Ghost form or no, instincts made sure I died about a thousand deaths in the few seconds of free fall before he flared his wings out and shot upward again with powerful beats.
His mouth at my ear, he murmured, “That’s what you get for Yummy Mammon.”
“Right there, the house on the corner lot,” I said, pointing to the small single-level home that was just a step above a trailer as Azazel swooped low over the little town.
After we’d gone back to Hell through the gate in Sydney, he flew me to yet another demon’s territory, since Azmodea’s gate in the east of the San Francisco Bay Area was hundreds of miles away from Forest Grove, the little town on the suburban outskirts of the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon.
Thankfully, the demon whose gate we had to use this time wasn’t interested in why Azazel needed access, and we proceeded to Earth without issue.
Now Azazel shot me an arch look. “You do realize I’m familiar with your mother’s house?”
“Why—” I broke off and glared at him. “You watched me?”
“I checked in on you every once in a while,” he corrected, “in the never-dwindling hope that you might marry before your twenty-fifth birthday.”
“Perv.”
“You weren’t that interesting as a teenager,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I never watched you in your room.” His lips twitched. “Not until after you went off to college.”
“What?”
His voice was all innocence. “Had to keep a closer eye on you as you approached your mid-twenties.”
Ah, yes, to manipulate my boyfriends into proposing. I was still sore about that. But right now, the other implication of what he said riled me up far more—while it also irritatingly aroused me, not that I’d ever admit it. “How much exactly,” I gritted out, “did you watch me?”
A smug smile snuck onto his face, and his voice dropped to a sensual purr. “Enough to know how you like to be touched.”
I probably should have been scandalized. And I would have been. Totally. I’d have mustered up real outrage about his unethical snooping…if I wasn’t so much in favor of the result.
He landed in a whirl of wings and set me down right in front of the door to the small backyard just as I heard my mom’s voice.
I froze where I stood.
The window to the kitchen was open, allowing parts of her conversation to float outside. As if in a trance, I stepped closer, looked inside.
My mom sat at the small kitchen table, her phone at her ear. Her hair, the same dark brown as mine, only cut shorter, was tousled, as if she’d run her hand through it a hundred times today. The last few years had brought her a few wrinkles, but now her face appeared haggard, the lines deepened, her skin pallid. She seemed to have aged years since I last saw her.
Even in my spirit form, the echo of my heart cringed at her sight, at the sorrow and grief that hung about her like a heavy mantle.
“No,” she said, her voice hoarse. “No, I do understand, but—” She paused, and her features tightened. “She wouldn’t just leave. Maybe you could—” She closed her eyes, her free hand on the table clenching to a fist. “Please, if you could just send another officer to question—yes, I know. I get that. I just think—” She paused again, swallowed. Her tone turned bitter. “I’ll have a nice day when I know what happened to my daughter.”
She glared at the phone, the call apparently ended, and let the device fall to the table, burying her face in both hands. Her shoulders shook.
Something broke inside me.
I started for the door. Azazel caught my wrist. His face harsh, he shook his head.
“Don’t.”
“I need her to see me,” I rasped. “She needs to know.”
“No. You think you’re doing her a favor by revealing the truth, but you’ll end up hurting her more. Most human minds aren’t meant to understand what lies beyond their senses. There’s a reason we don’t run around showing ourselves here on Earth. Taylor was different because she was present during the séance and has known since you were both thirteen. Kids are more open. If you spring this kind of knowledge on an older human, set in their ways, you risk irreparable damage to their psyche.”
My mom’s sob yanked my gaze back to her. I hadn’t seen her cry like this since the early days after my dad’s betrayal. My entire soul