Chapter Fourteen
By the time late morning rolled around, the summer heat had been switched to full-blast, scorching the air and setting Vegas’s blacktop streets to broil. Grif had his sleeves rolled, but wanted to strip down to his undershirt as soon as the sun’s rays hit his body. It took a while for Kit’s classic convertible Duetto to cool, and he couldn’t help but think of the sun’s violent plasmic state—all that fire and cosmic fuel burning the atmosphere.
So deep, Grif thought, that there was nothing it couldn’t split, sunder, or touch.
And speaking of deep, Grif thought, stealing a glance at Kit. There’d been something deeper niggling at her when he’d arrived home that morning. More than just worry or irritation over his absence. He’d sensed it as soon as he entered the living room, the same way he sensed a soul recently loosened from its body. It might have been the dregs of their conversation about Evie the day before, and Kit’s harebrained idea that Grif somehow compared the two women in his mind. It was a talk he’d been determined to revisit, though he wasn’t so sure now.
Do you ever dream about me?
No, he didn’t really want to bring that up again. And there was no comparing Kit and Evie anyway. They could have been alive at the same time, same era, and still wouldn’t exist in the same universe. Evie was moody and melancholic and prone to fits of passion, good and bad. Grif had often held his breath when she entered a room, waiting to see which it would be, sighing in relief when she turned the beautiful moon face his way, a calming force over the wild sea.
Kit, on the other hand, was like a newly opened soda pop. All effervescence and sparkle and fizz. It was a strange feeling when a woman’s smile made you want to hold her inside of you just to feel more of her cooling effect. So her mood yesterday had cold-cocked him. He didn’t know what to do with her when she was flat.
Thankfully, whatever was bothering her had melted away during the course of their lovemaking. What started out as sweet and tentative on the living-room sofa transitioned into a wild vertical roll down the hall. They’d ended up back in their bedroom, where they eventually slept, as if trying to make up for the missed night.
God, but this woman made him forget himself. It was such a complete lapse in purpose and reason that it almost worried him. Should he react to another person like she was an addiction? Or allow himself to burn with a need so fiery all he wanted to do was add more fuel?
Half the time, Grif thought, he didn’t even know he was craving her—her touch, voice, nearness. Then the need climbed into him like a bandit, and it was only after he was already bruising her lips with his and devouring her flesh like an animal that he realized how hungry he’d been for her at all. By the time they were done, both sated and sweaty, loose-limbed and exhausted—he could barely remember his own name.
He even forgot why he was here.
Grif shoved that thought—all of them—away. The important thing was that Kit was back to her normal self, volleying theories on the Cuban-Russian connection like she was playing tennis with herself. By the time she’d come to a halt in the hospital lot, she was armed with plans to confront the Kolyadenkos, Mary Margaret, and Al Zicaro in one fell swoop.
Five minutes later, though, after following the ER nurse’s directions to the hospital’s cafeteria, they were faced with a sight that made them both fall still and silent. Jeannie Holmes’s mother was already waiting.
The woman’s hollow gaze skimmed Kit first, wistfulness blooming, before dying on the next blink. Seeing the look, Kit shoved her bag into Grif’s hands, and rushed to take the woman’s hands in her own. “Thank you for agreeing to see us, Ms. Holmes. I know this is a terrible time for you.”
Ms. Holmes’s face damned near turned to dust. Her head fell, and she dropped back into her seat, and slumped. Yet her fingers remained locked with Kit’s, who moved to sit next to her. Grif remained standing across the Formica tabletop.
“Call me Jann,” she said, finally looking up. “Detective Carlisle told me you’d be coming. And that you saved my daughter. Thank you. No one else ever tried.”
“I wish we could have done more,” Kit said softly.
Grif sat, too. “We’d like to do more still.”
Jann jolted at his voice, and her expression hollowed out again as she drew her hands away. Grif’d seen this look in women before, cowed and withdrawn and mistrustful. He both understood it and didn’t, but knew Kit would have to take the lead on this one.
