Unholy | Noah Sebastian

|Chapter Twenty-Four|

I couldn't put my finger on it, but something was very wrong with Briar. She wasn't acting like herself, and that was saying something because my girl has been through some personalities since I've known her. This was something completely different, but I didn't want to accuse her of anything when I wasn't completely sure.

The loud one sticks her head into Briar's office, "hey do you want to get tacos for lunch?"

"No," Briar says, it's short and she doesn't offer anything else. The loud one frowns, not ready to let it go, but Briar flicks her wrist at her friend to get out. Her eyebrows knit together, but she does leave the office. I catch her shake her head as she goes back to her own office.

"What was that?" I ask, she's never turned down the loud one for anything.

"I don't want to have lunch with her, she gets on my nerves," Briar rolls her eyes. She's never said anything like that about the loud girl. She always, always defends the girl when I say something negative about her, and now she's being a bitch to her.

"Since when?" I challenge.

"She always has, I've just put up with it, I don't care to do that anymore," she says, "I think I'm ready to be done with work for today, this is so boring."

"It's not even lunch," I remind her, and she loves her job. She chooses to come into this office every day because she likes being around these people, she hasn't said as much, but I can tell from her always feeling good when she's here.

"So what? I'm sure I can take the rest of the day and no one would notice, it's not like this even matters anyway," she rolls her eyes at me.

I don't want to give her anything, but I can feel it in my ethereal bones that whoever is sitting before me is not my angel at all. Whoever this is isn't even trying to pretend to act like Briar.

"I'm not going to stop you," I tell her, and she grins. It's devious, not playful like my girl.

"Perfect," she says, slamming her laptop shut and grabbing her bag. There's a swing in her hips that wasn't there before. She doesn't bother not talking to me on the way home, it seems she suddenly doesn't care if other people think she's talking to herself. This is also unusual.

If I didn't know any better I'd think she was acting like Lilith.

Briar throws her things down on the floor and makes her way to the liquor cabinet. She grabs the vodka, when she's only been drinking whiskey lately. I don't know how I'm going to prove whatever is going on, but I know that's not Briar in there.

I don't know how this happened, or how to fucking fix it, or why this one simple job has gone so fucking wrong. I've never lost control of a charge like this, and to think I thought this was going to be easy in the beginning.

"Let's go out for dinner," not Briar says as she takes a shot of the vodka. My girl likes staying in on the weekdays, especially since I'm not visible to the other humans most of the time.

"You want to go have dinner alone?" I challenge.

"No, silly, I want you to come," she says and there's a glint in her eye, she meant the double entendre.

"You know I can't keep showing myself to the humans, you are going to look like a crazy person talking to yourself," I remind her.

"Oh, who cares?" she asks with an eye roll, plopping down on the couch. She usually is taking her kindle to the balcony to unwind with a filthy book that turns her pale cheeks pink.

This time yesterday Briar was reminding me that I needed to be careful, that I needed to remember I was trying to get into the Blue to save my brother. This was definitely not Briar, it was somehow Lilith, and I didn't know how to get her back or where she even was.