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she’s plotting. “I’ve got a little business I need to tend to with the Paragon Princess.” The words swim from her lips like a thinly veiled threat. “In fact, I have a guest in the Transfer I’ve been dying for her to meet. I might just arrange for that—” Chloe doubles over abruptly and cuts short her rambling speech. Her face bleaches out, pale as concrete. A groan expels from her throat as she starts in on a series of dry heaves.
    Liam bounces back. “You feeling all right? You need some water?”
    “I’ll gladly push you into the harbor,” I offer.
    A raven screams overhead, and Chloe gives a quick glance up before backing the hell into the forest as if a demon were about to snatch her.
    Liam and I watch as she fades into a mass of swirling molecules.
    “What the hell was that about?” He touches the air in her wake as if making sure she’s truly gone. With Chloe you never know.
    “I think that’s what it’s about.” I point skyward at the raven still hovering above. “That bird is the new home of Holden Kragger. My friend, Nevermore, used to live inside that ball of feathers. You’ll get to meet Nev soon. There are quite a few people we won’t be avoiding, and Nev’s one of them. If I remember correct, part of the punishment was that Nevermore’s form couldn’t be near Ezrina’s, which would explain the fact Chloe had to excuse herself. I guess Holden makes her sick—literally.”
    “Good to know. I’ll be sure to keep Ms. Bishop in a bird-free environment the next time we meet.”
    “You won’t need to. With any luck we’ll know where that damn bird is 24/7.”
    “Where’s that?” Liam looks slightly ticked as if I were suggesting we use his dick as a perch.
    “With Skyla Messenger. It looks like Holden Kragger is going to be her warped little guardian.” And that alone saved his neck. Holden once tried to force himself on Skyla. I had planned on removing him from the planet permanently—giving one of the feathers to Nev to stick in his hat out of posterity, but, for now, Holden Kragger is very, very safe. “And you’d better get Bishop out of your brain. She’s nothing but trouble. Besides, you’ll want someone who’s into you, and Chloe could never be that person. She only has eyes for Gage.” I learned that the hard way myself, but I wasn’t too sorry. She wasn’t the one for me.
    “Yeah, well, she looked pretty interested in the goods”—he grabs his crotch—“and a lonely guy like me has to start somewhere.”
    “Start somewhere else.”
    I glance over at the gaping hole in the harbor. The ferry has long since faded from sight.
    There they go. Gage and Skyla are embarking on a new adventure without me—the first of many. The thought has my stomach feeling as if it’s been scraped with a razor. If it wasn’t for Liam and his decades-in-the making hard-on, I would have been long gone by now. But something tells me neither Skyla nor Gage would approve of that.
    Just the thought of seeing them together kills me. This is going to be harder than I ever imagined.
    A pain, with no beginning and no end, settles in my chest. It feels familiar, as if I’ve owned it all along, for as far back as losing my parents. Losing the ones I love seems to be a theme in my life.
    The dark fog of depression rolls in, crashing right over my head.
    Watching Gage with Skyla is going to be a fate worse than death. It was one thing in high school when he was there to protect her—to keep her safe until she could be with me again. But now, I’m nothing more than a ghost, some phantom from the past, haunting them until the day Gage leaves this planet. And if I’m right, Skyla is going to move heaven and earth to make sure that doesn’t happen anytime soon. She loves Gage, and so do I. Hell, I’ll work with her to make sure he sticks around for a good, long while.
    “You okay?” Liam lands a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Let’s head over to Barron’s, I think I still owe him a