My gaze followed to where he pointed. Against the cloudy night sky, the darker shape of another Warden headed toward Zayne and the church. Relief loosened some of the tension in the muscles of my neck. I had no idea who the deceased Warden was, but it had to be someone Zayne knew and possibly had grown up with or spent years with, like Greene. I was grateful he had backup, because I wasn’t much help all wingless and standing on the sidewalk.
“Damn,” the fair-haired man said again. “I can’t get over how big those things are.”
“They’re not things,” I snapped, earning dubious looks from the two men. “They’re Wardens.”
“Whatever,” one of them muttered, and they both turned away from me and lifted their phones to take a picture.
It took a lot of restraint I didn’t know I had to resist the urge to snatch the phones out of their hands and stomp on them. I figured I’d made enough poor life choices today to last me at least the next week. Drawing in a shallow breath, I scanned the crowd. Someone must have seen how that Warden got up there. Unless whoever had done it could move so fast that the human eye couldn’t track them. Very few Upper Level demons were that powerful. Roth was, but was he even that fast? Able to crucify a Warden to a church on a busy street without being seen at all?
Once more, whatever had done this had been out here while we were patrolling—well, where we were supposed to be patrolling. It could be here right now, and we had no idea.
“Dammit,” I muttered, frustration rising. Where was this—
The brush of icy fingers over the nape of my neck sent a shiver down my spine. Tiny hairs all over my body stood up as my breath hitched deep in my chest. It was that feeling again. I spun, scanning the people who stood near me, all of them looking up at the church. They all seemed human to me. No one suspicious.
Reaching back, I rubbed my fingers along the base of my neck. The skin was warm, but that chilled feeling was still there.
Wait.
One of them didn’t look normal at all.
Near a parked white delivery truck, a woman’s body was blinking in and out like poor reception on an old television. She was wearing a dark blue service uniform, and while I could see no visible injuries, her face held the pale gauntness of death. She was a ghost...and she was staring at something or someone.
The ghost faded out and then reappeared on the sidewalk, her body angled away from me. Surprise rippled through me. The ghost didn’t know I was there, which was odd.
As I watched her drift through the onlookers as if she had a target, something occurred to me. I couldn’t be sure the little old lady in the park had seen me earlier. She’d looked my way, but then I’d felt that coldness.
I stepped around people until I reached the edge of the onlookers. The ghost was only a few feet in front of me when her form began to flicker rapidly. I opened my mouth, fully prepared to look like I was talking to myself.
The ghost woman jerked, her wispy arms flailing, back bowing as if an invisible string attached to her waist had been yanked hard. A second later, she blinked out of existence.
I drew up short. Ghosts and spirits both had an annoying habit of randomly disappearing. That wasn’t breaking news, but the way her body had jerked, as if she’d been caught—
Something dark and large moved along the corners of my vision, snagging my attention. I turned but saw nothing but a brick wall. I stared, seconds passing without anything happening.
I had no idea if I’d seen something. It could have been a person, or a weird trick of light from a passing car, or the outcome of my mind trying to compensate for the gaps in my side vision. It could’ve even been a ghost or a spirit. Maybe that guy who’d followed me to Zayne’s apartment. Or absolutely nothing. With my eyes, who knew?
But the icy awareness pressing on the nape of my neck had vanished, which made for a very strange...coincidence.
“Trin.”
I whirled around. Zayne had shifted back into human form, which I knew he’d done beyond the prying eyes of humans. My gaze flickered over him. There were dark smudges splattered along the tattered remains of his shirt.