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“Eden, are you comfortable with this male speaking to you?” he rumbles. “Because your taste in companions is consistently tragic. First the Corpse-Boy, and now this… curly-headed thing that’s lying to your face about his communication.”

Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Ice surges through my veins, and the apples of Leo’s cheeks turn a feverish pink. The pity in his eyes is replaced by a cold, defensive fear. He looks at me, then up at the dark glasses of the monster looming over me, his voice trembling. “Wait—what did you just say? Who the hell is this guy, Eden?”

“He’s… he’s from a support group,” I scramble for the lie, my hand shaking as I reach for a box of painkillers, trying to bring some desperate sense of normalcy back into the moment even as my arm gives a vicious throb. ”His loss was… recent. Like mine. He’s struggling with some pretty severe anger issues since it happened. He’s not himself today, Leo. Please.”

I see the shift in Leo’s face—the sudden, uncomfortable soften of his features. It’s the ‘Grief Pass.’ He thinks he’s looking at another version of me, just louder and more dangerous.

“Eden, you shouldn’t be around people like this,” he whispers. “It’s not safe for you to be taking on someone else’s… instability.”

“I’m not taking it on,” I hiss, feeling Malachi’s chest vibrate against my shoulder as he suppresses a laugh. “I’m just helping. Now go. Please.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Leo says, his voice gaining a desperate, shaky kind of bravery. He shifts his weight, trying to stand taller, but next to Malachi, he looks like a child playing dress-up. “Look at her, man. She’s shaking. You’re practically hovering over her, she looks terrified.”

“She is terrified,” Malachi agrees. “But not of me. She’s terrified of the hollow, performative concern of people like you. Tell me, does your conscience feel lighter now that you’ve cornered her in an aisle of painkillers and pretended to care?”

Leo’s face flushes a deep, ugly red and he reaches out as if to grab my shoulder, but freezes when a low snarl echoes from Malachi’s throat.

“Don’t touch her,” Malachi warns, the air practically humming with static. “You had your chance to protect her, didn’t you? When the Corpse-Boy fell?”

“That’s it. You need to back off right now.” Leo fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his phone—the exact same one he had when Matthew died. “I’m calling the cops. We’ll see how tough you are when⁠—”

“You are calling no one,” Malachi purrs.

“Stop it!” I gasp, the thin cardboard packet of paracetamol crumpling into a mess in my hand. “He’s just—he’s a friend! He was Matthew’s friend! He means well!”

“Then he should have been more diligent in his duties,” Malachi says.

Before Leo can even swipe the screen, Malachi’s hand snakes out with impossible speed, plucking the device from Leo’s fingers. There’s a crystalline crack, and the tiny fracture already on the screen spiderwebs instantly, the glass grinding into a fine white powder under the sheer pressure of Malachi’s grip. The screen flickers once in a burst of purple and green, before turning completely black against his silver fingers.

“Your technology is as fragile as your loyalty,” he remarks, dropping the dust and shards back into Leo’s hands.

Leo stares at the dead weight in his hand, his mouth working but no sound coming out.

I need this to end. Now. I need to heal this arm and sever this rage-inducing blood-bind before the world finds out I’m harboring a crime against humanity in my apartment. The sooner I’m better, the sooner he can go back Hell or find another unfortunate soul to haunt. I want him out of my head and out of my life before he manages to set the rest of my world on fire.

“Leo, I’m so sorry—I’ll—I’ll pay for it, I’ll Venmo you, I’m so sorry!” I scramble, shoving the crumpled pack of painkillers into the basket. I don’t look back at the wreckage of Matthew’s best friend. I just grab the front of the pale blue hoodie and haul Malachi toward the self-checkout with every ounce of strength I have left.

Chapter 12

Malachi

“What the fuck is wrong with you? What was that?” Eden all-but yells at me, slamming the front door shut with a force that rattles the cheap frame, sending a fine dusting of plaster down from the ceiling.

“What do you mean?” I ask, leaning against the wall to pry my boots off.

“What do I mean?” She whirls on me, her eyes wide and wet with panic. “You were out in the open for an hour, Malachi! One hour! And you picked three fights! And Leo—he was staring at your hands when you crushed his phone! The fingers! He saw the silver!”

She practically rips her coat off, throwing it onto the rack before dumping the pharmacy bag onto the coffee table with a clatter of pills and plastic.

“I did not ‘pick’ them,” I say calmly, hooking my thumbs under the rim of the beanie. I yank it off, letting out a low groan of relief as my horns finally tear free of the wool. “I merely responded to the structural weaknesses of the situations presented to me. If your world is filled with fragile egos and breakable electronics, that is hardly my fault.”

I toss the beanie onto the couch and fix her with a level stare.

“And you,” I add, my voice dropping an octave. “You stayed quiet while that lying sack of shit lied to your face. Why?”

“It’s called manners!” Eden shouts, her hands balling into fists at her sides. “It’s called being a person! We don’t just crush phones because we’re annoyed!”