“No,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut. “I can’t believe you.”
“You need to stop avoiding the truth. We’re pulling her from the stone, and you have to be prepared for what she’s going to say. We need to know what she did with Serenity and then we’re sending her to Otherworld where she belongs. Lucifer knows you’re alive now; there’s no reason to keep her from crossing over.”
She took the phone from him in a slow, deliberate movement. Her mouth worked as she set down the cognac bottle so she could trace a finger over the smooth surface. “I’m prepared to accept some of this. But the architect of the attack? No. If she had done that, she wouldn’t have kept me away from danger. Hell, even with her laughing at me,” she spat with a surprising amount of venom, “she never turned me over to the Twisted Ones. Why wouldn’t she have done that if she was this big, bad evil you claim?”
He prayed she didn’t shatter his phone as her fingers tightened around it. Sometimes gargoyles forgot their own strength.
“We don’t know. That’s what we’re going to find out.” He took another deep breath and touched her arm. She jerked herself away, almost falling off the bed in her haste to escape his touch. Maybe with good reason, since he’d just told her he didn’t want to be with her.
“You seriously believe she’s evil, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe it. I know it.”
She didn’t meet his gaze, instead choosing to study the carpet. Her shoulders gave a suspicious hitch but no sob escaped. Thank God. He couldn’t take her tears and keep his distance.
“You have to accept it now. There’s enough on that phone to make me sick. You’re going to seriously piss people off back at the Protectorate if you continue defending her. A lot of people loved your mother, loved Anniko and her passion. If you continue putting Gwen on a pedestal after being told she arranged the deaths of Anniko and Aurora, I’m not entirely sure you’ll ever be accepted into the Protectorate. Yeah, they’ll tolerate you, sure. We need you too badly. But we’re all you have to keep you safe. Do you really want to become a pariah amongst the Sentinels and gargoyles?”
“That’s certainly blunt speaking,” she said quietly. “I…I don’t know what I want any more, Cal. I don’t know what the hell to believe. I don’t know what to do any more or who to believe. My life might not have been particularly calm or laid back before all this happened, but at least it was stable. Normal…well, normal for me. And she’s been the one constant I’ve had since I was four years old.”
He clenched his hands into fists to keep from touching her in comfort. He wanted to so badly, but wouldn’t give in now. She was clearly listening, possibly even beginning to believe him.
“I’ll read this. I don’t want to, but I’ve got too many questions now to not do it. Just tell me you’re going to try to find out about Reny.”
…
Keeping her voice level took every ounce of control Rose had garnered over her lifetime with Gwen. Blood pounded in her ears. She might not have been with Lucas, Cal, and the rest of the Sentinels very long, but she wasn’t entirely a ninny. If they were presenting her with documentation as to Gwen’s misdeeds, it must be true, at least as far as the Sentinels went.
Once she could get some privacy, she’d read and let herself absorb the information. But she had to know, absolutely had to know they would indeed follow up on the Reny connection. If there was any chance her sister was alive somewhere, they needed to know that.
And once she had the answer to that question, then she’d deal with Cal’s ridiculous notion that protecting her meant they couldn’t give things a shot. She’d meant every word in that bedroom back at Lucas’s house. She wanted to feel his kiss again, touch him again, and damn it, see the man fully naked! She’d seen him in all states of dress but that.
So she’d bide her time. Stupid man probably thought he was being all noble and crap. Well, screw him and his idea of nobility.
Once they got the Gwen situation squared away, she had every intention of screwing him. One way or another, even if she had to strip naked and sneak into his bed one night, silly and as old-fashioned as that might be.
“I will.”
Cal’s solemn vow yanked her from the very absorbing mental image of him stripping his leather pants off over his thighs. He would what?
Oh, right, ask about Reny. Shit. Get it back together. Focus.
