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I felt like an asshole for giving him a hard time at Mags’s mating ceremony now. He’d acted like a dick, yes, but that hadn’t been him. The male who’d said that shit to me hadn’t been the Ren I knew and loved. He was Willow’s familiar, part of the family, and he’d be in my life in some capacity for the rest of it.

So instead of the other replies flying around my head, I held up my hand where my butterfly lay and offered an olive branch. “One of my familiars died.”

His chest expanded, hands curling into fists, and his intense gaze dipped briefly to my mouth before coming back to mine. No false smiles. Not this time. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Jaz,” he said, deeper, rougher than before.

I nodded, expecting him to walk away, but he didn’t. His jaw worked like he was about to say something else—

The hearse’s horn blasted, and the Ren I’d seen in his eyes retreated, the barrier coming up. He took a step back. “I’m sorry, again, about your familiar, Jaz. Night,” he said and walked off.

With my sigils on, I couldn’t see them, but I felt them, the souls of the people he’d been forced to kill while possessed. Waiting, always waiting for him to do what he needed for them, to set them free. My heart hurt for Ren and those poor souls.

We headed toward my car.

“So, Jaz, um…what the hell was that?” Zinnia said. “There were like sparks flying, and waves crashing, and angels singing.” She stopped by the passenger side. “Is there something going on there? Like did you two hook up or something?”

“Nope, we had a fight,” I said and opened the driver’s door. “Besides our stilted and awkward greeting at Willow’s earlier, that was the first time we’ve talked since.”

We both got in. Zinny looked concerned, and that’s exactly what I didn’t want.

“What did you fight about?”

“He was drunk and being a dick. I told him so. I think he was embarrassed. But we’ve talked now, so it’s all good. No harm done.” I opened the glove compartment and pulled out an empty Nerds candy box and carefully placed my familiar inside, then tucked her in the pocket of my hoodie.

I started the car and drove toward the exit. There was no way I was telling my sister what we really fought about. I didn’t want her last few days spent worrying that she was leaving me alone to nurse a broken heart.

I felt Zinnia’s eyes on me. “I’m glad you’re moving past it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror, and I did as well. The hearse was behind us. “He needs all the friends he can get.”

“Oh, he has friends.” I wasn’t sure he spent a night alone. Ren lived just down the street from my aunt Daisy’s house, in an apartment under Foxglove Funeral Home, his family business. Ren worked there as a mortician.

I glanced in the rearview again. He was obviously taking the wolf home with him. Cool. Whatever, right? He could fuck whoever he wanted. It had nothing to do with me. We reached the house, and I couldn’t stop myself from watching his brake lights flash before he turned into the driveway a few houses down.

“Is Mags here tonight or with the crows?” Zinny asked. “I wanted to check if she’d heard anything.”

My sister didn’t like to talk about Death when she was home, but Mags was now one of his reapers, so she knew what we’d been doing the last month and why. “I think her and Bram are with the crows, but when I spoke to her this morning, they still didn’t know anything.”

Since Death couldn’t leave Limbo, not in his physical form, anyway, he needed someone else to find the souls. Reapers would seem the obvious choice, but they weren’t mediums and only saw a soul here on Earth when they were sent to collect them, which meant his reapers couldn’t help.

Would he be angry with Zinnia when she went back? Furious that she hadn’t found his souls? I’d always respected Zinnia’s wishes when it came to him, but I couldn’t swallow down my next words. “Does he hurt you, Zinny? Is he cruel?”

She swallowed several times before she turned to me and shook her head. “No, he hasn’t hurt me.” She squeezed my hand. “I promise.”

We went inside and Zinnia headed straight up to bed, but I wasn’t tired—not after falling asleep and drooling all over Rome, and not with my emotions so raw after losing my familiar—so I headed to the kitchen to make a hot chocolate.

Stanley smiled when I walked in. His green feline eyes filled with warmth. He was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book.

“Hey, Stan, how’s it going?” Stan had been around so long, my and Zinnia’s sigils didn’t work on him anymore and hadn’t for a long time.

“Not bad. We went to the Coven Elders Assembly tonight.” He chuckled. “Else was in fine form.”

Zinny and I were the only ones who could see Stanley, and that’s the way he liked it. He’d made us swear never to tell anyone about him, not even Else. He’d been her familiar and soul mate until he’d been tortured and murdered by Else’s evil cousin Edward, when Stan was twenty-one. He didn’t want Else to change how she lived her life, something that could happen if she knew he was always with her.

Else had only been nineteen at the time, and losing Stanley had left her heartbroken. She was now seventy-five and had started dating again, like a year ago. Connor was a good guy. He made her happy and thought her grumbling was cute. It made Stan happy that Else was happy, but he was waiting for her, for the time when they could be together again.

To add to the twisted tale, Else’s cousin Edward was the one who had possessed Ren, making the whole situation, that was already utterly horrific, that much more awful for everyone.

Nothing was black and white when it came to souls. Some instantly went where they belonged after death—Heaven, Hell, or Limbo—and some, like the ones that surrounded Ren, were trapped here by the person who caused them harm, or by unfinished business, or for a multitude of other reasons. Emotions were a powerful thing, strong enough to send ripples through the spirit world, which is why Edward’s victims wouldn’t leave Ren. They were trapped until he forgave himself. And some, like Stanley, went to the other side and came back, reassigned as spirit guides or guardian angels rather than being reincarnated so they could stay with the person they loved, which was another reason our sigils didn’t work on him.

“Else is always in fine form,” I said and grabbed a thermos mug.