Abject, vomitus horror at the mental image of you naked.
“It’s the look of verbal restraint, Cobon—you’re…” Hailey looked to Asher, who seemed interested to hear what she had to say, but not near as attentive as Cobon. “You’re rotting and disgusting.”
Cobon stepped back, looking genuinely offended.
He glided to the grandfather clock and studied his reflection in the glass.
“Humans are superficial,” he said as if it were some sort of cosmic revelation.
“If I may, Asher...” Cobon turned away from his reflection and waved his hand at Hailey. “At the risk of sounding…pharisaic, let’s say.” He grinned as if amused by a private joke. “This little affair with your human is dangerous in so many ways—forget the wrath of the others—tell me, whatwon’tyou do to her when she rejects you?”
Both Asher and Cobon suddenly shifted their gaze into the distance, momentarily distracted. Hailey looked around the room, listening intently, but she perceived nothing out of the ordinary.
“You hear it too,” Cobon whispered. “Hideous sound, is it not?”
Asher narrowed his eyes at Cobon.
“What darkness are you hiding, brother?” he asked, turning his head ever so slightly, and Cobon sneered.
“Time for you to leave, I think,” he said coldly, his eyes bulging. His next words were measured, commanding. “Tomorrow, Asher. No more stalling.”
Hailey’s heart jumped in her throat, and the grandfather clock ticked.
Chapter forty-one
The Last Night on Earth
"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams." - Henry David Thoreau
“Come along, Hailey,” Asher said gently and without explanation as he slid her chair out, and when they returned to campus, Hailey unloaded six months of confusion.
“What was the point of that?” She stood on shaky legs after the floor of Asher’s atrium slammed against her feet. She didn’t know if she was more wobbly from melting or from the prospect of Cobon ripping her soul out tomorrow. Honestly, if he was hell-bent on doing it the next day, she would rather Asher just did it right then and there and got it over with. She didn’t want Cobon’s creepy, scaly, corpse hands on her.
She shuddered.
“We accomplished nothing, Asher, Cobon is…is…” She shook her head, bewildered.
“Cobon has clearly gone mad,” he said.
“Clearly. He sounds like a psychotic maniac—Asher, why did he kick us out? What was the hideous sound you two heard?”
Asher creased his brow. “It was a very sudden, very brief, and very faint percussion—barely audible, even to me, but just as suddenly as I heard it, Cobon concealed it from me.”
“He can do that?” Hailey’s eyes darted left then met Asher’s fierce gaze. “Why would he do that?”
“He hides something…” His voice trailed off, and Hailey watched his eyes erupt. “Cobon is a skilled deceiver. He can project images and sounds—as well as obscure them from the minds of humans and Envoys alike.”
“But why would he do that? What…?”
She dropped her shoulders and huffed, exasperated. Cobon made absolutely no sense. But in his ramblings, he’d mentioned so much. “Asher, were you there when he killed Holly?”
The mood in the atrium shifted. He stood unmoving for several seconds, gazing impassively, no doubt weighing his answer though his hesitation spoke for him and punched her in the stomach.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” she breathed. At least he had the decency to look contrite.
“I wanted to, Hailey, but I couldn’t stop him. We spoke of this—the others would have surely intervened, and then you would have been in danger as well.”
“You didn’t tell me you were right there, watching as she—”
