Darkness in the Blood

Book II of the Gifted Blood Trilogy

by Vicki Keire

Copyright © 2011 Vicki Keire

All rights reserved.

Website: http://www.vickikeire.com/

Blog: http://vickieire.blogspot.com/

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon. com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Chasing Phantoms

Chapter Two: Trouble

Chapter Three: Close to Home

Chapter Four: Shadow Lessons

Chapter Five: Shadow Sick

Chapter Six: The Trouble with Threes

Chapter Seven: Dreaming in Blue

Chapter Eight: Unwelcome Substitutions

Chapter Nine: A Little Wild

Chapter Ten: The Summer People

Chapter Eleven: Such Creatures

Chapter Twelve: Stars

Chapter Thirteen: Azalene

Chapter Fourteen: Splinters

Chapter Fifteen: Snakes and Angels

Chapter Sixteen: The Devil You Know

Chapter Seventeen: Ethical Dilemma

Chapter Eighteen: Strange Passage

Chapter Nineteen: The St. Clare

Chapter Twenty: This Delicate Madness

Chapter Twenty-One: Shared Purposes

Chapter Twenty-Two: Breakfast with Asheroth

Chapter Twenty-Three: Broken Things

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Other Caspia

Chapter Twenty-Five: Break My Bones

Chapter Twenty- Six: White Box

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Delivery Service

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Twilight Kingdom

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter One:

Chasing Phantoms

I used to break out in a cold sweat when I was terrified.

These days, I break out in Shadows.

I squared my back against one of the sturdy trees of Blind Springs Park and stared up through its branches at the moon. Almost full and only slightly lighter than my quicksilver eyes, it cast just enough light to show the cold darkness snaking between my fingers and creeping up my arms. I closed my eyes and focused on calming my breathing. Dark electric fire crackled across my hands, racing up my arms and arcing across my neck. It felt like a combination of freezing water, marching ants, and someone slithering over my grave.

Once they appeared, only two things got rid of the Shadows: attacking someone or something, or calming down enough that they went away on their own. There was no one in the park but the crickets and I, so the attacking option was out. Lately, it took longer and longer periods of calm to make them go away. I was afraid the day would come when nothing I could do would banish them.

Asheroth had warned me. When Ethan was gone and Logan lay dying, he came to the hospital to warn me. “He taught you just enough to get you killed,” the mad Nephilim raged at me, furious with Ethan for unlocking such a dangerous gift. I hadn’t believed my insane self-appointed guardian then.

I did now.

I forced myself to focus on my goal: find Asheroth, get help. Breathe, calm, focus. Find Asheroth and get help for Ethan. Ethan needed help much worse than I did. And Asheroth was the only Nephilim I knew. He had to have answers. There was no one else.

I silently pleaded with the Shadows to stay gone as I stepped carefully away from my tree trunk. I’d been wandering Blind Springs Park for the third night in a row. Each night had been as unsuccessful as the night before. And yet, I couldn’t quit hoping that tonight would be the night I’d find him. “Caspia Chastain,” I hissed as I walked, “when will you learn to be careful what you wish for? The only thing worse than not finding Asheroth might be actually finding him.”

I sealed my lips together against the chilly night air and crept closer towards the most deserted part of the park. The nearly full moon overhead cast ragged patches of light through the winter bare trees. I was deeply in, now; branches snagged my long tangled hair and snapped against the leather of Ethan’s jacket. I could imagine what he’d say if he knew what I was doing.

“Are you crazy, sneaking through Blind Springs Park in the middle of the night? Alone? The same park where Dark Nephilim attacked us just a few months ago? When you know there’s still a demon after you? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” my imaginary Ethan raged at me.

Amazing how much Ethan and Logan could sound alike when my welfare was the topic of conversation.

“I’m not trying to get myself killed,” I whispered, but I didn’t sound convincing, even to myself. I was well aware that what I was doing was far from sane. I knew both Ethan and Logan would do everything they could to stop me. Why else had I snuck out in the middle of the night? “I’ve tried every other way I can think of to summon him, and nothing’s worked.” I drew a deep, shaky breath and rocked back on my heels, looking for landmarks. “I need him. We need him. Asheroth. He promised he’d help.”

I needed Asheroth because the man I loved had sacrificed immortality to keep my brother alive. By Ethan’s reckoning, his sacrifice had been more than worth it. He got to live a mortal life with me, and Logan was recovering with a kind of speed and strength that amazed his doctors. So much so, in fact, that we’d checked him out against medical advice because we were afraid the doctors might decide to keep him for experiments.

But for Ethan, becoming mortal was turning out to be a painful, ongoing sacrifice. Even now, he slept restlessly, tormented by fever, headaches, and nightmares. His waking hours were a nightmare of sensory assault as his body tried to process hundreds of new needs, sensations, and information all at once. His mortal body was strong but completely alien to him. He had bruises from walking into things, and we had quickly learned not to trust him with anything sharp or breakable. After Ethan’s second set of stitches, Logan and I had silently replaced all the dishes with hard plastic and wood.

Worst of all, he could feel the empty space where he’d once carried throbbing, pulsing Light. Like an amputee with phantom limb pains, the emptiness hurt him. He never spoke of it. He thought I didn’t know. But I could see the pain in his eyes, and when he slept his drugged sleep, he cried out for the lost Light that had served as wings. I watched him in the night, hating myself as I massaged his knotted muscles. Three nights ago, I’d finally had enough. I started sneaking out, looking for my mad, self-appointed guardian. I was desperate.

I needed Asheroth to tell me how to help Ethan.

I hoped Asheroth could tell me a way to change him back.

Ethan. Love. I’m so sorry.

It hadn’t seemed like such a crazy plan when I’d dreamed it up in the warmth and safety of my apartment. I visualized the small clearing where I’d first met Asheroth months ago. He and two other Dark Nephilim had attacked Ethan and I. They’d tried to kill each other, and I’d learned about my own Nephilim blood when Asheroth kidnapped me. But none of that mattered now, because Ethan was mortal, and Asheroth had sworn to protect me from an even greater threat, a demon that hunted me.

“Asheroth,” I called softly, as I had the night before, and the night before that. “Are you there?” The wind picked up momentarily, as if in answer, snapping bare branches against each other and stirring the dead leaves at my feet.

Nothing.

“Hello?” I turned in a slow, tight circle, watching the trees for a flash of red leather. “It’s Caspia. If you’re there, I need you.” A sudden blast of wind hit me from behind, whipping my hair around my face in all kinds of crazy directions. Momentarily blinded, I hugged myself against the chill. “I need help.”

Still nothing.

Underneath the curtain of my hair, I felt tears forming. My world was falling apart. I was being consumed by Shadows, Ethan’s mortal life was pain-filled and confusing, and I had come to a deserted park for three nights in a row to beg a mad fallen angel for help. I didn’t bother to wipe at the tears. At least Logan had found some peace; his recovery was going well, Amberlyn adored him, and he had his old job back.

“Flowers will grow there, in the spring. Silver ones, like your eyes.”

The voice was hesitant, even shy; it came from behind me. I would have recognized it anywhere. I froze, prey sensing a predator. It was my automatic reaction to him.

“What do you mean?” I finally asked when he didn’t elaborate.

“Your tears,” he said in the same soft tone, as if he’d explained himself fully. Then, with an edge: “Why are you crying?”

There it was. A hint of the unpredictable anger that made him so dangerous. I wrapped my arms around myself and hoped I didn’t erupt into Shadows. “I’ve been looking for you. For three days.”

Before I finished speaking, I found myself staring straight into a pair of burning diamond eyes. Rough stone hands gripped me on either side of my ribcage, lifting me so that my feet dangled several inches from the ground and my arms flailed in the night air. He stared at me like a fisherman who’d caught a water-breathing mammal. I stared right back: soot black hair, ghost-white skin, and a mad, cutting beauty that would haunt me until I died.

Asheroth.

“What has happened, that you would seek me so, Caspia?” he demanded, the pressure on my ribs increasing with his agitation. His bright eyes narrowed to slits although his voice stayed soft as mist. “You do not appear injured. Are you endangered in some other way?”

“It’s… Ethan,” I gasped out. My ribs were screaming at me. “Please put me down.”

“No,” he suddenly snarled. “Tell me what he has done.”

“Nothing,” I growled back. As I struggled against his bruising hold, I felt cold electric darkness pooling in my palms. My fingers flexed automatically. “You’re hurting me,” I warned.

“You play dangerous games,” he said, and dropped me, disgusted.

“I don’t mean to. I only want your help.” But the Shadows were out now, racing across my fingers. Asheroth saw them, and his look of disgust grew more severe.

“I warned you,” he said. The space behind his back, where planes of Darkness served as wings, began to shimmer.

“Yes. You did.”

“I could teach you. Someone must teach you, before they consume you.”

I ignored the electric cold creeping across my hands as best I could. “Yes, but not today. I need help with Ethan. He’s hurting. Being mortal… it’s agony, Asheroth. I didn’t know. I don’t think he knew, either.” I felt the tears forming as Asheroth stood watching me, still and unreadable. “Watching him… I can’t bear knowing he’s in that much pain because of me. I came to ask if there was anything to be done, either to make mortality easier on him, or...” I closed the distance until I stood almost nose-to-nose with the Dark Nephilim. “Or turn him back.”

“Make mortality easier on him. Turn him back. E’than’i’el,” he echoed flatly. “Not to teach you or train you. Not to keep you safe. He is the reason you creep through the night while evil hunts you.”

“Please.” I found myself leaning into him, both palms flat against the front of his red leather jacket. Shadows crackled and flared where I touched him. “Please,” I repeated, softer this time.

He stared at my hands. “No mortal woman has touched me since she died.” He covered my Shadow-pulsing hands with his own cold white ones. In a whisper: “I forget. You’re not mortal, and neither was she. Not entirely. But close enough. Enough to be warm.” Suddenly his hands were manacles around mine, his eyes so bright they burned. “Enough to die.”

He clapped one rough hand over my mouth and the other around my waist. Blind Springs Park vanished around us.

***

I’d forgotten how truly disorienting the abrupt spatial displacement could be. It had been months since I’d traveled this way.

Asheroth held me firmly. I sagged against him as I found myself staring at the front door of my apartment, sick and dizzy. His voice against my ear came fast as bullets and just as merciless. “You must learn to protect yourself, Caspia Chastain. Ethan cannot do it for you anymore. You will not accomplish that by chasing lost mad Nephilim in the dark and off the path.” He shook me so hard my teeth rattled. “I know you do not see it, but there are dark things roaming Whitfield. Powerful, ancient evils that would love a soft new thing to play with. Those Shadows you wear like cheap jewelry only call to them. You must be careful. If you let E’than’i’el tempt you into dangerous stupidity one more time I will kill him myself. Do you understand?”

When he let go of my mouth, I hissed at him. “If you touch him, I’ll end you.”

His hold on my waist remained steady. “When you can harm me, I’ll worry about you much less.” He beat on the door, three booming knocks I was sure would wake the entire apartment.

Asheroth worried about me? Right. “What the hell are you doing?” I hissed again. “You’ll wake everybody up!”

“Your dwelling is too well warded for me to enter. Yet another reason why I’d prefer you were inside it this night. And yes, I am rather counting on waking everyone. I think your brother and the other one should know what you’ve been up to. They don’t, do they?” I pulled uselessly on his arm. Shadows crackled and flared against his jacket. “I rather thought not.” He pounded on the door again, even more energetically this time. In fact, he seemed downright cheerful.

Bitter, insane Dark Nephilim.

The door flew open. Logan stood there wearing ratty sweats with a Futurebirds t-shirt hanging loosely from one arm. He’d tried to put it on and given up on the way. His hair had grown just enough to stick up wildly. Dark stubble covered a long red crease mark down the right side of his face. As he blinked rapidly in the bright hall light, his mouth fell open in surprise. “Cas? What the hell?” But then he took in my wild hair, tear-stained face, and the owner of the red leather-clad arm that held me, and surprise melted quickly into anger. He slowly twined the t-shirt around his fist. “Seriously? What. The. Hell.” Logan shook off the last bit of sleep. “Let her go.”

I love my brother. Only he would try to use a t-shirt as a weapon.

“I don’t want her,” Asheroth said haughtily, but I swear he sounded amused. “I found her wandering the park. I am merely returning her to you.”

“I am not a lost dog,” I growled. I knew better than to hit him, but I was so mad I didn’t care. I elbowed him in the ribs and yelped at the shooting pain that was my immediate reward.

“Then why haven’t you released her yet, Asheroth?” Ethan asked coldly as Logan angled himself sideways to make room. His blue green eyes were fever-sharp, but he held himself steady. “She doesn’t appear to want you either.”

“She is right here and quite capable of speaking for herself, thanks,” I snapped as Shadows continued to pulse harmlessly from my hands against Asheroth’s jacket. Logan and Ethan stared; exactly how out-of-control my Shadow-summoning had grown was yet another secret I’d tried to keep. Damn Asheroth, damn him!

“I was waiting for you, E’than’i’el-who-was. You look every bit as terrible as she said you did. I am so glad. Since you are the reason our Caspia decided it was a good idea to go creeping about in the middle of the night, I thought I had better see the extent of the damage for myself.” He pulled me even tighter against him, pushing out all my air. “You were right, dear,” he whispered theatrically. I could feel myself turning white. “Mortality looks quite painful. How terrible to know he did it because he loves you. Perhaps you were right; maybe this really is your fault,” he purred.

Son of a bitch, I thought. I couldn’t breathe.

“Son of a bitch,” Logan said, and rushed us. I felt his warm human fingers close over mine. I wanted to tell him no, to warn him about the Shadows, but I couldn’t find words. My vision was graying out. Bare seconds after he grabbed my hands, the electric cold between us flared so intensely it seemed to burn, and Logan wasn’t holding onto me anymore. I heard a dull thud as his back hit the wall.

Then Ethan was there, cradling my face between his hands. Pale and feverish, he stared straight into my panicked face. “It’s going to be fine, Cas,” he promised. “Asheroth. End this now. I won’t ask again.”

“How do you plan to do that, E’than’i’el-no-more? As much as I would enjoy destroying you, I think it might distress her.”

Ethan never took his eyes off mine. He spoke two words I didn’t know, two words in a language so full of liquid sibilance it was difficult to tell where one word ended and the other began. I didn’t think the human tongue could produce such sounds. I knew instinctively I was listening to the Nephilim language. The effect on Asheroth was electric; he released me immediately, practically throwing me at Ethan with an inhuman snarl.

As Ethan’s warm, strong, human arms opened to catch me, I had time to wonder just what two words had such power over mad fallen angels. I gave myself roughly three seconds to catch my balance before rounding on Asheroth and demanding answers.

There was no sign of him. The hallway was empty except for the three of us. Logan leaned against the wall right next to our apartment door, looking winded and shaky. He waved me off when I started for him. Ethan held me gently by the arm instead. “Caspia,” he said before I could ask about Asheroth. The warning was plain. “Did he speak the truth? Have you been wandering the park by yourself, trying to find help? For me?”

I bit my lip. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t have to. He tightened his hold and pulled me back against him.

“You,” Logan said severely, “are in so much trouble.”

“I am not a child,” I announced.

My brother ran a hand through his spiky hair. He shook his head in disgust. “I’m going back to bed.” From inside our darkened apartment, he shouted, “You. Trouble. Morning.” His door slammed shut.

Ethan didn’t say anything. His silence stung.

“I can’t stand to see you hurting,” I told the empty doorframe. “You don’t say anything, but I know you are. And when I think about what you gave up…” I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt a warm hand, not my own, brush my cheek. I half-spun on the ball of one foot until I could tuck my head underneath his chin. “You cry out for your… wings. In your sleep. It’s too much. Asheroth only said what I was thinking. It’s all my fault.”

Cocooned in his arms, I felt the bass of his reply through my bones. “It was a gift. I was glad to give it. I would do it again.”

I let myself rest against his soft t-shirt. “How can you say that?”

“It was a selfish gift. I had a lot to gain. You.” He pulled me into the darkened apartment. “Come to bed, Caspia. There’s trouble to be in tomorrow.”

Chapter Two:

Trouble

“Don’t you miss it? Being immortal?” Warm from the shower, I sat cross-legged on the edge of my bed, towel-drying my hair.

He watched me through cat-slitted eyes, considering. “I couldn’t feel you before, in my old skin,” Ethan finally answered, lying on his back. One arm lay folded underneath his neck. The other inched idly towards me, finding the edges of my sleep shirt. “I didn’t understand about skin. How knowable it is.” A corner of his upper lip disappeared into his teeth as his eyes closed, his focus totally on the sensation of my skin under his fingers.

“Knowable?” I echoed, mesmerized by these tiny actions. No one else knew these things about him. They made up a secret Ethan who was totally mine: the single piece of wavy hair that never behaved; the way one eyebrow rose higher than the other when he was surprised; that his back was more sensitive than his stomach.

“It’s like suddenly having an extra sense.” The pads of his fingers settled against the curve of my waist and flexed there, pulsing, fluttering, like a butterfly tasting its environment. “I didn‘t know,” he repeated. “I knew how breakable you were. How easily hurt.” His hand stilled against the swell of my hip. “But not how sensitive skin is.” He swept my hair to one side and touched his lips to my neck. “I was so prepared to lose things. Senses, strength; but this…” He breath was warm and moist. I shivered, arched, and he caught me, folding me against his chest. “How could I prepare for being open to the wind, the rain, the bitter cold?”

“Cold and rain that almost killed you.” I remembered his torn hands and feet, the hypothermia that could have killed him.

The shape of his smile against my neck had not changed. He had promised me, again and again since returning to me, that it never would. “Being immortal meant strength, but it also meant barriers. To the elements, yes. But also, this.”

Blue green eyes, river-bright above me. Hands spanning mine. The weight of him over me, stealing my breath. Or maybe that was just what happened when Ethan kissed me, now that he didn’t have to hold back because I might break.

“I can’t breathe,” I gasped out after several very long minutes.

“Good,” he said, kissing my neck.

I felt his teeth nip me right at the base of my throat. It was just hard enough to drive what little air I’d managed to siphon right back out of my lungs in a single electric shock.

“This,” he murmured against my throat. “I couldn’t do this. For fear of hurting you.”

“Um.” My hands were in his hair. When did that happen? “Ethan.” It was hard to speak when air was so precious all of a sudden. He had kissed his way up to my jaw.

“Mmm?”

“I’m glad I’m not breakable,” I managed to whisper. “Because then I couldn’t do this.” I wrapped my arms around him and pulled, bringing all the weight of a normal human male right down on top of me. Not the mass of a granite statue, not the killing crushing power of an immortal guardian, but the clumsy collapse of mortal Ethan. He rolled off me, laughing, tangled in the oceans of fabric that smothered my messy bed.

Mine, for one short human lifespan, full of stupid human mistakes and triumphs and losses and love. This one, I thought. I want this one. When we finally fought our way back through the pile of blankets, we held each other so tightly I thought my ribs would crack.

Towards dawn his fingers curled into claws and the muscles in his back spasmed. When he began to fight the blankets in his sleep I crouched over him, my long hair a curtain around us. “Sshh,” I murmured. His skin felt like fire underneath my massaging palms. “Sshh. It will be all right.” But as always, he didn’t hear me, and nothing I did stopped his writhing.

He talked in his sleep, the same terrible, pain-filled litany: “Gone. All but the burning.” A bitter laugh. “Fire instead of Light.”

Every night, the same ritual, and every morning, I had to face him and know it was my fault.  “I mean it, Ethan,” I whispered as I traced the taut tendons of shoulder and neck. “I will find a way to fix this somehow. I will.” I think he said my name in his sleep, but maybe I just imagined it.

