Page 90 of Scrooged for the Holidays
“True. After our time with her today and her experience with me yesterday, she was surprisingly docile, especially for her.”
I mull over what he’s saying as we enter Sam’s room. I don’t bother knocking, and I’m not surprised to find him sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for us. “Everything go well?”
I sit next to him and pull Kai down beside me. “You tell me, Samael. I could feel you snooping, and I didn’t close down the link. I’m surprised Kai stayed away,” I say, gripping his knee.
Kai shrugs. “Like I said, I wanted to give you some privacy, and I knew you would show me.”
“Is that the only reason?” I ask. Kai enjoys snooping more than Sam does. In fact, Sam is usually not the one to snoop.
“I just needed time to think,” he replies. “A lot has happened in less than forty-eight hours. I took a walk and asked Elysian Pines what was happening, why Greer has us reacting differently. When that didn’t work, I looked through the past and didn’t find anything that would lead me to answers, either.”
“Interesting.” I pause. “The past is one thing, but I’m surprised you asked the town. You know it never responds to questions; it never has.”
“I know, but I thought maybe…”
I take his hand and squeeze, picking up Sam’s as well. We’ve been here a long time, and what’s happening has never happened before. We’ve never had a human make us feel as if we’ll crawl out of our skin if we don’t have them. Nor have we had someone’s aura appear gold, much less the colors of our auras together. It makes me wonder if Sam’s will appear as well after Greer has spent more time with him.
“How are you both feeling?” I ask. The hunger inside me that was briefly sated after being inside Greer is returning full force. An invisible tug is telling me to go to her or bring her down here with us. If I did, maybe the sensation would go away. But it may only make it stronger.
“Like we should talk,” Sam says.
Kai shifts on the bed so he can look at Sam better. Clear surprise is on his face. “You’re ready to address whatever is happening here with Greer?”
Sam’s aura feels heavier than usual, the strength of it expanding out of him at Kai’s question. He turns his head, his near-black eyes connecting with Kai’s earthy ones. “There shouldn’t be anything happening—”
Kai stands. “Don’t do that, Sam. Don’t deny that you want her as much as we do, that your soul doesn’t call to her. I was standing right there when your aura exploded out of you to get to her at the rink.”
“That was an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” he says with a low, joyless chuckle. “It was your angelic grace, the part that makes you Nephilim, the part that knows more than you do. It sensed what you’re denying and reacted. It’s still reacting. No matter what you tell yourself, you want her. You yearn for her, the same way you do for me and Remi. You wouldn’t have sought us out at dinner or watchedearlier if you didn’t. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have let her into this room. What I’m trying to figure out, Sam, is why? Why work so hard to deny her, to deny yourself?”
Sam stands to meet Kai so that they’re toe to toe. Their anger flows from their auras, a pulsing crimson red that reminds me of blood.
“I’m looking out for you, Malachi,” Sam says. “And for Remiel.”
“You’re not,” Kai argues. “You only think you are.”
“You’re wrong.”
Kai leans in so that their noses are almost touching. “Did you stop to think that Elysian Pines sent Greer here for more than the usual routine?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, and you know it.”
He scoffs. “Only because you’re not allowing yourself to look at the entire picture. Tell me she’s not different from the others, Sam, that you don’t feel drawn to her. That her aura changing to Remi’s gold and my blue isn’t strange. In the hundreds of years we’ve been doing this, have you ever seen what you’ve seen with Greer or felt the way you feel now?”
“Everythingisdifferent, which is why I told you that getting involved with her was a bad idea. You should have all just let her be, done your jobs, and that’s it.”
“You’re only saying that because you’re thinking of the future, Samael. Because you won’t see past it!”
“That’s my job!”
“Yes, but you’re not looking at the whole picture. We ask the people who come here to do that, to look at their past, present, and future and make a choice to change or not. So why can’t you do the same?”
“Are you forgetting that we’re not human? Greer is.”
“We’re part human.”
“Maybe so, but how do you expect to allow Greer into our lives if we all develop feelings for one another? Do you think she’ll move here, forget her job that she’s worked hard for? Ontop of that, humans don’t live in Elysian Pines—they never have. We don’t even know what that would look like, not that she’d want that, anyway, given she doesn’t even like this place. Greer is meant to learn her lesson and return to her life, not stay with us.”
