“You’re right.” Bran laughed hard enough he braced his hands on his ribs to ease the pain of it. “She would.”
A horn honked behind them. Hannah wouldn’t wait much longer.
“Could you do a favor for me?” Nathaniel hated to ask, to drag Bran in again.
Bran lifted a hand, signaling to Hannah that he needed another minute. “Do you even have to ask?”
“In this case, yes, I do.” He paused. “I want you to pass along a message to Delphi. Ask him to meet me at my cabin tomorrow, around noon. Tell him it’s about the missing soul.”
“I’ll pass along your request, but you know how Delphi feels about leaving Dis.” Bran grunted as he shifted toward the tailgate’s edge, then grunted when he went to his feet. “If things take a bad turn with him”—he peered up at the bookstore—“or anything else goes wrong, you know my door is always open. You have sanctuary at the Order’s compound whenever you need it.”
Nathaniel nodded, grateful for the offer. “Thank you.” But the coming battle for Chloe’s soul was between Nathaniel and Delphi, and he didn’t want Bran to get caught in the middle.
Not to mention that the Order housed too many women and children for him to accept the offer of shelter. He couldn’t endanger them because Delphi would place no value on their lives if they stood between him and what he wanted.
Order restored. A life taken. Balance returned.
“Whatever happens, don’t blame Delphi for the choices I made.” Nathaniel silenced Bran’s rebuke before he started by pulling him in for a tight hug. Bran hissed from the pain but didn’t complain. Perhaps, he too sensed an end coming. Pulling away, he said, “I wouldn’t change a thing even if I could.”
Bran jerked back. “What is that supposed to mean?”
An irritated feminine voice intruded. “It means you’ve been out in the sun long enough.” Hannah grabbed Bran by the elbow and her tone brooked no argument. “It’s time to get you home and back in bed.”
His lips tightened, but he appeared too weary to argue. He gave a stiff nod of his head. “We’ll finish this conversation later.”
Nathaniel hoped so. “Remember to give Delphi the message.”
Hannah pulled Bran along at a tottering pace and put him inside her car before vanishing with an impatient squeal of her tires.
His departure was for the best. Nathaniel needed time to think and to prepare.
He sensed Chloe’s gaze locked on him from the upstairs window. These next few hours would bring the end. Hers, his, or perhaps both, and he planned to meet it by her side whether she wanted him there or not.
But first, he had to leave. Time was short and he needed every advantage when Saul returned. Right now, his best weapon lay on the nightstand by his empty bed.
Curiosity drew Chloe toward the window. She sneaked a glance over her shoulder, then strained her ears. Below, murmured voices meshed with the clicks and scraps of footsteps on hardwood. The slap of books as they opened and shut played a soothing melody. Neve’s distinctive laughter rang out, the sound she had waited for to prove she was alone in the apartment.
By the time Chloe worked up the nerve to peer through the window, Nathaniel’s blue eyes already stared up at her. She dismissed the idea he had waited, hoping she would appear.
His startled relief crushed her hypothesis. Genuine surprise softened his expression. He half rose as if she had called him. When he sank back to the porch steps, her heart gave a twist.
Bracing her forearm against the window frame, she leaned her cheek against her wrist. With ease that frightened her, she followed the source of comfort radiating through her chest, down a thin line she imagined tethered her to Nathaniel.
Embracing her earlier determination to stand her ground, she tapped into their connection.
“You and I need to talk.”
His response was immediate.
“Should I come to you? Or would you rather meet me down here?”
“Seeing as how you can come and go as you please regardless…”
Her mental chuckle must have sounded strained because he frowned.
“Come on up. At least here we’ll have privacy.”
In a blink, he was gone. He rounded the corner, and she thought he meant to use the side entrance. She was turning to let him in when Nathaniel stepped into her living room from thin air. A pair of burnished copper scissors fit in his hand. Their jaws gleamed with unnatural light. The snip as their teeth snapped together raced chills down her spine.
Her back hit the wall before she realized she’d taken a step.
Even relaxed in his hand, the scissors exuded menace.
“Can you put those away?” Her voice cracked. “Please?”