***

The front door snicked open, then shut again. Coffee and baked goods scented the apartment. Logan had cut his morning run short, and he wasn’t even waiting to shower. No doubt about it. I was in big brother trouble. I cast one last longing glance at a sleeping Ethan and inched out of my bed.

Let Fallen angels lie, if only through the morning.

Ethan wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. I couldn’t remember the last time I actually rested. My days were powered by coffee and adrenaline, my nights little more than short dark dreams punctuated by periods of watchful worrying. I’d thought of asking Mrs. Alice for my own sleeping draught more than once.

I filled the largest unbreakable mug I could find. “Would you like some coffee?” I asked, tempted to just drink straight from the pot. “How about a muffin?” Logan ignored me, his nose stuck in a newspaper. It wasn’t even Whitfield’s paper. “We have apple butter, from Parson’s,” I tried again.

No response at all. I slammed the coffee down next to his elbow. Some of it sloshed over the side. He looked up from his paper, startled. “Hey!” He protested. “I’m reading that!

“Well,” I huffed. “Aren’t you going to yell at me? Let’s get it over with.”

Logan shook his head sadly. “Right. You’re mad at me because I’m not madder at you. Really rational, Cas. Have some more coffee.” I resisted the urge to dump it on his head.

“No,” I said, injecting calm into my voice with effort. “I’d just like to get the being yelled at part over with. Before Ethan gets here, if possible.”

Logan drew himself up to his full height, which meant he towered over me by several inches. As if looming wasn’t enough, I could swear he was smirking, too. My temper flared even more. “I assume you know that freak who calls himself a guardian is unstable at the best of times?” I shrugged. “So you knew exactly what you were up against and did it anyway.” I folded my arms across my chest and glared up at him, waiting for him to start yelling. He only sighed. “Look, I had time to think about it. I’m not mad.”

“You’re not?” I asked suspiciously. Maybe he was planning a sneakier, delayed attack.

“Well, ok, I am a little. But mostly, I understand. In fact,” he ran a hand through his spiky brown hair. “You didn’t do anything I haven’t thought about doing myself.”

I stared, wondering if he’d sustained a head injury on his jog. “You’ve thought about looking for Asheroth in the middle of the night? Why?”

“Well, not that exactly. I’d like to think I have a little more sense.” I shot him a glare. He flushed the deep red of frustration. “You’re not the only one who feels bad. Do you think I don’t know what Ethan did for me? That I don’t know what I owe him?” I looked at him, my brother flushed from his aborted run, and remembered how this time last year he’d begun to lose his hair. His dark eyes fixed on mine and held them. “If what’s happened to him is anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I’m standing here because of what he gave up.”

All my defiance melted as I slumped into the nearest chair. “I feel…” I swallowed hard. “I think I hate myself for it. I think I’m starting to.” I scrubbed at my face with the back of my hand. “I’m terrified that Ethan regrets it. And what’s worse…” I buried my face in my hands. “Asheroth may be a crazy bastard, but he’s right about one thing. Before he changed, Ethan didn’t choose to love me. When his kind fall in love, they capital ‘F’ Fall. As in, they don’t have a choice. So what if this,” I indicated the two of us with a sweep of my hand, “isn’t something he willingly chose? And now that he’s mortal, with free will and all, he regrets it?”

“Just answer me one thing.”

“Ok,” I assented warily.

“Do you get to choose who to love?”

His question confused me. “What do you mean?”

“Could you choose to stop loving him?” he asked patiently. I just stared. “Free will is the wrong way to look at it, I think,” he said at last. “Could you just decide you don’t love Ethan? Like turning off the faucet, or something?”

“People can fall out of love,” I said slowly. If, God forbid, I found out Ethan was a serial killer, or caught him cheating, I’d like to think I wouldn’t be one of those women…

“That’s not what I mean. Is love a choice, Caspia? Was it ever, with him? Because you reacted pretty strongly to him the moment you saw him. I stared at my brother, remembering. The first time I saw Ethan, the way my body felt immediately pulled towards to him, even though my brain tried to fight it. There had never been anything neutral or casual about the way I felt towards Ethan. “Maybe none of us can choose who we love, Cas. None of the lucky ones, anyway. The only choice we have is how we serve that love. And Ethan’s made his choice. What about you? Are you going to reject it, or make the best of what you’ve been given?”

“He’s human now,” I countered, voicing my deepest fear in a whisper. “Free will and all. What if he rejects me?”

Dimly I felt my brother’s hand wrap around my own and was shocked at the strength of it. “It was the only way he could truly be with you. You can’t ask him to give that up, no matter how hard it is for either of you. To ask that… Cas, it’s like saying you don’t want him.” His hand convulsed around mine, and I hissed. I think he meant the gesture to be a gentle squeeze, but I actually felt the bones of my hand grind together.

“Hey! Watch it!” I yelped. I pulled my hand loose and shook some feeling back into it. Logan looked startled, but he didn’t say anything. “Ethan has to know that’s not true. That could never be true. It’s just that this life is so dangerous for him. Remember the emergency room, thinking he was going to bleed out in my lap, and all because…” It was suddenly hard to talk. Logan had my hand again, gently this time, so there was no way to wipe my eyes. “And I was right there,” I managed in a whisper. “Right beside him. I left the knife in the water. My god, Logan, if I hadn’t been right there…”

“But you were,” he whispered, and his arms were around me, pulling me from my chair into his lap, rocking me. “You were right there, and so was I, and it was fine.”

He knelt on the floor by my chair and I let him take all my weight. I’d missed this, leaning on someone stronger. “Who are you, and what have you done with Logan Chastain?” I asked, only half-teasing.

“I don’t know,” Logan said, his face a hollow echo of mine. He snaked an arm around my waist and deposited me in my chair as if I weighed almost nothing. His casual strength surprised me again. “You just can’t go out like that again, sneaking out in the night. Don’t forget we never caught this demon of yours, or found out who took your drawings. And when were you planning on telling me about that little trick with your hands?”

“What trick?” I asked as sweetly as possible, giving him my best fake smile.

He wasn’t buying it, I could tell. Logan had years of experience detecting my lies and evasions. I pretty much sucked at them anyway. I slumped back against my chair as he waggled his fingers at me. “The creepy black shadows you were wearing like gloves. The ones that knocked me on my ass? That trick.” He dropped into the closest chair and leaned into my space, eyeballing me like an interrogator. “I want to know about that one, Caspia. Why don’t you start there.”

I glanced at all the exits. Logan was too close. He’d catch me if I tried to run. “It’s the Shadows,” I said softly, addressing my muffin instead of my brother’s merciless eyes. “You know how I’m supposed to be able to use them as weapons if I have to?” He didn’t say anything. I took a deep breath. “Well, lately, they’ve been sort of coming out on their own.”

He just stared at me, his dark brown eyes developing an intensity that was as new and alien as his startling strength. Red, I realized. His brown eyes were darkening almost into blackness, and it looked as if they had lines of red radiating out from the iris.

“…how bad?” he demanded, and I realized he’d been talking to me. “Just how bad is it, Caspia? What’s happening to you?”

What’s happening to you, I wanted to ask, but didn’t. “I don’t know,” I admitted in a hoarse whisper. My eyes had changed once, too. From steel gray to bright silver. I made an effort to focus on Logan, who appeared to be panicking right in front of me. “It’s only been getting out of control over the last few weeks, and even then only when I feel upset or threatened. It goes away if I can calm myself down, or…” I risked another glance. Logan was breathing hard, an unmistakable ring of dark crimson encircling his irises. Oh, hell. Oh holy hells. What was happening to my brother?

“Or what?” he demanded.

“Or if I fight them out,” I finished in a whisper.

“Fight them out,” he echoed. “Fight what, Caspia?” He buried his face in his hands. When he raised his head his eyes were wild again, dark as burnt charcoal fissured with lines of fire.

I just looked at him, sick to my stomach for too many reasons to count. Logan had never shown a hint of any kind of gift our entire lives. Surely it couldn’t be happening now.

An orange blur bolted into Logan’s lap and yowled madly for his attention. Ethan’s strong hands settled on my shoulders a few seconds later, using me for balance and easing the knots of tension he found there at the same time. “You’re upset,” he observed. “I usually prefer to say good morning before you get upset.”

I leaned back, grateful he was there to catch me. “Good morning,” I murmured into his soft t-shirt. I rubbed my cheek against his stomach. Even though I’d given him the same juniper and cedar aftershave as Logan, on him it smelled icy somehow. “Mmm. Ethan. Hello.” I tried to smile, but I didn’t have the heart for it. I could hear how tired I was. I tried to remember the last time I had slept. I couldn’t. “Logan and I were just chatting about deadly and uncontrollable gifts. Have a muffin.”

Chapter Three:

Close to Home

Logan threw the paper he’d been reading earlier on the table like he was declaring checkmate. “Ethan. Good. My hard-headed sister seems addicted to monumentally stupid risk-taking.” I shot him my evilest glare.

Ethan brushed against me as he slid into a chair. I inhaled the scent of flannel and cotton warmed by his skin; crushed juniper and soap; towels fresh from the dryer. I didn’t want to hear any more bad news. I wanted to lean against the arms I knew were waiting for me and go back to sleep. Ethan. Home. I didn’t even realize I was leaning towards him until I opened my eyes to his amused blue-green ones. “Have you had your third cup of coffee yet?” he asked, brushing my hair back from my forehead and tucking it behind one ear.

“Just the one.” I looked mournfully at my now almost cold cup of coffee. “Logan’s being big brotherly at me.”

“Sounds painful.” He smiled as if he hadn’t been writhing in pain for most of the night. He started for the coffee pot before I realized what he meant to do. “We’d better fix that immediately. Caspia without her coffee isn’t…”

“No!” Logan and I shouted simultaneously before he had a chance to pick up the coffee pot from its burner.  I half-rose from my chair, ready to lunge if needed. Logan was faster; he’d actually taken two steps towards the kitchen, dumping an indignant Abigail on her tail. Ethan froze at the sound of our shouts, the muscles of his shoulders tensing. He stood perfectly still. Only the tightly controlled way he held himself let me know just how much our reactions upset him.

“It’s fine,” he said after a long moment. Abigail prowled between us, unsure which human most deserved her queenly scorn. Ethan, the muscles of his back practically vibrating with tension, wrapped his hands in two dishtowels. “Please sit down.” He held the coffee pot, the last remaining breakable item in our kitchen, with careful determination. I sat, my eyes on him the whole time. Logan followed more slowly, flushed with embarrassment. I refused to be embarrassed. I’d seen him get hurt too many times to care. His mortal body possessed remarkable strength. But he was still learning muscular control and hand-eye coordination. Routine tasks were fraught with danger. As Ethan gingerly set the glass pot full of scalding hot liquid down between us, I reached for his hand.

“I’m sorry.” He let my hand linger for a second or two, but he wouldn’t look at me. The muscles in his jaw were as tight as his back had been. “It just hasn’t been that long since the hospital.” I sighed. “How are your stitches?”

Without a word he flipped his arm wrist-up and yanked off the bandage. I winced. I felt queasy every single time I looked at it. Seventeen stitches from mid-wrist to just below the crook of his elbow.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated automatically as he slid back into the seat next to me.

“Don’t.” He touched my forearm, drummed against it lightly with his fingers. “It’s not your fault.” His smile was more bitter than graceful, but it was there. “I’m getting a little better. There’s hope I’ll figure this human thing out eventually.” But the closeness we’d shared, the thoughtless, automatic joy at sharing a morning together, was gone.

“Well.” Logan swirled a spoonful of honey into his green tea. “I, for one, was only trying to save you from drinking any more of that awful crap. Coffee is bad for you.” He grinned, trying to lighten the mood, saluting us with his mug. “Green tea is full of anti-oxidants. The body is a temple.” He leaned back in his chair, radiating smugness. “Especially mine.”

“Weeds, Logan,” I shot back as I drained almost a third of the pot into my huge blue plastic mug. As part of his recovery regime, Logan’s health kick was understandable, but there were some lines I just would not cross. “You’re drinking weeds.”

“Healthy weeds.”

“Whatever.” I smiled around my mouthful of muffin. I’d missed picking on him mercilessly. I’d held back the worst of my attacks when he’d been so sick. “That’s why you have to drown the taste with enough honey to send a normal person into sugar shock. And that’s got to be so healthy. Right, Ethan?” I choked down my half-chewed muffin, eager to include Ethan in my attack. “Logan can be the healthiest diabetic in Whit…”

But Ethan wasn’t listening, and judging from his face, he hadn’t been for a while. The newspaper Logan had been so absorbed in earlier drooped between his fingers like wet laundry. His was bone-white and had the most lost expression I had ever seen on his human face. I scrambled to read over his shoulder.

“Jesus, Cas! Watch it!” Logan yelled, snatching his precious tea out of my path. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Not me,” I insisted. “Ethan? What’s wrong?”

He had Logan’s full attention too, now. “Look,” he said, indicating the paper. He placed it on the table between us. “Did either of you read this earlier?” Carefully, with shaking hands, he smoothed the front page completely flat. “Did either of you pay attention?”

“That’s not even a Whitfield paper,” I said defensively, “so no. Plus I’ve been lectured at since my feet hit the floor this morning. I’ve had no time.”

“I picked it up because there’s a music festival in Birmingham next weekend. I just wanted to see who was playing.” Logan came to stand over my shoulder and leaned in close.

Ethan pointed to a headline on the front page, his finger white with pressure as if he could drill down through the surface of the table itself. Heiress Abducted, the headline screamed in gigantic black letters. I leaned in so close to Ethan our shoulders touched. “Twelve year old Caroline Bedford was taken from the family estate in Vestavia last night, despite some of the best private security in the country,” I read aloud. “Bedford is the only daughter of shipping magnate Nathan Bedford. Police have no suspects and no ransom has been demanded. Mr. Bedford has issued a one million dollar reward for Caroline’s safe return.” I frowned; it was terrible news, but I didn’t understand why Ethan was so upset he literally shook against me. He slammed his fist down against a black and white security camera photo. I leaned in closer. I could feel Logan’s hot breath against my ear.

A girl in a white nightgown and slippers. Long blond hair. A terrified blur of a face, the picture too grainy to make out distinct features beyond the usual trademarks of terror: wide mouth and eyes, head thrown back, arms flailing. Taken in what looked like a hallway with busy wallpaper, two dark figures held her. One gripped her around the waist, and the other seemed to be acting as lookout. Dressed all in black, they looked like army commandos or mercenaries of some kind. They wore form-fitting black clothing, bulky jackets, and huge dark blurry backpacks.

“I noticed those backpacks right away,” Logan said quietly. Something darkly chilling slid its way down the back of my neck at his tone. “Ethan? Do you see it?”

“Those aren’t backpacks,” Ethan said at last. He pulled me against him, his arms a circle around me. I leaned into him and leant him my warmth. “They’re abyss wings. Dark Nephilim. They’re taking her into the Dark Realms.”

Time stopped.

The three of us stood in shocked silence. “Dark Nephilim,” I said at last. I stared at the two creatures, at the terrified girl. Something else bothered me. Something wasn’t right. “Ethan,” I said at last, a horrible suspicion blooming like acid in my stomach. “Look. Do you see that?” At the girl’s side, there was a very faint blur. The more I stared, the more convinced I became that it was a spectral shape. I sagged down into my chair.

He didn’t answer me. He didn’t have to. The acid in my stomach had been joined by an icy cold fear that traveled across my body in waves. His hands, warm and human and trembling, reached for mine.

“What?” I felt Logan’s solid warmth against my right side, fierce and reliable. He leaned closer to the picture. “What do you see?”

I turned and buried my face in Ethan’s cotton and juniper scent. I didn’t need to look again. “I think there’s something there, Logan. A shape of some kind, just sitting there, glued to her side. It’s easy to mistake it for camera blur, but I don’t think that’s what it is. I just can’t tell what, exactly.”

I heard Logan pacing, the solid wood floorboards a familiar bass thump behind me. “What the hell is happening, then?” he demanded, his voice threaded with that combination of fear and anger he used when anything threatened family. “What does it mean? Dark Nephilim kidnapped a twelve-year-old girl with some kind of blurry friend in the photo? Why?”

“Gifts are different,” Ethan said simply, still grimly fascinated by the newspaper. “What Caspia can do is pretty rare. Maybe this girl can do something else.”

“Like what?” I demanded, but Ethan was silent, studying the grainy photo.

“What else does it say?” Logan grabbed the paper and held it between whitened knuckles. “Mr. Bedford describes Caroline as a shy girl, more comfortable with animals than people: ‘...so gentle birds eat out of her hands. She’s never even been to school. She must be terrified.’ The sole survivor of a car accident that killed her mother, Caroline Bedford is multimillionaire Nathan Bedford’s only heir.” Logan’s finger’s had made holes in the newspaper where he clutched it.

Ethan cupped my face in his hands. He spoke gently but with unmistakable seriousness. “Someone has kidnapped at least one Nephilim descendent with gifted blood.” My knees went wobbly at his words, but his hands held me by the forearms, bracing my body just as his presence steadied my insides.

“But why?” I choked out. “Why take a twelve-year-old girl to the Dark Realms? What use could she possibly be?” The blue green eyes I loved so much had no answers, only sorrow. And fear.

“You can draw the future, Caspia. This girl’s father said she could charm wild birds to her hand. That was probably not an exaggeration. Nephilim descendents have different kinds of gifts. The gift of Caroline Bedford’s blood probably connects her to animals in some way. The shape at her side, if that’s what it is, could be anything. I won’t pretend to know everything about gifts.”

“Gifted blood,” my brother repeated slowly. The words hung in the air of our apartment, heavy with meaning. Gifted blood, like the ability to draw the future, or summon Light and Shadows. “But… why?” Logan’s hand rested against the small of my back as he repeated my earlier question. I hadn’t seen him move, but I was grateful for his presence, for both of them, surrounding me, supporting me. “I didn’t even think there were that many Nephilim descendants. None of this makes sense. How do we know it’s not just some random kidnapping?”

I knew with sick, utter certainty that this was not just some random kidnapping. I fought the urge to run back into my room and hide there. “Asheroth,” I said, giving in to the urge to pace. “He’s been trying to warn me. He keeps saying things like a war is coming, or that terrible evil roams the streets. I wrote it off as more of his rantings.”

Ethan returned to the table and began clearing away the remains of breakfast. It was a real testament to how distracted we all were that we let him. “Those were not just random kidnappers in that picture, Logan. Birmingham is too close. We have to treat this as a warning. Caspia, we never caught the demon that tracked you last winter. Add kidnappings into the mix, and it’s not safe to go wandering by yourself.” He fixed me with one of his darkest glares before turning to Logan. “You too. You both go out in pairs.”

“But,” Logan started to protest.

“He’s right,” I interrupted, tempted to tell him about the changes I’d seen in my brother’s eyes. But there had been enough revelations for one morning. “Just because you haven’t erupted into Shadows yet doesn’t mean it won’t happen, or that you don’t have some other ability. And we don’t even know who’s being targeted, exactly. It could be anyone with Nephilim blood, gifted or not.”

“But that’s ridiculous. I can’t do anything. I never have been able to,” Logan protested. I could tell it upset him, the idea of having a chaperone everywhere he went. I fought down annoyance. So it was fine for me, but he got to play by different rules? That was so Logan.

“We don’t know what they’re after,” Ethan added evenly. Only then did I realize he had managed to clear most of the table without dropping a single thing. Of course, the plates and cups were all melamine, so it wouldn’t have mattered if he did. But it still made me happy to see his hand-eye coordination improving. I gave him my sunniest, most encouraging smile. “We should start checking the newspapers for any unusual disappearances. Let’s focus on the nearest big cities; I’ll take Nashville or Atlanta, whichever you don’t want, Cas, and Logan, if you…”

Too late, I saw it coming. Too late, I cried out for him to stop. I watched the glass coffee pot shatter, smashed against the wall as Ethan simultaneously misjudged the distance to the kitchen counter and lost his balance. Glass and hot coffee soaked into the wall, the floorboards, and Ethan, who stood perfectly still while the mess settled around him. He’d learned by now that the best way to react to broken glass was to freeze in place until the shattering was over, otherwise he risked making the situation worse by slicing himself up even more.

