Page 38 of Of Angels & Absolution

“Oh, dear Lucifer,” Annabel Lee says, flopping back on the bed. “Please tell me no one uploaded a video of what my cousin did in the library, and you need it scrubbed from the internet.”

“No,” I say quickly. “It’s something else. A file with some pages missing. I thought there must be a backup online. Maybe it’s complete.”

“Sounds like a job for Nate Swift,” Manson says. “Boys dorm, room 417. He’s probably already gone, so catch him after the break. And be ready to do him a favor in return.”

“What kind of favor?” I ask, my throat tightening. “Like… A sinful one?”

They stare at me a second, and then they all burst into laughter. “Okay, I’m going to need the video evidence of what I heard happened in the library, because there’s no wayyoudid that,” Manson says when he recovers.

“Not a sexual favor,” Annabel Lee assures me. “Nate’s not interested in that kind of thing.”

“More like, you owe him one,” Ronique explains. “I heard he doesn’t even call most of them in. He just likes the power of knowing you’re in his debt.”

The thought sits uneasily with me, but they don’t have any other suggestions, and I don’t have anyone else to ask for alternatives.

That evening, when the last classes and labs are done and the campus sits quiet except for an occasional student crossing to the dining hall, I head for the boys’ dorm. They said Nate was off campus, but I want to check anyway. I’m just reaching the fourth-floor landing when I hear footsteps in the stairwell above me.

I freeze, caught between the instinct to run and the one to stay still and quiet and hope whoever is there passes me without notice. As they move quickly down the stairs, I realize how foolish I was to go into the boys’ dorm on a night like this. Almost no one is around to help me if I need it, to hear me if I scream. What if the remaining guys on campus banded together like a lawless pack, like the Hellhounds, and attacked me?

The thought is more thrilling than it should be.

“Well, hello there, little sister,” comes a familiar, cruel voice on the stairs above.

I swallow hard and drag my eyes up, my heart hammering in my chest. My words catch in my throat when I see Saint standing there in a pair of grey sweatpants and a black teethat stretches taut across his muscular chest and shoulders. His tattooed forearms are bare, corded with muscle and threaded with veins that make me lightheaded. I tear my gaze back to his.

“Sneaking around again, are we?” Saint asks, a taunt in his deep voice.

“I—Why aren’t you home?” I blurt.

“Because my father is a power-hungry fraud who uses his children to reflect his moral superiority while treating them like disposable, subhuman vermin behind closed doors, and my mother is a spineless piece of shit who lets him. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”

“But… They chose you,” I whisper.

A sardonic smile twists the corner of his lips. “Indeed. But you haven’t answered my question yet. What are you doing here, M?”

My heart nearly stops when he calls me by the nickname. I never expected any of them to remember, and when Angel used it, I thought it was already too good to be true. I never even hoped the others might.

“The same thing I was doing the last time,” I admit. “I was hoping to find a copy of the digital file, maybe see if the missing pages are present online. I heard there’s a guy here who might be able to help.”

Saint stares at me a long moment, then comes down the stairs between us. “You need to stop digging,” he says, his voice flat and hard, more commanding than I’ve heard it before.

“What?” I ask, taking a step back. The railing stops me, and Saint steps forward, trapping me against it.

“There are things you don’t know, that you don’t need to know,” he says. “You’re going to fuck up the balance of this whole town if you don’t keep your nose where it belongs.”

“What are you talking about?” I whisper, my throat closing as I stare at my brother, who looms over me like a threat.His clear eyes are as cold as ice, a stranger’s eyes, moments after he reminded me we are the furthest thing from it. We share an upbringing, parents, a family. And yet, we don’t share the one thing that matters—the truth.

That day is what separates us, and despite his kindness the day he caught me sneaking into my room at dawn and made me tea, he’s telling me now that he doesn’t want that obstacle removed.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he warns. “You’re going to piss off the wrong person, and it’ll be a fucking war, Mercy. This whole town exists as it does right now because the people at the top of each faction pull their string to keep the powers in balance. If you disrupt that…”

“But it’s a lie,” I say. “If covering up Eternity’s murder is keeping the town in balance, then the town is built on a lie.”

“The town was built hundreds of years before any of us came along,” he says. “This is how it’s always worked. You’re not going to change that. All you’re going to do is get yourself killed too.”

“If the truth will do that much damage, then maybe this town needs disrupting,” I say, refusing to back down. Saint’s jaw clenches, and he stares down at me with disbelief and fury. I’ll take it. It’s better than the chilly indifference of a moment ago.

“You don’t know what you’re fucking with,” he grits out.

---