Caleb looked down at Delia. Her hair was starting to fall down and dirt smudged the tip of her nose, but she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Hang on,” he told her, and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
Then they were gone.
Chapter Nineteen
The three of them emerged in a hotel suite Delia had never seen before. Sitting on the couch in the middle of the living room area were her friend Pru and, for some reason, Aaron Sanchez.
They both gaped at Delia and Caleb and Ty, with Pru’s expression shifting at once to concern after she seemed to focus on the half angel.
“Holy crap — did you just do ten rounds with Riddick Bowe at Caesar’s Palace or something?”
Ty reached up to touch the puffy skin around his eye, now turning spectacular shades of purple and dark blue. “No — maybe more like five with a demon under the Aquarius.”
“Should I get you some ice?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied, then headed over to one of the unoccupied club chairs and basically fell into it.
Delia couldn’t really blame him for wanting to collapse. Although she hadn’t been physically knocked around like Ty Carter, she also felt as if she’d been pummeled, just in a different kind of way.
Aaron looked over at Caleb. “What happened?”
“We won,” Caleb said briefly. “So I’m pretty sure you don’t have to worry about selling the house now. The thing your grandmother was trying to warn us about isn’t a problem anymore.”
“Well, not exactly,” Ty put in. Pru had just handed him a baggie full of ice, and he pressed it against his eye and winced slightly. The cut on his forehead had stopped bleeding, but he’d need to clean it up at some point. For now, though, it was probably better if he attended to his eye first.
Delia crossed her arms and sent him what she hoped was a steely look. “What do you mean? With Sellers gone — ”
“He’s gone,” Ty broke in, “but the river is still without a guardian. Sooner or later, someone’s going to try to exploit its power again.”
This comment obviously didn’t sit very well with Caleb, because he glared at the half angel. “You need to shut up about that. You’re not roping Delia into being some kind of river guardian.”
“Whoa, whoa.” She held her hands up and looked over at Ty. What the hell was he even talking about?
Clearly, she’d missed a lot during the time August Sellers was holding her captive.
But she remembered the terrible visions she’d seen while she was feeling her way around in the utter darkness of her prison — an older woman, possibly Alba, falling to the floor as unseen hands appeared to choke her to death. A car crushed by a semi on a dark highway under glittering, uncaring stars.
And the much younger woman, probably even younger than Delia, fleeing her apartment, a suitcase in each hand.
“August Sellers killed or scared off anyone in the Sanchez family who could have been the next guardian,” she said, and everyone stared at her, frankly astonished.
“How do you know that?” Aaron demanded.
Considering it was his family they were talking about, Delia supposed it made sense that he’d be the one asking the questions.
“Because I saw it in a vision,” she said. “Your grandmother didn’t die of natural causes — I saw something choking her.”
His wasn’t the sort of complexion that could turn exactly pale, but he looked stunned nonetheless. “The doctors said it was a heart attack.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”
He was silent for a moment. “Did you see anything else?”
She nodded. “There was a terrible accident — a car and a semi. It looked like it was out in the middle of the desert somewhere, but I didn’t see any mile markers or anything that could tell me where it was.”
But Aaron obviously knew what she was talking about, because his expression turned very grim. “My cousin Isaac. He was driving back to Laughlin from Needles, and a semi plowed right into him. He didn’t have a chance.”