“Sorry,” he said at last in a tight, angry voice as the last shards of glass dropped to the wooden floor with a chiming sound.

“Are you hurt?” I asked, carefully navigating pools of coffee and razor-sharp glass. Logan followed silently with the broom. He began the familiar drill of cleaning up. My job was Ethan triage; only after that would I return to help with clean up.

“I don’t know.” His shoulders drooped. “What was that? Coffee pot number five?”

“Something like that,” I murmured. Actually, it was the seventh, but he didn’t need to know that. I shook glass out of his ruined t-shirt and bit my lip. “You’ve got some glass embedded in your arms, Ethan. I’m going to have to use tweezers.”

He watched the blood welling up around tiny shards of glass stuck in his skin. “Fine,” he said as I took his hand gently in my own and led him into the bathroom for what had become our all-too familiar ritual. “Caspia,” he said at last, after the de-glassing was nearly complete but before I’d doused him with peroxide.

“Mmm?” I smiled as softly as I could. He looked like a lost little boy, perched on the edge of the bathtub, surrounded by our brand new, ridiculously overstocked first aid kit.

“It gets better, doesn’t it?” My eyes drew close together, narrowing down his question. “Being human. It gets easier. It has to, right?”

I bit back the first answer: that I had been born this way, that I had never known anyone before him who had to learn, that it sure as hell hadn’t gotten easier for me. “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. I perched on the tub beside him. “I think that depends on the human.” I wrapped my pinky finger around his and bumped his shoulder. “Tell you a secret.” My lips brushed the shell of his ear. “I’m a better human since you came to me.”

I couldn’t improve his balance or hand-eye coordination, but at least I could still make him smile.

Chapter Four:

Shadow Lessons

I stood on the edge of the leaf-covered path, watching as the Navau River snagged part of a scorched tree limb from its swollen banks and swept it up into its racing tide.  So far, I’d watched three fairly large scorched tree limbs travel down the Navau. They all came from the same maimed tree. The damage was my fault. All part of my training, Ethan tried to reassure me.

Several successive days of relentless cold gray rain had pushed Whitfield’s second largest river almost to flood levels. As a result, the Navau’s normally peaceful, meandering green-tinged waters now raced by choked up with all kinds of debris. I could see trash, branches, bottles, and the occasional swollen dead fish.

“Caspia.”

I shifted my weight backwards when he spoke my name, feeling my boots sink slightly into the damp pines needles and decomposing leaves. I couldn’t help myself, even though I tried to ignore him. Sometimes my body still reacted as if he was a full-blooded Nephilim, straining towards him as if the angelic blood that once bonded us had not been erased forever.

“Caspia,” he repeated, closer this time. “We should try again.” Right against me, his breath warm and damp across my left cheek, I knew I could lean all the way back and rest comfortably against him. He would catch me. He always did.

“It’s so ugly after the early spring rains. The river, I mean.” I wanted to feel his breath across my cheek again. It had not been that long ago when Ethan did not breathe at all. “It’s flat gray. Like my eyes, before you came to me.”

Ethan’s hands clamped down on my shoulders and spun me to face him. My world narrowed to an annoyed teacher-boyfriend with a mouth twisted in amusement or impatience or both. “I did come to you. More than once. And your eyes are far from flat gray now.” He tucked my hair, loose and damp with sweat at the temples, behind my ears. “They’re molten silver. They get brighter the more we practice.”

With a groan, I collapsed against his shoulder. “I can’t keep this up much longer. I’m going to run out of Shadows, I swear.” Truthfully, I just didn’t want to practice anymore. I was tired and aching and I didn’t feel any closer to learning control. All we’d proven after hours of trying was that the Dark Realm energy that made up the Shadows responded to me very quickly, and I didn’t like it. How could I summon Shadows so easily unless there was something dark and terrible about me?

Ethan’s laugh was very deep. I felt, rather than heard it, as he hugged me with one arm. “Impossible. You can’t run out of Shadows. There’s a limitless supply.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I muttered. Either he didn’t hear me, or he ignored my rebellious mumblings.

“We’re working on your ability to control them. We have to perfect your skill, Caspia, so you can fight off any demon kidnappers who come for you. Now, come on.” He held me by the forearm like a truculent child and marched me down the path, deeper into the bare pine forest.

“Remind me again why we’re doing this,” I hissed through gritted teeth as I unbuttoned my black leather jacket and positioned myself in a rare patch of sunlight. The air was still chilly, but working with Ethan was hard, sweaty labor. He was merciless. I was a pathetic pupil but he wouldn’t let me stop, determined to train me until I could fight Dark Nephilim kidnappers with one arm tied behind my back.

“Besides learning to protect yourself, you’re the best defense we’ve got.” He paced backwards until he stood about six feet away, facing me.

“Asheroth says it’s forbidden, for humans to do this kind of thing. It’s dangerous and will attract the wrong kind of attention.” It was risky to play the Asheroth card, but I hated feeling the Shadows slither across my skin. The sensation was never exactly the same twice, but it was always some kind of mixture of the mental and the physical. In the session before I’d taken a break to stare at the river, handling them had given me that creepy feeling I got when I felt like I was being watched but no one was really there. Combined with the physical sensation of cold wet snakes crawling over my arms, no wonder I didn’t want to continue with our practice session.

Ethan bristled, as he always did when I brought up the name of the Nephilim who’d abducted me and attacked him. “It’s more dangerous to leave you unable to defend yourself, with only Asheroth to call on if you get in trouble. We have enemies, remember? Not just you, but your brother, as well.”

“But we’ve been doing it for hours,” I whined. “It’s already late afternoon!”

“Only a little more,” he coaxed, and I sighed.

My head hurt and my eyes were beginning to burn, but in his way, Ethan was as stubborn as I was. It was easier to get it over with. My fingers twitched, exactly as they did when I wanted to draw something. I flexed my hands and tried to concentrate. I didn’t have to look to see what was happening. Faint Shadows, like the lightest charcoal shading, would be wreathing my fingers. That’s how it started.

“Good,” I heard Ethan say. His voice was strong and steady. He hadn’t panicked or gotten angry with me once, even when I partially destroyed the one hundred year old oak tree with a particularly strong and uncontrolled line of Shadow. Ethan just held me and let me sob in terror. After he’d gotten me far away from the unstable tree.

Then he made me start again. He wouldn’t let me quit, he said, until I’d realized it was just an accident. One hell of an accident, I thought grimly. I bet the tree didn’t think so. I’d blasted pieces of that poor oak tree all over the park. Sure, the swollen Navau had taken care of some of it. But only a small bomb could cause the kind of damage I’d done to that tree. How was I going to cover that up, let alone deal with something that destructive living inside me?

“Caspia,” he said sharply. “Pay attention.”

When I snapped my eyes open, thick dark lines of dark Shadows obscured my hands and snaked their way up my outstretched arms. “Um. Ok. That was fast,” I stammered as the Shadows collected, growing thicker and darker. I fought the urge to brush them away.

“Focus.” Ethan’s instructions were sharp and fast, like bullets. “Send them outward. Picture what you want to do with them, and they’ll do it. You’re drawing with Shadows instead of charcoal or pencils, but you’re still drawing.” As I stared at the Shadows climbing up my arms like coal-black snakes with vague, dumbfounded terror, he wielded words like an electrified whip. “Do it now,” he yelled.

Now. Right.

I just wanted them off me. Nothing elegant. I flipped my arms outward, imagining strong straight lines instead of the tangled mess climbing up my arms. Dark lines spiraled obediently down my arms and moved quickly outward, thick and straight. I tried not to look too closely at them. Pulled from the Dark Realms, they were the essence of absence and emptiness. It still frightened me to know I carried access to the Dark Realms inside me, no matter how formidable a weapon it was or how many times Ethan reassured me I carried Light, too.

If I carried Light, why wouldn’t it come when I called? I hadn’t been able to summon it since the day of Logan’s accident, and Ethan had been right there to help me. Part of me grew more and more convinced every day that I’d used my one and only burst of Light bringing my brother back. Since then, only the Shadows came to me. I tried to remind myself of what I’d learned about the nature of good and evil in the last few months, and that it didn’t match up to light and dark in some neat, balanced equation. Mrs. Alice, whom I loved and trusted, was a dark witch and was as far from evil as I could imagine. Bearing a dark gift didn’t make me evil. My head knew this, but when Shadows slithered across my skin and beautiful burnt oak trees scented the air, my heart had a hard time believing.

Shadows crept across the clearing towards Ethan. He stood firm as they got nearer, watching me closely. “Um, you might want to move,” I said a little breathlessly. “Remember the tree?”

“You’re doing fine,” he countered absently, as if he wasn’t really listening. He stared at my hands intently and sucked in a deep breath. I flexed my fingers, turning my palms skyward before flipping them back down. I’d discovered that I could control the thickness of Shadow, just like I could when drawing with a pencil. I pinched my fingers inward, creating very thin lines. The more I handled them, the less nervous I got.

But I didn’t want to be less nervous. It was like getting friendly with the monster under my bed. If I relaxed my guard, sooner or later he would crawl into my bed and eat me.

***

When he finally let us quit, I was mentally and physically exhausted. Ethan’s idea to treat Shadows like any other artistic medium made them a little more manageable, if not less frightening. No matter how many times he told me otherwise, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it said something about my essential nature. Something bad.

“You did great,” Ethan murmured. The river rushed madly on. I watched its flat gray streams and swirls with my throbbing head propped in his lap. My vision blurred as I tried to follow trails of water with my eyes. A sharp stab of blinding white light erased my sight totally for a minute. I cried out and curled up into a ball, suddenly sick to my stomach and dizzy. “What?” He crouched over me, his hand on my forehead. “What’s wrong?”

It passed almost as quickly as it came. I uncurled a bit. “I’m not sure. My head hurt, and everything went white, and…” He looked panicked. “It went away.” Ethan eased back on his heels, watching me intently. “Really. I just feel tired now. I think I just overdid it.”

He looked like he didn’t quite believe me. “Rest, then.” I found myself using his lap for a pillow. I smiled against the soft corduroy covering his legs. I couldn’t wait until spring. Whitfield in spring was beautiful. So far, he’d seen only our fall and winter. “Ok. I’ll rest,” I coaxed. “If you tell me the story of how you became human again.” I felt like an eager child demanding my favorite bedtime story. I hooked a leg over his and pulled him even closer, as if he were a puzzle I could solve by locking the pieces tighter together. “Please,” I added for good measure.

“Like everything had been turned up too much- the lights, the sound, the temperature, everything; and that I was carrying some kind of very heavy weight while trying to operate incredibly complex machinery with no instructions and every part of me was screaming different kinds of wants and needs, like hunger and cold and pain and fear- but they all meant essentially the same thing.”

I rolled over on my side and pushed his hood down. “What?” I demanded, skimming my palm across his jaw. I knew the answer to this one, but I never tired of hearing it. “What same thing?” His face was stubbly. I let my eyes droop half closed, picturing a shirtless Ethan, drawing silver razor through scented white foam. The only man I had ever seen shave who was not my brother or my father. Shivers I could not define as warm or cool crept delicately up my neck.

He caught my wrist and pulled. I yelped in surprise at the strength of him, sprawled on the forest floor. Even human, he was still strong. He pinned me, half-teasing, but searching my face for something.

“Where does your mind go,” he said softly. It was a question, but it wasn’t addressed to me. “I wonder, sometimes.” Then he grinned, his blue green eyes crinkling around the edges. “Sometimes, I’m jealous.”

“I was thinking of you,” I told him honestly. Shirtless and shaving, I didn’t add. “About how well you fit into my crazy life. About how it doesn’t even seem all that crazy, my life, with you in it.” This last, in a whisper.

Cradled instead of pinned now, his words tickled my ear even as his rough cheek scraped and abraded my smooth one. “And I was telling you how it felt, that first day I was human. How every human need I had, every pain and hunger all combined into two little words.”

My hands crept towards the curve of his spine, finding the indentation of his bowed back. My fingers rested there lightly. “Mmm,” I agreed, wanting him to keep talking as I rubbed small slow circles against the soft skin of his lower back.

“Two words,” he repeated, warm damp breath brushing my ear. His heart pounded over the soft skin exposed by my open jacket. A black leather jacket that had once been his. “Caspia. Home.”

Chapter Five:

Shadow Sick

I was dying or having a nightmare. Or both.

The blood in my veins was on fire. An honest-to-God, five-alarm, someone put a bullet through my brain fire pulsed through me.

My body was nothing but a fragile shell for the pain. Only two things could happen here: the burning would stop or I would die.

I ran through strange corridors. Whispers rose and fell around me instead of wind. Everything was gray and barren, the walls around me crumbling. If there had once been a roof, it was long gone, so there was nothing to shelter me from the sky. I was barefoot, wearing nothing but my pajamas, not caring where I put my feet. Rocks and crumbling bits of wall littered the ground. I felt like I had run forever through gray stone corridors following whispers that led me, finally, to a courtyard.

But the courtyard was gray too, gray and dead under an always-twilight sky. I collapsed on the edge of a dry fountain while my heart went supernova in my chest. Time runs differently in dreams, and death is forever. How long had I been running the corridors? Hours? Days? Above me the sky pulsated with all the shades of twilight. At home, this time of day was nothing but a bridge between day and night and a backdrop for the fairy lights in the park. It made me dizzy, though, and faintly sick, watching the symphony of twilight colors: shades of grays, blues and violets as they chased each other across the sky. My blood simmered with barely contained heat. I want, I thought. I want… something. God, I didn’t even know.

After a moment a man stepped out from the shadows. Roughly my age, he wore nothing but loose dark pants and tattoos. Dark hair, faintly golden skin. For a long moment we stared at each other. I wished I could see the shape of his features, but the shadows made this difficult. Heat traveled through my veins in waves and I had to remind myself to even out my breathing. At first he just stared at me like we were in Hell and I was trying to sell him Girl Scout cookies. Then his eyes flashed silver. Not solid, like mine, but in pieces, like stars. Shooting stars of pure pissed off.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded at last. “How did you get here?”

“I ran,” I told him. I was acutely conscious of the fact that I wore nothing but thin pajamas. “I’m dying. Or having a nightmare,” I amended, hoping he would feel sorry for me.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said sharply. “Even in the Dreamtime. You have to go back. Now.”

“Who are you?” I demanded. I tried to memorize him, his tattoos, his face, but the light was too dim and he seemed to flicker with a faint blue light when I try to focus on him.

“Doesn’t matter.” Barefoot, he moved with the speed of angels, perching easily beside me on the fountain’s edge. He grew increasingly agitated. “How did you find this place?”

“There were corridors,” I tried to explain. My blood gave one hot violent throb at his nearness. Him. It was all suddenly, horribly clear. The fire in my blood, the wanting, the whispers leading me here. To him. In this twilit dreamscape, the fire was becoming an inferno, and this angry young man could help. Need you, I tried to say, but I was on my knees dry heaving into the fountain instead. Heat raced through me. I arched my back like a cat, my fingers claws in the fountain’s edge.

“Your blood is on fire.” He sounded horrified, like a television doctor right before he calls for the crash cart. “You’re Shadow-sick. You’re burning out.”

Shadow-sick. That sounded major. “I don’t know what that means,” I admitted through clenched teeth. “I. Need. Something.” It was all I could manage before I dry heaved again. Instantly, I felt strange hands spanning the nape of my neck.

“Shadow-sick. Did you…” He hissed angrily the second he touched me. His hands rested against my neck, radiating coolness and calm. But his tone was bottled murder. “I bet you call it practicing, or something cute like that. Did you ‘practice’ summoning any Shadows today?” Normally I’d meet sarcasm with sarcasm, but since the angry half-naked tattooed man was saving me from burning alive, I decided to let it slide.

“For hours,” I admitted. He inhaled sharply. “I practiced with Ethan over and over. To learn to defend myself.” Now that the wave of sickness had passed, I felt euphoric and slightly drowsy. “The bad angels are trying to kidnap me,” I told him conspiratorially. Might as well bat for crazy, too.

“Don’t move,” he ordered. I didn’t. He stood behind me, his hands splayed across my upper back where wings would be, if I had them. I felt the fire cooling to a bearable level. The burning sensation moved inward as it ebbed, like he’d caught electric eels and was reeling them in through my veins. His fingers trembled more and more against me as the fire disappeared. His breathing became more labored. Finally, he dropped his shaking hands. I sat back on my heels, feeling strangely hollowed out.

He collapsed on the edge of the fountain, not looking much better than I felt. “You’re wildly untrained. I’m sure this Ethan person means well, but he isn’t one of us.” Then, a bit angrily, he muttered, “You really need a teacher.”

I looked up at him sharply. “One of us?” I echoed. “A Nephilim descendent? Is that what you are?”

He wouldn’t answer. “For now, only use the Shadows if you’re being attacked. Do you understand?” He pulled me up. This close, I could see his face: fine sharp bones, high and angled upward. Dark, almost black hair, and eyes even darker. Only then did I really notice his tattoos. They were moving, the ink of his strange symbols and markings gleaming as if alive. His forearms rested against mine, my whole hands held under his. As his tattoos moved, my blood cooled more and more. “Do you understand?” he repeated.

“Who are you?” I whispered, frightened now.

“You’re only dreaming,” he said. “Your blood called to mine in the Dreamtime because you needed me. You were burning out. That’s the only possible explanation. But you must never come here again.” He looked up at the scintillating twilit sky. “He’d like nothing better than to trap you here, with the rest of us.”

“Who?” I demanded. “Where is here?”

“I’ll find you. It’s what I do.” His hand covered my eyes. “Time to wake up.”

“But I don’t even know…”

“Wake up,” he repeated.

“…your name.”

“Caspia? Wake up.”

“But…”

“You’re having a nightmare. It’s ok. Wake up.”

I opened my eyes to the faint light of dawn through my bay window. Ethan was level with me, kneeling beside the bed. Confused, I reached out and touched his face. “What happened?”

He stroked my sweaty forehead. “You’re burning up. I’m worried you’re sick or something. You were talking in your sleep and thrashing. I’ll get a thermometer.”

I remembered flashes of my strange dream: forever twilight, crumbling gray stone. I wondered if I should tell him, wondered what he would think. Then I remembered the burning in my veins and a pair of dark eyes shot through with stars. Bare tattooed skin cooling mine. He isn’t one of us. “It was just a dream,” I said. I grabbed his wrist before he could leave. Shadow-sick. Burning out. Trap you here. “I think I’m just worn out from yesterday. Stay with me. Please?”

Ethan didn’t say anything. He frowned, but he pulled me close as the sun rose.

***

Ethan repeated his warning about Logan and I always having someone with us when we left the apartment that morning. I never mentioned my dream. I wanted time to process it, to figure out how I felt about it and maybe what it meant before I tried to explain it to anyone else. The nightmarish landscape and the dimly remembered warnings of the night before made me skittish through breakfast.

But when the three of us hit the square, we could see it was the beginning of a busy workday. Citizens of Whitfield went about their everyday routines, bustling in and out of stores, eating at outdoor tables, and generally getting on with their lives. Across the street, a few brave souls in short sleeves stretched out on blankets in the park, trying to soak up the weak early spring sunshine.

I was willing to bet what was left in my checking account that more than half of them had some kind of hidden powers. I would bet even more of my meager savings that if Dark Nephilim were stupid enough to try to snatch either me or my brother from the middle of Whitfield’s Old Town Square in broad daylight, my supernatural neighbors, who usually minded their own business, would be on them in a heartbeat.

