“I still need to be loved and cherished and thought of. I’m like Santa Claus. If no one alive is here to want and believe in me, then I’ll cease to exist.”
Ghosts and spirits didn’t work that way. At all. But he was so wonderfully overdramatic. A grin tugged at the corners of my lips until I remembered I wasn’t the only one who could see Peanut. A girl who lived in this apartment complex could also see him. She must have watered-down angelic blood kicking around in her veins, like all humans who were able to see ghosts or displayed other psychic abilities. Enough to make her...different from everyone else. There weren’t many humans in existence with traces of angelic blood, so it was a shock to learn that there was one so close to where I was staying.
“Thought you made a new friend?” I reminded him.
“Gena? She’s cool, but it wouldn’t be the same if you ended up as dead as a doornail, and her parents aren’t choice, you know?” Before I could confirm that choice meant good in ’80s speak, he asked, “Where were you last night?”
My gaze shifted to that closed, unlocked door. “I was at the compound with Zayne.”
Peanut inched closer and lifted a wispy hand. He patted my knee, but I felt nothing through the blanket, not even the cold air that usually accompanied Peanut’s touch. “What happened, Trinnie?”
Trinnie.
Only Peanut called me that, while everyone else called me Trin or Trinity.
I closed my sore eyes as realization sank in. Peanut didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure how to tell him when the wounds left by Misha’s actions hadn’t scabbed over yet. If anything, I’d just slapped a weak-as-Hell bandage over them.
I was holding it together. Barely. So, the last thing I wanted to do was talk about it with anyone, but Peanut deserved to know. He knew Misha. He liked him, even though Misha could never see or communicate with Peanut, and he’d come to DC with me to find Misha instead of staying behind in the Potomac Highlands Warden community.
Granted, I was the only one who could see and communicate with Peanut, but he’d felt comfortable in the community. It was a big deal for him to travel with me.
Keeping my eyes closed, I drew in a long shuddering breath. “So, yeah, we...we found Misha, and it wasn’t...it wasn’t good, Peanut. He’s gone.”
“No,” he whispered. And then louder, he repeated, “No.”
I nodded.
“God. I’m sorry, Trinnie. I’m so damn sorry.”
Swallowing around the hard lump in my throat, I met his gaze.
“The demons—”
“It wasn’t the demons,” I interrupted. “I mean, they didn’t kill him. They didn’t want him dead. He was actually working with them.”
“What?” The shock in his voice, the way the one word pitched to near glass-breaking levels, would’ve been funny in any other situation. “He was your Protector.”
“He set it up—his abduction and everything.” I pulled my knees up under the blanket, pressing them to my chest. “Even made it so Ryker saw me that day using my grace.”
“But Ryker killed...”
My mom. I shut my eyes again and felt them burn, as if there could possibly be more tears left inside me. “I don’t know what was wrong with Misha. If he’s always...hated me, or if it was the Protector bond. I found out that he was never supposed to be bonded to me. It was always supposed to be Zayne, but there was a mistake.”
A mistake that my father had known about, and not only had he done nothing to fix it, he hadn’t seemed to care about it at all. When I’d asked why he hadn’t done anything, he’d said he wanted to see what would happen.
How freaking messed up was that?
“The bond could’ve twisted him. Made him turn...bad,” I continued, voice thick. “I don’t know. I won’t ever know, but the why doesn’t change the fact that he was working with Bael and this other demon. He even said that the Harbinger had chosen him.” I flinched as Misha’s face formed in my thoughts. “That the Harbinger told him he was special, too.”
“Isn’t that who’s been killing Wardens and demons?”
“Yeah.” I opened my eyes once I was sure I wasn’t going to cry. “I had to...”
“Oh, no.” Peanut seemed to know without me even saying it.
But I had to say it, because it was the reality. It was the truth I would live with for the rest of my days.