She wasthatmuch more powerful? So much that he was terrified to be in her presence?
Fuck, if we weren’t par animarum, I had no explanation for any of this.
“I could eat,” Ria said. “Do you have fries? Or chicken tenders?”
“Fries and chicken tenders it is.” I turned to Emory. “You wanna go start those so I can clean up this glass?”
He only stared Brooke down a moment longer. When I nudged him, he spun around and headed for the back. As soon as the door shut, Brooke’s gaze met mine. “Why was he looking at me like that?”
I fished for a bottle of zinfandel. “Because he’s weird.”
“No, that face meant something,” Brooke said. “What was it?”
Sighing, I set the bottle before her. “You’re stronger.”
Her face said she didn’t understand.
“He said your energy signature is significantly more powerful than it was Saturday,” I said. “I haven’t explained everything to him yet.”
“Explained what?” Ria asked.
As I glanced her way, an obvious realization came to me. “She doesn’t feel different to you?”
Ria looked as confused as Brooke did, reaching across the counter for the basket of peanuts. The angle exposed her forearm. Specifically, the inner crease of her elbow where a black and blue bruise showed.
That would explain it. She was an addict. Not only did that account for her physical appearance, but also her failure to recognize the energy difference permeating from Brooke. She was probably too high to notice.
“Never mind,” I said. “It’s not important. Are you guys—”
“Why would that bother him?” Brooke asked.
“Why would what bother him?” I asked.
“That I’m more powerful,” she said. “Why would that bother him?”
I paused, watching as she squinted at the door. “What’re you getting at Brooke?”
Her eyes came to mine. “What is Emory anyway?”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t answer mine.”
My teeth tightened. “He’s half Angel half Demon.” Squinting, she glanced behind me again. “Now what are you getting at?”
“He was here when Misty disappeared. He works here, and—”
“Are you saying that Emory shot me?” I didn’t intend for my tone to grow as defensive as it did. “Because you’re full of shit.”
She frowned. “I wasn’t saying hedid. I was proposing a question. A guilty person would be scared if the person looking for their victim walked in the door twice as strong as they’d been two days prior.”
I couldn’t help my scoff.
Granted, she made a good point. But she didn’t know Emory. I did.
We’d been friends since we were kids. When he came out in high school, and his adoptive parents gave him the options of conversion therapy or homelessness, mine took him in. There was no paperwork—he wasn’t my brother on paper—but we’d been family for almost two decades.
Aside from the one fist fight we’d gotten into after two bottles of vodka too many over whoactuallywon a game of pool at eighteen, he’d never hurt me. Not in a million years.