“I want to show you something,” Jann said, pulling a battered brown handbag from the adjacent plastic chair. She rummaged until she pulled out an old photograph, and handed it to Kit. “Jeannie wasn’t always like this. Three years ago she was beautiful, bright. So smart I would have sworn on my life she could never get involved with any drug. Certainly not this.”
“I don’t think smarts have anything to do with it,” Kit said, gently thumbing the worn photo. “These kinds of drugs can take over your mind in one fell swoop. They shut down the pathways that lead to healthy decision-making and burn new cravings into your mind.”
“They eat you alive.” Jann winced like she’d bitten into something bitter, and she dropped her face into her hands. “She used to sing, you know. She had a voice like an angel. The kind that could have taken her somewhere.”
Kit rubbed her palm along the woman’s arm, Jann Holmes’s pain etched across her own brow. It made Grif want to pull her close and protect her from herself.
“We’re working hard to get krokodil off the streets and to take down the people who put it there.”
Sniffing, Jann’s eyes narrowed as she glanced up at Grif. “You’re the couple who busted up that prostitution ring a while back, aren’t you? They said at the time that the man who was running that ring, that Chambers character, was untouchable in this town. But you touched him.”
Grif just nodded.
Jann glanced back at her lap, and the photo that she cradled there. “More rich men doing what they want, making money off the poor . . . or the cravings of the poor.” Mouth pursed tight, she looked at Kit. “I can’t tell you much. Jeannie and I haven’t been close in years, not since she started using. I’m ashamed to say that I kicked my own daughter out of my house. I knew she’d already shot every dollar and dime she had into her veins, and when the money I worked so hard for began to disappear from my wallet, well, I’d had enough. I’ve just . . . I’ve had enough of people taking things from me.”
“So had you ever met her friends? Tim Kovacs? Or Jeap Yang?”
“Tim was the one she was found with, right?” Jann asked, but immediately shook her head. “No, she obviously picked him up somewhere on the way to rock bottom. But, of course, I’d met Jeap. They dated for years. I think he’s the one who got her into that life. Started with the light stuff, but that was like putting a match to a fuse for my Jeannie. She’s like me. I get hooked on something, and it don’t ever stop. That’s why I don’t ever start.”
Jann lowered her head again.
“Ms. Holmes . . . Jann. This isn’t your fault.” Kit leaned close. “Nothing could have fated this addiction. It was her choice. But she was given a hand in getting there.”
“Only someone without a child could say I’m blameless.” The permanent frown deepened between Jann Holmes’s eyes. “It’s a mother’s job to protect her child. I brought her into a dangerous world. And then I failed her.”
Jann rose, and hefted her bag over her shoulder. It looked like it weighed a thousand pounds. “I— I think I’m going to go home for a bit. I’ve been here since they brought her in. I’ve already told her nurses that you can go in, but I don’t know what you expect to accomplish by seeing her. They say she might never wake up.” She huffed humorlessly. “Just don’t get your hopes up. That girl will break your heart every time.”
And she walked away without another word, steps as monotone as her voice, until she disappeared from sight.
“Ouch,” Kit said softly, finally breaking the silence.
“What do you expect to accomplish here, Kit?” Grif asked, because it was the one thing that hadn’t made sense to him on the short, hot drive over. She’d been chatting too rapidly for him to get a word in edgewise, but in the wake of Jann’s dejection, he couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. “Chances are Jeannie’s not going to miraculously wake from a coma just to help forward our investigation.”
Kit’s chatty demeanor made a sudden detour. She looked away, all at once overly interested in the vending machines. Grif narrowed his eyes.
“I could use a granola bar about now,” she said. “You want a granola bar?”
“Ki-i-it.” The word elongated into a growl. She turned back to him with wide, gamine eyes—à la Hepburn, à la Evie, à la every woman who’d ever tried to pull the wool when getting what they wanted. Grif crossed his arms. “What. Are. You. Doing?”