Once he secured them in a battered leather case at his hip and the snaps closed, her dread lessened. When his hand broke contact with them, she could breathe again. At least until she got a good look at Nathaniel’s face.
Gone was the teasing man from the past weeks. What stood before her now was danger wrapped in a thin skin of humanity.
“So.” Chloe steadied her legs under her. “What exactly are you and how afraid should I be that you’ve camped out on my doorstep?”
He took his time answering, as if deciding on the best approach.
“I was an archangel once, before I fell from Heaven.”
Her mouth ran dry. He was an archangel? Heaven was real? She’d always hoped, especially after her parents died, but to have it confirmed, to see the proof right in front of her… Her parched throat constricted. If Heaven existed, Hell must be equally real.
When he grew silent again, she shoved down her shock and prompted him. “And now?”
“I’m called the Weaver of Souls, and I’m in service to the master seraph governing Hell.” She sensed his hesitancy and wondered at the cause. “I, and others like me, collect marked souls and confine them. So, no, you don’t want to find me or my kin at your door.”
She considered his answers. Oddly enough, if she tried, she could picture Nathaniel as an avenging angel. She’d seen him mete out punishment often enough in her dreams to know he was merciless in his pursuit of justice. Her understanding failed when she tried reconciling his fervor to a fallen angel. Weren’t they by definition the bad guys?
“So the job is a punishment because you fell from Heaven. How did that happen?”
His silence gave her the impression he’d rather not answer. “I was cast down for a lie.”
The irony of their situation wasn’t lost on her. “I see you didn’t learn your lesson.” She choked up a laugh. “What did you lie about?”
Nathaniel ran a hand over his scalp. “My brother fell in love with a human woman named Mairi, but relationships between angels and mortals are forbidden.” He paused. “I learned of their affair when Mairi approached me during a visit I made to Saul. She beseeched me on her son’s behalf. Bran was dying and she was desperate to save him. I agreed to help.”
He chuckled now, the sound harsh and self-directed. “When the master seraph, Gavriel, asked me if I knew about Saul and Mairi, I covered for them. Of course, Gavriel already knew about their relationship. He had wanted to test me, see if Saul’s corruption had spread, and I failed. We were taken to the city of Aeristitia for sentencing.” His tone roughened. “Sometime during the night, we were sequestered, and Mairi’s village was attacked. She was killed and Bran, well, you already know his story.”
Chloe’s thoughts reeled. “Bran is one of you?” Of course he was. How could he not be?
“Yes. He is Nephilim, born of an angelic father and a human mother.”
Her mental picture of a boy with ruddy cheeks vanished. In its place, she remembered the man with a cane. He resembled Nathaniel and Saul enough to be blood related. Now she realized he probably was the nephew in question, which explained why neither man included him in their earlier argument. They were, or at least Nathaniel was, protecting him from Saul’s plans.
Desperate for a moment to process the information, she asked, “What happened next?”
“We were found guilty, transported to Dis, and given to Delphi. My brother became a soul harvester and I became the Weaver. I’ve spent the latter part of my eternity weaving soul cloth from harvested souls while he spent his hunting down marked souls and executing them. As you know, I’ve completed my share of collections as well.”
Her spine tingled at the mention of collected souls. “A marked soul is damned, then?”
“Yes. Murderers, pedophiles, rapists… they’re marked for punishment and their souls are harvested for our use.”
“All those dreams I had… you weren’t after me.” The realization took her by surprise. “You were doing your job and I got caught in the crosshairs somehow.”
“If I had known I was hurting you, I would have approached you sooner.” He met her gaze. “Whatever this bond is we have, it enabled you to experience me harvesting damned souls.”
“Then I’m not crazy.” Relief wended its way through her until she sagged from the respite. For a while there, she’d wondered. “Everything I thought happened, everything I dreamed, was real.” She scarcely believed it. “Wait—the dreams started after my accident. My doctor said I almost died. Do you think my brush with death caused our connection somehow?”
“I know it did.” His ominous tone made her shiver. “What do you remember?”
“Not much,” she admitted. Snow and fear, but the rest blurred in her memory. “Why?”
