Wait.

I pressed the same hand against my chest, feeling my heart beat unsteadily. If I died and was now a ghost, would I feel my heartbeat? Would I be able to feel anything?

My head swung toward Peanut.

He waved at me.

“I can feel the bed. I felt the book,” I told him, and then thumped my hand off my chest. I winced. That hurt my boob—that actually hurt. Ghosts felt pain? Oh God, if so, how in the Hell did Peanut let himself float through ceiling fans and stuff? “I can feel my heart.”

His brows lifted. “I would hope so.”

I stared at him. “Can you feel your heart?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

“How is that a stupid question?” I demanded. “I’m dead. I died, Peanut. I’m superdead, and if I’m a ghost, how can I feel my—”

“You’re not a ghost,” he cut me off. “You’re not dead.”

I stared at him.

He stared back at me.

I stared at him some more. Probably for a good full minute before I could even process what he’d just said, and even then, I didn’t understand. At all. “How?” I whispered. “How am I not dead?” I looked around the room again, just to make sure it was still the bedroom. It was. “How am I here?”

“Well, it’s kind of a convoluted story,” he said.

I scrambled to my knees. “Try to make sense of the story, then.” Zayne’s face suddenly filled my mind, and I started for the edge of the bed. “You know what. It doesn’t matter. I need to find Zayne. He has to be—”

“Beside himself?” Peanut suggested. “His heart so broken that he demanded that Lucifer bring you back?”

I froze as my eye shot to where he floated.

“And when Lucifer explained to him that giving life was beyond him, that he is not the keeper of souls, he demanded that Azreal himself answer to him,” Peanut continued, but there...there was something a whole lot wrong with his voice, and not just the fact that he’d referred to Grim by his angelic name, which was weird all on its own. It had...strengthened, becoming less airy. Gone was the singsongy way he normally spoke.

“Azreal didn’t answer, because he knew there was no reason to. There was nothing he could do. You were beyond him.”

The tiny hairs all over my body rose. “You’re starting to creep me out, Peanut.”

His head tilted to the side. “I think you’re going to be way more creeped out by the time this conversation is finished.”

Skin pimpling, I stood so that the bed separated us. “What’s going on?”

It could’ve just been my wacky eyes, but the window behind him seemed less visible through his head. “You know what people get so wrong about God? That He is an absentee father. That He doesn’t care for His children, watch over them meticulously, day in and day out. That He doesn’t interfere in small ways—ways often and easily overlooked. That random choice to turn left instead of right on the way to work? The unexpected decision to stay home or stay out late? The unplanned trip or phone call, purchase or gift? None of that is random or unknown. That is God, doing what a good parent does. Stepping in when they can and knowing when there is nothing they can do. I never really understood how God could do all of that—be willing to do anything and everything to be near His children and yet be able to walk away.” His shoulders seemed to lift in a sigh. “There are always so many rules, Trinity, so many expectations, even for God, and most assuredly for a chief prince.”

A shiver skated over my skin. No. There was no way—

Peanut looked over at me, and yep, his face was definitely more solid. “You were right, you know? When you said there had to be signs that something had gone terribly wrong with Gabriel. That there had to be signs.”

I stepped back, bumping into the wall.

“And there were. You were also right when you said you were a loophole. A weapon that could be snuck past the oath to harm none. At least in the beginning that was all that you were, but then I learned just how and why God could and would do anything for His children.” A smile formed. “That sometimes even God bent the rules.”

I was completely flattened against the wall, my heart pounding so fast there was no question I was very much alive.

“An archangel cannot remain on Earth and among souls for any real amount of time. There are too many responsibilities and too many consequences. The presence of one would draw too much attention from all manner of things,” he said, and the barest white glow started to appear in the center of his chest. “But just like God, I could not walk away from my own creation. My flesh and blood.”

The glow from the center of his chest washed across the rest of his body. Heavenly light pulsed an intense white—the kind of light I knew souls saw before they passed on. It was warm and bearable to look upon, to witness.

Peanut changed.

His body lengthened and his shoulders broadened. The mop of brown hair lightened, turning to the color of the sun. His features hardened, shedding the fullness of youth I was familiar with. The old Whitesnake T-shirt turned to a white sleeveless tunic, and the ragged jeans became linen, pearl-hued pants. And his skin...it continuously shifted through the shades of human skin before settling somewhere in between.

“So,” he said in that voice that didn’t belong to Peanut. “I did what I could to watch over you.”

My father, the archangel Michael, stood before me.

“Holy shit,” I whispered.

He laughed—he actually laughed, and it was a strange sound, one familiar and yet unknown. It reminded me of Peanut’s laugh if that laugh had grown up.

“I am not surprised by that response.”

My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of my head. “You... There is...” I shook my head. “Is this real?”