I giggled as I pictured some of my stodgier neighbors suddenly sprouting fangs and claws to come to my defense. My giggles climbed in pitch until they bordered on hysterical when I imagined the good ladies of the gardening club chucking weeds and balls of fire at invaders. I turned my back on them as they knelt by the flowerbeds across from the fountain. I wouldn’t want them to think I was laughing at them. They might lob fireballs, or worst of all, give me a public scolding.

“What?” Ethan demanded.

“It’s just really hard to picture anything nefarious happening here,” I said.

“Nefarious,” Logan repeated slowly. “Like being assaulted and kidnapped by Dark Nephilim in the middle of the park on your way home from work?”

“Point taken,” I sighed. “But really, it was just that once.” Logan rolled his eyes at me. “Look, you and Ethan both have to get to work. I have to go drop off three sets of hand-painted Tarot decks at Mrs. Alice’s. This buddy system thing is silly on the square during business hours. I mean, just look around you. Nothing happens on the square without everyone knowing about it.”

“We live in a fish bowl,” Logan muttered.

“A big square friendly fish bowl,” I chirped back.

“Replace friendly with nosy and I’ll agree with you,” he retorted.

“A big square friendly fish bowl full of nosy supernatural…”

“You’re both right,” Ethan interrupted quickly. After a minute Logan shrugged philosophically and disappeared into the hardware store. “You’re terrible,” Ethan said under his breath as I followed him to J. Roth’s, Bookseller. “You torment him endlessly.”

“Why, thank you, Ethan,” I said. We paused just outside the diamond-paned door, and in three short hops I pressed myself up against him. “It’s what little sisters are for. It’s how I show him I care.” I stuck my hands in his jacket pockets. “I’ll miss you. To tell you the truth, you sort of have my dream job. Quiet, plenty to read. I can’t believe Old Man Roth decided to semi-retire.”

Ethan laughed. “What would Mr. Markov do without his Coffee Goddess? Not to mention the caffeine withdrawal you’d go through. It wouldn’t be pretty.” He locked his hands in a tight circle around my waist, drawing me closer. “It’s really kind of a nightmare in the bookstore. Mr. Roth had his own system for cataloguing everything, and not even Calla can understand it. We’re trying to sort it out, but it’s a mess.”

Calla was Mr. Roth’s pink-haired niece. She was the only other employee of Whitfield’s one and only bookstore. I felt a twinge of jealousy at the thought of the two of them working together, alone, for long stretches of time. It’s just a stupid job, I told myself fiercely and pushed it away. “Still, be careful. Don’t work too hard, ok?” I thought about all those heavy stacks of books, all the piles of disorganized papers he could trip over, and shuddered. “Are you sure it’s something you’re comfortable with? I mean if you want to wait, we’ll work it out.”

“Wait for what?” he asked. I was so close. It would take only the slightest movement to carry me upwards into kissing distance. Instead, I kept my eyes on the hollow of his throat.

“You know,” I said, watching his pulse beat. “Until you’re… you get your balance back, I guess,” I finished lamely.

I felt his low rumble of laughter all across my chest. “You make my being human sound like a particularly bad bike wreck.” He touched his forehead to mine. “Believe it or not, I like this job. Funny, isn’t it? Immortal beings aren’t supposed to think about things like money and the electric bill and paying for dates. But I did. There I was, all-powerful, and I couldn’t even take you out to dinner. To me, this is one of the best parts of being human.” He replaced his forehead with a soft kiss. “Buying you things.”

“But I don’t want anything,” I protested.

“I know. You truly don’t.” He looked puzzled and pleased all at once. “Sometimes you run out of paint, but that’s not the same thing.” He suddenly seemed very smug. “It’s all right, though. I have my sources.”

“Ok,” I said uneasily. “But it’s still not worth hurting yourself over, not even for something you think I might want.”

“Actually, working at the bookstore is like taking a break from how hard everything else is. I’m not sure why.” He leaned back against the door, thinking, while I tried not to show how much his words stung. “It has something to do with how quiet it is. And not many people come in. So there’s no sensory overload to deal with, and no…” he paused as if searching for words, then shrugged it off. “Nevermind. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No, what?” I asked, intrigued. “If it helps you in some way, then I want to know, Ethan. Even if it doesn’t make sense.”

“Some people are more… confusing… than others. But in different ways. Some hurt my head when I’m around them. I’m clumsier around some people than others.” He gave out a short, humorless laugh. “Some make my senses go haywire, like I’ll feel thirsty around someone, or cold around someone else. Sometimes it’s emotional, like fear or even…” he shot me a quick sideways glance. “Jealousy.”

Uh-oh. I tried very hard not to think of Calla.

“And there’s no logic to it. It’s not always the same people, or even the same effect,” he continued, running his fingers through his hair, clearly frustrated.

“And that doesn’t happen here?” I pressed.

“Not nearly as much,” he admitted. “It’s just quieter. Unless a bunch of other people come in. Then I just disappear into the back, and Calla handles it.” He raised an eyebrow. “I think she thinks I’m pathologically shy.”

“What about me?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

His smile twisted something inside me. I realized for the hundredth time how much this man could break me if he wanted. “You do unbalance me,” he said, tugging on my fingertips. “From time to time.”

“Really,” I breathed. “What are we going to do?” His lips were inches from mine, my arms around his waist.

“What indeed?” he murmured, his lips on mine stopping time, breath and thought. Crushed juniper, warm cedar; something else that was uniquely human, male, and Ethan. I dug my fingers into his hips. This one. I ached with the force of this almost-prayer. Please, just this one.

I felt his eyes on me all the way to Mrs. Alice’s shop. By the time I got to the dark witch’s herb shop and looked back, he had disappeared.

Chapter Six:

The Trouble with Threes

A violent gust of cold enveloped me within feet of Mrs. Alice’s door. I looked up at the sky, confused because it was still clear and sunny. Did I have my own personal storm cloud following me around now? I wished I’d grabbed a hoodie when I left the apartment. Ethan’s jacket just wasn’t enough to chase away this bone-deep chill.

“Miss Chastain,” said a voice that made my insides as cold as the rest of me. “What a pleasant surprise.”

I knew without turning it was Dr. Christian. If I was dying in the wilderness and this man knew the way out, I still wouldn’t call his presence ‘pleasant.’

He stood between me and Mrs. Alice’s door. There was no way to avoid him.

I tried to smile. “Dr. Christian. Um. Hello.” His blue eyes were just a little too bright, too Technicolor, to be called cerulean. With his wavy golden hair and perfect bone structure, every female at Andreas Academy thought he was the most gorgeous man alive. Combined with artistic genius, wealth, and the big city sophistication that came with being partial owner of one of New York’s more prestigious galleries, he walked through my little town like he owned the place. Maybe that was why I seemed to be the only person who didn’t swoon when he came into the room. If anything, he had the opposite effect on me. My feelings had morphed from indifference to outright distrust. I could trace it all back to one confusing afternoon when he’d called me out in front of the entire class and I’d awoken hours later, napping on a bench in the hall.

That had been the day of Logan’s accident, when so much of my life had changed forever. I hadn’t seen him since then. Just thinking about him made me feel vaguely panicked, which was silly, because I had so many other serious problems to worry about.

“How are your classes this semester?” he asked. He seemed genuinely interested, leaning in to hear me better. I had to stop myself from stepping away.

“Oh, they’ve just started. But they’re going well.”

“I was disappointed to see you absent from my upper level drawing seminar.”

My nervous laugh sounded fake even to me. “It didn’t fit my schedule.”

He frowned. “I hate to lose an artist with your obvious talents.” I froze. Something about him, about the way he spoke, alarmed me. I felt Shadows stirring. My palms tingled. Not here, not here, I thought, and rammed my hands into my jacket pockets. He stepped even closer to me. “I could arrange something private if you’d like. Independent study, for credit, of course.”

Was he coming onto me? No way. He could have any woman in the city. He smelled like cinnamon and ash. I struggled to speak around a sudden sourness that coated my tongue. “That’s not… I can’t. Busy schedule,” I coughed, my eyes watering for no apparent reason. I couldn’t wipe them because my hands still tingled with Shadows. “This semester. Really busy.”

He stepped away, but not before I saw a weird look of triumph in his unnaturally blue eyes. “That’s unfortunate. If you change your mind, come by my office anytime.” Yeah right, I thought. But I managed to nod. “Are you dropping off more of your exquisite Tarot cards, Miss Chastain? They’re quite popular. I know several buyers who’ve been waiting for you to finish a deck or two.”

Suddenly I was freezing again. “You know about my hand-painted decks?” I almost whispered. Someone buying all my decks at once had set off the chain of events leading to the present insanity I called a life.

He chuckled. “Of course. They’re quite popular.”

I made myself ask. “You don’t, um, have a set, do you?”

He laughed. “I have no need for such crude methods of divination, Miss Chastain. But please do drop by my office. Again, you are welcome anytime.”

I watched him walk across the square as I rested against the side of Mrs. Alice’s shop. I didn’t want to burst into her store trailing Shadows from my fingertips. As I forced myself to calm down, I thought over his words. Dr. Christian had only said he didn’t need ‘crude methods’ when I asked him about my cards. He’d never outright denied buying them.

***

“Don’t tell me you brought three,” Mrs. Alice said, sticking her head out from behind a bookcase. A sprig of dried lavender waggled behind her ear like a forgotten pencil. “Three would be a very bad omen, Caspia.”

“Uh,” I hedged. Three what? Buttons? Socks? Elastic hair bands? “What do you mean, exactly?”

Instead of answering, she crept out from behind the bookcase, looking nervously over her shoulder. “I forget you aren’t one of us, dear. I wouldn’t have to explain myself to another witch.” She marched behind the counter and produced ingredients for tea. An odd moment of déjà vu rocked me: he isn’t one of us. The tattooed man from last night had said that about Ethan. Mrs. Alice rattled china, dragging me back to the present. “So how many did you bring, dear?”

I wondered if Mrs. Alice, longtime pillar of the community, had finally lost her mind. “Excuse me?” I said faintly.

“Your cards, dear. How many did you bring?” She perched beside me on her butter-colored leather sofa, the tea smelling faintly of bergamot and oranges. She peered at me intently, as if the fate of the world hung on my answer.

“Oh! Three decks. Sorry,” I admitted sheepishly.

“So it’s three after all. Goddess help us,” she murmured as she blew on her tea.

I looked at my cup suspiciously, not sure I trusted it. “Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Alice?”

“Caspia, dear,” the stately witch said. “Threes are powerful. They are triggers.”

“You’re talking about numerology,” I said in the careful tones people use when addressing the insane.

“I wouldn’t even have to explain this to another witch,” Mrs. Alice snapped, irritated. I tried to look harmless, silently grateful I was not another witch. She sighed and took my hands between her aged but strong ones. “I’ve been having Foretellings. I will spare you the exact symbolism since you wouldn’t understand it anyway, but I will tell you this: I have Foreseen the same basic configuration for several nights now, and you,” she made a thick slash with her finger through the air, “have been at the center of it every single time.”

“I see,” I told her, although I didn’t.

“Do you think I enjoy dreaming about you and your tangled dramas every single night, young lady?” She poked me with an aged but steady finger. “Well, I don’t.”

Tangled dramas? Me? “Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Mrs. Alice? Is there someone you want me to call?”

She tapped her lilac colored fingernails against her china cup in time with the shop’s grandfather clock. I had the uncomfortable twin sensations of time running out and being scrutinized like something about to be dissected. “Foretellings are difficult,” Mrs. Alice said at last. “Not having them, mind you.” She looked at me sadly and tapped her forehead. “I have to decide which are safe to tell and which are not.”

I frowned. “That’s not fair. If you’re having visions about me, shouldn’t you tell me everything?”

She snorted. “Spoken like a modern young person. They are Foretellings, not visions.” I scowled. I didn’t care about the finer points. “Which makes them both more fluid and more volatile. Tell you too little, and I don’t give you the information you need. Tell you too much, and I influence the outcome.”

“I don’t understand,” I admitted, setting my tea down untouched. “Can you at least tell me what numerology has to with it, and what I’m in the middle of?”

Mrs. Alice had looked roughly the same age for as long as I could remember: over sixty but under ancient. For the first time, she looked tired. Worn out, even. “All of it,” she said heavily. “You are at the center of all of it.”

Well, that was massively unhelpful.

She smiled a little, as if sensing my frustration. “Your sleep has been disturbed.” It wasn’t a question. How had she known? “It will only get worse, I’m afraid.”

My throat was suddenly dry enough to tempt me into drinking cold tea. “I’m sleeping well enough. I’m getting enough rest. It’s just that I have these dreams.” Loose tea coagulated at the bottom of my cup. Was my future down there? Could Mrs. Alice tell me what it was? “Actually, it’s just this one dream,” I heard myself say. “There’s a boy. He’s like me. Of gifted blood, I mean. I was sick, really sick, in my dream.” She watched like I was her favorite soap opera. “I think I was dying, Mrs. Alice. I really do. He stopped it. Just like that.”

“It’s good he was there, then,” she said. “But now you’re worried. Who is this boy, and should you trust him? What would your brother or protector say?”

“Protector?” I repeated. “What does Asheroth have to do with it?”

Mrs. Alice looked at me like I was too stupid to draw breath. “I meant Ethan, dear. Don’t think that just because he gave up his powers he also gave up the post. In my Foretelling,” she continued smoothly, as if I had never spoken, “you are linked with two other souls. You are always caught between things. Worlds, forces, places.” She leaned forward, her voice Hollywood husky. “Young men.”

I spewed out my tea.

“Three is a volatile grouping, my dear. Never balanced.” She patted my tea-soaked knee. “Which is why you need my womanly guidance.”

My face flamed; I searched for an excuse, no matter how implausible, to escape the pit of humiliation I had so blithely skipped into. “I have to… go wash my cat… now.”

Mrs. Alice ignored me. “You have no sisters. Your mother and grandmother have long since passed from this world. Were you a witch, you would have an entire coven to enlighten you about the mysteries of womanhood. But don’t worry. You have me, my dear.”

Please, God, let me die, I begged as cold tea seeped into my jeans.

“I, uh, already know about…” I gagged. “Those things, Mrs. Alice. Really, I do.” I eyed the door. If I vaulted over the back of the sofa, I could probably make it. Then the lock turned by itself. Mrs. Alice smiled grimly. For the first time in my life, she really did look like a dark witch.

She still wasn’t done with me when the lock turned again. Mrs. Alice’s great-granddaughter Cassandra burst into the store. She took one look at my wide, panicked eyes and her heart-shaped face contorted with fury. “Grand’Mere, tell me you didn’t.”

“The child has no female relatives,” my torturer said defensively.

Cassandra turned several interesting shades of scarlet. “The child? Caspia is nearly my age, Grand’Mere!”

“Exactly my point,” Mrs. Alice sniffed.

“Caspia.” Cassandra slipped up beside me, wrapping her hand protectively around my forearm. “Tell me she didn’t have the ‘mysteries of womanhood’ conversation with you.”

“She did,” I whispered. “It was terrible.”

“Oh, sweet Goddess,” Cassandra moaned.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Mrs. Alice snapped. “It’s not the end of the world.”

“You underestimate the force of your personality, Grand’Mere,” Cassandra looked at me sympathetically. “I was coming in to start my shift early. But now I’m going to have to exercise some damage control.”

“So you won’t be working today?” Mrs. Alice asked, less surprised than I would have expected.

“Like you didn’t know already.” Her great-granddaughter rolled her eyes. “She’s got more than a touch of the Sight, you know,” Cassandra stage-whispered. “Probably planned this whole thing right down to the rescue.”

“Sss…sso she really can see the future?” I asked, terrified all over again, remembering Mrs. Alice’s Foretelling.

“You’ve scared her into stuttering.” Cassandra shot Mrs. Alice a dirty look before marching me out of the store.

I had never really liked Cassandra Blackwood. With her billowy skirts, waist-length blond hair, and profoundly New Age ideals, she always struck me as a privileged neo-hippie. That was before I’d discovered she was a member of the most powerful family of witches in Whitfield. Now that she’d rescued me from her great-grandmother and proceeded to pour strong red wine down my throat, I was ready to erect a shrine in her honor.

I hadn’t known there were different kinds of witches, either. We talked about the different kinds as Abigail sniffed her suspiciously. Cassandra called herself an Elemental with an affinity for earth. “That explains the patchouli,” I said, after one and a half bottles of wine. “And the dolphin music.” The words were already out before I realized I might have offended her. We stared at each other for a loaded minute before exploding into drunken giggles.

“I guess it does,” Cassandra sighed. “Grand’Mere thinks a lot of you, Caspia. She meant well. But at a hundred and ten, she’s a little out of touch sometimes. I’m sorry.” She crooked her index finger at a gallon of Moose Tracks ice cream. It flew three feet across the floor to rest right in front of us. She’d kept it in her backpack along with the wine, and it hadn’t melted all day. “We need more wine.”

“Yes we do,” I seconded. “Because I thought you said one hundred and ten. Mrs. Alice is eighty. That means I’ve had too much to drink, or not enough.”

Cassandra snorted. “Eighty. Hah. She wishes.” I watched as her backpack unzipped itself and a fresh bottle rolled out. A gold foil box of chocolates followed. Abigail, hiding under the couch, decided to attack it. “So. Did she talk to you about what happens when mortals and immortals…”

“Please, Cassandra,” I slurred. “No more. Not after that bizarre ‘Foretelling’ of your great-grandmother’s.” I sketched phantom quote marks in the air. “I can’t handle it.”

The bottle froze between us, hanging suspended in the air. “Grand’Mere had a Foretelling?” For someone on her second bottle of wine, she sounded remarkably alert.

“Mmm-hmm. Something about linked souls, and intimacy, and…” I could actually feel myself blushing. “It doesn’t matter because it made no sense and it’s not going to come true anyway.”

“If you say so,” Cassandra said doubtfully. Sighing, she pushed the bottle my way. “You need some more wine.”

“Definitely,” I agreed, sure my face was tomato red. We pushed the bottle through the air between us. I giggled to see it floating through space. Poor Abigail inched out from under the sofa to bat at it longingly.

“I was going to ask if she talked to you about the Compact between Light and Dark, or what makes Whitfield a refuge in the first place, or the four Guardian races. You know, the important stuff.”

“Um, no. We didn’t get much beyond Foretellings and my dreams.” Alcohol allowed me to say this without sarcasm.

Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Figures she’d fixate on the embarrassing parts.” She frowned in concentration. “Is your brother going to kill me when he finds out I got you drunk? No, he’ll pretend, but secretly he’ll think it’s funny. And he’ll give me a ride home. But Ethan…” Her head snapped up. She looked utterly shocked. “There’s nothing there. It’s like… he’s just a blank space, or something.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, alarmed.

The door flew open before she could answer. Ethan was first. It was very hard to read his expression, but perhaps that had more to do with my difficulty focusing on moving objects. Logan was easier. He carried a stack of Chinese take out and stared, open mouthed, as the two of us giggled maniacally and rolled on the floor. We lay surrounded by gold foil chocolate boxes, piles of records, never-melting ice cream, and floating bottles of wine.

“She got me witch-drunk!” I managed to gasp, pointing at Cassandra through peals of laughter.

“I knew you were going to say that!” she laughed, curled on her side, shaking with mirth.

The two boys stared at us in shocked silence. “You got witch-drunk without us?” Logan finally asked. He sounded hurt.

“What do we do?” Ethan asked at last. I was eye-level with his boots. I gave them my most charming smile. From far above me, he looked more surprised than upset.