She licked her lips slowly, as if testing the words for flavor before answering. “I’m baiting . . . it.”
Grif shoved back from the table. The pop and effervescence and fizz of her personality suddenly made his head want to explode. “Hell no.”
“There is no hell,” she quipped. “Remember?”
Grif shook his head. “For the life of me, I cannot figure why you’re always bound and determined to throw yourself in the line of fire.”
She clearly had no argument, as she waved the concern away. “Scratch reached out to us through Trey Brunk, and I bet we could have squeezed vital information from it if we’d been prepared for it.”
“How do you propose we prepare to face off against one of the Third?”
“Not we, silly,” Kit said, rolling her eyes like he was the nut job. “Scratch would never talk to you.”
Now Grif stood.
Kit stood, too, and suddenly they were toe to toe. In that moment, with determination in her eye and her jaw clenched tight, he decided she looked exactly like Evie.
“No.” Grif meant to walk away, clear out of the hospital without looking back—heat be damned, along with Kit’s harebrained ideas—but he whirled back before he’d taken three steps. Pointing, he said, “Scratch wants to possess you. It wants your soul!”
“So let me use that,” she implored, palms up.
“Over my dead body.”
“I don’t think anyone with a dead body has ever said that before,” Kit said, crossing her arms.
Now he did turn to leave.
But Kit appeared unexpectedly in front of him, leaning forward, all of that energetic willfulness curled into her fists, like he was the one in the wrong. “Grif, when I told you Jeannie was still alive, you got a look on your face that contradicted that fact.”
Grif said nothing.
“Is she destined to die?” she asked, and then clarified, “Is she your next Take?”
He unclenched his jaw only long enough to answer. “Yes.”
“Soon?”
“Yes.”
Shaking her head, Kit glared. “So we don’t have much time, and we have even fewer leads. It’s worth a shot.”
Laying a palm on each side of her face, Grif whispered fiercely, “It’s not worth all the fortune in the world.”
Placing her palms over his, Kit squeezed. “Let me do this, Grif. I don’t have wings. I can’t fight using fists or brute strength. All I have is my mind, and the knowledge that this Scratch creature is . . . interested in me. And . . . ouch. You’re hurting me.”
Realizing his palms had fallen to her shoulders, he released her immediately, but he didn’t back away. “Scratch is stalking you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Grif slammed his fist on the table next to him, causing the rest of the room to go silent and still. He didn’t care. “Don’t say that like it’s a good thing! It’s obsessed! Didn’t you see the way it looked at you?”
Kit only lifted her chin higher. “Yes. I know exactly what that sort of obsession looks like.”
He stuttered into silence and cocked his head. Was there some sort of double meaning in her words?
“I can do this, Grif,” she said before he could give it more thought.
Grif jerked his head. “It’s too dangerous. It will try to use your emotional weaknesses against you.”
“So I won’t show it any.” She shrugged.
“It has a bead on you, Kit, and I don’t know what to do about it! Not yet, anyway.”
Kit jabbed a finger in the center of his chest. “Then let me use that obsession! Let me get what we need from Jeannie through it by doing what I do best.”
Grif cursed and paced away, blowing out a hard breath as he yanked the hat from his head. Running a hand over the top of it, he stood for a moment, feeling her eyes hard on his back. When he was sure he was calm, he turned. “If we muck it up, Jeannie could be Lost.”
Kit stood there, her pretty face and cupcake dress completely at odds with the steel in her spine. “Then we don’t muck it up.”
And what about you, he wondered, but couldn’t say. He didn’t want her to know how worried he was for her, partly because he didn’t want to admit it to himself. But Scratch was the scariest creature he’d ever encountered . . . and he had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
Grif didn’t answer for a long while. Visitors and orderlies and nurses mulled around them, but nobody paid much attention to the man and woman in an obvious standoff. They were probably used to the drama. And Grif was used to Kit. He knew that look on her face. If he demanded she leave here now, she’d just return once his back was turned. Better to stay close so he could keep watch.
