Immortal (Fallen Angels #6)(80)
Author: J.R. Ward

Cranking her head to his side of the bed, she felt the blood drain out of her skull.

Lying on the pillow where he had been sleeping … was her necklace, the one with the little gold dove on a chain.

Grabbing the thing, she brought it right up to her face—like maybe she’d gotten it wrong or … no, it had not broken. The clasp had been reengaged.

After he had taken the thing off.

“Shit!” Scrambling out of the sheets, she threw some clothes on and shot out the door. “Jim!”

She ran for the stairs and took them two at a time on the way down. Halting in the front hall, she froze and listened—prayed for the sound of him moving around in the kitchen, the smell of cigarette smoke, the creak of some floorboards somewhere, anywhere.

“Jim!” she hollered.

The front door was locked, although it wasn’t like he was going to leave that open if he’d gone out that way—and when she shot back to the kitchen, she found the back exit was the same.

“What’s going on?”

As Eddie appeared in nothing but a pair of pajama bottoms, she wheeled around and held out the necklace.

Yeah, like that explained everything.

“I’m sorry?” he said. “What is that?”

“He’s gone. Jim’s gone.”

“What?”

“I woke up and he was gone—and he left this behind.”

Eddie’s red eyes narrowed. “And that is…”

“My necklace.” She waited for the OMG! Of course! When it didn’t come, she said, “You don’t understand—”

Adrian came in, having been slower on the descent. “What’s—”

“—my mother gave it to him. He told me he never took it off—and now he’s gone and he left it behind.”

“Shit,” Adrian muttered, heading over to the table and falling into a chair.

“And he’s not anywhere in the house?” Eddie said. “You’ve—”

“Come on,” Ad cut in. “You know exactly where he is.”

“Damn it.” Eddie shook his head. “He needs to work on the next soul. Now is not the time to go after Devina.”

The two angels started talking back and forth at each other, but Sissy suddenly couldn’t hear a word they said.

The newspaper.

Drawn by something she couldn’t explain, she went across and flipped the CCJ over so that the bottom half of the front page showed. That picture, of that man …

“Hey,” she cut in. “Hey! Who is this?”

She flashed the paper to the pair of them and they looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Who is this?” she demanded, pointing to the man. “This is one of the souls, isn’t it.”

As alarm bells rang in her head, she focused through her fear.

“Yeah.” Ad shrugged. “So what, we got bigger problems than where Vin diPietro is holding a garage sale of all his—”

“Do you see this?” She jabbed her forefinger at the picture. “Do you see what’s over his head?”

The two of them leaned in as if they both knew damned well they either checked it out or she was going to shove the newspaper in their faces until they answered her.

“No,” Eddie said. “I don’t see anything.”

“You?” she said to Ad.

“Nope. Nada. No offense, but if you need your eyes checked—”

“Jim’s the last soul.” As they stared over at her with all kinds of WTF, she jogged the newspaper and spoke with crystal clarity. “Jim is the final one in play.”

Chapter Forty-five

As Adrian narrowed his eyes on Sissy, his heart skipped a beat and seemed to consider taking a lunch break altogether. Except then he thought, as smart as Sissy was, she had this wrong. Somehow she had to have this wrong.

Eddie clearly felt the same way. “Listen, Sissy, I’m not sure—”

“This man has a halo.” She pointed at the grainy picture of Vin. “Was he one of the souls in the war?”

When neither one of them replied, she nodded grimly. “He was. Wasn’t he. And the man I saw in Home Depot, the one I pointed out to you, Ad. He was also a soul, right? And then there was a guy at my funeral who had a halo, a musician here in town—and I read that he had died in the paper … right after Jim told me we’d lost the round before mine.” She pointed to her own head. “I have a halo.”

Now, an electrical shock went through Ad’s nervous system, the kind of thing that he imagined happened when humans saw what they thought were ghosts, or maybe when you were driving down the highway and an SUV swerved into your lane.

It was the response of an adrenal gland that had just up and wakey-wakey’d.

“Jim also has a halo.” She tossed the newspaper down onto the table. “So I have to be right about this.”

With a curse, Ad closed his eyes and prayed that Eddie jumped in and came up with the ironclad reason this was not true. Eddie would know. He knew everything—

“Let me make sure I understand you,” the other angel murmured. “You see these things?”

“As soon as I got out of Hell, I noticed that Jim had one, and I asked why you two didn’t. He didn’t see it. Doesn’t see mine.”

“Well, I have to tell you, I don’t see anything over your head.”

She shrugged. “Fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. Is there anyone else who was a soul? Let me see a picture of them, and I’ll tell you. Come on—let me prove this to you.”

“Okay, okay … lemme see what I can find,” Ad muttered, taking out his phone. “How the fuck do you spell DelVecchio—never mind. His father was that serial killer, both of them are all over the Net.”

When he’d found what he was looking for, he turned his phone around and flashed the screen at Sissy. As she bent down and her brows came together, he measured every nuance of her face, from the clarity of her eyes to the tightness of her mouth.

She exhaled with frustration. “Well, I guess I’m wrong. He doesn’t have—”

“That was his father,” Ad said, taking his phone back. Another touch or two and he flashed her a second picture. “How about him.”

But he knew what she was going to say.

“Yes,” she breathed, pointing down. “Right here. It’s right here.”

Ad glanced across at his best buddy. “I thought Jim was supposed to be the fucking savior.”