With how loud she’s crying and screaming, I wouldn’t be surprised if a human could hear.
Against my nature, I wrap my arms around her, tight enough to stop her from pulling out of my hold. My chin rests on her head, and I let her yell and scream and try to scratch me. She tells me she hates me, that I’m a monster. I’m the reason she’s trapped. The reason she wasn’t able to summon her sister. Her body relaxes against me when none of her attempts to get free work.
“Calm down,” I say, softer this time. “Breathe.”
She kicks at me again, and I hold her tighter, but my grip on her loosens as she drives her forehead into my nose and knocks me back.
Shit.
That was both annoying and hot.
“I lost my sister,” she cries, swiping at her cheeks. “She’s dead, and all I wanted was to talk to her one last time, and you took that away from me.”
“I think I lost my brother too,” I say quietly, almost so quiet I don’t think she’s heard.
She stops fighting, breathing hard as she stares up at me with glistening brown eyes. A divot forms between her brows. The silence stretches like she’s processing my confession.
Sable’s lips quiver, her mouth opening and closing, lost for words.
“What do you mean?” she finally whispers.
“When I was killed and sent to Hell, my brother was left alone. He had no one to care for him. My mom died, and I became his guardian. And I…” Stopping, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know what happened to him.”
Her cries stop, although she still rapidly inhales every breath, her eyes red and puffy. “You lost someone close to you too.”
“Yes. Like I told you, I stole something that didn’t belong to me. But if I hadn’t, I would have lost everything. A roof over mybrother’s head, food in his stomach. Everything. I would’ve lost it all.”
“Why didn’t you go to a homeless shelter or a food bank?”
I tilt my head. “I fear we may be from different times. I wasn’t born with wealthy parents.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that my parents are horrible people.” She shifts her weight. “Were yours?”
My shoulder rises. “Both dead.”
She nods. “Lucky.”
How the fuck is that lucky? What kind of childhood did this girl have to think losing your parents is a good thing?
“I know what will cheer you up.” I grab her hand, and she doesn’t stop me as I pull her from the destroyed room and down the hallway, to the grand staircase to people-watch.
After arguing back and forth about messing with humans, she gives in. I hide behind a pillar as Sable trips someone up, making them fall flat on their face and stare around themselves in confusion.
Then she flicks someone’s ear, pulls a guy’s hand out of a girl’s pants, and grins at me as she pours a glass on the table, causing everyone to glance around and wonder why there’s a cup floating in midair.
Why am I smiling back?
The idiots who decided it was a good idea to party here are all drunk and dancing, and I stare at a group of guys pouring white powder on the table and using a piece of plastic to move it around.
Sable comes up beside me. Watching. She looks up at me. “Cocaine,” she says, reading my confusion. “It’s a drug. They’re snorting it.”
I’m not dumb—Tony told me a lot about drugs and how much they’ve taken over a lot of people’s lives. He was a stoner when he was alive.
I didn’t have the money to get drunk and take drugs when I was human. I could barely even put food in my brother’s stomach.
I zero in on a guy talking to the girl who tried to flirt with me. I recall him being the first person who walked into the house, ignoring Sable’s yelling. Now, with the finesse of a newborn horse, he drops a white substance into the girl’s cup the moment she looks away.
“You see that?” I ask her, and Sable nods.