There was just too much in her head. “Thank you,” she said firmly. “I…” She ground to a halt and swallowed, setting down the phone to clasp her hands together. She didn’t want to break the delicate thing when it held answers she needed, if not wanted, to have. “If it’s true, if what you’re saying about Gwen is true…”
“It is,” he stated firmly, expression darker than anything she’d ever seen on him before. He wasn’t very happy that she continued to doubt him, but damn it, what was she supposed to do? “Read it, and you’ll see. You’ll see what that woman did.”
Her stomach roiled as all the times she’d tried to cuddle up against Gwen flashed into her head. “I loved her. I did. She was shelter from a world gone insane.”
“And yet she all but stuck a knife in Anniko.”
Rose couldn’t bear his accusing stare any longer and turned away, using the pretense of snatching up both phone and bottle. She’d probably need the latter to deal with what she learned from the former. She whispered, “If you’re right…I’m not sure how I’m ever going to live with myself. For kissing her, hugging her. Hugging a monster.”
Cold stole over her because somehow it finally sank in, that everything they’d been telling her about Gwen was the truth. She’d clung to an illusion for far too long.
Tightening her grip on the phone, she lifted her chin and met Cal’s now-expressionless gaze once more. “Can you leave me alone now? I’ve got some reading to do.”
His mouth opened and then shut again with a snap. He nodded curtly and brushed past her, their shoulders connecting and a warm tingle shooting through her.
Oh no, they weren’t done dealing with the attraction between them by a long shot. No matter what Mr. Calhoun Levesque thought.
Once the dividing door closed behind him, she sank back onto the bed and lit up the phone once more. Time to get on with it. A grim sense of foreboding acceptance settled over her as she opened the document unimaginatively titled “Gwen letter re Rose.”
Less than five minutes later, she barreled into the connecting bathroom and puked up her guts, just from reading Gwen’s letter, the first of more than five hundred documents on the cloud server.
Chapter Fifteen
Sentinel Truth #8: Marry a fellow Sentinel. They’re not going to freak out when a gargoyle shows up to play poker in the middle of the night.
Cal shifted in his chair as he watched Jonas, or rather Tom, sleep. So far there had been no signs of the Sentinel body rejecting the Twisted One’s soul, which was good. Everything had gone surprisingly well. Even Mr. Ray, who he’d expected to be angry, had been seemingly okay with the soul implantation.
While he normally would have no problem letting Tom sleep as long as he liked—the transition from death to life likely not an easy one—Cal wanted him awake. No, he needed Ghost Boy awake. Rose wanted answers.
Across the room from him, she took another huge bite from the cold hamburger that had been meant for Tom once he woke up. She’d practically been glued to his side since they did the ceremony to seal the ghost into Jonas’s body.
“Is it supposed to take so long?”
It was the fifteenth time she’d asked the question. He had counted.
Now that she believed them, and judging by the still faint green tone to her skin, she’d read over everything available to her about Gwen’s misdeeds, she was driving him up the wall pestering him to get going with the next step. Unfortunately, he needed Tom before they could do a damn thing.
“Is he actually going to wake up? Are you sure it actually worked?”
“Absolu
tely. I saw the soul go into the body.” He dug in his pocket and found the cracked crystal no longer embedded in his watch. “This held him for two years, and only when I broke it was he freed. He certainly didn’t go on to Otherworld,” he muttered and studied Tom’s sleeping form. He made himself speak like he believed his own words, but then he had to confess the truth that he hadn’t wanted to bring up. “This is the first time we’ve ever tried something like this.”
“Oh good lord. Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
“I didn’t want to give you anything else to worry about. You’ve had enough to deal with today.”
She shrugged and set her burger down, scrunching up her face. “Okay, so you’re pretty much guessing about this whole thing. So, tell me something. If this didn’t work, or if Tom can’t access this power he says he has, there’s nowhere else to turn, is there? Mr. Ray should have turned someone else up to help by now, if there was anyone, right?”
“Yes.” Unfortunately, that was all too true and put a lot of pressure on the newly-living ghost. Hell, if he were Tom, he wasn’t sure he’d want to wake up and face that expectation either. “Are you scared he won’t be able to get Gwen out…or that he will?”