“Dude, I have no idea.” Logan sat the Chinese food down and came to perch on the edge of the sofa. “Torment them endlessly?”

Ethan finally cracked a smile. “I hear that shows you care.”

Chapter Seven:

Dreaming in Blue

Low haunting music woke me.

It came from the living room. Logan, I thought, aware of Ethan’s restless slumbering warmth beside me. My brother must be awake and playing records. I wondered why he couldn’t sleep. I buried my face in my hands and groaned, remembering my shameful behavior. “The witches made me do it,” I mumbled, trying out the excuse before I used it. It sounded pathetic, even to me. I groaned into my pillow. The least I could do was go apologize for my behavior. Dizzy and lightheaded, I forced myself out of bed and dragged myself into the living room with eyes at half-mast.

Someone stood over the record player, listening intently. He gave off a faint, unnatural blue light in the darkened room. “I love this song,” he said without looking up. “I think I miss music the most.” With a gasp, I backed away towards my bedroom. I don’t know why I didn’t scream. For a second, I thought he was a ghost. He must have been used to that reaction because he looked up sharply. “It’s ok. You’re dreaming again, but this time you’re not dying and we’re safe here.” I caught a glimpse of dark hair and eyes. His faintly golden skin was covered with tattoos from the waist up. Bare feet. Bare everything, in fact, except for a pair of loose black pants. He watched me through narrowed eyes, assessing.

The boy from my dream. The one who had helped me when I was Shadow-sick. I stared in shock, still inching backwards. “What are you doing in my living room?”

“Don’t you remember me?” He moved with Nephilim quickness; in an instant he was standing right in front of me. This close, his dark eyes held a sad urgency I’d missed before. I’d missed other things, too, like the cut across his lip and the bruise on his cheekbone, and the deep cut across his bicep. My blood throbbed, then roared at his nearness. This time it felt as if some deep part of me recognized him, rather than the searing heat of Shadow-sickness. I was as fascinated as I was alarmed.

“Yes,” I said softly. “I thought it was a dream.”

“It was,” he said.

“I mean a made-up dream. A not-possible kind of dream.” His face flared with reflected silver as I seized his wrist and looked at him, really looked at him: his tattoos, his minimal clothing, the way he prowled instead of walked. “You really are like me.” The first and only Nephilim descendent I’d ever met who was not a blood relative. I felt his blood calling to mine as surely as if he had spoken my name. I was excited, suddenly, but forced myself to remember how strange this was, that he was in my house and that he was injured. “You’re hurt. You weren’t before, in that other dream. Are you all right?”

He bowed his head. “I’m a Nephilim descendent like you, yes. This,” he indicated his face, his arm. “It’s not important right now.”

“Of course it is.” How very male, to ignore obvious injuries. “We’ve got a gigantic first aid kit in the bathroom. Ethan hurts himself all the time. It will just take a second.”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of peroxide,” I teased.

“No. I’d very much appreciate some medical attention, actually, because this,” he shoved his bleeding bicep in my face. It was really a deep cut, right across a circular tattooed symbol inscribed with strange markings. The blood turned my stomach. “Hurts like hell. Could probably use a few stitches. But since I’m not really here, and my physical body is asleep and bleeding in a place I wouldn’t take you in a million years, we’ll just have to deal with it.” He spun on his heel back to the record player, but not before I’d seen a mixture of rage and hurt and frustration on his face. “Don’t worry. If I bleed on your precious furniture, it won’t be there when you wake up.”

“I didn’t mean…” I began, and then clamped my mouth shut. Just what the hell did I mean, anyway? Tension and anger radiated off him like heat shimmers over the highway in summer. It was like having a wild animal in my living room.

And yet, he had saved my life. His blood spoke to mine. And he was hurting.

I tried again. “I’m sorry you’re hurt. I don’t care what you bleed on. I wasn’t sure if you were real, if what happened the other night was real.” I slipped up beside him, watching the record spin. I tried to ignore his steadily bleeding arm. The jagged slash had begun to coagulate around the edges. Maybe it would heal on its own soon. I hoped so.

“It was real. And you were very lucky.” He relaxed a little as I drew near. Strange. It was the exact opposite of what I’d expected. I thought he would lash out like any wounded wild thing. Instead, I was the skittish one. “I love this band,” he said. “No one listens to records anymore. You have good taste.”

“They’re almost all Logan’s.” At his frown, I added, “My brother. He’s almost solely responsible for my musical education. Ethan and mine’s too. Ethan hasn’t been hu… uh, here… very long.”

His head snapped up. Stars flashed in his dark eyes. “Ethan. The one who made you Shadow-sick.”

As Mark Utley’s voice reached its whispery end, I reached around him and flipped the record over. “He meant well.” I started the B-side. Then, to distract him but also because I was interested, I asked, “Where are you, that you wouldn’t take me in a million years?”

The wild thing was back again; he looked at me with the desperation of a caged animal. “The Twilight Kingdom,” he said. My blood roared again when I accidentally brushed against him, as if the Shadows wanted to break out. “You were there.”

I remembered the endless expanse of twilit sky. I knew of two other worlds that brushed up against this one now. I wondered how many more I would come to know in my lifetime. “Why are you here?” I hugged myself, suddenly cold. “In my living room? Instead of that other place?”

“To find out if it was possible. If I could come here on my own without him finding out.” He smiled into the darkness, at something I couldn’t see. “So that next time we’ll make better use of our time.”

“Next time? What next time?” Did he have a head injury too? “And who is he?”

This boy with gifted blood dropped to his heels. “Someone very unpleasant. Someone I hope you never have to meet.” Abigail streaked through the darkness and butted against his knee. He closed his eyes and gave himself over to petting her as if he was the one being stroked. I sighed heavily. Like it or not, Abigail had become our supernatural barometer. If it was weird and she liked it, it was probably going to stick around for a while. The universe had screwed things up with Abigail. Instead of being the cat that someone brought home, she was the cat who brought creatures home.  “What is my brother’s cat doing in my dream?”

He cracked a contented eye. “Actually, this is my dream. I’ve just pulled you into it. And even in the Dreamtime, cats do what they damn well please.”

I smiled a little, at that. “Why should they be any different in dreams, right?”

He smiled back, laughter bubbling up for the first time. But it softened into something else. Something that reminded me I stood in my living room in my pajamas with a boy who was not my boyfriend.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, jumping up. I remembered Mrs. Alice’s Foretelling. Three is never balanced. When he touched my elbow, I jumped.

“I need to get back to bed,” I said.

“Of course.” He turned back to the record player. “Just wait for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?” I watched as he selected another record and slipped it carefully from its sleeve. The Strangest Colored Lights. A favorite. Of course he’d have to have good taste in music. Way to go, Caspia.

“I’m a Dreamwalker. It’s one of my gifts. I’d prefer to put you back to sleep myself, rather than have you go back in your bedroom.” He changed vinyl carefully, breathing deeply as if smelling something delicious when the music began to play.

I’ll bet you would, I thought. “Why?” I asked out loud.

“Most people don’t react well to the sight of their own motionless bodies. It’s rather like looking at your corpse.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t think of an objection to that. I didn’t want to see my almost-corpse, or Ethan’s either, for that matter.

The ink of his tattoos shimmered in the faint blue light that enveloped the rest of him. “You haven’t run into a friend of mine, by any chance?” he asked casually. He might as well have been asking for the salt and pepper, his tone was so deadpan. “A bald man carrying a sword wrapped in a leather jacket?”

“Um, no.” I tried to suppress the laughter and failed. “Nope, definitely not. Even in Whitfield, word of something like that would get around.”

“You’re serious.” He raised a single black eyebrow in my direction before turning his back to look at records again.

That’s when I saw it: a long, deep gouge across his back, like a single huge claw had taken a swipe at him.

“Oh my God,” I swore softly. I found myself right against him, my hands on either side of the gouge. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, but still… “What would… uh. Wow. Let me put something…”

He tensed under my hands. “When a Hellhound takes a swipe at you, the wound pretty much cauterizes itself.” He spun under my hands, his dark eyes bright with sharp silver shards. “Besides, this is just a dream. Remember?”

He had a symbol inked over his heart, something familiar, if I just tried a little harder to place it… It was the last thing I saw before my alarm woke me to one of the worst headaches of my life.

Chapter Eight:

Unwelcome Substitutions

They say one of the first signs of serious addiction is lying about your habit and hiding the evidence.

Unfortunately for me, Logan decided to take my coffee away the morning of one of the worst hangovers of my life. He gave me an innocent, puppy-eyed look when I accused him of trying to teach me a lesson. “But Caspia,” he said smugly, handing me a mug of healthy green tea. “Your body needs anti-oxidants and rehydration. Coffee does the opposite.”

Even if my head didn’t feel like it had been colonized by evil elves with pick axes and a brass band, I needed my early morning caffeine fix more than ever. I had a brutal schedule this semester, including back-to-back studio classes and three lecture series. As luck would have it, the most boring class of all was also my earliest. I needed coffee. How else was I supposed to get through it?

I smiled grimly at the gigantic Styrofoam gas station Big Gulp cradled against my forearm. As long as no one came up and sniffed, it would fool everyone into thinking I’d suddenly developed a healthy appetite for sodas. I didn’t have a problem. I just needed coffee to stay awake in class and deal with one tiny hangover. I could quit anytime.

“Images of Art in Literature” was a core class at Andreas Academy. Close to one hundred of us sat, in various stages of sleep and boredom, throughout the campus’ largest auditorium. Mrs. Kenner taught the class, just as she had for the last twenty years. She was a kind but unenthusiastic teacher who gave her lectures in a pleasant monotone. The cushy auditorium seating, dim lighting, early hour, and soothing lecture voice all combined to give her class the nickname “Organized Group Sleep.”

Amberlyn was my only fellow sufferer in this class, and she was late, as usual. Mrs. Kenner was too, which was highly unusual. If she didn’t show up soon, I was going to sink into blessed sleep before she even called my name for the roll. My phone buzzed against my hip. I had just enough time to scan the first few lines of Logan’s text when a freesia-scented arm knocked me on the back of my already-pounding head. My phone came perilously close to knocking over my forbidden, and therefore valuable, coffee.

Amberlyn, predictably. “Looking for this?” she teased, her spiral curls twisted into a messy bunch at the nape of her neck.

“Is that a paintbrush holding your hair together?” It hurt to look up, even though the light was dim. “I hope it’s paint free.”

She rolled her eyes as she slid into the desk next to mine. “I hope that’s not coffee in a Big Gulp cup,” she countered, tossing my phone at me. “Not only is that just sad, but coffee in Styrofoam? Nasty, Caspia. It’s got to be carcinogenic, or bad for the ozone layer, or something.”

“What isn’t?” I muttered. “Besides, even if it was, which I’m not admitting to, by the way, how else am I supposed to stay awake in here? Logan thinks he can cut off my coffee supply, and Mrs. Kenner is really late. I need it. Don’t tell, please?” Amberlyn shook her head at my pleading whine. The rest of the class had become restless, checking their watches and openly using cell phones. “Isn’t there a time limit when we get to leave or something?”

“I don’t know,” Amberlyn said, a tiny crease appearing between her golden-green eyes. “I heard that was just an urban legend. I know Dr. Christian gave an entire class zeroes when they tried to pull that once.”

“Yeah, but he’s evil,” I countered, reaching for the Big Gulp. What the hell, I was already busted. I took a deep sip and winced. Coffee and Styrofoam really did taste terrible together.

Amberlyn pulled a sheet of iridescent blue paper from somewhere and began to make tiny folds with the precision of an open-heart surgeon. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said lightly. “Temperamental often goes along with genius, right?” I stared at her in shock. The blue paper rapidly took on the dimensions of some kind of flower. “Do you have any classes with him this semester?”

I choked down the acrid, lukewarm coffee. “Um. You know this one already. The gods have smiled on me for once. So no. Remember?”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “Oh, right. Forgot. Sorry.” Her slim caramel-colored fingers made faster and tinier folds. All around us, students shifted in their seats and grumbled.

Suddenly, the back of my neck started to tingle. I wondered if this was some hangover symptom I’d never heard of before. The door to the left of the far podium flew open violently, exactly as if it had been kicked. Students, many roused from the brink of sleep, shifted uneasily around me.

When Dr. Christian came storming in instead of mild mannered Mrs. Kenner, I almost dropped my coffee.

Oh, hell, I had time to think before he took the stage and glared straight at me.

***

I don’t know how he managed to single me out so immediately amongst all those students in that auditorium, but the second his hands clutched the podium and he turned to face us, I felt as if the room melted away and it was nothing but the two of us alone in a very dark universe.

I clutched my coffee, dimly aware that I was crushing it, but strangely unable to move. The class had come fully alive at his presence, as if they’d suddenly been given a wonderful treat. I could hear them buzzing at the edge of my hearing, like the soothing drone of insects on a pleasant summer afternoon. Only it wasn’t a pleasant summer afternoon. It was an awful gray morning and I should be drowsing peacefully through a power point lecture on ancient Egyptian tomb relics or cave paintings in France. Instead, Dr. Christian pinned me with his awful blue eyes until I had to remind myself to breathe.

“I am sorry to bring you all very sad news,” he announced. “Mrs. Kenner has been the victim of a very serious incident.” My classmates, especially the female ones, responded with an appropriate amount of rapt sympathy. Amberlyn was strangely quiet beside me, her origami flower forgotten. I could only stare at the impossibly attractive professor with growing horror. “She was brutally attacked in her home last evening. Whoever did it has not been caught and is presumably still a danger.”

Brutally attacked? In Whitfield? The only crime we ever had was the occasional act of petty vandalism. His words seemed even less plausible than the presence of angels and demons and tattooed Nephilim descendents. Blood roared in my ears. I fought the urge to bolt for the safety of my warded apartment and Ethan’s arms.

A girl with brown hair secured into a messy ponytail hesitantly raised her hand. Dr. Christian nodded sharply down at her, giving her permission to speak. “Will she be all right, sir? Do you know?”

Dr. Christian managed to look both grave and dismissive at the same time. “I do not, Tabitha, but your concern is touching.” Messy-haired Tabitha turned bright tomato red at this praise and ducked her head in her hands. Those sitting near her clutched at her arm, either in support, or to absorb some of Dr. Christian’s magnetic attention by osmosis.

I felt sick. I thought I had escaped this last semester. Not only was he back, but his charm seemed stronger than ever. Why was I immune to it? Why wasn’t everyone else as horrified by the news he brought as I was? I realized my fingers had curled around the edges of my desk. Maybe Dr. Christian was just filling in temporarily. Oh, please, I silently begged the universe.

My hopes and my stomach plummeted when he announced, “I will be filling in for Mrs. Kenner until she recovers.” Dr. Christian smiled, slow and brittle. “I am afraid that means I may be with you all semester.”

The buzz of approval swelled around me. What was wrong with these people? Mrs. Kenner was a sweet old lady who’d been with the school for ages. And Dr. Christian was… if not evil, then at least wrong on many levels.

“So generous of him,” I heard a girl whisper.

“Far beneath him, to take a class on this level,” another added.

What the hell? A surge of hot anger shot through me as my shallow, traitorous classmates whispered excitedly around me. Excited, because Mrs. Kenner was so badly hurt she wouldn’t be with us for the rest of the semester.

I felt myself standing without any conscious intention of doing so. My classmates noticed me, and one by one the noise began to subside. Dr. Christian waited until everyone was silent before singling me out. “Miss Chastain? You have something to say?”

“Um, yes actually.” Was that hostility I saw in my classmate’s eyes, or was I just being paranoid? I dragged my gaze back to Dr. Christian’s plastic perfection. “What about Mrs. Kenner, sir? Do you know anything more about her condition?” The silence was somehow more deafening than all the noise had been. I angled my body and pitched my voice so it would carry across the darkened auditorium, appealing directly to the students now. “Isn’t there anything we can do?” I was about to suggest we take up a collection for her family, or send flowers or something, but his flashing blue eyes stopped my thoughts right in their tracks. Eyes so blue could not be natural; concepts like ocean and sky slid right off them like oil on Teflon. I thought, instead, of jungle predators in the dark, just before they consumed their prey. My breathing was labored and slow. I couldn’t remember what I had been about to say.

“Miss Chastain is an idealist.” His voice was at once loud enough to carry across the entire auditorium and soft enough to feel like an intimate whisper right beside my ear. “She sees injustice, and wants to act against it. Admirable.” The class tittered. “Mrs. Kenner was an unfortunate victim, attacked by dark and terrible forces against which she had no defense. It’s a sad fact that most individuals have little or no defense, should those same dark and terrible forces,” he strode to the very edge of the podium, “choose to strike at them. Do you understand, Miss Chastain?”

What the hell? I staggered back, hitting the edge of my desk with my thighs. All I meant was that we should send her a fruit basket or something. He was treating me like I’d suggested a vigilante mob start stringing up random citizens. I tried again to make myself understood. “That may be true,” I heard myself say. “But surely we can do something. Mrs. Kenner has been a teacher here for years and years. She is one of us.” An instinct I didn’t analyze made me put a slight but distinct emphasis on the last three words. One of us. Dr. Christian’s finely arched eyebrows shot up. “Or else…”

“Or else what?” he echoed softly, almost mockingly. “It is comforting to think we can somehow protect the ones we love from all harm, Miss Chastain, but it is naïve. A child’s comfort.” The class shrunk to waves of noise around me, rising and receding like ripples in a smooth pond, pelted with stones.

My throat had gone as dry as sandpaper. Did no one else find this one-on-one conversation exceedingly strange? He smiled, his perfectly shaped mouth twisting suddenly into a single sharp slash before smoothing out again into full curving lines. He prowled along the edge of the podium, his movements almost liquid in their grace. “Miss Chastain, as much as I am enjoying your charming conversational powers, you are holding up my class.”

I realized abruptly that the entire class was watching our exchange. Roughly a hundred faces, ranging from curious to openly hostile, stared at me. I felt my face flame crimson. Most of them held a packet of papers impatiently; behind them, on the movie-theatre sized projection screen, Dr. Christian waited in front of a glowing screen.

Great. He was going to teach by PowerPoint, too. I had a feeling there would be absolutely nothing resembling “Organized Group Sleep” in his class, though.

A crew-cut young man wearing expensive hiking clothes that looked as if they had never seen a day of actual hiking nudged me roughly. He held out a stack of papers to me as if he’d rather touch a plague victim. I snatched them, glaring at Dr. Christian, and slid into my seat with as much dignity as I could manage.

He smiled back, soft and wild and perfectly beautiful. The afternoon of Logan’s accident tugged insistently at a corner of my memory. I badly wanted to get out of here. I needed to talk to people. I longed for Ethan or Logan, or even grumpy Mr. Markov and sharp Mrs. Alice. I wanted to feel the safety and support of my own personal circle of Light. But I felt light-headed and dizzy. Underneath my desk, my legs shook. I smoothed the packet of papers out across my desk. Most of all, I needed to calm down before I erupted into Shadows.

Amberlyn reached over and squeezed my hand. “Are you all right?” she asked. Dr. Christian had started his presentation. Not trusting my voice, I nodded. The words on the front of the packet ran together in a nonsensical blur. I leaned my forehead against the cool plastic surface of my desk, feeling as if I’d just run a marathon.

Something was badly wrong. A sweet old lady had been brutally attacked in Whitfield, where nothing ever happened. And now I had to sit through almost two hours of lecture about some dead culture given by my least favorite teacher in the universe.

Chapter Nine:

A Little Wild

I scrolled through the messages on my phone as I cut through the park. Work, work, Amberlyn; I stopped at Logan’s last message: “News. J. Roth’s. Important.” My thumbs hovered over the keys for just a minute while I thought about a reply. Did they know already? I thought of ways to pack the news of Mrs. Kenner’s assault, and Dr. Christian’s callous response, into text message form. I snapped my phone shut with a grunt that surprised me in its savagery. I’d wait.

