Vicki Pettersson - The Given

And these girls did. They understood the glory in one blade of grass, a singular sparrow’s song . . . a kiss truly meant and felt. If Kit could exist on such simple fuel—and do it after she’d endured the illness and death of one parent and the murder of the other—then other people out there must as well, right?

“And then Nic died.”

If someone took a picture of their tight huddle just then, they’d have been mistaken for pin-ups of the past. Sad ones. Every one of the women froze, a stillness Kit broke with the shake of her head. “And I realized that some people victimize others just because they can. They use their power to manipulate the young.”

Like Caleb Chambers had, until Grif and she had stopped him.

“Or feed a junkie’s addictions just to line their pockets with green.”

Like two warring drug lords had . . . until Grif and she had stopped them, too.

Or tear two people who loved each other apart, Kit thought. Just because they could.

She thought of the angel, the Pure, whom they hadn’t been able to stop at all.

“I thought that I could stop some of that. That I could make a difference.”

And perhaps it’d seemed obscene to God, and all His winged monsters in heaven. The so-called Pure. Because what did she get for trying to live her best life daily? For loving a man who suddenly appeared before her, and for wanting love in return?

“I was betrayed. I was abandoned. I was left worse than when He found me.”

The girls thought she meant Grif, and all began babbling at once, trying to console her. Kit let them, because there was no explaining what she knew of the Everlast and of the Pure and of Griffin Shaw’s true nature. And she really didn’t know how to state that she’d very simply lost her faith—in the truth, in the world, and in God.

Kit had been holding her drink throughout the telling, but she put it down now, because even though it was wet, she knew it would taste dry. “I’m going home.”

“Wait. We’re sorry,” Fleur said, trying to pull her back to her seat. “We won’t talk about Griffin Shaw, or men at all. Just . . . stay.”

“Someday,” Kit promised, and folded her hands atop Fleur’s for a brief moment. She meant it, too. She was still optimistic enough to believe she’d feel better someday. “But not tonight.”

She simply didn’t feel like dancing.

She didn’t look back as she left the side lounge, returning to the main club, where a sole male crooner was singing over the heads of a crowd of couples. You could choke on the pheromones rising in that room, and the hope in it—the life and the joy—had Kit rushing to the front door, which a man dressed like a fifties bellhop held open with a smile. Only when the cold night air finally hit her heated cheeks did she dare take a breath, though she kept up her pace until she’d reached her vintage Duetto and opened the door.

Then a silence closed in around her, a too-heavy blanket that made her ears want to pop. She whirled, searching, sure someone was watching her—from the doorway of the club, from behind the building, from within the cars around her.

Nothing.

She gave the lot one more scan, then huffed, sending a white puff of air into the night before climbing in behind the steering wheel of her car. There was nothing out there, she thought, as the car rumbled to life. At least, not for her.

How’s the head, Shaw?”

Stars, the imagined kind, floated and swirled before Grif’s eyes in a pattern that made his stomach flip and churn. He bit back bile and groaned in annoyance. He recognized that voice. Tilting his head in the direction from which it’d sounded, Grif caught a burst of bright light between his slitted lids before everything went black and vision again slid away. Blinders.

The voice, Sarge’s, tsk-tsked. “The flesh. It’s just so weak.”

That steeled Grif’s resolve, and he managed to sit up straight. “Does God know you’re knocking His children around like this?”

“I never touched you, Shaw.”

“No, you just sent your pretty little lackey to do your dirty work.”

“So sorry to interrupt your life-in-progress. I know how busy you’ve been trying to find out who killed you.”

“Sarcasm is ugly on the Pure.”

“How do you know? You can’t even see me.”

“Because you attacked me, kidnapped me, and then put blinders on me.” Grif stood up, because he couldn’t just sit and take it, yet his legs swayed.

“I understand you’re upset.”

Upset? Scowling, Grif folded his arms. He’d ceased taking calls from his celestial superior after the Pure had used Kit’s goodness against her. Against them. He wasn’t upset. He was downright furious.

“Please, sit down,” Sarge said, his voice coming from Grif’s left this time.

“Or what?” Grif rounded on the voice, on the Pure angel who’d given him a second chance at life, and then went ahead and destroyed that, too. “You’ll smite me?”

It was hard to toss off a pointed look when he couldn’t see—he couldn’t even tell if his eyes were open—but he gave it a decent try. “You’re a created being who will never know what it is to be born or die. To live or love. You don’t understand a damned thing about how I feel.”

“But I do. At least, I do now.”

Grif neither knew what that meant, nor cared. He just wanted to figure out where he was so he could get out of there, but that wasn’t going to happen until Sarge willed it. So he located the hard surface he’d been propped against when he came to, some sort of giant wooden box, and plopped back down. “Where’s your mercenary little angel?”

“Mr. Naumes was starting the Fade, so Ms. Rockwell had to take him for processing before he washed out completely. She asked me to apologize for the shiner.”

Grif huffed. “No, she didn’t.”

“No, she didn’t,” Sarge admitted. “I didn’t realize when I asked for volunteers that she had her own reasons for offering to secure you.”

That’s because he hadn’t asked Grif, who knew firsthand how fiercely Kit and her friends covered for each other. Even, it seemed, in the Everlast.

“She’ll be punished.”

“Nah, don’t do that.” He had broken Kit Craig’s heart, after all, and he’d feel the same way if he were Nicole. “Let’s just get this over with. What do you want?”

At that, the blindness tore away, stinging like duct tape being ripped from the skin. Grif rubbed his eyes, blinked, and looked around. Wooden cargo boxes, stamped and stacked in neat piles, lined the sides of an oblong room. Everything from ceiling to floor was made entirely of wood. Planks, Grif realized, tapping his feet. The sound was more hollow than he expected, and he frowned as he spotted the netting strung from the low-hanging beams. Thick hemp ropes coiled along the walls, and along with the swaying, it put him in mind of a . . .

“It’s not really a ship,” Sarge said from somewhere behind him. “We’re still in Vegas. Treasure Island, to be exact. It was Rockwell’s idea. We needed someplace central but quiet—though the next pirate show is in an hour, so we should make this quick.”

A pirate show. Grif shook his head. “The Rat Pack would be appalled at the—”

But Sarge stepped into view just then, and Grif’s words cut off in a sharp gasp.

The angel’s once-great arms had shrunken down to a quarter of their former size, and were now spindly, as frail as kindling. His wings were as bald in spots as his head, as if he’d picked and worried those feathers out of place. The remaining plumes had lost their glossy black sheen and lay flat against each other in dull, uneven rows. His skin, once as dark as those onyx wings, was ashy and sagged in all the wrong places, and his frame was more of a reminder of strength than the threat of it.