“And on that note.” Ezrina pecks Alice with a kiss. “I think we’ll get this one home where she can be herself.”
“Don’t leave. Santa’s coming and Alice won’t want to miss it,” Logan implores. He shoots a quick glance my way and I can feel him saying something, asking me to read between the lines, to trust him. There is a very real reason he wants them to stay, and I’m pretty sure a surly man in a red suit has nothing to do with it.
Ezrina pecks another kiss to Alice’s rosy cheek. “Fine. We’ll be out back. It’s far too stuffy in here. A breeding ground for germs.” They start to take off and a surge of desperation hits me.
“Ezrina.” A part of me understands that my mother is not the deadly tool in my arsenal. It’s this woman right there. “Aside from the markers. I’m open to suggestions on how to take down the enemy. Something unconventional, something heinous. Nothing is off the table.” I take another step forward and pick up her hand.I’m going to kill Chloe. And if she cannot die, I’m willing to make a sport of having her try.Both her host body and Ezrina herself are Celestra, so I have no doubt she heard.
She cranes her neck toward the rear of the room past the fireplace, deep into the crowd of bodies, and a line of heat bisects my stomach. That’s where they are. I can feel them there. Feel the boys.
“That is my body.” Ezrina meets her ice-cold eyes with mine.
“And she’s defiled it with wickedness,” I say.
“Pity.”
Nev steps in. “Skyla, you realize we can’t mix insanity and schemes. We stoked the flames of your mother once and can’t possibly go along with whatever you’re filling Rina’s head with. We have a child, Skyla. We will offer our full services to aiding your people, but any personal vengeance is yours alone.” He gives a curt nod as they speed off.
I turn to find Coop and Logan with their arms folded tightly across their chests like twin bookends.
“What?”
Coop’s lips twitch. “I don’t know what that was about, but I’ve got a gift for you that might cheer you up.” He glances to Logan. “Both of you.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense,” I say. “I need a little pinhole of light in this dark night.”
He glances around and shakes his head just a bit before stepping in close. “I came across a research paper online about a group of teenagers in Norway who contracted a rare tropical virus while on spring break one year.”
Logan and I exchange a quick glance.
“Coop”— I nod—“bright light, remember?”
“I’m getting there.” He sheds an easy grin and looks impossibly like Logan. My heart breaks that he can smile at all knowing how Wes is defiling his wife. “The virus was so disruptive to their systems, it not only nearly damaged their major organs, but it scarred their cellular structure.”
My lips part as my jaw unhinges. “Cooper Flanders.” I can hardly breathe. “I think you just gave me and our people a gift that will keep on giving.”
“Shit.” Logan leans in. “Then that’s where we look next. Ezrina was trying to find a cure when all along she needed to find a disease.”
I look to Coop. “What happened to the teenagers?”
“They’re all dead. It took them down in days.” He glares at something or someone near the entry. “I’ll be back.”
Coop takes off and Logan steps in close, our eyes constantly surveying the crowd as if we were expecting another government sting operation, but we both know we’re expecting something far worse—Gage and the demon he’s leashed himself to.
“Virus.” His brows tweak a moment. “You realize the enemy would love nothing more than to watch us kill ourselves in an effort to try to survive.”
“Yes, well, they say the planet is due for another purging. I say we swing at this beast from another angle entirely. Kiss Wes and his people with something that makes Ebola look like a summer cold, while those who side with us enjoy our inoculations. Might I suggest something painful that makes them bleed from every orifice.”
“That’s messy. And torturous. You do realize half our friends and family are lumped in with them.”
I make a face. “To quote Ezrina,pity.”
“And, of course, the poor humans. They wouldn’t stand a chance. And after we’ve killed off the human race, I suppose that would make us the evil ones by default.”
“I tried to save everyone, and look where that landed us.” I’m about to enter into a tirade about the injustice of the wicked and how they always seem to have the damn upper hand when ironically a hand itself falls over my shoulder and Logan’s, but before we can process what’s happening, we’re being escorted out back and into the cool Paragon mist by none other than the host with the most ghosts himself, Marshall Dudley.
“Hate to break up thepityparty.” He gives a sly wink my way. An odd confirmation that Marshall is indeed always listening in on my conversations. “But the heavenly gentry just arrived, and there are a few souls I thought you might be interested in seeing before they once again became the dearly departed.”
My adrenaline spikes, and every ounce of hope I’ve ever felt in my life skyrockets through me as Marshall leads us toward his enormous barn. A blaze of magnificent light bursts from its every seam in colors of lavender, cerulean blue, and amber shine like the spectral sight they are. As soon as we set foot inside, a sparkling fog envelops us and we’re met with a wall of chattering bodies dressed gloriously in rich velour and brocade, and yet each person here has a faded appeal to them. Each person here is only partially visible, their bodies ingloriously immaterial.