Dark emotions swirled through me like the tide. I’d left Andreas at almost a run, ignoring my best friend’s offer of a ride and Ethan’s order to travel in pairs. I needed the exercise, needed to burn off some of my fury before pasting a pleasant smile onto my face and serving espresso to unwitting customers all night long. I took deep breaths, almost gulps, of fresh park air to try and clear my head. Fantastic creatures spat water from the triple-tiered fountain I loved so much. Before, I’d always thought the fountain was just a whimsical thing, meant to enchant the town children who tossed pennies into it and sometimes waded in it on very hot days.

Knowing what I now did about Whitfield and its secrets, I wondered if the gargoyles, wolf heads, mermaids, dragons, chimeras, and strange winged creatures had a deeper meaning. If so, was it a warning or welcome?

Just how much did I know about my town and its secrets, anyway?

“Get it! Get it!”

“No! It’s mine!”

Something hard, moving incredibly fast, struck me in the back of my right knee. It knocked me forward, scattering the contents of my knapsack, and would have planted me flat on my face had I not managed to get an arm out in time. “What the hell!” I yelled, rolling with the force of the blow so that I ended up on my rear end. Muddy fingers clutched a soccer ball inches from my face.

“Sorry,” a frizzy head of dark curls secured by a red bandana claimed, although I wasn’t quite sure I believed him. I squinted.

“Timothy? Timothy Eden?” I accused. His eyes widened slightly, as if being identified made punishment for his crimes that much more certain. A few other muddy pairs of hands and tennis shoes ringed him, whether in solidarity or as witness to his shame, I couldn’t tell. “I almost didn’t recognize you,” I said, jumping up in one quick motion. “You need a haircut.”

He blushed crimson. “Sorry I hit you, Miss Caspia,” he recited with an appropriate degree of contrition, completely ignoring my haircut comment.

“You knocked me down flat.” I looked pointedly at his soccer ball. “My books, too. Now the polite thing would be to pick them up for me and apologize.” He blushed again, while around him his friends muttered and poked each other. “But I was your age once too.” With one lunge, I snatched the soccer ball from him. “And I was wicked good at soccer.” I dropped the ball so that it rested under my booted foot. I grinned at a thoroughly confused Timothy, pleased to find my bad mood lifting. For that alone, I would have kissed him, but it would have earned him eternal torment from his peers. “If you keep landing kicks like that, you ought to think about going pro.” I shifted my weight backward and kicked as hard as I could, sending the ball flying. “Run, run, run like hell!” I yelled as I watched Timothy Eden and his friends race after their ball.

I wished for a time machine. I’d give just about anything to be nine years old for just one afternoon again. As I picked up my knapsack and tried to wipe the dirt off my palms, I felt about ten pounds lighter.

“What happened to you?” Logan asked when I hopped across the threshold of J. Roth, Bookseller.

“Lost a fight with a soccer ball,” I huffed, collapsing into the nearest chair. Ethan leaned against a sturdy mahogany table stacked high with books and papers. I grinned at him. I hadn’t been able to get the dirt off my palms and I could feel the blood pounding in my cheeks. He took the chair opposite mine, bringing the stack of newspapers he’d been holding.

He stared at me. The air between us felt charged, electric. My breathing was speeding up instead of slowing down. He stared at me with a blend of curiosity and hunger. My lips felt swollen. “You have leaves in your hair,” he said at last, removing the offending objects with shaking fingers. I bit my lip. It didn’t mean anything. His hands often trembled these days. “You look…”

“Messy?” I sighed, trying to smooth my hair.

“Wild,” he corrected. The papers spilled off his lap and onto the floor. Neither one of us made any move to pick them up.

Logan cleared his throat. Loudly.

“Right.” Ethan shook his head, the spell broken. He scanned the fallen papers and grabbed two of them. “We think we found two more. We’ve only gone back a month, and this is still sticking to the Southeast, but even so, it’s pretty disturbing.” He leaned into me, our shoulders touching, and laid the papers across our almost-touching knees. I stopped myself from taking his slightly trembling fingers in my own. Instead, I scanned the front page of the first paper.

The story was gut-wrenching. “Newlywed Missing; Feared Dead.” I read. Malinda Brooks, age twenty two, had turned up missing two weeks after marrying her childhood sweetheart in one of Nashville’s nicer suburbs. She had been six weeks pregnant at the time. I flipped to the next paper, dated only a few days later. “Husband Suspected of Murder,” the story proclaimed, and then went into a gruesome confessional tale in which the husband admitted, after days of interrogation, to years of abusing Malinda. Neighbors and church members admitted, after being questioned by the police, to “always suspecting something,” but no one had ever felt strongly enough to interfere. Malinda’s few so-called friends admitted to seeing bruises on the young woman, which she always explained away.

After a few minutes of reading, I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my temples. “This is horrifying. But it seems to be a case of spousal abuse and murder, not…” I sat up suddenly, looking around the store. “Not a case of Nephilim abduction,” I added in a whisper.

“Calla’s in the back, doing inventory,” Ethan said in a more normal voice. “It should be ok.”

Calla? So they were working together today, then? I told myself to quit being stupid and focus.

Logan produced a third paper. “David Brooks Convicted and Sentenced to Institution,” it said. Horror and sick cold fear marched up and down my spine as I read. Malinda’s body was never positively identified, but after days of questioning, David Brooks spewed out a fantastic tale. “ ‘Malinda wasn’t human,’ Brooks told police. ‘She could do things. Crazy things. I’ve seen her heal the sick. People so sick they were almost dead. It got worse after we were married. There was a darkness to her that I couldn’t cleanse, no matter how much discipline I used.’” Logan read softly. I clutched Ethan’s hand convulsively at the word ‘discipline.’ There was a roaring sound low in my ears as Logan read on. “Brooks never confessed directly to his wife’s murder, but he did admit to handing her over to what he described as an ‘angelic being’ who claimed he would cleanse her of evil. When questioned further about his wife’s whereabouts, Brooks stated, ‘I am sure she is in Hell, where she and her kind belong.’ Brooks has been sentenced to life without parole.”

The paper was nothing but shredded ribbons between my fingers, blooming into a soggy mockery of warm melted newsprint as sounds of grief and outrage battled for dominance in the back of my throat. I was choking; I was drowning. What kind of world did we live in, I wanted to howl, where children were stolen in their nightgowns and pregnant women were beaten for the blood in their veins? But what came out was a kind of strangled gasping. My body hadn’t decided if it wanted to cry or scream, so it was trying to do both.

I felt fingers in my hair, delicate but decisive, travel down to push my head between my knees. “Water,” I heard, as if from very far away, and still the fingers were there, soothing me. There wasn’t time for soothing, not with nightmares stealing those of us with gifted blood.

Like me. Like Logan, though he didn’t know it yet.

The fingers lifted my chin, held water to my lips, and I looked into the huge blue eyes of Calla Roth. Calla, pretty pink-haired Calla who was utterly human and had never been hunted by demons. “I’m so sorry,” she said, screwing the cap back on the water bottle. She seemed sincere. I gaped at her. How did she know? Had Ethan told her after all? She leaned back on her heels. “Mrs. Kenner is such a sweet teacher. She really cares about her students. I can’t believe what happened to her. I was so upset when I heard, Caspia.” She enveloped me in a hug I was too stunned to shake off. She even smelled like her name. Lilies.

“Mrs. Kenner?” Logan repeated, his shock plain.

“You haven’t heard?” Calla asked. “She was attacked last night. She was hurt pretty badly. It happened when she was at home, too.” Her soft voice couldn’t mask her agitation.

“In Whitfield?” Logan said. “Mrs. Kenner was attacked in Whitfield?”

In Calla’s floral embrace, I remembered where I was and what I was doing. I gave her a half-hearted squeeze. “I forgot you went to Andreas too,” I sniffled. I scrubbed at my face when she leaned back. “Have you heard anything?”

“She’s stable,” Calla said, rising with the smooth grace of a dancer. Which was exactly what she was, I remembered as I noted the long lean lines of her tights-encased legs. Performing arts; ballet. I fought down an irrational surge of jealousy as she stood in front of Ethan in a short denim skirt, her long pink hair perfect even though I’d just sobbed all over her. “A couple of us were going to go see her later. After dinner, a little before visiting hours are over, if you want to come.”

“I have to work,” I said regretfully. “Please tell her I… I…” I looked helplessly at all three of them. What did you say to a person who’d been assaulted in their own home, their job taken over by the evilest possible professor in town?

Calla smiled. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.” She gave both boys a graceful little smile and slipped from the room.

“I don’t believe it,” Logan said, and then collapsed into an empty chair. “That’s… that’s just crazy.”

“I know,” I agreed morosely. “I was going to mention it, but then there was this.” I thumped the papers that mentioned poor Malinda Brooks. “It’s like the whole world’s gone crazy.”

“There’s more,” Ethan said slowly. “Just this one. It’s not much, but I think it’s related.”

“I don’t know if I can,” I said hoarsely. I pulled my knees to my chest and sank back in the sturdy leather chair. “This is turning out to be a really bad day.” I leaned into my crossed arms.

“We have to,” Logan interrupted. That faint red ring was back in eyes. I wondered if Ethan noticed. “If not us, then who? We may be the only chance these people have, the only ones with any clue that something’s going on.”

“Yeah, but what?” I snapped, grabbing the final paper from Ethan. “What the hell are we supposed to do about it?”

I wish I’d kept my mouth shut, because no one answered me. No one could answer me. I scanned the paper. A single grainy photo was sandwiched in between stories about robberies and homicides in one of the inner pages of the Birmingham News: “Popular Club Experiences Mass Hallucinations.” Logan met my shocked stare. “This happened at…”

“The Nick. I know.”

“Whoa,” I breathed, and went back to reading. “We’ve been here,” I murmured to Ethan. “A couple of times. But… Holy crap.” I read the story, what little there was of it, as intently as if I was studying for the bar exam. “It was at the Dexateen’s last show, so it had to be crowded. But only the people near the back had these so-called hallucinations. They claim to have seen black winged figures fighting a single guy… who had knives, which didn’t do any good, duh… but then…” The newspaper fluttered into my lap as I sat back, stunned and speechless against a growing cold crawling up my spine.

“Wow,” Logan said, leaning against the wall. “I can’t believe the Dexateens broke up.”

I smacked my forehead against my knees. “I can’t believe we share genetic code.”

Ethan kept reading. “ ‘The most acute part of the hallucinations included lines of darkness wrapping around the fighting creatures. The hallucinations vanished into ‘a door of darkness’ within a matter of minutes. Although some club guests tested positive for common street drugs and some refused testing altogether, the source of the hallucinogen has yet to be identified.’”

I studied the grainy sketch more closely. “They only have his first name,” I read. “Jack. They think.” Bare-chested, maybe he’d lost his shirt in the fight. Maybe he liked to show off his ink. A guy like that was definitely trouble, even if… and then I remembered. “Oh no,” I breathed, as Ethan leaned in close. “I think…” I froze.

“What?” Ethan sounded really worried now.

“I think I’ve seen him before,” I quietly wailed, rubbing my temples with the palms of my hands. “I think I dreamed him.”

“You only draw things that happen. You don’t dream them. Do you?” Doubt pushed Logan’s words up half an octave.

“No,” I groaned. “I don’t. At least, I didn’t. This is something different.”

“Cas,” Logan said, my nickname as taut as stretched canvas. “Now would be a good time to try and talk some sense, hon.”

“I’m not sure if I can,” I said, so frustrated I was almost in tears. “I’m not even sure if that’s him. He never told me his name. But in the dreams he never wears a shirt, and he has a lot of tattoos.” Ethan kept his expression carefully blank. Logan’s eyebrows went up before he wrestled them down again. My own face was on fire. “I’m pretty sure he’s a Nephilim descendent, like me. He says his gift is Dreamwalking. And Shadows.”

Ethan inhaled sharply. Then, the question I’d been dreading: “Why didn’t you tell me immediately?”

“Because I wasn’t sure.” My chin shot up defiantly. “I don’t know, Ethan. Besides my Gran, I’m the only gifted blood I’ve ever met. I don’t know anything about Dreamwalking. At first, I thought it was just some fever dream. But the second time, he was hurt. Whoever he is, he needs help.” I stared at the newspaper. “They all do.”

Ethan paced to the window. “Did this Jack say where he was being kept? Because the others are probably there too.”

“The first time I dreamed him, I think I went there by mistake. It made him furious. The sky was always twilight, but in a dizzy kind of way. Everything else was gray and dead.” He kept his back to me, and as I spoke, it stiffened. “He called it the Twilight Kingdom, and said he wouldn’t take me there in a million years.”

“You’re sure he said that? The Twilight Kingdom?”

“Pretty sure. It made sense, because of the sky. Why? Do you know it?’

“Some of us… of them, I mean, the Fallen… liked to make little kingdoms for ourselves. In the Dark Realms.” He sounded very far away. “That might be one of them.”

“Ethan, you’re scaring me,” I warned him.

He spun around. “Will you stay at your work until I come for you? It’s well warded. Mr. Markov has seen to that. I just need to know you’ll stay where it’s safe while I check on some things.”

The demon that had been hunting me was never captured. Nephilim descendents with gifted blood were disappearing from nearby cities. One of them was starring in my dreams. He’d kept my blood from boiling over somewhere in the neighborhood of Hell. My insane guardian kidnapper claimed war was coming to Whitfield and that my forbidden powers had already incurred Heaven’s wrath. Oh, and a really sweet old lady had been attacked in a place where nothing ever happened and replaced with my arch-nemesis. If I were a horror-movie heroine, I’d be screaming at myself to pack a bag and leave town as fast as I could.

“Fine,” I sighed. “Just don’t let anything happen to you.” I included Logan in my glare. “You either.”

“I don’t have any special abilities,” Ethan countered. “Unless being the most mortal person in Whitfield counts.”

“You know, in a way, that does kind of make you stand out,” I admitted. Logan snickered at him from across the room.

Chapter Ten:

The Summer People

“Grande moccachino, two grande caramel lattes, and a regular skim cappuccino with a single shot lemon twist,” Amelie fired off, her charcoal-lined eyelids scanning the order screen rapidly. A steel prep counter separated the kitchen from the front. She tapped her garnet fingernails against the steel and leaned towards me like a big cat about to pounce on something cute but delicious. “A favor please, Caspia. Think very bad thoughts when you make that last one.” She cast a swift icy glare over her shoulder at one of the unfortunate customers. “Think of those sad animal commercials. The ones with the depressing music, and the little kittens with no homes?” Her perfect red lips curled into a wicked smile. “For me, please?”

Lining up espresso shots with one hand and frothing milk with the other was so second nature I could do it in my sleep. I had half the order prepped already before she even brought up sad animals and shelters. “Uh, Amelie?” I called, grabbing the caramel syrup before she could turn away. “I think I can handle things from here if you want to head out early.” I gave her my most energetic smile. “Seriously. You’ve had the counter all night, and it’s finally slowing down. I can handle it.”

“You are a terrible liar, Caspia Chastain,” she pouted, twirling her snow blond hair between her fingers.

I made the last drink and resolutely did not think of animal shelters. “Oh, Amelie. Whoever he is, he’s not worth it. And ‘Coffee Goddess’ is just a courtesy title. Even I don’t have the power to imbue drinks with imaginary kitten tears.”

Her slim shoulders drooped beneath her silk sapphire hoodie. She dropped her apron on the prep counter and gave me a wan smile. “You’re right. I’m just so tired lately.” She rubbed her arms as if she stood in her own personal tundra instead of a warm coffee shop. “Everyone is. Have you noticed? It’s as if the air is extra heavy, or something.” As if she realized she’s said something strange, Amelie gave me a rare, wintry smile. “Never mind. I’m going to head out, if you’re certain you’ve got it.” She nodded at Erik, who sat in his usual corner with his guitar, and ducked into Markov’s office to get her things.

I thought about what she said as I finished serving customers. I’d been so wrapped up in my own little life that I hadn’t really noticed the atmosphere around me. Mrs. Kenner’s attack had been the first sign of anything unusual. As horrible as the attack had been, it was easy to write it off as an isolated incident. Nothing else had happened in Whitfield. Right? Agitated, I grabbed a lighter and went to check the tea lights along the windowsill.

It was full night now. I could see through the window to the park. The tea lights reflected dim images of the coffee shop’s interior against the glass so that I stared into a strangely double-layered world. The square was brightly lit as always, dotted with luminous trees and the colorful fountain. The night businesses were every bit as busy as their daytime counterparts. But did people seem a little more hurried than usual?  No one just stood and talked, or strolled through the park.

I watched through the glass as the last of our customers got up to leave. Business had been brisk but no one really lingered. The Coffee Shop was usually pretty full of people who’d come for the music, to meet up, or just read books. But tonight everyone seemed to be all business; they drank their coffee and left. It was so easy to focus on bad things happening elsewhere, in bigger cities like Atlanta and Nashville. Had I been ignoring more subtle signs right under my own nose?

“You missed a couple,” Erik said right in my ear. I jumped.

“Don’t do that!” My heart raced. I shoved my hands in my pockets as soon as I felt them tingle. “Seriously. You have no idea.”

“Wow,” he said, vaulting up to sit on the counter. “Logan must have really tortured you as a child. You’re jumpy.”

“Something like that,” I exhaled, my fists still clenched. “Want a drink?” I darted around him and pulled a Coke from the deepest depths of the refrigerator, hoping the cold would have some effect on my prickling hands.

“Sure,” he said, sounding contrite. I took longer than I had to, trying to calm myself down. When I emerged, he had made his way down the entire length of tea lights for me, relighting the few that had sputtered out. “Markov really loves his candles.”

“Mrs. Alice does too. They’re pretty though.”

“I guess.” He dropped into my boss’s usual chair by the unlit fireplace. “Sorry I scared you. Really.”

I shrugged, cradling my Coke. “It’s not your fault I’m jumpy. It’s in the air, I guess.”

He scanned the empty room. “Yeah, I noticed. It’s like this everywhere, the whole town. Like a storm’s about to break, or something.”

Guilt pricked me. I hadn’t noticed. I’d been wrapped up in my own drama, or reading about other cities. Which reminded me. As a musician, Erik was one of the few residents who left town on a regular basis. For whatever reason, the rest of us tended to stick pretty close to home. I wondered if he’d noticed anything unusual while traveling. “Hey Erik.” I tried to strike a balance between interested, but not too interested. “Who are you playing with these days? Anybody outside of Whitfield?”

If I’d been trying to play it casual, I failed. I’d suddenly drawn his attention like a bird of prey, and I had no idea why. He leaned in so close I could see each individual worry line on his forehead. “Actually, yeah, I am. And not because I want to, exactly. I’ve been filling in for a buddy of mine who can’t…” Erik stopped abruptly. A gold Zippo appeared in his hand, dancing between his fingers as he played with the flame.

Erik was my brother’s age. To us younger kids, he’d always seemed just a little tougher, carried just a little more cool, than the average Whitfielder. As he rolled open flame across guitar-callused fingers, there was no way I was going to tell him to stop playing with fire. He watched me, assessing. “You have really unusual eyes,” he said at last.

“Points for being observant,” I shot back, unsure of how else to respond.

He snorted and leaned in even closer, pitching his voice low. “So my friend’s band. I’ve played with them before, right? And they’re good. Been together for like, ten years or something. Just released their fifth album.” The Zippo danced faster. “It’s supposed to be the one, you know? And it’s selling, getting air time. They’ve worked really hard for this. Everything’s falling into place. Before they go on tour, my friend decides to marry…” Erik stopped again. I watched him struggle for breath, then speech. He slammed the golden metal down between us, its fire gone, but his eyes carried the vanished flame now. “Tell me why my best friend would leave his girlfriend of twelve years, the mother of his child, on their wedding night two weeks before touring with his best selling album ever?”

