The Angel of Death (The Soul Summoner Book 3) (3 page)

He sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. Have you told him?”

I smirked. “Warren or Nathan McNamara?”

He frowned. “Sloan.”

“I haven’t told anybody, Dad. Not even Adrianne,” I said, and it surprised even me. I’d been telling my best friend, Adrianne Marx, everything since I was thirteen.

“Why didn’t you tell Warren?”

“Because I found out after he left. I figured it out when we dropped him off at the Marine station in Charlotte last month and I didn’t get a migraine. It made everything make sense. My demon-mom trying to murder me, my sudden ability to heal, oh—and I saw Warren’s soul for the first time ever.”

“That’s right. You could never see his soul,” he said.

“But I can now. I can sense him like I can sense everyone else,” I said.
 

He rubbed his palms over his face.
 

I leaned forward and rested my elbow on his desk. “Am I wrong for not telling Warren? It didn’t seem right because he’s already so worried about me, and I’m sure he’s worried about the crap with me and Nathan…” I cast my gaze at the carpet. “He needs to focus on whatever dangerous stuff they have him doing. He doesn’t need anything else to freak out about.”

Dad sighed. “I don’t know, Sloan. If it were me, I would want to know. Imagine what it will do to him when he shows up and you’ve got a belly out to here.” He was holding his hand about a foot out from his stomach. “Or worse. What if you’ve got a baby in your arms when he comes home?”

I groaned. “You’re probably right. Maybe I’ll tell him if I get to talk to him again on the phone. I’m not writing it in a letter though.”

He shook his head. “No, don’t do that.” He handed me the ultrasound picture. “Does this mean you’ll marry him?”

“We talked about it before he left, but he said I needed to take the time while he’s gone to figure out what I want for the rest of my life,” I said.

“Him or the detective?” Dad asked.

I nodded.

“Well?” he asked.

I turned my palms up. “Aside from the obvious fact that I’m in love with Warren, doesn’t it kind of make up my mind if we’re having a baby together?”
 

Dad was thoughtful for a moment. “Sloan, you can’t put that kind of pressure on your child. You can’t just marry him because of the baby. You still have to choose for yourself.” He laughed a little. “I will say you won’t come across another man like Warren. I wouldn’t be so understanding if I were in his shoes.”

Tears pooled in my eyes. “I can’t help it. If I could turn off my feelings for Nathan, I would. I swear I would.”
 

Dad got up and knelt down beside me. “Come here.” He pulled me into his arms and let me cry on his shoulder.
 

“I don’t know what to do. Why can’t I just love them both?”

He pulled back to look at me. His eyes were serious. “You
can
love them both. But sometimes, the most loving thing we can do for someone is let them go.”

I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I don’t know how.”

He tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “You have to figure out how, sweetheart, because three-way relationships don’t work. Pretty soon you won’t have a choice, and you might lose them both.” He handed me a tissue from the box on his desk. “May I ask you a question?”

I braced myself.

He studied my face. “What is it about Nathan?” He held up his hands. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good man. It’s just you and Warren seem so perfect for each other. It surprises me you’re still struggling with a decision.”

I had asked myself the same question over and over since the fall. “You know, for years I pretended to be normal because I feared if people found out what I was really like, they’d be afraid or they’d hate me. For years no one knew except Adrianne, not even you and mom.”

Dad squeezed my hand.

“Then Nathan showed up,” I said, smiling. “The first day we met, he had me so flustered that I basically blurted it out.” I took a deep breath. “And he did the opposite of reject me. He found out everything I wanted to keep hidden, and I think he liked me even more.”

“And then Warren showed up,” Dad said with a sad, soft expression.

“Yeah, and like you said, Warren’s perfect. It’s like he was made for me,” I said. “Sometimes it feels like the universe shut everything down with me and Nathan and neither of us had a choice in it.”

Dad grinned. “I wouldn’t say it shut
everything
down. Otherwise you wouldn’t still have to choose.”

“Yeah.”

He squeezed my shoulder. “Well, if your old man’s opinion matters, I really like them both. I don’t think you could find two better men to pick from.”

I whined. “That is so not helpful.”

