Sullivan’s hands gripped his shoulder, pulling him back. “Jarrod, look at him.”
Gabriel’s glare hit him full strength, crimson burning.
“Do not threaten me,” he growled. “I don’t want to hurt you.” The veins in his neck stood out, throbbing just under the skin. His arm muscles corded.
“Easy,” Jarrod said. A sheen of sweat broke over his skin as he realized what had set Gabriel off. “It was just a stupid thought. Let’s not get out of control.”
Sullivan pushed past him, heading toward Gabriel. She didn’t look back. What the hell is she doing? Jarrod grabbed for her, missed.
“Gabriel, you remember me, right?” Sullivan’s voice was soothing. He jerked his head in a nod. “Sullivan,” she said anyway. “And I think, if you planned on hurting any of us, you would have done it already. Right?”
“I . . .” Gabriel winced. “I can’t answer.”
Eden whispered his name, sounding shaken. Gabriel’s nonanswer explained his agitation, the careful wording he’d used—“I don’t want to hurt you” instead of “I’m not going to hurt you.” Had the Bound sent him? Was he fighting against orders he’d been given?
Sullivan went on. “You’re not gonna hurt us in the next five minutes then, right?”
His red irises slowly dulled to amber. He nodded. “Right,” he managed.
With the murder Jarrod had seen in Gabe’s eyes, it was hard to believe.
“Okay,” she said. “So we have a guaranteed five minutes. If you need to say something, now’s the time.” She grabbed Eden’s hand and helped her up. “I’m guessing you didn’t just come to catch up?”
“No,” Gabe said, and he looked at Jarrod, speaking to him alone. “I need your help. I want you to track down the territory leaders. Kristen, Madeline, Erin”–his eyes flicked to Sullivan–“Vaughn. I know they were the original Siders. There has to be something that links them.”
“Like a patient zero,” Sullivan said.
“What good is that going to do?” Jarrod asked.
Gabe shrugged, at a loss. “You’re in the bodies you had as mortals. You’re not alive, though blood is still pumping. Your hair grows and you heal, which means your cells regenerate. You’re not dead and you’re not alive. It’s almost like without paths you’re just . . .” He hesitated, his brow wrinkled in concentration. “Paused.”
Jarrod raised an eyebrow. “So what happens when we get unpaused?”
Gabe didn’t answer. “Do you remember anything strange from your last days as a mortal? Times you would have been on Touch and not known it then?”
“Um,” Jarrod said, hesitating. Memories crept through him from the last month or so of his mortal days. Screaming matches with his foster parents. Taking off in the middle of the night. A trickle of sweat dripped down his neck as Sullivan and Eden shifted to look at him. Sullivan’s hand slid across his shoulder, easing down his arm until she could lock their fingers together.
He bit the inside of his cheek, not wanting to answer. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I mean, the state came and took me away from my mom’s. The place they put me was worse, so after a few months I bolted. I was afraid the cops would find me and take me back.” He faltered, embarrassed and unsure of whether to go on. “I did things. Stole. I had to survive. I never hurt anyone,” he added, vehemently. “I’d never done anything like that before. I was crashing with guys I didn’t know well. There could have been a Sider in there, I guess. We were all messed up a lot of the time.” He couldn’t be certain. “It might have been Touch.”
Gabe’s gaze was still on him. “So none of the Siders you know of now were there? None of the territory leaders? Kristen, Madeline, Vaughn?” Gabe asked. “Think hard.”
Kristen and Madeline wouldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes around the group he’d taken up with those last few weeks. Vaughn would have stuck out. Jarrod shook his head. “No, I would have remembered.”
“How long were you with these guys?”
“Little over a month?” Jarrod guessed.
“Eden? What about you? Times you could have been on Touch,” Gabriel asked, though his eyes never left Jarrod. Why’s he looking at me like that? Jarrod wondered.
“Before I met you and Az?” she stammered, and Jarrod knew she felt the same strange disconnect he did. Their mortal days were gone. Forgotten.
The same way their mortal days had forgotten them.
Eden coughed weakly. “The first month or so of summer, there were a bunch of parties. I went to all of them. I didn’t really know everyone there, but it was the same crowd. Then I stopped getting invited. My friends stopped calling.” Her last words were almost inaudible before she rallied. “They were forgetting about me, because I was losing my path, weren’t they?”
Gabriel seemed to ignore her distress. “Do you remember seeing any Siders?”
Jarrod shot a glance her way to catch her shaking her head. “No,” he answered for her. Gabe’s agitation worsened, the angel’s irises darkening to rust-colored rings. “Sullivan became a Sider because Vaughn’s group passed her too much Touch and her path got eroded. I think you were all exposed that way.” His voice lowered to a mumble of concentration. “A month of parties, a month for Jarrod. And then death. But Sullivan was with Vaughn much longer.”
“No!” Sullivan piped up, and then stepped back against Jarrod. “I mean, I was with him for six months, but he kept me alive. He kept me from killing myself.”
Gabe blinked quickly. “The Siders started in New York, but someone was spreading enough Touch in New Jersey that Eden was exposed to it a significant amount.” He stepped back toward the door like an animal afraid to be caged. No one made an attempt to stop him. He sucked in hard, clenching his hands. “Question Madeline, Kristen, Vaughn . . . Erin if you can find her. If you can trace it back—”
“No.” Jarrod cut in before Gabe could go on. He didn’t bother to hide his anger. “We’re staying here. Inside. We can’t go wandering around with your kind out there. Look at Eden,” he said, tipping his chin toward where she leaned against the wall, swaying a bit.
“I can’t,” Gabe whispered. “Jarrod, please. If you can find out how the Siders started, maybe I can find a way to fix things.”
Jarrod tensed when Gabriel dug into a pocket, but rather than a weapon, the angel pulled out a folded piece of paper. “The Bound are coming. Some are already here, searching for Siders, trying to figure out how to kill them. When they ask me where you are . . .” Jarrod heard the heartbreak in Gabriel’s voice. “Please don’t be here.”
“Can’t they just materialize anywhere we go?” Jarrod said.
“Not if they don’t know where that is. They won’t be able to appear inside this apartment because they haven’t been in here, but your security door isn’t exactly going to hold them out.” As he palmed the paper to Jarrod, Gabe pulled him close. “I’ve already been inside,” he whispered in his ear, too low for the girls to hear. “Get out. Now.”