“Oh, Erik,” I breathed. “I’m so sorry. Do they… I mean, have they found…” I snapped my mouth abruptly shut. What was I supposed to say? Have they found his body, Erik? Or maybe he just ran off with a stripper instead? We stared at each other across Mr. Markov’s favorite heavy wooden table, its surface scarred from countless chess battles and years of customers.

“David would never leave Beth. Not ever, but especially not on their wedding night.” He spit the words out like they were the worst obscenity he knew, like someone suggested he kill his own mother. “And he wouldn’t ditch his band. Not now.”

He wouldn’t ditch me, Erik didn’t add, but it hung in the air between us nonetheless.

His eyes were a reflection of how much he was burning inside, and I felt the quicksilver stirring in mine. Finally, I buried my face in my hands. “When did the whole world go insane?” I murmured.

“I don’t know, but he’s not the only musician who’s disappeared. A couple of us have gone missing over the last few months. It’s got everybody spooked.”

Cold knifed its way up my spine. Could they be related? “Why hasn’t this made the news?”

Erik kicked back in Markov’s chair, balancing it on two legs. “Not high profile enough. It’s like they’re careful with who they target. Super talented people, but not famous enough to draw attention. It’s really twisted. If that’s even what’s going on. Who knows, really.” He pocketed the lighter in his threadbare Levis and gave me a worn smile. “You’re a good listener, weird-eyes.”

“Cute. I don’t have enough nicknames in my life, you know. Don’t forget I make your coffee.”

“Yeah. Listen. Since it’s so dead, I think I’m gonna take off. You ok here?”

I nodded. “I’m not worried about me. You take care of you.”

As I sat watching him pack his gear, I knew I should have called someone to come sit with me. Ethan, Logan, Amberlyn; even Mr. Markov would be happy to come keep me company, and I’d promised Ethan I wouldn’t be alone. But I also knew The Coffee Shop had some of the best wards in Whitfield and that closing time was in little over half an hour. I could see the tea lights glowing in the windowsill, and I realized I hadn’t really had a half hour to myself all day. It would be nice to just sit and let my thoughts wander. The air was so fragrant and warm here. Relaxing. Somnolent.

I don’t know exactly how much time passed before I realized I held the pencil I took orders with in one hand. I’d been drawing on the back of a paper menu for as long as it took Erik to pack his gear and tidy up his corner. That meant I’d been drawing for fifteen minutes? Ten? Oh no. My automatic instinct to hide my ability at all cost kicked in and I flipped the menu face up. I didn’t look at it; I didn’t want to. My heart dropped when I realized Erik was standing as still as the statues in the fountain behind my shoulder.

“Caspia,” he said, his voice shaky and strained. “What are you doing?”

“Um,” I squeaked. “Looking at the menu?”

“Before that.”

Crap! “Oh, it’s just this project. For school. You know I go to Andreas, right?”

Without another word, Erik reached out and flipped the menu price side down. “Can you explain why my best friend who disappeared, and whom you’ve never seen, is in this picture? And why I appear to be breaking him out of some kind of prison?” I stared at my drawing with him, as stunned as he was. Steps; long, winding steps that were carved into someplace underground; there was Erik, looking rough, separated from a stranger I’d drawn in great detail by bars made of stone… or was it ice? The shading was odd, too. Woven into patches of penciled shadow were faint figures, different scenes. I squinted, but it was hard to make them out. Maybe they made sense to Erik. He jabbed the menu drawing with an accusatory finger. “What the hell is Amelie doing there? And her brother?”

Sure enough, my ice princess co-worker stood at the top of the stairs with a lantern, wearing a cloak that looked like a reject from a Renaissance Faire. Nicolas stood at her right elbow, holding a sword. Nic… with a sword? My mouth opened and shut like a doomed fish. Explanations presented themselves, each crazier than the last, until I realized there was no way I could explain drawing his friend, a person I’d never seen. Besides, what if it was somehow actually important to him?

“I got nothing,” I said at last, collapsing back in my chair. He stared at me like he didn’t know whether to call the mental ward or the police. I hauled myself up out of my chair and willed him to believe me. “It comes with the weird eyes, ok? That’s all I can say.” I handed him the menu. “Take it. The last couple of my drawings have disappeared, and it might be important to you. So please. Take it. Just don’t tell anyone, ok?”

After a very long moment in which I dared not look at him, the drawing slid from my fingers. Strong hands slid under my forearms, supporting me. “Ok,” Erik said simply. I expected fear or suspicion, but saw only acceptance and concern on his plain, honest face. That was it? Ok? He wasn’t going to demand another explanation, or tell me I was crazy?

Suddenly, along the windowsill beside us, every single tea light in its votive holder flared roughly six inches high and sizzled out. Mrs. Alice and Mr. Markov both lined their windows with the same tea lights. They were both obsessive about keeping them lit as soon as darkness fell. The back of my neck prickled with cold and Shadows as I realized they must be some kind of magical defense.

The fact that they’d just failed, spectacularly and simultaneously, couldn’t be good.

The door flew open behind us in a whirlwind of warmth, laughter, and perfume. A small crowd poured across the threshold. They were the most beautiful beings I had ever seen. Dressed for high summer although the air carried a distinct chill, they moved as if nothing so base as the weather could touch them. Their skin was just a little too pale to be called true gold, but they glowed as if they had just walked off a beach. Everything from flowers to gemstones decorated the sun-streaked hair that framed faces on the cutting side of breathtaking.

I couldn’t count how many there were. I was too blinded by their brilliance to look past the ones in front. Erik hadn’t let go of me; the two of us stood frozen, transfixed by the remarkable creatures who stood in The Whitfield Coffee Shop. The one in the very front, a male, snapped his head back as if scenting the air.

“Our dearest cousins are not here,” he purred to the female beside him. “How disappointing.” His eyes, when they fixed on me, were green and slitted horizontally like a cat’s. My brain felt foggy and slow. Caught by his terrifying beauty, I thought of words like sharp and cut along with please and beautiful. I had never wanted to please anything or anybody more than I did this creature in front of me. I would have done anything he asked of me. Anything at all.

“No matter,” the female said, equally mesmerizing. “Our arrival shall surely bring one, or both, of them. If not, Saran can track them.” The cat-eyed male stood slightly behind her while the rest of them fanned out behind them with military precision. My brain grasped dimly for numbers, trying to count them, to take some notice of these beautiful dangerous creatures that didn’t belong here. Six? Eight? But every time I tried to focus on any but the two in front, the two who seemed to be in charge, my attention slid off them like Teflon and came back to the green eyed male or the female directly in front with hair like coiled gold.

She stepped gracefully closer as if dancing across a floor covered with shattered glass. “Are you Erik?” Her smile to him was a fractured jewel, brilliant and cutting. She wore nothing but a sheer, strapless sundress that skimmed the tops of her tanned thighs. Her feet were as bare as her legs; a heavy gold rope, studded with clear blue stones, cuffed her right ankle. “I’ve wanted you to play for me since I heard you at the Crossroads.” She took another step towards him. The rest of her creatures shadowed her. She studied the way he held me, supporting me. For just a moment, speculative cruelty replaced her lush summer beauty. Then she smiled again. “Play for us, Erik,” she commanded. “Let go of the girl and play for us. It seems my cousin has tried to keep you from me, and I do not share well.”

Chapter Eleven:

Such Creatures

Yes, I thought. Yes, anything. I desperately wanted to bring these radiant beings happiness. Erik’s calloused hands no longer gently supported my forearms. Instead, he gripped me wildly, as if I was an anchor in an unexpected storm. I pulled restlessly against his hold on me. Why wasn’t he doing as the lovely summer lady asked? How could he deny her? “Erik, please. Let me go and play for them.” Ultimately, he was powerless to do otherwise. His music swelled and soared in the familiar space, but in the presence of these radiant beings, it became something new. Something better. His lone husky tenor became a whole choir of voices. His single battered guitar sounded like many instruments at once.

The beautiful man with green cat eyes took me in the circle of his arms and we were dancing. They were all dancing to Erik’s music. I wanted so badly for them to be happy. I ached with wanting it, and told the cat-eyed man so. He laughed and his teeth seemed sharper than normal. “What are you?” I asked as one of his hands settled against the bare skin of my hip. Another cupped my neck. I was barefoot, the familiar wooden floor of my workplace somehow covered with soft white sand.

The world I knew, of work and coffee shops and small towns faded into something radiant. Brilliant colors danced and tugged at the edges of my vision: the full spectrum of sunsets and oceans and deepest night skies. But when I chased them, when I turned from the piercing gaze of the cat-eyed man, these spectral colors moved again, staying forever at the edge of my vision.

I realized I was dressed too warmly for summer. I began to unbutton things.

“We’re looking for our lost cousin.” The cat-eyed man’s low voice soothed me. I could almost hear the wind and waves crashing as he spoke. “A… friend, of sorts… told us she was here.” He pulled me closer, his breath hot against my cheek. “In exchange for bringing you to him,” he whispered. This was important information; there was enough of me left to know this as he caressed my cheek with his closed fist. But I didn’t care. I wanted to take off my shirt. It was too hot, too heavy. His hands skimmed my sides and it was gone. I stood in the circle of his arms in nothing but a tank top and jeans.

“My sister likes your friend. Our kind does not have the power to create beautiful things like music and art and stories, so we collect those who do. She has a weakness for musicians. Tell me, silver eyes, what do I sense in you? What would you add to our halls, should I wish to collect you instead of delivering you to my friend?”

The air around us seemed to shimmer with heat. I felt my hair tumble free of its restraining clip. My blood was warm and scents of overripe fruits and flowers lingered just at the edge of my senses. “Art,” I murmured as more and more of my sense of self slipped away. “I’m an artist.”

“So you would come with me then, and paint for me in my far kingdom.” I could only nod, struggling for breath in the ever-thickening air. He brought my face close to his until all I could see were his green cat eyes. “Your name,” he prompted, my skin almost burning against his. “Give me your name, your true name, and no one can ever separate us.”

“My name?” The air in the circle of his arms was so thick I almost had to swallow it. “I’m Caspia,” I told him, embarrassed I hadn’t introduced myself sooner. But my answer wasn’t enough.

“Tell me all of it,” he demanded, his hands on me suddenly rough, nails digging into the skin of my hips. “Your full, true name. What is it?”

“Don’t,” said a new voice, low and furious. I knew this voice, the one that pierced the circle of heavy summer air. “Don’t tell him.” A familiar hand gripped mine tightly, pulling, trying to free me from the green-eyed man’s encircling arms. “Come back to me.”

“Ethan,” I murmured. His hand felt like ice-cold water. I suddenly realized how tired I was, as if I‘d been dancing for hours and hours. My skin hurt where the cat-eyed man dug his nails into me. But I wanted to stay and dance and forget. “I’m glad you’re here. You can come to the summer kingdom with us.”

“I don’t think so,” Ethan said quietly. He wouldn’t let go of my hand. “These are very dangerous creatures, Cas. Why don’t you come with me instead?”

“She doesn’t want to,” purred the cat-eyed man. “Do you, silver-eyes?”

“I don’t know,” I said, confused. “Why do I have to choose? Maybe we can both come with you.”

“Can you do something for me, Cas?” Ethan asked, our hands still firmly linked. I frowned at him. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the dancing? There were lots of summer girls to choose from. And he was wearing way too many clothes. “Can you show your new friend just how special you really are? Since he likes your silver eyes so much, can you show him what else you can do?” He squeezed my hand gently. “You want him to know how special you are, don’t you?”

Cat-eyes watched me carefully.

“If you’re sure,” I said doubtfully.

“Oh, I’m absolutely sure,” Ethan said.

I leaned into the summer man as if closing in for a kiss. “Watch this,” I told him, smiling brilliantly. I really wanted to impress him, so I dug deep for the darkest Shadows I could find. Thick lines of deepest black poured from my palm and down my arm in a double, then triple, helix formation. The edges sizzled like dark electricity in rain. “Neat, huh?”

The creature that held me hissed and shoved me. I caught a glimpse of shiny sharp teeth and fingers with extra joints and claws. I was falling backward into empty, brilliantly colored space. The beautiful summer man who’d been holding me swiped at Ethan, who held my hand so tightly it hurt. Before I hit bottom, Ethan pulled me up and behind him. The cat-eyed man growled like far off summer thunder, but made no move to reclaim me.

“I guess he didn’t like my trick,” I whispered. I felt drained, but still dazzled by the beautiful creatures in the room. “Don’t you want to go to them?” I asked, smiling at my former dance partner over Ethan’s shoulder. “How can you not? They’re so beautiful.”

“I don’t think they’re beautiful,” he said stiffly. “You wouldn’t either, if you could see through their glamour.” Cat-eyes looked interested when Ethan said that.

“Glamour?” I leaned against Ethan’s shoulder since he seemed determined not to let me have any fun. “What do you mean?” I nuzzled his neck. “Dance barefoot with me in the sand. I promise you’ll enjoy it.” My fingers worked their way underneath his t-shirt, but he caught my hands and held them tightly. Now I was totally trapped. I pouted.  The green-eyed man smirked. “Erik’s still playing, and there’s dancing. One of the summer girls would dance with you, Ethan. They’re all so beautiful.”

He spun so that we faced each other. I don’t remember the last time I’d seen him so angry. “Will you listen to yourself?” he hissed. “I don’t want to dance with a summer girl.” His blue green eyes snapped fire. “You still feel it,” he said at last, studying me. “You’re drunk with it.” As I laughed and pulled against his hold on me, he sighed heavily. “Dance with me, then, if you must dance. Until this madness passes.”

He locked his arms around my waist and pulled me tight. I rested my head against him until the sound of his heartbeat was at least as loud as the music. I wondered briefly how tired Erik must be. If dancing exhausted me, how would Erik feel after all that playing? “Ethan, tell me why you don’t feel glamour when Erik and I do.”

After a moment he cupped my head against his chest. I was surprised to find my shirt back on. “It’s complicated.”

“We really don’t need all these clothes.”

“Markov, hurry up please,” he growled. “Will you listen? I’m not as clumsy as we think I am, and adjusting to being human isn’t the reason I’m having so much difficulty with things like balance and coordination.”

The atmosphere around me still felt heavy and lazy and sensual. My fingers traced circles along Ethan’s bare back. Either he enjoyed it, or he couldn’t keep me trapped and fend me off at the same time. “Mmm. Really?” I said, because I thought I was supposed to. In reality, I was much more interested in the different textures of Ethan’s skin, in the low pleasant voices of the summer people, in Erik’s steady strumming.

“Caspia,” he snapped as I skimmed his side. I felt his muscles bunch under my fingers. Was he ticklish? Interesting. I’d have to file that away for later. “We think I can see through glamour and other kinds of magic. That’s why I’m so unbalanced and distracted all the time. Whitfield is full of the supernatural. It’s information overload. My brain has been trying to reconcile the impossible with the possible. We think magic doesn’t affect me like it does other people. In fact, we think it may not affect me at all.” He took a deep, shaky breath. “Caspia, do you understand? I’m saying that when I was changed, they made some kind of mistake. I’m really human. So very human that I have an immunity to magic. Maybe it was on purpose, or maybe it was a mistake, I don’t know. Do you realize what this means?”

“You’re saying that magic doesn’t affect you? Not even the appearance of it?” He nodded. The magnitude of what he was saying penetrated my glamour-addled brain. “Ethan, you realize that in Whitfield, that makes you incredibly unique. And dangerous.” He didn’t answer. His arms were tight around me.

The front door crashed open. Mr. Markov stood holding his cane, Mrs. Alice’s niece Cassandra and my co-worker Nicolas right behind him. His sightless eyes flicked rapidly over every single inhabitant of his shop. In one fluid motion the tea lights along the sill sprang back to life. As soon as they were lit, the oppressive heat and summer ambiance began to ebb. Erik hit a few false notes on his guitar. “Who has broken my wards?” Markov asked, as mildly as if he was inviting a customer to play chess.

Mr. Markov never, ever lost at chess.

The summer lady stepped forward. “We’ve come seeking our cousin.” At her gesture, the music stopped. Her entourage once again took up their places behind her. With a flash of his sharp teeth, my green-eyed dance partner went to join her. Despite myself, I strained after him, but Ethan tightened his hold. “Our father grows anxious to have her with him again. We’ve come to bring her home.”

“We’re never going back there,” Nicolas said. “That hasn’t changed.” In jeans and a green hoodie, he looked like the same co-worker I saw almost every day. But when he came to stand within feet of the barefoot, blue-eyed woman, I could see the resemblance. He looked like a cooler, calmer version of the invaders. Winter to their summer, his ice-blond hair shone under the lights. His bearing became almost military in its formality, and for the first time I noticed he wore a slim silver sword against the denim of his hip. Nic, with a sword? I remembered the drawing I’d given Erik.

“Nic?” I heard myself say, but he ignored me.

“Where is our fair cousin?” the cat-eyed man asked. “Surely she should be allowed to decide for herself.”

“As if I would allow you within a half mile of my twin,” Nicolas said. His voice was deceptively soft.

“Enough!” Mr. Markov roared. “They are both under my protection.”

“It’s a simple family visit,” the summer lady purred, dragging her nails lightly across Nic’s chest.  “Nothing more.”

“Nothing is ever simple in this family,” Nicolas snapped.

She smiled, a quick twist of cruelty. “Cousin. Is it too difficult to believe we come bearing our father’s love?”

For just a second, I saw it. The mask slipped and a stranger stood before me. This Nicolas had ice-pale cat-eyes and sharp, bared teeth. His words were frost-rimed steel: “He will never touch her again.” His muscles eased forward until he looked like Abigail before she pounced. “You have until sunrise.” He touched the sword. “Then I’ll come for your blood.”

Markov nodded to Ethan. In seconds, I was moving towards the door. Ethan pushed me past my employer, past a stone-faced Cassandra, who gave me the barest nod, and out into the street. The cold night air flooding my lungs was the sweetest thing I’d ever breathed. More people stood in small groups near the Coffee Shop’s door. Dressed in dark clothes with their backs to me, I didn’t recognize them. Ethan rushed me right past them.

“Wait… Ethan. What’s going on? Who are all those people?”

He didn’t say anything until we were climbing the stairs to my apartment. Even then, his tone was heavy and clipped. “I imagine they’re Markov’s people. To help with clean-up.”

“You mean… witches?”

He nodded at me, very slightly, as he let us in the apartment. He kept holding on to me all the way into the front room. We stood by the window, moonlight our only illumination, until I realized the apartment was completely empty. Logan had the night out with Amberlyn. “How do you feel now?” he asked, the words laced with unvoiced fears.

“Besides embarrassed?” I asked. I leaned into his shoulder. “I have no idea. What the hell was that? I’ve never felt like that before. I would have… my God. I would have done anything he wanted. Gone away with him. I almost did.” His hand on my forearm squeezed tight as a blood pressure cuff.

Abigail brushed against my legs and hissed at me, her fur as bushy as if she’d played in an electrical storm. “Uh-oh,” Ethan said. “She smells the glamour.”

“Yeah,” I reluctantly agreed. “I can still kind of feel it, too. My skin feels a little slimy. I think I want to go try and wash it off.”

His smile was worn. Our foreheads touched. His fingers through my hair were strong and sure, settling on the back of my neck, where they belonged. “It’s ok. You’re ok.” I think he was trying to reassure himself as much as me.

“Yeah.” I locked my own hands around his neck “We’re ok.” After a moment, I let myself sag against his shoulder. “You brought The Tempest home from the bookstore the other day.”

“The Shakespeare? Yes.”

