“If someone is a ghost, that means they haven’t moved on, right? And spirits are those who’ve crossed over.” Dez had surmised correctly.

“Yep.” I squeezed my knees with my icy fingers. “Can’t say I’m surprised that Fisher hasn’t moved on.”

“Probably because he’s afraid of where he’s going to go.”

“No doubt.”

Silence fell between us as Dez drove, the twinkling city lights giving way to stretches of darkness as we crossed the Potomac. The silence didn’t last long. “You hanging in there?” he asked.

I nodded.

“How are you healing?”

“Good,” I said, my fingers tightening around my knees as I stamped down the burst of irritation. Dez wasn’t just being nice. He was nice, like Zayne. I shouldn’t be annoyed with his concern. “It looks worse than it feels.”

“That’s a relief, because I’ve got to be honest with you—it looks painful.”

“It wasn’t very...fun in the beginning.” It actually had been Hell. Not just the torn skin healing or the shattered bones knitting together, but waking up and remembering that Zayne was really gone had been the worse part. I would gladly live through a thousand hours of my body healing over and over again to not experience the cold, heartbreaking reality of his death.

And there was a chance I’d have to go through that again.

I sucked in a sharp breath, loosening the grip on my knees.

“I know...I know Zayne meant a lot to you,” Dez said after a moment, and I squeezed my eyes shut. The motion caused the tender, still healing skin to pull. “I know you meant a lot to him. He meant a lot to all of us.” He inhaled a shaky breath, and it took everything in me not to tell him right then what was going on, but I only wanted to explain everything once. “He was...”

Zayne was everything.

Dez cleared his throat. “He was the best of us. I don’t think he ever realized that, and I know for sure he didn’t understand that all of us would’ve rallied behind him if he took over after his father. We didn’t care about what happened in the past. He may have been missing a part of his soul, but he—he had more soul than most of us.”

I looked over at him, wishing Zayne was here to hear that, but Dez would get the chance to tell him. I just had to...stab him in the heart with the Sword of Michael.

God.