When we’d started patrolling, I’d wondered if it would be weird to hold his hand as we walked. I hadn’t quite worked up the nerve to do that.
But we hadn’t spent the whole day training or making out. We’d planned for the Harbinger. I had come to accept that Zayne had been right all those days ago, when he’d said we wouldn’t find the Harbinger until he wanted to be found. Once he came around again, we needed to get him to talk, because if we took him out, we wouldn’t know what was going on with Bael and the senator and those spirits trapped in the school. And if the Harbinger had been the one to set those wards, he could possibly be the only one able to break them. So, we needed to make ourselves available.
We needed to be alert.
And we needed to be patient.
The latter was not a part of my skill set.
Under Zayne’s watchful eyes, I was treating the narrow ledge of the building as if it were a balance beam. I thought that perhaps he had about four separate heart attacks each time I misstepped.
“Do you really need to do that?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“The correct answer would be no.”
Grinning, I pivoted like a ballerina, eliciting a harsh curse from Zayne. “It’s practice. That’s what I’m doing.”
“Practice for what? Earning a new world record for how many times you can make my heart stop?”
“Besides that, it helps me work on my balance when I can’t see.”
“And that can’t be done when you’re not several hundred feet in the air?”
“Nope. Because I can’t mess up when I’m up here. Down there, nothing bad would happen if I fell.”
“That would be the point,” he replied dryly.
“Don’t be such a worrywart. I know exactly how wide this is. Nine inches.” I carefully made my way back to him and stopped a couple feet away. I looked down, unable to see the width of the ledge or the shape of my boots. “The ledge is like my field of vision. Well, except the edges here are straight and not like a wonky circle where things are sometimes clear and sometimes blurry. Everything else is...” I lifted my arms. “Shadows. It’s weird, because sometimes it’s not even black. It’s like gray. I don’t know. That might be the cataracts.”
“Do you think it’s possible to get them removed?”
“My eyes?”
“The cataracts.” He sighed.
I grinned again. “The last doctor I saw said they were actually protecting my retinas in a way, and until they’re causing a real problem, they wanted to hold off on talking about surgery. There are a lot more risks involved with operating on people who have RP, and more possible side effects.”
“I hate to think what might classify as a real problem.”
I snorted, thinking that while I’d adapted the best I could to the restricted vision, the cataracts often annoyed the Hell out of me. “If they cause a lot of pain or fully obstruct my central vision, I guess.”
“But you said your eyes hurt before.”
“Yeah, but it’s manageable. More of an achy feeling and that probably has nothing to do with the cataracts. I mean, not directly. I do think I need to have my eyes checked, though.” Tipping my head back, I looked up at the sky. It took me a moment to see the distant, faint glow of one star and then another. “I had edemas once before. They could come back.”
“Macular edemas? The swelling behind the retinas?” he asked, surprising me once more with his own independent research. “That could be what’s causing your eyes to ache. We need to make an appointment. Call Thierry and see if the doctor they took you to could hook you up with someone closer, like the Wilmer Eye Institute over in Baltimore. They’re a part of Johns Hopkins.”
He really had done his research.
“We’ll just have to be careful,” he continued. “As long as there’s no genetic testing—”
“They’ll have no idea I’m not completely human.” I lowered my arms, inching closer to Zayne. “Though, can you imagine if they did test? The look on the geneticists’ faces when they got an eyeful of my DNA?”
He laughed. “They’d probably think you’re an alien.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in aliens.”
“I never said that. I just said it wasn’t likely those spikes belonged to aliens.”
“And I said that those spikes could belong to angels,” I pointed out. “Just to remind you, I was right.”
He snorted. “I’ve been thinking about the spikes. They’d be deadly against any being with angel blood. Between your grace and them, we’d be better prepared.”
“Good idea.”
“Of course it was a good idea. It was mine,” he replied, and I rolled my eyes as a warm breeze curled around the bare nape of my neck. “By the way, I forgot to tell you I was not remotely successful in convincing Stacey to not go back to the school.”
I waited for a surge of jealousy, but there was barely a smidgen of the ugly emotion. Since that was a massive improvement, I decided not to read myself the riot act. “She might be safe. Sam didn’t make it sound like she was in immediate danger.”