So he sighed and asked the inevitable. “What’s your plan?”
And he was unsurprised to find that it included him.
The curtain did little to separate Jeannie Holmes’s bed from the rest of the ER, and the human drama playing out behind and around Kit seeped into the dreary enclave in the form of intermittent moans, rhythmic beeps, and constant drips. A machine also beeped in the corner of Jeannie’s cubicle, Kit saw, but that was the only life behind that curtain. She wanted to ask Grif if plasma ringed the girl’s pale, limp body, but for now, as planned, Kit stood utterly alone.
Edging closer to the bed, she studied Jeannie. She looked a fraction better than Jeap had when Kit found him, though the fresh-faced girl in Jann Holmes’s photo was long gone. This face was pocked with scabs that stood out angrily against sallow gray skin. Chapped lips were sunken slightly, indicating where teeth should have been, and her hair was lank and brittle.
The wounds left from the crocodile injections had been cleaned and were bound tight, so maybe Kit only imagined that a cloying sweetness lingered beneath the room’s antiseptic scent. At least the girl’s brow was smooth, indicating a total lack of consciousness. Regardless of what’d gone on before, Jeannie would feel no pain at her time of death.
“Jeannie and Jeap,” Kit murmured, feeling her resigned study shift to overt sadness. “I bet you were a cute couple at first.” The girl who sang like an angel. The boy who liked to cook.
“I wish I could speak with you,” Kit said softly, leaning nearer. “Because I’d really love to know . . . what was your longtime boyfriend doing with some new woman?”
It was a rhetorical question. Kit knew exactly what Jeap had been doing. Same thing Jeannie had been doing with Tim Kovacs. Getting their tweek on.
But how had Jeap then passed his crocodile addiction on to her? Kit’s gaze skittered briefly to the girl’s bandaged limbs, then she looked away and leaned against the side of the bed. “I bet he couldn’t quit you, huh? You were the love of his life. Even if the drugs were telling him differently.”
It was a statement that could be seen as silly, a regret only a girl could sigh over . . . at least that’s what Kit was counting on. Still, Jeannie didn’t move, eyes immobile behind her paper-thin lids, and the only sound within the sad, little chamber was the beep-beep of the monitor. Either Scratch was doing a crappy job of stalking Kit or she had to put some more emotion into it.
“Remember,” Grif had told her. “The Third feed off negative emotion, and if you reveal even the slightest hint of it, Scratch won’t hesitate to use it against you. Don’t let it. If it tries to goad you into rage, you combat it with patience. It says hate? There’s no stronger emotion than love.”
“I know that,” Kit said softly.
“I know you do, doll,” Grif replied, the intensity washing from his face as he placed a palm to her cheek. She knew he was genuinely scared for her. That alone was all the reminder she needed.
She’d then given a humorless smile. “I just have one question.”
Grif cocked his head.
“Why are the Third the only ones who get to wield the sharp emotions?” Hate, vengeance, rage, greed—all cutting, all dangerous.
“I don’t know, Kitty-Cat,” Grif said. “But I’m sure I’d lift a blade in my love for you.”
He was just trying to shore her up, yet Kit still smiled. “Griffin Shaw, you say the most unintentionally romantic things.”
Fortified by the memory, Kit stared at the glowing green line of the monitor and continued to address Jeannie as if she were conscious. “You know, I was once lost as well. I don’t know if you can see it from where you are, but that dark time marked me similarly to the way the krokodil has marked you. Not physically, but psychically. Can you see the ring of a former sorrow around me? A Pure angel once told me he could.”
Nothing.
“Anyway, I understand the need to hide somewhere safe. But where you are now?” Kit shook her head. “That’s not safe. That’s not anywhere. You’re going to have to leave there soon, because your body is going to give out, but you want it to be by your choice. You don’t want to be Lost.”