Her tongue traced her lower lip as she scowled. “I just want this over with. I want to know the truth, from Gwen, right to my face.”
“Better to get it over with, right? And this way we can ask her questions.” All he could offer was the semi-neutral comment. She chewed on her lower lip and looked away. Cal glowered and folded his arms across his chest to stifle the need to put his arms around her. God, he hated seeing her in pain like this. He prayed that when they got Gwen out, they got answers that would give her at least some peace.
A weak smile tugged up the side of her mouth before she leaned back against the wall. “Right.”
Before he could say anything, not that he had any idea what to say, Tom groaned. Both of them stiffened.
“Tom?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”
“Am I alive?”
Relief flooded his body and Cal’s muscles unknotted. Jonas had been from South Africa, with the accent to prove it, and the voice rumbling from the body on the bed bore no trace of anything but Mid-West America. It was Tom all right. He leaned forward and slapped him on the shoulder. “Feel that?”
“Alive,” Tom whispered. His chest expanded and contracted as he took several experimental breaths. “Wow. I feel real heavy.”
“It’s the body. You were a Casper for two years. Has to be weird being weighed down by a skeleton and flesh again, yeah?”
Tom struggled to sit up, and before Cal could help, Rose was there to lift him into a sitting position. “Welcome back,” she said quietly.
Tom’s gray eyes—a dramatic shift from Jonas’s dark brown and the only physical manifestation of the body’s new soul—focused on her and he offered a weak smile. “Hi there, Sweet Cheeks.”
“Sweet cheeks?”
“Just sayin’. You’ve got a mighty fine…”
“Don’t you finish that,” Cal snapped. No one was going to ogle her ass while he was around. Technically, he’d given up any right to protest, but damned if he’d let Ghost Boy get away with it. “She’s, uh, not in the…”
Rose flashed him a quick, surprised smile, and he saw the relief was surging through her, too, that Tom had woken up. “Yeah, I suggest you don’t finish it, Mr. Ex-Casper. I’m not afraid to make mouthy Sentinels bleed.”
There was the Rose he knew so well. She’d not even think twice before flattening Tom if he got out of line, no matter how recently he’d been brought back to life. “So, how’re you feeling, man?”
“Weak. Shaky.” His face turned toward the dresser. “Am I dreaming, or is that a burger?”
Cal snagged the plate, holding out the sole remaining burger and its cold onion rings. “All yours.”
Tom snatched the plate, and then devoured the food. As the last bite of the burger disappeared, the ex-ghost moaned. “Oh my God, it’s real.”
“Should I, um, leave you to have a moment?”
Tom’s cheeks turned scarlet and he swallowed. “No. No need for that. Sorry, it just tastes so good.”
“Glad you’re enjoying it. Think you can stand yet?”
“I can try.” Tom crammed two onion rings in his mouth before he heaved to his feet. He swayed for a moment and Cal tensed, ready to catch the other man if he went down. Tom straightened up with a beaming grin. “Oh, wow, this is major awesome, man! I can feel my heart beating. I can feel the air around me.”
So far, so good.
“You look great for a dead man,” Rose said and then offered Tom a huge grin. Cal told himself he didn’t care if she smiled at another man, even Tom. It was just damned relieving to see her smile at anyone at that point. She’d been so devastated when they got off the plane. “So, you’re the ghost that’s been hanging around, huh?”
Tom nodded, looked uncertainly at Cal, and then back at Rose. “Sorry ‘bout the Sweet Cheeks thing. I just…”
She waved her hand. “Less said about that, the better. I’ll chalk it up to rebirth insanity. Just don’t do it again.”
A mischievous sparkle entered Tom’s eyes and Cal covered a smirk. She’d just sealed her own doom. He knew Tom well enough to know he’d probably use the name on a regular basis, just for that comment.
