Or Rochelle had fallen victim to his demon lure. But Sara was right. He wasn’t going to argue with her. There was no way to argue his point. And while it bothered him that Sara didn’t know all of him, didn’t understand the true depth of who he was and what he had seen, done, there was no option to tell her the truth. She would think he was insane and leave.

And he couldn’t let her go.

“I guess this is where I stay silent again.”

She gave a muffled laugh. “You’re a good man, Gabriel St. John.”

He wished he could claim that. “I haven’t tried hard enough. I’m going to try harder from here on out.” He needed to fight for redemption, for the right to live among mortals without the danger of causing them harm. He wanted the opportunity to use his gifts again, for the pleasure of people, and to inspire, to allow them to see beauty around and within themselves.

Escape no longer appealed.

He was ready to change, to make it all right.

“Gabriel, I have something to tell you.” Sara took a deep breath, not at all sure how Gabriel was going to respond to the fact that she had lied to him. But she needed to tell him, now, before they went any further. He had let her into his life, into his work and his apartment. Into his sketching and his music. He had offered her comfort, security, passion, and understanding. He had looked at her and let her know that he knew what it was like, how she felt, what grief and fear and addiction could do.

She owed him the truth.

“What’s up?” he asked, squeezing her upper arm.

It was hard as hell to peel herself off of him and meet his eye, but she did it, because she was tired of being afraid, exhausted from the cowering and the worrying and the looking over her shoulder all the time. “There’s something I didn’t tell you about myself. I agreed to help you on this book because I wanted to solve my mother’s murder, that’s true. But I thought that was really a long shot . . . that if the police couldn’t solve it and the court couldn’t get a conviction, then there was nothing I could do. But I thought maybe in going through the case, comparing it to Anne Donovan’s, I could find some closure.”

She wrapped herself tighter around him, knowing he would pull away, not wanting him to. “Because what I haven’t told you is that I’m interested in Anne Donovan’s case because she was my great-great-grandmother. And I want to know why the women in my family are murdered the same way, generation after generation.”

Gabriel’s eyebrow went up as he stared at her. “Excuse me?”