The Taken

it. The woman from the Chambers estate. The one who’d handed her the Bible and told her to go home.

“You might have your precious free will while walking this mudflat in human flesh, but you’re still a creature of the Everlast, just like me.”

Kit edged closer, and peered around the corner to find Grif with his back to her, staring out the small window over the kitchen sink. “What does that mean?”

The woman paced behind him, circling like a wolf. “It means that every day, at four-ten in the morning, you will return to your exact state of death-that clothing, that watch, the loaded gun at your ankle. Four bullets. And, of course, the photo of that pretty little wife tucked deep into your wallet.”

“You leave her out of this,” Grif said lowly.

The woman smiled, and Kit saw fangs. “You can strip it all off again in the next minute-you can put on a top hat and tap until your feet fall off for all I care-but everything will be back twenty-four hours later. Same as when you died. Same as what happened just now.”

Grif said nothing.

“You can’t escape it, Shaw. And, no matter what you told yourself while burying your flesh in that female, you will never unknow being dead.”

“Are you done?” Grif asked, voice tight.

“I won’t be done until I’m home again,” the woman said, echoing what she’d told Kit at Chambers’s estate. Kit frowned.

And the woman turned with blue smoke swirling in her eyes. “Oh. Hello, dear.”

Kit jolted awake. “Jesus,” she said, placing one hand over her thumping heart, the other automatically searching for Grif in the bed. But he wasn’t there.

Biting her lip, Kit wrapped the sheet around her body, and slowly stood. It was just a dream, she told herself. Her mind’s way of trying to make sense of everything that’d happened in the past few days.

But she headed straight to the kitchen anyway.

He was leaning over the kitchen sink, arms splayed wide, head down, and yes, fully clothed. He must not have heard her come in, because he jolted when she wrapped her arms around his body.

“Shh,” she said, as he’d done with her, but he shivered despite her warmth, and didn’t press back into the embrace.

“Want to hear something amazing?” Kit said, trying anyway. Her voice was only a little strained, but she forced it lower, huskier, like it’d been when she cried out in the middle of the night. She wouldn’t let one bad dream sully all that had come before it. “It’s something I forgot in the chaos of the last few days. Especially last night after… you know.

“When I first saw you, when you saved me from Schmidt. You zigzagged from the shadows, and for a moment I imagined I saw… well, wings. They were black, like an onyx river falling from your shoulders. They flare like rising smoke, right? And dissipate the same way at the tips?”

Now Grif did turn. “How did you know that?”

One corner of her mouth had lifted with the telling, but now it fell. Shit. She thought indulging his angel story would make him laugh and bring them closer. Instead, though he’d joked about it during their night together, he was again serious. Dead serious. “I don’t know anything. I told you, I was just seeing things.”

But his expression had grown far off. “Because you were so close to death. Because you were supposed to die.”

Kit retreated a step, pulling the sheet tighter around her. “Well, that’s what angels do, right?” Kit tried again, with a forced laugh. “Protect the innocent from a wrong, untimely death. Knowing that, knowing you did just that for me, I feel… different this morning. Like I might just get through this, you know?”

Grif met her gaze, and for a moment he looked like he was going to touch her. But then he turned away, and there was no danger of them touching at all. Not looking at her, he said, “We made a mistake.”

Kit’s pulse jumped in her chest. “No, we didn’t.”

“You slept with me because I fit in with your rockabilly lifestyle.”

“No, that’s why I was first attracted to you. I slept with you because… because…”

“Because?”

Because you said I was beautiful and strong. Because you said you saw my soul, and because I’ve always believed that life requires being known by another soul.

She refocused her gaze on Grif. “Because I’m an idiot.”

Grif looked down, and shuffled a foot against the peeling linoleum floor.

“What are you doing?” Kit’s low, husky lover’s voice was gone.

“I need to tell you why I’m really here, Kit. I am a Centurion. I really am an angel. I meet murdered souls in the moments after their death.”

Wrapping her arms tightly around her body, she jerked her head. “Don’t do this. You know my best friend was just murdered. And my ex-husband.”

“Nicole was my Take, Kit. I was the one who was supposed to see her home.”

The dream-woman’s voice popped into Kit’s mind again. I won’t be done until I’m home again.

“Stop it,” Kit hissed lowly. “This isn’t funny.”

But then the thought of Nicole and Grif caught hold, and the blood drained from Kit’s face. “You were there,” she whispered. “I saw you in the window. I… I saw your hat!”

She saw him consider lying, but Kit knew what she’d seen. Like Tony himself had told her, she knew what she knew. It had been Grif.

“Yes,” he finally said, voice clipped and hard.

“You killed her.” She backed up, knocking into the kitchen table.

“No.” Grif took a step forward.

She held out a hand, like that could keep him from coming near. “I saw you up there. I saw your silhouette! You were there.”

He shrugged impatiently, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I already told you that. But I didn’t kill her.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why should I believe you?”

“I saved you, didn’t I?”

It was a good point, and Kit tilted her head. “Did you talk to her?”

“Nicole?” Grif nodded, but Kit waited for more. “She said you were supposed to go to a bonfire last weekend. And some bar of beauty.”

The Beauty Bar. All her girlfriends met there once a month. Tears blurred Kit’s vision, and she hastily wiped them away. “Why are you doing this?”

“I can tell when death is coming from someone,” he said, pressing on with his crazy, horrible story. “I can smell it like a hound scents blood in the air. I can see the plasma of world matter, of fate, gathering in the moments before death, marking the end of that soul’s Surface time.”

“Like Paul?” she asked, one brow lifted in challenge.

But Grif continued to lie. “Yes.”

A harsh laugh ripped from her chest. “So you knew he was going to die? And you did nothing?” She shook her head. “What kind of angel is that, Grif? What kind of person is that?”

“It was fated,” he replied quickly, defensive. “There was no stopping it. Besides, he wasn’t my Take. I was with you.”

Kit thought for a moment, tried another angle. “All right. What about Marin?”

Grif didn’t even blink. “She’s got a stew of drugs inside of her that’ll probably have her outliving all of us.”

Oh, he was good. Lying with such a straight, sincere face.

“She’ll be happy to hear it.” Kit crossed her arms. “So what are you doing here, Grif? You don’t want me, that’s obvious-”

“Kit-”