“I cannot fathom your attraction to that man, but it is not wrong to want to have someone in your life.”
“But I shouldn’t be selfish enough that I’ve put him in danger! I tried believing that fucking monster wasn’t back. I had convinced myself it couldn’t be him, but after the other night, I can’t deny it,” I say as I yank the scarf down and wave at thebruises on my throat. “How can I see this and still think it’s okay to leave them at risk like this?”
The door slams open and I jump when Nolan rushes in.
“Why the fuck are we keeping this all hush-hush? You are putting my brotherat riskby not being honest with them. If you don’t go tell him right this second what’s going on, I’m going to,” Nolan snaps.
I freeze as I stare at him, realizing that he must have read my mind at some point. He knows, he fucking knows.
“No, no, please don’t tell them, I’m fixing this,” I beg, desperate.
Nolan gives me a confused look. “Why? We’re all fuckups here, Ellison! Every single one of us! Asmodeus is constantly in his head thinking about how much of a monster he is. All he was thinking about this morning is August with a bullet in his head and keeps repeating that he could have killed him. That he’s a monster. And then you’re over here with this bombshell.”
Guilt eats at me. “I was trying to fix it.”
“Taking the drugs they give me clearly isn’t going to fix you. Those drugs work instantly, and if you took them yesterday and you still couldn’t control your power, then they don’t work.”
Suddenly, my illusion appears in front of me, grabbing me. “He took Asmodeus.”
Anxiety floods me. “What?”
“I was looking for him and security said he just left the buildingwithme.”
“Fuck,” I say as I dash toward the door and slam into Landon.
“You almost murdered me with a door!” He hesitates when he sees the look on my face. “What’s wrong? Is this about Deus?”
“We have to find Asmodeus,” I say. “Don’t trust any of my illusions.”
“What? I can’t tell the damn difference between you and your illusions. Like there’s two of you right now and I have no idea which is which.”
“Stay inside,” I decide. “Nolan, you can tell the difference between us?”
“Yes.”
“Come with me,” I plead, rushing through security while panic washes through me. I try calling Asmodeus’s phone, but he doesn’t answer, and I have no idea where they’d have gone. I send my illusions out, begging them to help me search for them. Looking around the parking lot, I wonder if he got him in a car, but I doubt Asmodeus would leave in the car with one of my illusions when my real body is here.
An illusion manifests in front of me. “I found the ferret behind the building.”
If Pocket Lint is there and Asmodeus is not…
“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” Nolan asks me.
“I was going to fix it. I was going to make it all better,” I answer, knowing how foolish my words are, but I couldn’t tell them. “Why didn’t you tell your brother about all of the shit you were involved in?”
“One does wonder,” he says thoughtfully.
We hurry toward the back of the building, but I still can’t see them, I only see one of my illusions holding Pocket Lint. I ask him to get the ferret back to Landon and keep moving in that direction just as I seehim.They’re so far away, but I can see him turn to Asmodeus a second before he pulls him in for a kiss.
They’re too far from me to stop him, no matter how much I long to when I see the knife.
“Don’t!” I yell, but my voice is lost in the sounds coming from the highway not too far from us while I watch that monster plunge the knife into Asmodeus’s side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
DEUS
I smirk as I tug the illusion forward.
