Page 131 of Veil of Death and Shadow

“Watch it, Thorne,” Kieran snapped. “I mean it.”

“Or what?” He smirked, which somehow only made him look more threatening. “We don’t have time to pander to your every whim. You were given a job, and you haven’t completed it. You don’t belong here, you don’t control the fates, and you should’ve been back two days ago.”

The fates? What the fuck was he talking about?

“You’ve checked up on me like a good little soldier,” Kieran said, inching in front of me, like he wanted to keep me out of sight. “Now go home and tell Rafi that I’ll return when I’m done with my assignment.”

The man, Thorne apparently, bared his teeth. “I was ordered not to return without you.”

“Since when do you follow orders?”

Thorne’s hands flexed into fists.

“I’ve seen you before,” I said, stepping out from behind Kieran’s shadow, attempting to dispel the visceral tension building between the two men. “A few days after The Undoing. There was a vampire and a werewolf.” I took a deep breath, steeling myself under the weight of Thorne’s stare now that it was burrowing into me instead of Kieran. “They couldn’t see you though. Neither could my friend.”

There was a woman heading in our direction, but she only shot me an alarmed look, before crossing the street to give us a wide berth.

“So,” I said, glancing between the two men. “I take it that means you’re dead, too?” Which meant that, to the rest of the world, I was in the middle of a dark street, talking to myself. Great.

Well, that was one way to keep people at a distance.

Something flashed in Thorne’s eyes—a watered down version of surprise, maybe. He studied me again, with slightly more attention this time. Not like I was someone worthy of his attention, but like I was gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. A nuisance he was trying to figure out how to rid himself of as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Kieran stiffened, inching closer to me.

“I’m Mareena,” I said, awkwardly extending my hand out to him.

Thorne only scowled at it.

“This is Hawthorne,” Kieran said, his jaw tight. “But everyone calls him Thorne.”

I gave him a tight smile, offering the vitriol he served up right back to him. “Suits you.”

“Exactly.” Kieran grunted, before adding a mumbled, “Been nothing but a thorn in my ass since the moment I met him.”

“Are you a guardian angel, too, or another ghost-phantom-thing like Claudine?” I asked, fidgeting with my ring, as I tried to assess if this guy was a legitimate threat, or just a friend of Keiran’s whose factory setting came with a stick shoved so far up his ass that it addled his brain. “Or . . . something else, maybe?”

“Fucking hell, Kieran,” Thorne spat out, his eyes shining with venom as they lasered in on Kieran’s hand. It was getting worse, the veins black as tar as they branched up his forearm. “You can’t be serious.”

“Hawthorne,” Kieran said, his voice dipping into a warning growl. He adjusted his sleeve until it covered his arm.

Instead of answering me, the two of them got caught in some silent staring version of a pissing contest. That, or maybe they could communicate telepathically. Kieran hadn’t exactly been expansive when describing his powers or the various forms and occupations of the dead.

“Stay here for a minute, Agony,” Kieran finally said. “Thorne and I need to have a brief chat in private.”

Without waiting for my response, they walked off.

So . . . apparently, they couldn’t telepathically communicate then. At least that was one answer down. More than I usually got out of Kieran.

For five minutes I watched the two of them argue down the block, just out of earshot.

They were tense, the silent threat of aggression baked into every line of their bodies.

I glanced down at the business card Villette had so reluctantly parted with, my focus split between the shady new arrival and devising the fastest route to the address. Thorne was not part of tonight’s plan. We didn’t have time for this.

Kieran’s gaze sought me out every minute or so, almost like he didn’t trust that I would listen to him, that I would wait. And honestly, maybe I shouldn’t.

Judging from Kieran’s absolute refusal to stop stalking me, I’d been under the impression that guardian angels weresupposedto stick to their charges like glue. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? That we were bound, and he couldn’t leave until his job was finished?

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