He clenches his jaw so hard I can see his cheek muscles twitching.

‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘Being around you had nothing to do with it.’

He cocks his head at me. ‘What makes you think I was worried it had to do with me?’

Oops. Did he ever mention hellions to me? Or do I know he worries about them coming after me because I peeked into his memories through Pooky Bear?

I could lie, but . . . I sigh. We all have to accept our faults eventually. And mine is that I’m a terrible liar.

‘I – um . . . saw things through your sword. Not intentionally. Not at first.’

‘Things?’ He crosses his arms and glares at me. ‘What kind of things?’

I chew my lip as I think about what to say.

He then looks at his old sword lying on the counter. The shine on Pooky’s blade seems to dim a bit under his glare.

‘My sword showed you her memories of me?’

My shoulders relax a little. ‘So you know that she can do that?’

‘I know that she used to be loyal to me and that I trusted her.’ He’s talking to Pooky Bear, not me.

‘I think it was an accident. She was just trying to teach me how to use a sword. I mean, I had never held one before.’

Raffe continues to talk to his sword. ‘It’s one thing to be forced to give up on a bearer because you think he may have fallen. It’s another to expose his private moments.’

‘Look,’ I say. ‘It’s weird enough having a semisentient sword without being in the middle of an argument between you two. Can you please just let it go?’

‘What did she show you?’ He holds up his hand. ‘Wait. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know that you’ve seen me dancing in my underwear to my favorite music.’

‘Angels wear underwear?’ Oh, man, I wish I hadn’t said that. I’m just digging myself in deeper and deeper today.

‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘Figure of speech.’

‘Oh.’ I nod, trying to get the image out of my head of Raffe dancing to some rock song, possibly buck naked. ‘Well, speaking of weird things, the hellions came through the sword.’

‘What?’

I clear my throat. ‘That hellion you saw on the lawn and two others crawled out of Beliel through the sword.’ I still have hope that I won’t have to confess it all, but he must have gone through angel interrogation school because he gets it all out of me.

He frowns and paces around the kitchen as I tell him what happened.

When I finish, he says, ‘You can never trust Beliel.’

‘That’s what he says about you.’

He rummages through the trash bag he dropped earlier. ‘Maybe he’s right. You shouldn’t trust anyone.’