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light breeze smelled fresh, like rain. I’d always loved mornings. How quiet and at peace the world the seemed. Finn took off at a jog and I picked up speed to stay in step with him.
    “Wow,” I breathed. “You really have gone all human on me. You even jog now.”
    Finn snorted and cut down a wooded path. The soles of his shoes pounded out a rhythm on the dirt trail, but I didn’t leave a single print. “I’m not trying to fit some kind of mold here, Anaya. It just helps.”
    “With what?”
    “He gave me a new body,” he said. A bead of sweat glistened on his forehead and his brows pinched together. “He didn’t give me a new mind. You don’t forget. Everything I’ve done. Everything I’ve seen…”
    Finn pressed his lips together and his feet pounded against the trail a little harder, picking up speed. “I don’t want to remember. This helps.”
    “Are you happy?”
    Finn skidded to a stop in the middle of the trail and bent over, bracing his palms on his knees to catch his breath. My hand absently clutched my chest, wanting the burn that he was feeling. “Why did you do it, Anaya? Why didn’t you take him? I’ve tried again and again to wrap my mind around it…and I can’t. I can’t come up with one good reason why you’d deny him an afterlife.”
    I lifted my chin, not knowing what else to do. I couldn’t show weakness when I was guarding Balthazar’s secret. Not to him. Not to anyone. There was too much at stake for me here, whether I agreed with what I was doing or not. Balthazar would turn my dreams to vapor in the space of one of Finn’s fragile heartbeats if things didn’t go his way. If I’d learned anything in my thousand years in the service of the second in command to the Almighty, it was this. “You did it to Emma.”
    Finn’s head snapped up and his eyes flared with anger. “That was different. You don’t even know Cash. What you did goes against everything we’ve ever learned. How the hell did you even get away with it?”
    I hesitated, not knowing how much to reveal. Finn was a human now. Would Balthazar care if he knew? A gust of wind rustled the budding canopy of branches above us, bringing with it a burst of resolve.
    “I did as I was told,” I said, feigning more confidence than I felt. “Maybe you’ve already forgotten, but that’s what we do, Finn. They command. We deliver.”
    Finn leaned forward, curling his fingers around his knees, and narrowed his gaze on me. “That’s just it, though. You didn’t deliver this time.”
    I raised a brow and ran my fingers over my blade out of habit. “Who said I’m finished with him?”
    “He’s expired, isn’t he? That’s why the shadow demons are making his life hell,” Finn said, realization lighting his emerald eyes. “He’s so close they can smell it on him. It’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”
    Hating the way Finn’s accusing glare made me feel, I turned away, listening to the world wake up around us. Birds chirped. In the distance the steady hum of the highway leaked through the trees. Shadows pooled in the corners of the forest, but a glow of sunshine lit the space where I stood. “This really isn’t your business anymore, you know.”
    “He’s hurting. Hell, he’s more than hurting. The kid is losing it. He’s deteriorating, slowly and painfully, a little more every day.” He sighed and came to stand beside me. “The Anaya I knew never would have aided in something like this, let alone sit back and watch it happen. Do you have any idea what will happen to him when that body gives out? What those shadows will do to him after all of the pointless suffering?”
    “Nothing!” Something inside of me snapped at the image of Cash ending up in the bellies of those creatures. “Nothing will happen to him, because I will be there. I’m going to take care of him. I have orders from Balthazar, Finn. Don’t question matters you know nothing about.”
    His jaw tensed. “You know what I