His eyes closed. “I was there.”
Shock made her knees buckle. “Did you cause it?”
“No.” His tone went sharp. “I witnessed it. Your soul called to mine. I knew I shouldn’t have stayed, but I couldn’t leave without seeing you for myself.” His exasperation was clear. “No one came to claim you. You wouldn’t have survived the journey to Heaven. Your soul would have been lost and I couldn’t let that happen, so I helped.” He held out his hands. “You were beautiful, your soul the loveliest sight I’d seen in such a long time.”
“You saved me.” Certainty filled her as wisps of memories floated to the surface. The perspective was wrong; it wasn’t hers, but his. Through him, she relived him bent over her body with a needle and thread, heard her ask him to stay. “That’s what Saul meant when he said you bound me to you. How is such a thing even possible?”
“Part of your soul had left your body, but it was still tethered. I cut a piece from my own and sewed it to you. Forced your soul back into your body long enough for paramedics to arrive, long enough for them to save your life.”
Her hand went to her scar and tracked the puckered edge. “Didn’t it hurt?”
His bitter laughter jarred her. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Why would you endure such pain for someone you didn’t even know?”
“I can’t say.” She watched as he scratched his head and wondered if he noticed how often he indulged the nervous habit. “I asked myself the same thing, so many times. Did I risk it because your soul was that unique? Or because I worried Bran would suffer the same fate if something ever happened to me? Was it because I found the consequences unfair? Or because of some other reason I can’t fathom?”
“If you didn’t know we were connected, then why did you come back?”
He stared across the street and her heart plummeted into her toes.
“When I bound you to me,” he said, “I contaminated you. I left a stain on you and the master seraph, Delphi, noticed. He marked you because of it.”
“He… marked me? Like damned souls marked me?” Her legs gave out and she sank to the floor. “It wasn’t a coincidence you found me. You came to collect.” She swallowed a knot of sick fear. “You came to kill me.”
His answer came without hesitation. “Yes, I did.”
“Can’t you tell this Delphi person it was an accident?” Her heart pumped wildly. “Wouldn’t he understand he made a mistake and I’m not like that? I’m not any of those things you mentioned.”
“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “You’re also not supposed to be alive. You should have died in that accident. There’s a balance, and I shifted it when I saved you.”
“You mean like the butterfly effect?” A flap of gossamer wings and everything changed.
“Something similar, yes. To make an exception is to invite chaos. Children won’t be born that should be or lives will end before their time, all to accommodate a life that should have ended.”
Chloe could have been a paper doll as easily as his news tore her in two. Part of her had wanted to run screaming when she realized her lover would become her executioner. The other part had shut the panicked portion up in a box and locked out the pathetic whimpers for a second chance she’d already been given.
With numbness came clarity, and with clarity came something too desperate to be acceptance. She was grasping at straws to save herself and she knew it.
“You waited, though. To collect me.” She considered their visitors. “That’s why Saul and Bran came.” She frowned. “What were you waiting for?”
“For love to find you,” he said simply. “When a person who is loved dies, their soul emits a beacon of light, bright enough to draw Heaven’s attention. It’s how my angelic kin know where and when they are needed.” He paused. “When you died, you weren’t tethered. There was no beacon, no guiding light. There was nothing.”
“So when you saved me, it was to give me time to find someone to love?” Her pride stung at the thought of being laid so utterly bare before him. “I guess I wasn’t fast enough for you. After you realized I had been marked, you came to see for yourself what was taking me so long.”
His response was lost in her frustrated growl of fury. She was such a fool to have ever trusted him.
“When Saul showed up, you two fought over what exactly?” She stood and dared him to contradict her. “Who gets to finish me off now that I’m in love with someone?”
Bright blue eyes snared hers and the anguish in them made her chest ache. His lips parted, sounding out the words even as he thought them. “You’re in love.”
Heat flared in her cheeks. “I think I’m finished with this conversation.”
She covered her face with her hands and turned toward the window. It didn’t help. His gaze seared her back and made her spine itch. The denial she wanted to fling at him dried on her tongue and hung suspended in her thoughts.