jinn 03 - vestige by Liz Schulte Read Free Book Online

holding her close. Jealousy and regret filled the emptiness where the anger had been. It was my nature to destroy everything good that I touched. Maybe fighting it was futile.
    Quintus’s face was grim when he came back out. “She needs rest,” was all he said as he tried to move past me.
    “What the fuck was that?” I asked. Quintus hadn’t been surprised when he saw her and he knew exactly what to do. “What happened? She’s still a guardian, right? She can’t possibly be this weak.”
    He shook his head. “You should talk to her about it.”
    “I’m talking to you. What. Happened?”
    He shook his head. “I told her she should tell you.”
    “Tell me what?” I was seconds from beating it out of him.
    He put a hand on my shoulder. “She’s dying, Holden. Killing the angel is killing her. The wound won’t heal. They were halves of the same whole.”
    My entire body and mind went still. I looked toward the room where she slept for the first time since we killed the angel. Since that day she hadn’t eaten or slept. I blinked. I should’ve realized. . . . And she wouldn’t fight with me. She was so tired all the time. She’d known she was dying, and I had . . . I swallowed a couple times. What had I done? Her last words to me were that she loved me, but mine to her were so far from that. “Will she wake up? She has to wake up, right?”
    “I hope so.”
    ‘I hope so,’ what kind of fucking answer was that? This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be how we ended after everything we had been through. What was the point of it all?
    “Come away from the door,” he said, pulling at me. I brushed off his hand. Olivia was dying and didn’t even bother to tell me. “She needs rest. We can talk in the living room.”
    I followed him back to the front room, and watched him take in the aftermath of our fight and the ruined picture of us . . . “How long have you known?”
    “I found out this morning,” he said. “She didn’t tell me either. I figured it out.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve been living with her, and the two of you are connected. How is it that you didn’t figure it out? How did you miss this?”
    I scrubbed my hands over my face. Because I had been a dick. Because I wasn’t paying attention to anyone but myself. Because I blamed her and part of me was glad she was suffering. I sat on the couch. “How long can you keep her alive?”
    “Why? So you can continue to torture her? She won’t talk about it, but I see what happened. She’ll let you treat her terribly because she loves you and she believes you when you make her feel like this is all her fault. But you aren’t the only one who loves her. I love her too, and I won’t let you keep hurting her. It would be more merciful to let her go than to leave her with you.” His voice grew progressively louder as he spoke and his hand balled into a fist.
    Femi and Corbin took that moment to burst back into the warehouse, the kid trailing behind them, holding a bunch of pink shopping bags. “What’s with all the shouting?”
    “Olivia is dying and Holden couldn’t bring himself to care,” Quintus ground out.
    I glared at him.
    “Wait, wait, wait. Hold the frakkin phone. She’s dying? I mean she looked a little rough after her fight with the demons, but I didn’t think . . . What did they do to her? How do we fix it?” she asked.
    I knew how Femi felt. The reality of Quintus’s words still weren’t sinking in. Liv couldn’t be dying.
    “It’s my fault, Quintus. Not his.” Olivia’s voice came from behind me and my heart beat again. She walked by me and hugged him tight. “But thank you for defending me.”
    “You should be resting,” he told her.
    She touched his arm and something passed between them in the look she gave him. I seethed, knowing even as I did that I had no right. She took a step back. “Holden and I have a lot to talk about. Thank you guys for caring, but could we have some privacy?”
    An array of