word of a fallen angel?”
“Not normally,” Reaver said. “But she has reasons to speak the truth about this. And her Watcher Council has known about Reseph’s release from Sheoul-gra for months, thanks to loose-lipped demons. Now that you know, you can confirm everything I’ve said.” He hopped down from the stage, letting it poof away. “I have an angel to hunt. I suggest you put the wheels in motion for others to be on the lookout for Gethel as well.”
“You’re going to be punished for what you’ve done,” Modran swore, as if Reaver had been at all unsure about that.
Reaver ignored Modran and strode toward the exit. He’d do everything in his power to find Gethel, but first he had to check in on the Horsemen.
And given that he’d missed a birth, a wedding, and who knew what else, he had a feeling that explaining his absence to them was going to be a lot more difficult than explaining it to angels.
Nine
Jillian woke to the smell of burned pancakes and charred bacon. She sat up, blinking, the events of last night as fuzzy as her eyes. She’d crashed, and crashed hard. She remembered waking at one point in the night, and although she couldn’t recall why she’d woken, she did know that Reseph had been holding her, and his chest had been wet with her tears.
He hadn’t said a word. He’d just handed her tissues and kept her close, his strong arms banded around her. And now, it seemed, he was trying to burn down her house.
She made a quick trip to the bathroom and donned her robe before hurrying to the kitchen, where Reseph, wearing only jeans, was dousing a fire.
Smoke drifted out of the sink, billowing up around a stream of rushing water. “Oh, uh… hi.” Reseph shot her a sheepish grin over his shoulder. “I tried to make you breakfast.”
“I can see that.” She peered into the sink, where the remains of paper towels and pancakes were an ashy mush. “I think, in the future, you should leave the cooking to me.”
He frowned down at the mess. “It’s like I’ve never cooked in my life. How could I not have cooked?”
“Maybe you only ate out?”
“Maybe I’m rich and have servants,” he suggested. “That would be cool.”
She turned off the gas burner that was heating the empty cast iron frying pan. “I don’t think I’d like being that rich.”
He pivoted around and propped his hip on the counter, giving her a tantalizing view of his sculpted chest. “So there’s nothing you’d want to change around here? No place you’d like to travel?”
The magical island full of hunks like Reseph came to mind. “Maybe I’d get a new truck and expand the barn, and a tropical vacation would be nice, but no, I like my life the way it is.”
“Huh.” He rubbed his sternum and worked his way up to his shoulder, getting out the morning kinks, and Jillian could barely tear her eyes away to open the fridge. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m better,” she said, as she fetched the bowl where she kept her fresh eggs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Nope.” She didn’t think she’d ever want to talk about her neighbors’ deaths, or the fact that she’d freaked out last night. “But thank you. And thanks for getting the fire going.”
“I also fed the animals and shoveled the path to the barn.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. I hope it’s okay, but I spent some time on the Internet.”
A twinge of anxiety shot through her. “Did you find anything? About yourself?”
“No, but I scanned my horse tattoo and uploaded it to a skin art forum to see if anyone recognized the work. Nothing so far. I also caught up on what happened over the last year. Sparked my memory on a lot of stuff. I remember who the president is now.” He ran his hand through his hair, and her fingers itched to do it for him. “It’s weird, though, because I swear I actually remember Washington.” He shook his head. “But the really fucked-up thing is that I’ve got bits and pieces of memory and knowledge up until around the time everything started. Then nothing after that.”
Placing the bowl next to the sink, she thought about her own month in a coma. When she’d awakened in a hospital bed, confused and alone, she didn’t remember what had landed her there. It was only weeks later that it all came back, and in many ways, she wished it hadn’t.
“Maybe you were injured. In a coma or something.”
His expression was troubled. “Maybe. But that still doesn’t explain how I got onto your property, naked and half-frozen. And what if the explanation for why I have no memory is something worse than an accident or coma?”
“Like what? Like something terrible happened, and you’re blocking it out? Some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder?”
“I don’t know.” He pushed off the counter and began to pace. “It’s like there’s a wall in my brain that surrounds my past, and if I could just break through it, I could remember. It’s right there… I can almost touch it.” He shook his head. “But then I think that maybe I don’t want to.”
“I get that,” she murmured. “I so get that.”
“What happened?” Reseph brought his hands down on her shoulders, and her breath caught. He was so careful, so gentle with his strength. “You cried out in your sleep last night.”
She suppressed a groan. “I was upset about the Wilsons.”
“Bullshit.” The harsh word was spoken softly. “It was a nightmare, and you have them a lot.”
“You can’t know that,” she blurted, too defensively.
Reseph dropped his hands, but he didn’t move away. “When I slept on the couch, I heard you.”
She couldn’t outrun his accusation, but she could get away from him, and she crossed to the other side of the kitchen and busied herself with wiping the counter. “Everyone has nightmares.”
“But you don’t have to wake up from them alone.”
The way he said it, so weighted with emotion, wrapped around her heart. A strange tension sprouted between them, as if they were both uncomfortable with the way their relationship was progressing. Which was way too fast, for Jillian, at least. She didn’t
A slow smile spread over his face. “Jilly, you know me so well.”
Wince. No one had called her Jilly since she was in diapers. She grabbed the frying pan off the stove. “Call me Jilly again, and I’ll nail you with this.”
“Looks heavy.”
She hefted it higher. “Cast iron.”
“You wouldn’t really hit me, would you… Jilly?”
She spoke through clenched teeth. “Yes.”
Reseph sauntered over, and her heart pounded faster with each step. He stopped when they were almost touching and leaned in so close his lips grazed her ear. “You know I love a woman who can handle a weapon.”
“Yeah? You know what you can
Laughing, he raised his hands in defeat and stepped back. “I’m going to check on the animals.”
“Didn’t you already feed them?”
“Yeah, but there’s something out there.”
The reminder put a damper on the light mood. “Be careful.”
“Yup. If I had a middle name, careful would be it.” He waggled his brows. “I think.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
He shrugged, making all those luscious muscles play under his skin. “You’re probably right.”
