“I know,” I say, avoiding eye contact as I try to make sense of what happened. “Put your murder eyes away. Something about this wasn’t right.”
“No shit,” Luca snaps. “They jumped me out of the blue.”
“But they didn’t try to hurt me,” I point out. “Which is a pretty strange trait for an assassin.”
Luca considers that. “Maybe they thought you were too hot to kill.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I roll my eyes, my nerves too fried to engage in banter. “That one over there nearly stabbed himself while trying to avoid checking me out.”
The adrenaline of the fight fades and everything else comes rushing back. I prop myself up with the sword as my energy abandons me all at once. “Ciprian played me.”
“He played us,” Luca says, his voice painfully gentle. “And I’m not convinced we have the full story. None of it adds up.”
I frown. “He told us his name, what more do you need to know? He’s enclave.”
“If that’s true,” Luca says. “Then why are you walking around free? I heard you tell him about Roscoe last night.”
“I knew you were eavesdropping.” I try to muster some outrage, but I’m too tired and heartbroken to pull it off.
“I had to pee,” Luca says stubbornly. “And it’s a small apartment.”
I shrug. “Does it even matter why I haven’t been arrested? Maybe he wanted to stick around and get more dirt.”
Luca touches the split on his face and examines the blood onhis fingers. “From everything I’ve heard about the enclave, that’s not how they work.”
“We don’t need to understand his motives,” I snap, pointing at the fallen soldiers around us with my sword. “We need to deal with this mess.”
“He saved Alistair, though.”
“Lucky us,” I snarl.
“Baby.” There’s enough quiet judgment in Luca’s voice that a thin outline of fire spreads around my wingtips.
I groan. We’re surrounded by bodies, dead, dismembered, or lights out, and my wings decide now is a good time to impersonate a road flare?
Frustrated, I toss up my hands. The sword feels a lot heavier than it did when I first grabbed it. “I don’t want to talk about either of them yet,” I say quietly, then turn as I hear footsteps running our way.
Imani skids around the corner in a silk robe, breathing heavily. “Celine, thank the gods you’re okay.” She takes in the crime scene around us, her mouth dropping open.
“I’m sorry I shoved you,” I tell her. “But you need to get away from here. I’ll call you after I get this cleaned up.”
“Celine, listen,” she begins.
“There isn’t time.” One of the unconscious angels groans, and Luca kicks him in the head. The sound cuts off abruptly. “Don’t kill him until we know what’s going on,” I hiss.
“Shut up!” Imani shouts.
I stare at her, shocked. In all our years of friendship, I’ve never seen her lose her temper before. Not with me at least.
“I ran out here to tell you that someone is here to see you.”
“Okay,” I whisper, ashamed of myself for pushing her this far. “Did they mention their name?”
Imani shakes her head, her eyebrows drawing tightly together.She shoots a worried glance at Luca. “He said . . . shit, Celine, he said he was your husband.”
I’m running before she can say another word. It’s all I can do not to scream into the night and never stop, because here, on the Fringes of supernatural Las Vegas, we live every moment in the darkest of valleys, even when the sun is blinding. And the truth none of us can ignore for long is this: we’re never safe.
EPILOGUE
