The Protect Her Box Set: Parts 7-9 Read Online Free Page B

case you didn’t notice, he didn’t stop long enough to confer with me,” I said.
    “He took your associate along with him.”
    At least he hadn’t made the mistake of calling her the ‘vessel’. “Paige,” I growled. “Her name is Paige, and she’s more than my associate.”
    “So I gathered,” Samuel said easily. “Yet, you don’t seem concerned about this turn of events.”
    “They’ll be back,” I said. “My guess is Benjamin wanted to discuss the matter privately and didn’t want any more comments from the peanut gallery.”
    “You are so refreshingly human,” Samuel said with a small laugh. “I miss that when I am assigned to be in Heaven. I was called back when all of this business with the demons began. It feels good to be back in this realm.”
    “Great,” I said, rolling my eyes.
    “It would appear that Benjamin has some affiliation with you as well,” Samuel commented. “Has he used your services before or is it friendlier than that?”
    I wasn’t going to go into the fact that it was a job for Benjamin that brought me to Calamata Island to begin with. It wasn’t anyone else’s business. “Trust me, the only mutual interest Benjamin and I share is Paige,” I said. That much was true. Benjamin had hired me to find out why demons were appearing on his demon-free zone island. The reason had been Paige. “Otherwise, I couldn’t care less what happens to that prick.”
    “He is a bit standoffish, but he’s not a bad person,” Samuel said. “None of us are.”
    I looked at Samuel with a bit of chagrin. “Save the sales pitch for somebody else. The only people I care about in this whole mess are Paige and my family. I will do whatever it takes to make sure they come out of this whole thing in one piece.”
    “Then you understand our position,” Samuel said with a small shrug. “This is family business at its core, no matter what side you think we all sit on. Eva was an archangel. Our father determined that Eva was no longer fit to reside in either of these realms. Her place is in the ether, and we must ensure that she stays there.”
    “Well, she’s got a foothold, and she will come back if she can,” I said. “I don’t care about what happens in your little family. Paige stays out of it. Eva can go find herself another vessel and then you can do whatever you want with that one.”
    “Is that really how you feel? You’d willingly pass that sentence to another human?” Samuel shifted his stance and put his elbows on his knees.
    I opened my mouth to say yes, but something stopped me. I thought about what he said and what it would all mean. That was something that I never stopped to think about before, and it was more than a little unsettling that I was doing it now. The whole idea of suddenly possessing a moral compass was frustrating, to say the least.
    “Paige and my family are my priorities,” I said. “If things go the way that we want, we are going to get rid of the threats that affect everyone. All of our interests are aligned at the moment.”
    “My brothers don’t want Eva to return, but they similarly have great concern about the idea of a mortal possessing Eva’s power,” Samuel said. “And it seems that possession could fundamentally change your Paige even if that wasn’t the intention.”
    He had given voice to a small, yet vocal voice that had been clamoring in the back of my mind ever since Klein’s suggestion that Paige take on Eva. “I trust Paige, and I realize that this is unprecedented in many ways. That makes things scary for you guys, but maybe it’s about time that things changed,” I said changing the subject.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You don’t think it’s clear to me that things have been going downhill between everyone for the last few centuries?” I doubted that the archangels stopped long enough to think about anything outside of their self-interests. “Everything seems to point toward another showdown between the three