Immortal by J.R. Ward Read Free Book Online Page A

curtains and the girlie bedspreads magically filling their own holes and fixing their frays. Creepy shit—at first he’d assumed it was because someone, not him, was cleaning stuff. But no Dyson job could restitch a rug, repair the hem of a chair, replaster a wall.
    There was so much else to worry about, though.
    As he breathed in, the lingering stench of smoke sharpened the air, and he looked to the hearth. The charred detritus in and around the burned logs looked like paper, as if someone had tried to burn up an old set of encyclopedias. But nah, it wasn’t that. The shit was the remains of all the sheeting that had been draped over the old furniture. Sissy had been the one who dragged everything over to the fireplace and lit the match.
    Can you say
Phhhhhu-mp!
    The smoke damage had charred the walls around the hearth, and that forty-by-twenty-foot rug, even though it was doing the Oriental carpet version of Botox with the anti-aging, had been toasted but good in a semi-circle.
    They’d probably lost their security deposit, thanks to her.
    And hell, maybe Jim had a point. If Sissy was already lighting things up . . . this recon trip Jim was about to head off into wasn’t going to help her mellow out.
    â€œAnd why did you tell her?” Jim demanded from the doorway. “What the fuck is that all about?”
    â€œTell her about what?”
    â€œAbout Devina and me.”
    Ad turned around. “I didn’t—”
    â€œBullshit.”
    Ad leaned forward even though his hips let out a holler. “Let me make this perfectly clear—I didn’t say one goddamn thingabout you and Devina. You think I want to make this situation worse than it already is?”
    Jim stalked into the room, going all caged-animal as he paced around. “Then how did she know—”
    â€œHere it is.”
    As Sissy came in with the book, Jim froze and just stared at her—and in the strained silence, the only thing that came to Ad’s mind was . . . why the fuck couldn’t the bunch of them, at least once, have something go their way. Because the math was looking really bad at the moment: Jim had clearly not said anything about his demon lover. And Ad might be an asshole, but he knew every word that had come out of his own mouth, and he sure as shit hadn’t spilled.
    There was only one other source of that knowledge.
    â€œNow, are you going to tell me about Purgatory,” Sissy said. “Or are you two going to try to get through these stereo instructions on your own?”
    Jim let off a fantastic string of curses that did nothing to share any information, but did suggest that inanimate objects were in imminent danger of getting thrown.
    When the savior finally went quiet, Ad found himself wanting to rub his face with a piece of sandpaper. ’Cause that would be less painful than all this bullshit.
    Clearly, the pulpit was his and no one else’s. “Okay, so we have a boss—”
    â€œGod,” Sissy cut in.
    â€œNo. Although the Creator is a huge part of everything.” Well, duh on that one. “And Jim’s bright idea is to go and bring him back.”
    â€œHe’s dead? I thought we were all immortal.”
    Hadn’t he come in here to sit down? He picked a sofa and sank into it with all the grace of a knapsack falling off a counter. “Our boss is no longer in existence, how about that.”
    â€œSo there is a way out of here? Like, this life—or whatever it is.”
    â€œNo.” He thought of Eddie, but decided, given Sissy’s too-intense expression, he was going to keep quiet on that one. ’Nuff to worry about already. “Our boss is in Purgatory, and that’s just a different kind of immortal hell.”
    â€œThere has to be a way of doing this without her,” Jim growled in the corner.
    Sissy leveled a stare at the guy that could have blown a hole through a bank safe. “You wanna