My sixth sense wormed under my skin, burrowing beneath the hairs at the back of my neck, warning me. But my sleepy mind pouted, wanting to fight the tug from oblivion, trying to ignore the unrelenting question that crystallized in my drowsy thoughts. Did something just move in the corner?

 

   My eyes blinked open, struggling to make more of the shadows cast upon a curtain of blackness. There was nothing to see. Yet still, my instinct wouldn’t quiet, crawling over my body like an army of ants, refusing to allow me to look away.

   

   Then it moved again.

   

   My breath caught and held. I lay frozen, too shocked and scared to move a muscle. Slowly, I lifted my head just enough to peer deeper into that corner. Outside, a night owl hooted among the chirps of morning birds, and dawn hinted on the breeze, pushing back the night.

 

   I narrowed my eyes as a body took shape in the darkness: a man, tall, dressed in faded jeans and a dark T-shirt. He edged from the deepest shadows into the dim light then stopped, watching me from no more than eight feet from the foot of my bed.

   

   A manic kind of fear tightened across my chest, paralyzing me. My mind raced with a clamor of instincts: scream, run, hide. I did nothing, staring at the man, willing him to vanish like a bad dream.

   

   Shadows masked his face, but the blond curls of his hair seemed to cast their own soft glow. Long arms hung at the sides of his lean, muscled frame. In his right hand a sword gleamed, its point nearly touching the floor.

   

   Outside, a gentle wind pushed clouds from the moon, lifting shadows, finally revealing his face. I blinked again, not trusting my eyes.

   

   “Tommy?” I whispered the name on an exhale, terror mixing with disbelief.

   

   The boyish-faced man flashed a smile, blue eyes twinkling. “Hey, Emma. Long time no see.”

   

   “No. You’re dead,” I whispered again, swallowing against the fear drying my mouth.

   

   “Yeah. I noticed that.” His smile turned lopsided, less flashy and more genuine.

   

   He’d died nearly two years ago, murdered right in front of me, stabbed through the heart by a demon. It was a common death for illorum, God’s half-angel warriors. We weren’t born illorum. We were born nephilim, half angel, half human, although most people like us don’t even know what they are. But Tommy and I were different. We knew what we were because we’d been attacked by demons and used an illorum sword to defend ourselves. The angels considered this a sign that we joined to battle against all evil and called us, and the hundreds or thousands or who came before and after us, illorum. Now, death by demon was pretty much a daily risk.  

   

   “You’re a ghost?” I asked. I’d seen weirder things.

   

   He shrugged, glancing down at his sword and then back at me. “Don’t know, really. Just wanted to talk with you, and here I am.”

 

   I pushed up in bed, still not sure I could trust my senses. Eli stirred beside me, and I froze for a solid minute, waiting for him to wake up or settle back into sleep.

 

   Tommy waved off my concern. “Don’t worry about it. He can’t hear me.”

 

   I kept my voice to a whisper. “Why not?”

 

   “Don’t want him to.”

 

   “Good for you. What about me?” I stared at Eli. “We can’t talk in here.”

 

   Tommy looked at the sleeping angel. “He can’t hear you, either. I exist on a different plane, one where his kind isn’t welcome. When we speak, your voice comes through on this plane, too. Eli is deaf to all of it now.”

 

   I tried not to let my guilt show. Eli’s deep breaths picked up again, and I bunched my pillows at my back, hands trembling as I turned to the ghost at the foot of my bed.

 

   Maybe I was still asleep, dreaming. It was a real possibility. What if this was my subconscious way of dealing with my guilt over Tommy’s death? Maybe. I mean, Tommy had been a good friend. He’d protected me when I was first marked as an illorum. He’d shown me the ropes, kept me alive. It’d been his sword I used to kill my first demon. The damned thing had burned the illorum mark on my wrist, a sword with the crossed skeleton keys over the blade beneath the hilt. All illorum had the mark.

 

   But I trusted Tommy, or at least I had, and that familiarity lifted a small measure of my fear. “It’s good to see you. Are you okay? What happened after you…after you died? Where did you go? Where have you been?”