“I know.”

“You really won’t tell me who you think I should be with?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Maybe someday but not today.” He winked at me. “I don’t want to give up any leverage I may have in case they start bribing me with gifts or money.”

I wadded up the tissue and threw it at him.

2.

My ability to summon people had drastically improved since I found out I was pregnant. So when my phone rang as I left Dad’s office, it wasn’t a surprise that Detective Nathan McNamara’s face popped up on the screen.

I tapped the answer button and pressed the phone to my ear. “I was just talking about you,” I said in lieu of a greeting.

He chuckled. “You know, it’s not always you putting your voodoo on me. Sometimes I call or come by all on my own.”

I squinted against the sunshine as I unlocked my car and got inside. “Whatever you say, Nathan. What’s up?”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I stopped in to visit my dad, but I’m heading back to work now.” I started my engine and backed out of the parking space.

“Good. Come by my office on your way in.”

I slammed on my brakes, bringing the car to a lurching halt. Nathan’s office was located inside the jail, and I could no longer take my Xanax. “No.”

“No?” he asked. “Trust me. You want to see this.”

I groaned and put the car in drive.

“I’ll see you in ten minutes,” he said and disconnected the call.

Nathan knew how much being at the jail affected me, and he wouldn’t ask me to come if it wasn’t important. So, on the drive there, I practiced deep breathing exercises and tried to think about anything but the panic attack I knew was on its way.
 

A few minutes later, I pulled into the jail parking lot and parked in the space beside Nathan’s county-issued SUV. I took the steps to the front door two at a time and sucked in a deep breath before pulling the door open.

I breathed a small sigh of relief when I saw Virginia Claybrooks stuffed into the office chair behind the front desk. Her uniform was screaming at the seams, and her shoulder-length black wig was sitting a little too far back on her forehead. She was on the phone, and her bright red lips bent into a fake smile when she saw me.  

She held up a long manicured fingernail, signaling for me to wait before continuing her animated verbal assault on whoever was on the other end of the line. “Honey, if you wanted to have Thanksgiving dinner with your baby boy, you shoulda raised him better so his ass didn’t wind up in jail! I don’t give a turkey’s butt about whatchoo think is fair and not fair. Not fair is me having to sit my ass on this phone, listening to the whinin’ and complainin’ of you people when I oughtta be…Hello? Hello?”

She stared at the phone for a moment in disbelief. “That bitch done hung up on me!”
 

I tried to suppress my laughter, but I wasn’t successful.
 

She rounded on me. “You think sumthins’ funny?”

I covered my mouth with my hand and shook my head. “No, Ms. Claybrooks. I’m sorry.”

“How ‘you know my name?” she barked at me.

“Ms. Claybrooks, I’ve worked with the sheriff for years.” I tapped my chest. “I’m Sloan Jordan.”

She tossed her head from side to side. “I don’t know no Sloan Jordan.”

I sighed. “Can you please tell Detective McNamara I’m here?” I asked. “He’s expecting me.”

She looked me up and down so skeptically that I half-expected her to throw me out the front door. “Mmm-hmm,” she said, pressing her lips together. She picked up the phone and pushed a few buttons. “McNamara!” She waited. “De-Tec-Tiv Mc-Na-Mara!” Her voice bounced off the concrete walls around us.
 

She slammed the phone down and looked at me. “He ain’t answerin’.”

Her phone rang, and she picked it up. “Hello?” She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and huffed. “They’s six thousand offices up in this buildin’. How do you people expect me to remember ‘em all. I got close enough for you to hear me so stop your bitchin’.” She looked over at me. “You got a girl up here askin’ for ya…Uh-huh, OK.” She hung up the phone and forced a smile in my direction. “He’ll be right with you.”

Rather than sit, I paced the lobby. Evil reverberated off the walls like a heartbeat. The whole place pulsed with dark energy, and it tightened around my throat. I took a deep breath in and blew it out slowly. The mechanical doors slid open, and Nathan stuck his head out. “Sloan!”
 

I jumped, then scurried over.