The silence deepened, and the machine’s beep punctuated it in shrill stabs. For all Kit’s awareness of angels and the Everlast, she received no more answers than anyone else who’d ever stood by a sickbed, waiting for a miracle. Kit wondered if Grif was right, and she was just wasting time. Jeannie wasn’t going to wake. The doctors said so, as did Grif . . . and he had the advantage of celestial eyesight.
Kit squinted, trying to blur her mortal vision so that she, too, might see the plasmic outline fating Jeannie to death, but there was nothing fantastical about Kit. She was merely mortal, and saw only what she was meant to.
Yet she could communicate this way. Scratch had addressed her directly using Trey Brunk’s drug-altered state. And the . . . thing wanted her, right? So Kit took hold of the girl’s lax fingertips, leaned closer to that destroyed young face, and whispered, “I don’t care what you’ve done, Jeannie Holmes. I don’t think you’re weak at all. You’re human, and you’ve made mistakes, but beneath this fragile flesh? I think you’re incredibly strong. And I think you should leave this mudflat on your own damned terms.”
It was the curse that did it. Or maybe the strength of her conviction, or the anger behind it. Grif said not to allow in any negative thought, but Kit couldn’t help it. And this was righteous negative thought. It was bullshit, she decided, that kids like Jeannie had to live in a world where such a gruesome death was possible. It was additionally offensive that heaven’s celestial heralds didn’t lift a feather to help.
Jeannie’s fingertips twitched, then tightened over Kit’s to the point of pain. Kit lifted her head in time to see the girl’s face stretch wide, but it was with a grin she’d likely never worn before. The entire room seemed to pulse, and a rolling sound, the ripple of leaves on an accelerating breeze, undulated along the privacy curtains before settling again. Then Jeannie’s bruised lids whipped open like window shades, and twin stars shone where pupils should have been.
The anger and frustration that’d flared after Jeap’s death rushed over Kit again, but she damped it down and played dumb. “J— Jeannie? Is that you?”
The head moved up and down woodenly. Kit barely resisted an eye roll. Kit would have to be on krokodil herself not to see that this wasn’t Jeannie, but she played along, heart pounding so hard she could almost taste the beat in her throat.
“I knew you were strong,” she said, managing a shaky smile. “I’m so glad you decided to speak with me.”
It nodded.
“I don’t think we have much time, though,” Kit continued, trying to ignore the cold air now being exhaled in her direction. The hand clutching hers grew icier degree by degree. “Someone will be coming for you soon. A Centurion. They’re a kind of angel, one that used to be human.”
The fallen angel blinked. “Not like you, then. You’re . . . like me.”
Kit caught the sound of leaves rustling deep in Jeannie’s throat, and fought back a shudder. She wasn’t like this thing at all.
“I’m human,” Kit confirmed, fighting her nerves by lifting her chin. “And I’m a reporter. I’m trying to find out who did this to you.”
Jeannie laughed at that . . . or, at least, Scratch did. “I did this to me.”
“You had help,” Kit said gently.
“You mean J.P., right?” Scratch said, accessing Jeap’s real name through Jeannie’s memories. As with Trey Brunk, it now possessed the thoughts of the body it ruled.
Swallowing hard, Kit said, “I mean the woman who gave him the recipe for crocodile. Britney. Or was it Brandy? No, Bianca?”
This was the information she needed, and she held her breath to see if Scratch—so eager to reach her—would release it.
“You mean Bella,” Jeannie/Scratch said, and Kit’s heart leaped in her chest. “She popped up out of nowhere. Glommed on to Jeap like he was God’s greatest gift. Said he was just the man she was looking for.” It scoffed. “Her and those stupid wigs and that clunky, annoying accent.”
“They hooked up pretty quick?” Kit asked.
“You know how men are,” it said, rolling Jeannie’s eyes so the black stars in them pulsed. “Professing to be lone wolves, but unable to be alone with themselves. Right?”
