His lids flipped open and just as he lunged for the back door, Eddie caught him by the arm. Which, considering the guy’s strength, was like running into a parked car. “No, it’s not Devina. That’s a wayward soul.”

Jim frowned and focused his feelers on the disturbance. “Wayward?”

“It’s a soul that has been released from the body, but has yet to go to its destined eternity. It’s trapped here on earth.”

“A ghost.”

“Yeah.” Eddie slipped his backpack off his shoulders, his thick braid falling forward. “It’s hanging around, waiting to be free.”

“What keeps the thing here?”

“Unresolved business.”

“And you’re sure that’s what it is.” As the angel’s red eyes went rock-hard, Jim raised his hands. “Okay, okay. But can we go with calling them ‘ghosts’? That ‘wayward’ shit is straight-up granny-speak.”

“Agreed,” Adrian chimed in.

“Oh, for the love . . .” Eddie muttered. “You can call them Fred if it gets you off.”

“Deal.”

At that moment, Isaac and Grier walked into the kitchen. As the guy parked it on a stool, she resumed cooking for him and the tension between them was obvious . . . as was the attraction: The pair of them were playing eye tennis—each time one looked over, the other glanced away—and that blush on the woman’s cheeks sealed the deal on the ooh-la-la undertone.

Staring through the glass, Jim felt utterly ancient and apart. Guess now that he was an angel any dreams of ever getting married and doing the kid thing were dead and gone—to say nothing of dating anyone . . . although, Christ, when had he ever dated?

And he’d never been the marrying kind, so what the hell was he bitching about?

Besides, this was no Lifetime movie going down in RL on the far side of the glass: what he was staring at was a hunted man and a woman who was in over her head.

Hardly something to be envious of.

In fact, he wondered what in the hell the guy was thinking. Anyone who had worked with their old boss knew that collateral damage was a very real possibility in this scenario.

“Man, let’s just move in with them,” Adrian groaned. “Screw protective spells—I love a good omelet and I’m starved.”

Jim glanced over. “Seriously.”

“What? Gotta have plenty of bedrooms in this place.” Abruptly the angel’s voice grew deeper. “And I can partake of my extracurricular exercises discreetly.”

Yeah, and he wasn’t talking about basket weaving there. Read: sex with anonymous women. Sometimes with Eddie riding shotgun.

Jim had spent only one night with the pair of them, but he already knew what the drill was. Even though Ad had allowed himself to be used and abused by Devina at the end of the first match, it hadn’t taken him long to go trolling again. The guy was frickin’ obsessed with the females.