“Yeah.”
Hopping off the ledge, nearly laughing at the ripple of relief that came through the bond, I walked to Zayne’s other side.
I almost lost an eye almost walking into his wing.
Luckily, he sensed how close I was and lifted it before I made contact. “You’re worried about her.”
“I am,” he admitted, and as close as I was now, I could make out his profile in the moonlight. “She’s been through enough.”
“She has,” I agreed. “Hopefully once we get into the school, we’ll be able to assess the situation. There’s got to be a way to get the spirits and ghosts out of there.”
Zayne stared at the street below, and I thought that if anyone could see him, they’d think a stone gargoyle had been installed. “I know you want to help them.”
I stiffened. “I will.”
“But you can’t help them cross over with those wards in place, Trin.”
Anger ticked away at my otherwise pleasant mood. “Well, you can’t exorcise them with the wards there, either, so we can compromise. Get the wards down, and I can move on the ghosts who need to go and the spirits who were trapped. I can take care of the Shadow People on Saturday night, and I’m betting, once I get rid of them, the ghosts and spirits might calm down.”
He nodded. “I was thinking about some of the books my father used to keep in the library. There’s a huge old book about angels. Probably be good to head over there tonight and grab it. Gideon might have already checked it, but...”
“But it wouldn’t hurt,” I agreed.
“Right. And I also think there’s another avenue we can take.”
“Like—” I jerked as an icy shiver slipped over the nape of my neck and settled between my shoulder blades as if a hand was pressed into my skin. “He’s here.”
Zayne came down from the ledge in one fluid motion. “Where?”
“Nearby. We need to draw him out.” I kept my voice low as I turned to Zayne. In the shadows, his gray skin blended in, but his pale gaze stood out in stark relief. A plan quickly formed. “We need to split up.”
“Yeah, already don’t like this idea,” Zayne growled.
“Neither do I.” I placed a hand on his chest. The heat of his skin was warm against my palm. “But he didn’t show himself last time until we were separated, and we need to get him to talk. I’ll go to the next roof. You go elsewhere, hide until he shows.”
“Trin—”
“I can take care of myself, and this time I won’t let him get the upper hand,” I promised. “You know I got this.”
His wings twitched with irritation but he said, “I know.”
I found his gaze and then stretched up, placing my other hand on the hard surface of his jaw. Three simple words rolled to my tongue but couldn’t break free. I did what I knew I could. Guiding his head toward mine, I kissed him softly, quickly, and then settled back onto my feet. I took a step and turned.
Zayne caught my arm, hauling me back to his chest. A gasp of surprise left me, quickly swallowed by the press of his mouth on mine. The touch of his tongue and the almost forbidden sensation of the tips of his fangs against my lips nearly turned my muscles to liquid. I was lifted up until only the toes of my boots touched the roof as he kissed me like a man coming out of a deep slumber, and there wasn’t a part of me that didn’t feel it.
This kind of kiss was definitely more.
When he lifted his mouth from mine, I had to remember that there was stuff to do. Important stuff. “The fact that you can kiss me when I look like this?” His voice was like sandpaper. “It...it undoes me, Trin. It really does.”
My heart swelled and then squeezed, torn between the understated beauty of his words and disbelief. “I can kiss you like this because you’re beautiful like this.”
A tremor rocked him as he pressed his forehead to mine, holding me tight for another all-too-brief second, and then he lowered me to my feet, letting go with a slow slide of his hand. “I’ll be watching.”
Stepping back, I smoothed my hands down my sides. “Creeper.”
“Be careful,” he growled, ignoring my comment.
“Always.” Spinning around, I took off as fast as I could, admitting that, if I didn’t get going, predestined duty or not, I would do something incredibly irresponsible and completely impulsive. I’d stay and find a way to prove that he was as beautiful to me in his true form as he was in his human skin.
Knowing exactly where the ledge was and the distance between the buildings, I jumped just as my foot touched the short wall. Brief, weightless seconds were as stunning as Zayne’s kiss. I landed in a crouch, scanning the lit rooftop. Between the floodlights and the full moon, I had a decent view.