Scratch was fishing for a reaction. Kit changed the subject. “And what happened when he lost his job and the money ran out?”
Kit didn’t know for sure that Jeap even had a job, but even the most dedicated tweeker wouldn’t pump lighter fluid into his veins if he had another choice.
“She had that recipe,” it said, fishing that answer from Jeannie’s memories, too. Bingo.
Kit resisted a full-blown smile. “And didn’t you mind? I mean, about them getting together?”
“You would have minded, wouldn’t you?” it answered. “If it’d been your man longing for another?”
“Yes,” Kit answered honestly, because she couldn’t see the harm in admitting that, but added, “Though my man tends to go for a more traditional gal.”
“Oh, but Bella was whatever you wanted her to be. She wore those stupid wigs and bright clothes, but they were more like costumes than anything. She knew the guys loved it.” Scratch crossed Jeannie’s arms, ignoring the tubes and tape and bandages holding Jeannie together. “I just thought she looked like a clown.”
“Maybe that was the point,” Kit said, crossing her own arms, trying not to shiver. The curtained cubicle had to be ten degrees cooler now. “Bella didn’t want any of you to be able to identify her. But was there anything noteworthy about her? A scar? A personal tic? Some physical item she favored?”
Jeannie/Scratch shook her head. “Her clothing was always different, but always the same. Low-cut. Tight-fitting. Cheap bling. That was never J.P.’s type before, you know. He liked the way I dressed. Solid, like I was going somewhere.”
A wry smile flashed this time . . . and it fluttered wistfully at the edges. Edging back, Kit stared. Could that have been Jeannie? Could she hear Kit? Did Scratch’s power or magic or whatever enable her to talk to Kit as well?
“I want to show you a picture,” Kit said quickly, and yanked the photo of Yulyia Kolyadenko from her bag. “Is this Bella?”
Jeannie’s head tilted, and while the star-stamped pupils remained, they were dull and softly edged. Almost, Kit thought, human. Finally—she, it—someone said, “No. That’s not her.”
Kit’s hopes plummeted. “Are you sure? Imagine her with a wig.”
“Not her.” The woman who might be Jeannie shrugged. “Even with the right earrings.”
Kit paused. “What earrings?”
“The basketball hoops that hung down to her damned shoulders.” The twin stars in Jeannie’s eyes pulsed, brightening at the curse word. “I commented on them every time I saw her. The wigs varied in length, but the earrings never did.”
Kit bit her lip, thinking. She couldn’t see the meticulously groomed Russian wearing hoops that large, but then she couldn’t picture her flopping with Jeap, either. So, a lackey? A female underling in her organization to do her dirty work?
“I don’t like it here anymore,” Jeannie said suddenly, and gave a great shudder. “It’s too cold.”
It was. Kit reached down. “I can pull up your covers—”
“Can you take off my flesh? Because that’s the real problem. It’s weighing me down like an icy anchor.” Kit froze, unsure who was talking now, and the voice shifted, frail with memory. “When I was using croc, it felt like I would never be cool again. I was either shooting up or burning up.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kit said, and meant it. Shooting krok might have begun as a personal choice, but once the drug took hold, choice became a luxury viewed from afar.
“Because you, too, know what it is to burn, don’t you?” A lilt tinged the flat tone, and Kit’s ears suddenly wanted to pop, like during an altitude shift on a plane. “You once wished for death and longed for oblivion.”
Don’t engage it.
As Jeannie’s gaze blazed, pricked with the twin stars, Kit decided to follow Grif’s advice. She had what she wanted. A name, and clues to Bella’s identity, if not a full description.
“You’re looking a little parched, Jeannie,” she said, reaching toward the bedside tray. “Would you like a little water?”
Jeannie’s features immediately twisted, as if they were made of pale putty pressed atop a skull-shaped rock. Scratch wasn’t trying to hide anymore.