Even my rising anxiety wasn’t enough to completely suppress the butterflies that were disturbed every time I laid eyes on Nathan McNamara. He was in his standard outfit of khaki tactical cargos and an olive drab green fleece pullover. He wore his badge around his neck and a ball cap with an American flag patch on the front pulled low over his face.

Nathan was the guy mothers wanted their daughters to marry, and the one fathers warned them about, all wrapped up in one. He was the blond-haired boy next door with a baby-face smile and the ability to put a bullet between someone’s eyes. He was also the kryptonite to my better judgement, and he had been nothing but trouble for me since the day we met.

“Hey stranger,” he said. “Long time, no see.”

That was a joke. Nathan had come by every night for the past three weeks. Warren had asked him to keep tabs on me since we found out I had a cosmic bounty on my head.

His eyes widened when I stepped through the door. “You OK?”

I pumped the collar of my blouse forcing cool air down the front. “You know I’m not. I hate this place.”

He nudged me forward. “Come on. We won’t be here long.”

We walked past his office, and I jerked my thumb toward his door. “Where are we going?”
 

“Women’s solitary,” he answered.
 

I shuddered. “Isn’t that where they keep the really bad people?”

“Sometimes.”

“Nathan,” I whined, dragging my feet.

He urged me on. “We’ll be on the medical hall. I promise it’ll be worth it.”

My rising blood pressure stirred my doubt in him.

Once we were deep inside the jail, we went through one more heavy metal door that opened to a long hallway. Nathan escorted me by four locked rooms that reeked of evil before stopping in front of an empty cell. “What is this?” I asked.

He nodded toward the door. “Look through the window.”

Curious, I peeked inside.

The stale white room was flooded with blinding light from the overhead halogens. There was a steel frame bed shoved against the wall, a metal toilet, and a matching small sink. “I don’t get it,” I said, looking back at him.

He looked in, then took a step back. “Under the bed.”

I leaned toward the glass again. This time I saw long strands of red hair laying across the concrete floor, and the edge of a corpse peeked out from the shadows. I gasped. “Why is there a body in there?”

“Keep watching.” He knocked his knuckles against the metal.

A hand shot out from under the bed in our direction. I jumped back. “What the hell?”

He put his hand on my shoulder and ushered me forward again. Covering my mouth with my hands, I watched an emaciated woman, paler than anyone I’d ever seen, drag herself out from under the bed. I scrambled to get away, but Nathan held me still.

He put his lips to my ear. “She can’t get to you.”

“She’s not a
she,
Nathan.” I gripped his sleeve as I looked at him. “She’s not human.”

He looked only mildly surprised. “They found her wandering around the Vance Memorial completely naked. She doesn’t speak English, but she kept saying one thing very clearly.”

“What was that?”

“Sloan Jordan.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

Then her soulless eyes settled on me. They were the color of flawless sapphires. “
Id vos, Sloan!
” The woman banged her fists against the glass, her nails caked with dirt, or blood, I wasn’t sure which. I’d put my money on blood given the heavy white bandages on her forearms. “
Id vos! Id vos! Utavi! Ename utavi.
”

Had I not already been mid-panic attack, she would have triggered one. I stumbled back into Nathan.
 

“
Nankaj morteirakka!
” she screamed.

My heart was pounding. The air was as thick as soup. “Nathan, I can’t stay in here.”

He put his hand on the back of my neck. “Did you take your Xanax?”

I shook my head. “No. I forgot it,” I lied.

The woman threw her body against the door. “
Ketka, Sloan! Ename utavi!
”

Nathan took hold of my arm, just as my legs wobbled. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here.” He hooked an arm around my waist.

She was still wailing in her cell. “Sloan!
Sloan!”

My heart was pounding so loud I could swear it was echoing off of the walls. I feared my head might pop right off my shoulders. Nathan was carrying me more than I was actually walking. “Hold on,” he said, pushing a door open.

When we got to the front of the building, we reached a door that could only be opened by Master Control. Nathan pressed the button and held it down. When no one answered, he groaned and pushed it again. Finally, Ms. Claybrooks came over the speaker. “Seriously!” she shouted. “They’s only one of me up here, ya know!”

I bent at the waist and rested my hands on my knees for support as the floor spun in and out of focus.