When the man had shown up earlier that summer—a big, buff stranger claiming to be there to help Riley—the boy-crazy Lily had rented him a room on the spot. It was a parlor of some sort. Like the rest of the house, crammed full of a few generations of paraphernalia.
Gabe’s bed was a sofa with a single pillow and bed sheet. It looked like it would only hold the man’s upper torso. His wardrobe of black gym clothes was folded and stacked neatly on top of some sort of old dressing room vanity next to a black marble fireplace. The man himself was suspended upside down from a metal rig set up in front of the bow window.
“One hundred forty-seven. One hundred forty-eight.” Gabe fought gravity and curled his body into a sit-up with each count. There was a puddle of sweat beneath him on an exercise mat.
“Uh, you doing okay there, Mount Olympus?” Nick asked.
Gabe’s mouth pinched in a firm line. “No. I am not well. Thank you for asking.”
Ah, hell.
They hadn’t exactly been best pals. Not with Nick discovering how much he liked a certain resident psychic and Gabe’s fawning adoration over Riley. But the guy was basically an oversized teddy bear who had Riley’s best interests at heart. It was hard to keep hating him.
“You want to come down here and talk about it?” Nick offered.
To his surprise, Gabe neatly executed a skin the cat flip and landed with asplooshin his own sweat puddle.
“I would very much like that,” the sweaty giant said.
Crap.
Gabe swiped a bath towel over his brow. It looked like a regular-sized sweat towel in the man’s dinner plate-sized hands. “Elanora is disappointed in me,” he announced.
“Elanora seems like she’s disappointed in a lot of people,” Nick observed.Like the entire human race.
Gabe shook his head, sending sweat in a 360-degree radius. “It is my fault that Riley was in danger. I was distracted by my infatuation with…ice cream. Riley could have ceased existing, and it would have been my fault.”
Nick was fairly certain Gabe wasn’t really talking about ice cream.
“Listen, big guy,” he said, clasping Gabe’s sweaty shoulder. He removed his hand and wiped his palm on his t-shirt. “Riley’s safety is not on you. It’s on me. If anyone failed her, it was me, not you.”
“But I am here to guide her. Instead, I allowed myself to be distracted by earthly enjoyments.”
Definitely not talking about ice cream.
A life without “earthly enjoyment” sounded like a shitty, boring existence.
“Look, Gabe. I don’t know what your relationship with Elanora is or what your relationship with Riley is supposed to be. But you’ve got to cut yourself some slack. You’re only human. Youarehuman, aren’t you?”
Gabe dropped to the floor and assumed the push-up position.
“One. Elanora is my spiritual patron. Two. I repay her generosity by taking on roles she specifies for me. Three.”
“And training Riley to open up to her powers was one of those roles.”
“Four. Yes. But my role was to guide hersafely.”
“Riley pulled a fast one on all of us by sneaking out to try to rescue Jasmine on her own. It won’t happen again. I won’t let it. Moving forward, you can guard her spiritually. But I’m guarding her body.”
Gabe looked thoughtful while he executed several more push-ups. “I do not know if Elanora would find that arrangement acceptable,” he said finally.
“Does Scary Grandma Lady pay you?” Nick asked.
Gabe paused. “Of course not.” He said it as if getting paid to do work was the most ridiculous thing in the world.
“Seriously? Then where does your money come from?”
“Nine. The universe provides.”