Kit backed away. “Let her go.”
“No.” And with its otherworldly gaze fixed on her, Scratch began manipulating Jeannie’s expressions, pressing them into anger and horror and sadness, often at the same time. The raw hatred glowing in the irises completed the aspect of possession. It seemed there was nothing at all human left inside the fleshly shell. “I’m going to drag her into the Eternal Forest. I’m going to see to it that she’s never warm again.”
Kit shook her head. “She hasn’t earned a place in the Forest. You have no right to her.”
Scratch scoffed, and a glacial wind cut past Kit to whip at the curtains behind her. “Don’t deign to tell me my rights! I was fashioned by all that is Pure! I was created of the finest material in God’s great universe! Back when the Forest was still known as the Garden, before I was cast—”
“Was,” Kit interrupted, her own indignation growing. “Was, was, was. And are no more! And even if you hadn’t fallen, what’s Pure never trumps what is Chosen.” Kit knew that much. God loved mankind . . . not the feathered beasts created to protect them.
She also knew that she should shut up, and that Grif was probably cursing her from his hiding place. But she was hot now. Jeannie’s life had been wasted and her death hard. Her passage into paradise shouldn’t be the same.
She just hoped Grif was making a move now that Scratch’s attention was on her.
“Temper, temper, little deva.” Because, of course, it sensed the downgrade in her emotions. “If you think this is a neat little example of possession, you should see what I have planned for you.”
“No.” Kit shook her head. “I’m Chosen, one of God’s own. And so is Jeannie.”
Scratch drew a smile across Jeannie’s face, sickly sweet. “And yet here you both are.”
Kit managed a smug smile of her own. “Yes. And thanks for your help.”
The brow on Jeannie’s face drew overly low, and all was still. The seconds stretched, then snapped. Star-struck eyes flew wide, the light within them flaring like torches, then Jeannie’s body stiffened, and the stars in her eyes snuffed like matches.
Kit inched forward. “Jeannie?”
Scratch lunged, and bandaged arms ripped at Kit’s shirt. The stars in Jeannie’s gaze were blotted out, but the eyes had flipped to the backside of her skull, and the attaching muscles stretched before Kit like taffy. Kit fought to escape, fought for a scream, but the body jerked back just as suddenly, as if yanked by the center of the spine.
Kit twisted from the frigid grip as the body convulsed, and the room swelled with the sound of something living being uprooted. Jeannie’s whole body fell onto the bed like a discarded ragdoll, and lay exactly as before, as if it’d never been possessed by a sadistic fallen angel. The wind-washed howl of dead leaves and snapping branches slid from the cubicle, and on Kit’s next blink, all was still.
The heart monitor beat steadily, same as before. The chill left the curtained chamber. The noise on its other side rose again, in relieving and unbelievable normalcy.
Shaking, Kit bent to peer beneath the bed where Grif had been hiding.
Gone.
“If a fallen angel can possess her body, so can you,” she had told him, back after Jann Holmes left the hospital crying.
Grif jerked his head. “It’s technically not allowed.”
“But you’ve done it before,” Kit pointed out, and he couldn’t argue that, because he’d done it in the case that’d brought them together. He’d done it to her best friend, Nicole Rockwell.
“You lined up your pulse points with hers,” she reminded him, and he frowned, obviously wishing he hadn’t told her. “You fueled them with your angelic energy. Do the same with Jeannie, bind yourself to her, and Scratch won’t be able to touch her soul. Or, at least, it’ll have to get through you first.”
“And doesn’t that sound peachy,” he muttered, but he hid beneath the bed anyway, because they both knew Jeannie Holmes didn’t deserve to spend her afterlife fleeing Scratch in the Eternal Forest.
And then he’d done it. While Kit had Scratch’s attention, Grif had slipped inside.
Rising again, this time truly alone in the room, Kit could only wonder what happened after that. Wonder . . . and settle in to wait.