Any remaining amusement faded from Natalie’s pretty face. She sat down on the edge of the couch again and indicated for me to do the same thing, casting another glance toward the other grays, who continued to keep their distance. No one was within hearing range.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “All of it. What I can do…what I’ve done. I’m not proud, Samantha.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My hunger.” She bit her bottom lip. “My curse. It’s been hard to control since I first became a demon. The conversion to demon is harsher than the conversion to angel. Lucky bastards. My brother and I…we both had complications. Nathan could absorb life energy—he could kill with a touch—but he had it totally under control. I hungered for a different kind of energy…and I couldn’t control it no matter how hard I tried.”

I watched her with widening eyes. “Souls.”

She nodded, her expression bleak. “It became an addiction, one I knew would lead me to trouble every time I came to the human world. But I couldn’t stop. Nathan tried to help me, but I finally ran away. I hid out here and my hungers only got worse. Of course, that meant that I showed up on the proverbial radar screen of Heaven and Hell like a bright blip of trouble. I was destroying what they valued most. I was a renegade that needed to be hunted down. They sent a team of angels and demons to do just that. On that team was my brother whom they’d enlisted in the hope that he could help control me—and your mother, Anna. That’s how they met.”

Anna. Her name immediately seared into my brain. I swallowed hard. “So what happened?”

“They found me, of course. But it took them many months. By then, Anna was already very pregnant.” She let out a humorless laugh. “Believe me, they were shocked that it happened as much as anyone else could be—at the time, they hadn’t even known it was possible. But—” Natalie turned to clutch my hand and looked deeply into my eyes “—they wanted you, Samantha. They loved you even before you were born.”

I didn’t pull away from her, but my palms were sweating. “Then what happened?”

“Even though they tried to keep it a secret, the other team members figured out they had an illicit relationship. They were torn apart and told they would never be allowed to see each other again. You’d been born and hidden away by then. Anna planned to get you back as soon as she could.”

“But she didn’t.”

“No.” Natalie’s grip on me grew so tight it was nearly painful. “There was a fight. A big fight. Anna—she was stabbed with a dagger just like the one Bishop carries. The Hollow opened up and swallowed her. Nathan was so devastated at the thought of losing her, he jumped right in after her.” Her face tensed. “And the rest of the team made sure to shove me in right behind them. Wouldn’t want to waste an opportunity to get rid of three problems at the same time.”

I stared at her in shock. My heart was pounding three times as fast as normal. “They killed her?”

Natalie nodded. “I’m sorry.”

Grief for a woman I’d never known gripped my throat. Tears welled in my eyes.

I forced myself to hold them back. “Wh-what is the Hollow? I keep hearing that but I don’t understand what it is. It’s where supernatural beings go when they die. Right?”

Her lips thinned. “It’s a black pit where all the unwanted garbage from Heaven and Hell is tossed—and it doesn’t discriminate. It opens up here in the human world only when a supernatural is destroyed—like a vacuum that will suck up anything in its immediate path. Nothing has ever returned from there. It’s the ultimate garbage disposal.”

It sounded like a nightmare. A horrible, endless nightmare.

But then something occurred to me. “Wait a minute. You said that nothing has ever returned from there. But…you’re here. You returned.”

The haunted, serious expression was still there, but a small glimmer appeared in her eyes. “I did, didn’t I?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that the Hollow isn’t what they think it is. It’s changed.” There was a large helping of disdain in her voice, and some smugness, too. “They have no idea what’s possible now. They dumped me in there like garbage because I was different. Did they think about helping me, like my brother wanted to? No, of course not. I was a problem. And their solution to a problem is stomping their foot on it and kicking what’s left into the trash. But I’m back.”

I stared at her with cold shock. “You’re back and…now you can create more who do the same thing that you do.”

“That was a surprise, believe me. It never used to be like this, and I’m sure Heaven and Hell were shocked when that little news item showed up on their radar. When I kiss someone—like I did with Stephen—it changes them. Turns them into something like me. But they need to be careful not to take too much. Their bodies have transformed to become supernatural, but their minds are still frail as a human.” She gave me a small shrug. “And humans are traditionally very greedy creatures. Give them a taste of something delicious and they come back for more.”

I focused on breathing as normally as possible. “So you kissed Stephen without knowing what it would do to him.”

Her lips curved into a genuine, wicked smile. “What can I say? He’s cute. I like cute boys. They’re fun.” She cast a glance across the lounge toward him. “He had a girlfriend, but he dumped her. I vainly thought it was so he could be with me full-time, but I have a funny feeling he wanted to save her. He didn’t want to take her soul.”