Chapter Twenty-Five
Phin
To say Donn’s presence shocked me was an understatement. The only reason Donn would be in Hollowbrook was that he had an agenda, and the only agenda that served him was to get rid of beloveds.
I had never seen Donn outside the Soul Management Bureau. The shock left me paralyzed, standing on the sidewalk, holding Hale’s hand. I knew my grip was punishing. His was tight on mine, too.
I met Hale’s gaze. His mouth hung open, and his eyes were wide.
“We gotta do something.” I wasn’t sure why I whispered.
It wasn’t like anyone besides souls could see us.
It just seemed appropriate for the moment, as though Donn could somehow hear me from outside on the sidewalk, which was impossible, even for a god.
Still, he scared me enough that I didn’t want to draw his attention.
The thing was, Donn had always been a good boss.
He was down-to-earth for the god of death.
You’d think he’d have a little arrogance, but there wasn’t as much as I expected.
The rumor around the office was that he treated everyone with respect and kindness.
That had been my experience with him, too.
So what was all this? What was he doing in Hollowbrook?
“I think we’re going to have to go in there and confront him. He’s in the bakery for a reason. There might be a beloved inside.” Hale was right.
“That’s a terrible idea.” Every disaster scenario crossed my mind at once.
Like, what the hell was I going to do in Tech Duinn with the world’s biggest office gossip?
Hale was going to drive me up the wall. I loved Hale, don’t get me wrong, but he could be a lot, especially when he speculated about why Crazy Betty from the second floor was locking herself in the bathroom.
There was an office betting pool and a ton of speculation.
I had never wanted to know, and thank the gods, I’d never found out.
But I did have ten bucks on her watching porn on her phone.
What if there really was a beloved we couldn’t save? That was the worst scenario. Everyone deserved a chance at love if they wanted to find it, but love wouldn’t happen for the beloved or their reaper if people couldn’t find each other.
“Don’t let go of my hand, Hale.” We headed toward the entrance.
“I’m not planning on it.” Before we entered, Hale stopped me. “Do you know how to use this thing?” He scanned my cloak-covered body with his eyes.
I teleported us into town, didn’t I? But I knew he was really asking whether I could use the cloak with even a small measure of skill. “Sort of.”
I’d stayed away from magical garments. Magic seemed like something I didn’t need to try on. Call me cautious, but it was a little scary. Desperate times meant I had to be braver than usual.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Hale muttered. “Because I’m of no help here.”
Yeah, I hoped I knew what I was doing, too.
When we entered, I noticed three things at once.
Donn could laugh. The donut guy must have said something funny.
That was the first thing. The second was that the donut guy was a beloved, which meant I’d found my first one in the wild.
The problem was that Donn found him first. The third thing I noticed was two older women standing just out of Donn’s sight in another room, with the door between the rooms open.
They seemed to know something was amiss, though I doubted they’d figured out what.
The man behind the counter had blond hair with natural highlights. He wore a white apron. Either he wasn’t the baker, or he changed aprons when helping customers, because the apron was clean. He handed Donn a paper cup with a lid.
Hale leaned in toward me. “He’s a witch.”
Donn’s presence was about finding a beloved. That he was a witch on top of it made him more dangerous to Donn’s agenda than most other beloveds. Donn needed the witch out of the way. If we had wards up against him, his demons couldn’t get us.
The ladies came out from the back. They had flour on the fronts of their aprons. They seemed to be witches, too. Or, if they weren’t, they had the vibe.
They eyed Donn with no small amount of suspicion.
None of the three witches seemed to notice Hale and me, which meant the cloaks made us truly invisible. Donn knew we were there, though. I could tell by the way he stiffened.
He thanked the man behind the counter, then turned toward us and smiled.
“I found him first.”
And that was all it took for me to freak the fuck out.
I did the only thing I could think of. I grabbed Hale’s hand and pulled him with me as I ran through the bakery toward the beloved.
There was a half-door that kept customers from going behind the counter.
I unlatched it and ran at the man, yelling, “I’m not letting you hurt him! ”
Donn watched us with curiosity, sipping his coffee with a good deal of amusement.
The three witches must have heard me, because the old ladies started and clutched each other’s hands before chanting something.
The man behind the counter’s eyes widened. “What the fuck was that?”
I grabbed his arm.
Just as Donn reacted, darkness swallowed us. The next thing I knew, I was standing in a dark space with the baker and the office gossip.