Page 3

Jude said nothing. Slowly pulled away. His last touch left me wishing I could wrap my arms around him and comfort him. Instead, he retreated, taking his scattered emotions with him.

“Nothing that leads us to Erlik or the cult,” Wade said, disappointment thick in his voice. Or Jude’s body, went unsaid.

“No.” It was the same dead end we’d hit for weeks. Bureaucratic walls. Redacted files. Witnesses who’d seen nothing. The team had scoured every document on every cult victim and suspect. It all amounted to zero.

What now?

Jude paced beside me; his attention fixed on the door as if it were an exit from a nightmare. With his energy withdrawn, I couldn’t tell if it was the morgue unsettling him or something else.

I shifted my weight, turning toward the door.

Jude winced. Something flickered across his face as he whispered, “Remi’s in the hall.”

My jealousy around Remi was as reflexive as Jude’s around Victor, though mine had a concrete cause. The fae-touched practitioner had once kissed Jude to siphon his energy and seal a portal. When Jude was taken by Erlik in Bowman’s apartment, I’d blamed Remi’s magic for triggering the kidnapping. But Remi had paid a steep price. The backlash from Jude unraveling the death curse placed on Cassidy had nearly liquefied Remi’s mind. He’d only been out of the hospital a few days.

I was trying not to be an asshole about it.

Trying.

“Okay,” I said, offering nothing more as I moved toward the door.

Remi paced the hall outside the morgue. He didn’t approach until Wade returned the tablet and thanked Dr. Ling. Only then did his steps slow, his gaze lifting to meet mine. Oddly, his gaze swept to my side to where Jude stood.

Could he see Jude?

“You wanted a link to the changeling, right?” Remi asked, voice low. “Saw a patient in the hospital with that same dark stain. Like the one the Thayerson’s kid is left with.”

2

JUDE

My connection to Angel started fizzling the second we hit the parking lot. Static, then silence. I hated feeling like the ghost I was.

I spotted Ezra waiting by his SUV, for Remi, presumably. Was that a truce or just strategic parking? Hard to tell with those two. But sticking around in the mortal realm while Angel was across the Veil was like trying to run a marathon in quicksand. My ghostly stamina wasn’t what I hoped it would be.

So, I did what any self-respecting spectral boyfriend would do, I wrapped my will around his ring and sank through the layers between worlds like a stone through cold water.

I found Ivan in the community center, head deep in a book he shouldn’t have been able to read. I wanted to stay, but Xavier materialized five minutes later, and the tension in the room became thick enough to choke on. Ivan was protected, and that’s what mattered, even if it hurt that he didn’t need me.

So, I left.

Then I let myself drift to the only place that still felt like anything real, the library. At least there, the books didn’t look at me like I was a problem waiting to happen. And the hellhounds rarely chased me anymore.

Rarely being the key word.

They’d found me once, after a particularly nasty tear, its residue seeping into what passed for my soul as I tried to stitch it shut. Apparently, my magic smelled like bacon to interdimensional guard dogs. Go figure.

Zhenjun had me practicing on small repairs—weaves no bigger than my hand. Insulting and exhausting. Even those tiny fixes drained what little strength I had left. And I couldn’t shake the fear that I wasn’t just burning ghost-energy. I was pulling from whatever was left of my actual body, wherever Erlik was keeping it on ice.

I’d asked Nat once what would happen if I kept burning through myself like this. He’d given me a look that meant he was deciding how much truth I could handle.

“You’d fade,” he said finally. “Not death exactly. Just absence. Like a thread frayed to nothing.”

“Comforting.”

“Very little about truth is comforting.”

I’d changed the subject after that. But the words stuck.