LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter 5

      Cassandra had decided to stay with me. At my house. And I seemed to have no choice in the matter.

      It made me mad. This wasn’t a friend I wanted to help out. This was an uninvited problem that had barged into my life. If she was just a girl from school I would do my best to avoid her, but she wasn’t.

      She might look every bit as harmless as I did, but she was far from it.

      I eyed her warily as we walked away from St. Andrew’s and back toward downtown, the outline of the tall office buildings and St. Edward’s Trinity Hospital a glowing beacon in the distance. I drew my coat closer to try to block out the constant chill that made me shiver violently. This was the abandoned part of town, what was once rather industrial, but after the economy tanked a while back, a lot of stores and businesses went bankrupt and shut down. I would definitely think twice about walking around here alone at night—or even with a friend. But Cassandra wasn’t defenseless. She might be blonde and pretty, but she was every bit a warrior as the other guys. Maybe more so.

      To tell the truth, she freaked me out.

      “You know,” she said after we’d walked in silence for nearly fifteen minutes. “I am getting the distinct impression that you don’t like me very much.”

      Unfortunately, I wore my emotions on my face thicker than any makeup.

      “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” she added.

      I swallowed hard. “I’m not afraid.”

      Freaked out wasn’t afraid. It was freaked out.

      “If Bishop says you can resist your hungers, then I’m perfectly fine accepting his assessment. To me, you’re the same as any other human. Just a little more interesting.”

      “I’m not afraid,” I said again, firmer.

      She smiled at that. “If you say so.”

      I needed to gain some sort of control here—even if I was only fooling myself. This was going to be a long walk and I’d spent all my bus money on the plate of nachos at the club as well as the cover charge to get in. I’d had no idea I’d be needing to find another way home other than with Sabrina and Kelly.

      But here we were. Me hoofing it home on uncomfortable high heels with my new housemate, Cassandra the Perfect Blonde Angel.

      “Zach tells me you’re a host,” I said. I was making the assumption it wasn’t a secret. He hadn’t said it was.

      She raised an eyebrow. “And do you know what that means?”

      Yeah, that I should watch you carefully for your hidden agenda. “You weren’t human first. You were created as an angel.”

      “That’s right.”

      “That’s hard for me to wrap my head around. No parents. No siblings...not that I have siblings. But, I mean, most people do.” Like Bishop and Kraven, who came immediately and vividly to mind.

      She crossed her arms, keeping her gaze on the sidewalk stretching before us. “It’s not as sterile an existence as you might think. I have a sibling—or someone I consider my sibling. She was created at the same time as me. We’re like sisters.”

      “Oh.” Yes, that was my fabulously snappy comeback.

      There were some people you felt totally comfortable around. Like Carly, for instance. We knew each other so well we could basically finish each other’s sentences. Also, we didn’t have to be constantly talking. It was a comfortable silence.

      I didn’t have that with Cassandra. With her it was uncomfortable silence. One that pressed in on all sides like those collapsing rooms in sci-fi movies, threatening to squish the heroine into something the width of a piece of paper.

      “Your supernatural intuition has helped the team,” she said. “I’m grateful that Bishop found you.”

      “More like the other way around.”

      She looked at me with surprise. “You found him?”

      I nodded, thinking back to that night—which was wonderful since I’d met Bishop, but also horrible because, well...I’d met Bishop. He represented the best and worst moments of my life, all in such a short time.

      “He was having difficulties keeping his thoughts under control.” That was putting it extremely mildly. “Our paths crossed. We realized that when I touched him his mind cleared.”

      “Incredible. You must be an asset to the team.”

      I shrugged. Kraven’s earlier words echoed in my head: don’t try buttering me up now, Blondie. “I want to help if I can.”

      “Now he’s taken to inflicting pain on himself to get the same result.”

      I grimaced. “He has to stop that.”

      “I agree. It’s barbaric. But I do have to wonder how he realized such a thing would work for him.”

      I’d wondered it, too, at first. But I think I’d figured it out.

      Bishop must have realized that pain from the dagger helped clear his head when he’d been tortured by the Source of the grays—who just happened to have been my demon aunt, Natalie, my birth father Nathan’s sister. This was another fact that nobody on the team knew but Bishop.

      My aunt was anomalous—a demon with a scary glitch created in the conversion from human to infernal being. She had a disturbing taste for human souls and had been branded a problem that needed to be dealt with, especially since souls, both light and dark, were essential to helping keep the universal balance. She was tossed into the Hollow still alive as her punishment. Nathan, too, had an anomaly—according to what Natalie had told me, he could kill with a touch by absorbing life energy.

      Seventeen years later, Natalie escaped and arrived here in Trinity. Her strange ability had evolved. Now she was able to create more creatures with her hunger through the “kiss.” And they could do the same. Like a contagious disease. That was why there was a barrier up, so none of us “infected” could spread this disease to the rest of the world.

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