Tom settled back on the bed, plate still in hand, as he grabbed another onion ring. Around the food in his mouth, he mumbled, “I’ll give releasing Gwen a try, if you want.”
Cal blinked, startled at the ghost’s sudden offer.
Yeah, they’d brought him back specifically to do that, but they shouldn’t push him so quickly. He certainly wouldn’t have asked so much of Tom so quickly. “You up to it?”
Tom swallowed the last onion ring and set the plate down. His expression serious, he looked at Rose. “You need to know. Giles isn’t going to just sit around. With or without Lucifer, he’s coming after Rose. It’s not going to take him long to connect the dots back to this place. People know who Madra and Dennis are, and Giles got a good look at her in the basement.”
“Are you up to it?” Rose looked worried and glanced at him, as if looking for some sort of reassurance. “I mean, don’t push yourself too hard. I want answers, but not if you might get hurt.”
Tom shrugged and wiped grease on the previously pristine comforter. “I feel better than I ever have.” He stretched his arms above his head and joints popped. “Really good.”
Considering Tom now weighed at least a hundred pounds less than the last time he’d been breathing, Cal could believe it. “If you think you can, I suggest we try to summon her in the living room. I’ll talk to Lucas, get him to clear everyone out of the house that doesn’t need to be here.”
Rose’s brow furrowed and then she stepped back. “I’ll go get the soul-stone if you’re sure, Tom.”
“I’m sure…Sweet Cheeks.”
Cal groaned and turned away. And so it began.
Rose growled, punched Tom on the shoulder, and then stomped out of the room.
“Oh, man, I love being alive,” Tom said as he rubbed the spot where she’d hit him.
“Clothes are in the dresser. Consider putting something on before you join us,” Cal said before bustling toward the door. “Your ass is sticking out of the gown.” He really didn’t want to see Tom’s butt again. It didn’t hold a candle to Rose’s.
…
When she came down to the living room, the carpet had been pulled aside to reveal an eight-pointed star. Tom sat, his legs crossed in front of him, his hands on his lap with his eyes downcast. Did Sentinels pray? And did Tom even count as a Sentinel, given his past?
Cal, on the other hand, paced along the edges of the circle, mumbling to himself, occasionally gesturing at nothing.
“Did you pick up another ghost?” she asked.
He looked so handsome as he walked around the room. He was just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but every
movement was so fluid and even. And the damned fool thought he’d just fob her off, saying it was for their mutual good. Hah!
Lusting after him let her at least temporarily focus on something other than the wretched truth she’d had forced down her throat when she went through the Sentinel files on Gwen. She’d deliberately buried her occasional doubts about Gwen over the years. She’d known something was off, but always told herself to ignore it.
Cal shook his head, answering her question finally. “Just talking to myself. Going over how to make sure you can see Gwyeira. It’s not the simplest task in my repertoire and I rarely do it because, let’s face it, most people are creeped out by ghosts. They’re everywhere.”
“Are they?” she couldn’t help but ask. It was a bit unnerving to think there might be a lot of souls wandering around.
“Sometimes.”
Cal finally stopped pacing. For the first time since their argument on the plane, she didn’t see aggravation or disgust in his hazel eyes. No, instead she saw genuine concern, a hint of the man she’d thought he was before he turned asshole on her.
“Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, that you want to see her?”
Rose gulped but forced a nod. She needed to see Gwen and ask about Reny for herself, no matter how ugly it got. “Yeah. Wish Mr. Ray hadn’t needed to get back to Lhasa, but I get that the Rift situation over there is critical.”
She sighed and rubbed her arms briskly. Rifts trumped interrogating a ghost, she supposed. No matter who the ghost was or what they might be able to pull from her. Lucas was running a patrol, distracting the gargoyles from what they were doing.
Tom cracked his knuckles, apparently finishing whatever he’d been contemplating while sitting there. “You have the amber?”
She nodded and quickly held it out to him.
He took it. A shudder visibly wracked his frame. “Good lord, she’s powerful,” he said, a note of wonder in his voice.
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