“It’s my favorite play by him. When I first saw through their glamour, I thought of Miranda’s speech to Ferdinand.” Ethan looked at me quizzically. “Oh brave new world, that hath such creatures in it.” I shivered. “Only I didn’t mean it in a good way.”

Chapter Twelve:

Stars

I traced the spines of Ethan’s stack of books. I could easily make out the gilt letters of the thickest two: Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno. “A little light reading?” I teased, fingers pushing through books.

“Mmm. Well, I read fast. And I have a lot of down time at work.”

“What are you doing in there?” I asked, pulling a slim volume from the middle of the stack. “You’re not cooking, are you?”

“I just got you back from powerful illusionists trying to carry you away,” he said. I heard paper rustling, dishes banging against each other. “We may have figured out the clumsiness thing, but I have no desire to kill you with food poisoning. No, this is takeout. From the Wildwood Grill. I called it in before I left the bookstore.”

“Oooh, Wildwood. I love their burgers.” I flipped through the slim volume. Practical Demonology. I raised an eyebrow and slid it back into the stacks. “Did you know that, or was it a lucky guess?” I slipped out another heavier book and held it up to the moonlight. Meditation: A Beginner’s Guide. I put it down on the top.

“I might have been told,” he admitted, handing me a plate. As interested as I was in Ethan’s reading habits, not much could compete with a buffalo burger from the Wildwood Grill. I snatched the plate and pulled on his sleeve.

“Come on, let’s eat off the coffee table. I’m starving, and I’m too wiped out to do anything else. We can pretend we’re camping or something.” I shoveled buffalo burger in my mouth like a starving woman. Being glamoured and almost carted off left me ravenous. I couldn’t tell if Ethan was amused or disgusted with my lack of grace. I couldn’t muster the energy to care. “I never get a chance to eat at Wildwood’s. They open too late.”

We hunched over our take out. The sheer curtains made spectral swirls across the wooden floor as they moved through the moonlight. Abigail nudged Ethan’s knee, and he fed her bits of burger. “What?” he demanded, an onion curl halfway to his mouth. “The natives are restless.”

“The natives are fat and spoiled,” I grumbled. But I was the one who couldn’t be bothered to move his massive stack of books off the table. “I forgot that you’ve probably never been camping. That’s rule number one. Don’t feed the wildlife. It might come after you in the night.”

We watched as Abigail leapt onto the sofa and curled herself around her swollen belly. “I’ll remember to watch out for housecat attacks.” He wrapped an onion curl around his pinky finger. “Have you been camping much?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Logan loves it.”

“And you don’t.”

“No way. Bugs and sleeping on the ground. Scary noises in the dark.” I looked at him, this remarkable creature next to me in the darkness. He’d never been camping. He’d never been to school, or gotten in trouble with his parents, or done something dangerous because it felt good. Since meeting me, his life had been consumed with protecting my brother or myself. Then life as he’d known it had changed forever, and we were all still trying to pick up the pieces.

I wondered suddenly what he would look like by fire light, if the sharp contrast between flickering light and dark would make him look less mortal, more ethereal.

A rough palm cupped my jaw. “When you look at me like that,” Ethan said, brushing my lower lip with the pad of his thumb, “it makes me crazy. On almost every level.” He slid my plate from my unresisting hands, even though I was only half finished. I didn’t protest. “I almost lost you tonight.”

“They were working for someone else.” I felt ancient and weighted down. Facing Ethan’s concern took way more energy that it should have. “Someone told them where Nic and Amelie were, in exchange for bringing me to him. Whoever wants me can’t come here himself. So he sent them, the summer people.” Suddenly I couldn’t stand the things I saw in his over bright eyes; fear and love and possession clawed through my abdomen until I doubled over, ashamed and afraid. “I brought them here.” I whispered. “And now no place is safe anymore.”

“No you didn’t.” There was nothing soft about the way he held me. “They came for Amelie. You were just the catalyst. If whoever is stealing gifted Nephilim has to send others in his place, then Whitfield is the safest place you could possibly be.”

“But why?” I wailed. “Why me? Why now? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not now.” Ethan smoothed back my hair, held me closer. “Not tonight, ok? I just got you back. Tomorrow, ok? We’ll worry more tomorrow.”

I snapped my mouth shut as he took our plates to the kitchen. “Ok, but I insist on a distraction.” I ran for my bedroom. “We need supplies. A flashlight, marshmallows, and two dining room chairs.”

He tried to sneak a look into my room. “Are feeling all right? Maybe you should lie down. You did have a pretty nasty experience tonight.”

“No! Really, I’m fine. Just get the stuff.”

“Ok,” he said doubtfully, but he left me alone. After several minutes of rummaging in the cluttered mess under my bed and arranging sheets and candles, I looked over my fake campsite. It was, of course, completely pathetic. An old sheet sagged across two straight-backed chairs in a sad imitation of a tent. But I had managed to find the old plug-in planetarium. Fake stars rolled across my ceiling.

“Come in!” I yelled at last.

He gestured at the slowly spiraling dots of light. “I got the marshmallows. Can I join you?”

I made room for him beside my impromptu candle-fire. I balanced the bag of marshmallows on our knees, which touched. “We’re lucky we have clear skies,” I said, biting the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. He didn’t even crack a smile. In fact, he looked nervous. Really nervous. “Ethan?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

My carpet was white with a kind of black abstract pattern on it. Beyond the tiny circle of candlelight, it looked gray. Everything did, except for Ethan. He slipped a flat rectangular box into my hands. “I keep waiting for the right moment. But then it hit me that maybe there never will be a right moment and I should just, I don’t know. Give it to you. So here. It should fit. I, uh. I’ve been taking measurements…”

The flat rectangular box was a dusky purple color. It could only have come form one place, then. “You went to the Hollow,” I said, running one thumb over its satiny surface. “You had this made? Custom made? For me?” There were only a handful of businesses in the odd little community hidden away just outside the city limits. And only one of them made jewelry. Jacob Eden was a silversmith, as his father had been before him. Like most residents of the Hollow, he was fiercely independent and quite a bit strange, even by Whitfield standards. He only worked when he felt like it or needed money. That made his creations extra valuable. I couldn’t believe I held one in my hands.

“Yes,” he said, watching me anxiously. “I took your old watch out to Jacob’s to use for measurements. It was Jacob’s idea that they be snug. I mean, the overall design was mine, but he modified some things.” He trailed off uncertainly.

“You had Jacob the Silversmith hand-make something for me?” I repeated, staring at the box as if it might bite.

Ethan was in agony. “Would you just open it already?” He held it between us, and we both stared into the box as if it held something spooky that might escape.

I nudged off the lid. “Oh, Ethan,” I said. My heart felt as heavy as if it had suddenly decided to take up bricklaying. “This… this is some serious jewelry.” I held two long pieces of delicate silver loops and whorls, held together with crystal and silver links. They looked like sun hitting water as it skipped over the limestone rock formations in the mountains. Two silver bracelets, three inches wide, they looked more like intricate wrist cuffs than proper bracelets. Ethan’s hands trembled slightly as he hooked the clasps together. When they were both firmly attached, I just sat staring. I think maybe he misinterpreted my silence because he started babbling.

“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t like them. You can just keep them as a reminder.” He turned an awkward shade of red. “Guys are supposed to be terrible at this kind of thing. I’ve had even less practice than most, so if you don’t like them, I understand.”

I traced the clasps with my fingers. The silver wire formed a loop that resembled an abstract wing right over my pulse point. “They make wings,” I said, still not looking at him. There was one wing for each wrist.

“Yes.” Ethan was acutely uncomfortable now; I could hear it in his voice. “I know that’s not truly what wings look like, but I couldn’t come up with another way to represent them. Like I said, you don’t have to wear them.” He sounded miserable. When I snuck a look at him, tearing myself away from the most amazing gift I’d ever been given, he sat hunched in on himself. “They’re silver, like your eyes. I got one for each wrist. I thought,” his shoulders settled with a defeated sigh. “I thought maybe if you could see them when the Shadows came, you might not be so afraid.” This last in a whisper.

“Oh,” I breathed. I could barely speak. It amazed me, how much he saw. I tried so hard to hide my fears: of the Shadows, of the darkness that lived inside me. He saw all this, and wasn’t afraid. “They’re amazing,” I whispered, launching myself into his lap. “They’re the most amazing present anyone’s ever given me. I’m never ever taking them off.”

“Well.” He looked pleased as he kept me from knocking the both of us over and settled me more evenly in his lap. “That’s good then, right?”

“Yes,” I murmured, tucking myself into the space beneath his chin. “Of course.”

“He asked about you. Jacob.” Ethan was embarrassed again. “He said he needed to know things if he was going to make you something pretty. ‘Women are particular when it comes to presents like that,’ he told me.” Ethan looked bemused, but also a little awed. “Jacob said that the trick of jewelry was knowing it was like saying, ‘I’m making a promise and giving it shape through metal and stone.’”

“Is that what he said?” I asked, running my fingers over the silver whorls and links. “Jacob with the ponytail and pipe said that?”

“Yeah. You wouldn’t think it to look at him.” Ethan turned my other wrist. “All those Hollow folks kind of freaked me out, to tell you the truth. There was a weird kind of energy around the place, a shifting light and low humming sound, like magic but not as disorienting. It was maddening.”

“The Hollow is a weird kind of place,” I agreed. “And Jacob really only makes jewelry if he feels like it. How did you afford this?” The candlelight caught the dozens of tiny crystal facets and bounced the light off the ceiling, making the poor plastic substitute of my elementary school planetarium seem pathetic in comparison. “You must have been saving since…”

“Since I first got a job?” He held my hands wrists up, so that he could see the wing-shaped clasps. A single fingertip slipped through one to touch my pulse point there. My eyes widened at the sensation; I could see them flare brilliant silver in Ethan’s irises. He smiled.  His hand found mine in the dim light. For a moment both of us watched the candle flame and the tiny dots of slowly moving light overhead. “I’ve never been camping before. I’m not sure what to do.”

“Yes, well, you can see we’re really roughing it,” I said drily. “Here we have our candle flame camp fire. We use it to roast marshmallows, tell scary stories, and keep away vicious beasts.”

“Such as the ruthless Abigail?”

“Exactly,” I laughed.

“And the flashlight?”

I waved it dramatically under my chin. “Ghost stories, of course.” I made a face. “Or for protection when your brother jumps out at you on your way to the bathroom.”

He laughed. “I don’t think it will be quite so scary tonight.”

I fingered the silver of one of my bracelets, feeling the loops press into my skin. “Me neither.”

After carefully extinguishing our ‘fire,’ we lay on our backs, half of us under our sheet-tent. I kept one hand on my new bracelet and one hand in Ethan’s as we silently watched the stars spin by. I rolled on my side, facing him. “Thank you,” I said, tracing the silver loops. “No one’s ever given me something so beautiful before.”

He ran a finger over mine. “It’s funny. When I first came to you, I had no concept of things like money. And now…” he trailed off, a satisfied smile on his face. “Well. I couldn’t wait to buy you these.”

“Don’t you miss it?” I asked him softly. I’d asked him that same question many times since I found him, shivering and human, outside my apartment. We both knew by now it was a question that masked many others: Do you have regrets? Do you blame me? Are you happy?

“Don’t you mind having a boring human boyfriend?” he asked in return. Another layered question, hiding others: Am I less to you, now that I’m mortal? Do you blame yourself? Do you come to me out of love or obligation?

But they were questions too big to be answered. We could only hold each other, and try to reassure. We handled each other like newly blown glass, and every touch was a streak of fire. Before when he kissed me my skin burned from the contact, layers of me literally stripped away. Now, at last, there was no need to hold back, no danger of a thoughtless deadly injury. Yet still we were careful with each other. Maybe everyone who has come so close to losing the other half is as careful. Maybe we were just fearful and learning, but we couldn’t stand not to touch, as if letting go might mean the other of us would disappear, or we might wake up and find we’d dreamed each other up after all.

Ethan braced himself on his elbows. I loved his longer hair, the way it never stayed neat, no matter how many times he brushed it. I messed it up even more, so that his entire face was in shadow. All I could see was his silhouette outlined against the light dot stars, and a hint of blue green glow from his eyes. I trailed my fingers down to rest against his heart, and then fanned them out across his back, where planes of brilliant light had once protected me and marked him as immortal.

“Sshh,” he said, rolling so that he lay on his side and pulled me into him. I realized I was crying. “Hey now. You’re ruining our campout. What’s wrong?”

I clutched at his back. “It’s just…” I sobbed into his bare shoulder. “I know it hurts. In your sleep, you talk about them.”

He stroked my hair, the back of my neck. “You know how you can see wings as planes of lights? Doors, or portals, to the Realms? Not feathers, like everyone else?” I nodded. His voice had a soothing effect. “There’s nothing to miss, Caspia. Not like a limb, because it was never there. It’s more like a door is shut that used to be open. Like I’ve lost the way home.” I burst into fresh tears. “No, no. It’s not forever. There are more ways to the Realms that just one, Caspia. All humans find their way back eventually. And so will we. Nothing’s gone forever.”

Right before sleep claimed me, I managed to attach myself to his bare back, my arms wrapped around his. I pressed myself against him, hoping my heart beat, poor substitute though it was, might somehow make up for his lost way home.

Chapter Thirteen:

Azalene

“Hey.” A rough shake jostled me awake. “Hey, get up. We don’t have much time.”

I’m not an easy to wake kind of person. Usually, it takes many cups of coffee. The unfortunate person who actually has pre-coffee contact with me has, more than once, stopped speaking to me for days. But not this time. I awoke immediately, filled with an unfamiliar energy bordering on euphoria. I had no desire to close my eyes and roll over. Instead, I sat bolt upright from my place on the floor.

Then I jumped to my feet and backpedaled wildly, trying hard not to scream.

In the middle of the make shift tent of sheets and dining room chairs, I lay deeply asleep, curled around Ethan, who had rolled over on his back during the night. He had his arm around me. It should have looked sweet and touching.

Instead, we looked more than a bit like corpses.

That’s when I saw the tattooed boy.

“It’s ok.” He slipped up beside me. We both gave off the same faint blue glow. “You’re dreaming. Everything’s fine.”

“Uh, no. Everything is very much not fine. This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” I whispered, horrified. I managed to drag my gaze away from my lifeless body to confront the guy who’d ‘woken’ me and started all this. I wanted to demand answers, to know why he kept showing up, half-naked, in my dreams. I wanted to sound tough and unafraid. “Don’t you even own a shirt?” I heard myself say instead.

I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, but it was obvious he was laughing at me. “I told you last time I’d come back. And yes, I own several.” He wore the same black pants as he had the night I dreamed of him in my living room, playing my brother’s records. His arms and chest were still decorated with strange tattoos. As I watched, the lines of them shimmered against the faint blue glow we both gave off in the dream. Their dark liquid ink edges looked alive. They moved ever so slightly, as if they had a pulse.

“What are they?” I asked, fascinated in spite of myself by the symbols that seemed to live just beneath his skin.

“A way of controlling the Shadows- of channeling and amplifying them. They’re one of the few things that give mixed bloods an edge in a fight. Nephilim can’t bear them. Their stone skin can’t take the marks. It’s why I don’t like to cover them up in potential combat situations.”

“There’s a way to control Shadows?” My hands ached with cold, electric fire. “How?” I breathed. “I’m not a getting a bunch of tattoos, or walking around without a shirt,” I warned.

“You’re hilarious.”

I thought of a million sarcastic replies. Instead, I asked, “Is your name Jack, like the newspaper article said?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, I’m Jack.” He snorted. “I can’t believe I made the paper. Dad would have a fit.”

“How did you learn to control them? Is there someone like us who taught you?”

He spun and walked away from me. From my bedroom window, he said, “There are no others exactly like us. Not anymore. There are others with gifted blood, though.” He half-turned to me in the moonlight, and I remembered how Ethan stood there, months ago, and told me I was wobbly for a human.

How the world had changed. As if hearing my thoughts, Ethan stirred restlessly in our make believe tent. Jack stared at him intently, almost as if he recognized him. It wasn’t a friendly look.

“The Shadows. How many others can call them?” I skirted my own sleeping body. I would force an answer if necessary.

“Just the two of us now.” He flashed me a bitter smile. “We’re the last of the Azalene warriors.”

“The last who?” I echoed, baffled.

He looked at me, surprised. “The last of Azazel’s line? Azazel, of the First Fallen?” Whatever he saw on my face must have convinced him I wasn’t faking ignorance.

“What is an Azazel?” I repeated, fisting my hands against my rising anger.

“Easy there,” he cautioned, taking my hands. “You need to work on emotional control. It’s the first step towards controlling your gift.”

“My…” I started to say. Suddenly we were in the park, right in front of the fountain, brilliantly lit up for night. I yanked my hands out of his. He watched me, assessing, then shrugged. He leapt up so that he balanced on the very edge of the fountain. A multi-colored light outlined him in rapidly shifting colors. “We’re a dying people, Caspia,” he said. His bare toes gripped the stone effortlessly. “Our gifts are weakened, or skip generations. Most of us have only one. You and I are different, though.” I didn’t like the look he gave me. I couldn’t figure it out. He acted as if he didn't like me at all, yet here he was, explaining things to me. “You can draw the future. I can Dreamwalk. But more importantly, both of us can fight.”

“Fight,” I repeated. He watched me carefully.

“Fight,” he affirmed. “You haven’t seen the fat bald man with the sword around, have you?”

I tried to shove him into the fountain. “Don’t make fun of me,” I warned.

He wouldn’t let go of my arm when I shoved, and as a result, I almost went into the fountain with him. “I’m not,” he sighed. “Here’s the story. We think roughly two hundred angels were the first to take human wives and start families here on earth,” he said, releasing me as if I hadn’t just tried to drown him. “They knew things primitive man wasn’t supposed to know yet. When they had children, they couldn’t stand by and watch them struggle in ignorance. And so they taught them this forbidden knowledge. One of them, Azazel,” he nodded his head at me. “Taught his children how to fight. He taught them how to make blades, and how to fight with what we call Shadows, pulled from the Dark Realms. And then, when his beloved died, as all mortals must, he made one last special blade.”

Jack’s voice had a singsong, practiced quality. “You’ve told this story before.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “This blade was special because, unlike any other blade on earth, it could cut through a Nephilim’s stone skin like paper. He made sure his oldest son understood how important it was, and then he used it to cut out his own heart. He couldn’t face eternity on earth without his wife.”

I thought of Asheroth. If he was the alternative, this Azazel had made the right decision. “And this is the sword you’ve been asking about?”

“I gave it to someone the night I was taken. He should have brought it to you by now, unless something happened that prevented it. Which would be bad.” His smile was bitter. “But don’t say I never gave you anything.”

“It hasn’t made it,” I reminded him.

“I know. But it will. I have to believe that.” He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter much, but I didn’t believe him. Not after the story he’d just told. “There’s another reason I came tonight. I want you to meet someone,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed at a spot just over my shoulder.

“I thought we were alone.” The space between my shoulder blades had begun to tingle, exactly as if someone was watching me from the dark.

“No, I said there was no one in the Dreamtime unless I brought them.” He dropped his voice. “Listen, she’s been through a lot. It’s hard on all of us, where we are, but it’s twisting her more every day. I thought if I could bring her someplace normal, even for a few hours, it would help.”

The feeling of being watched had increased to an uncomfortable level. I spun back toward the fountain. “Who is it?” I whispered. “Is she dangerous?”

The specks of sliver were back in his dark eyes, but they were dull this time. “She didn’t used to be.”

Live Oaks, with their thick, downward swooping branches, perfect for reading and shade, have always felt sheltering to me. Wrapped in white lights, they became something otherworldly. In her white nightgown and light blond hair, the girl at the edge of the fountain plaza looked like a frightened fairy. I had seen a blurry picture of her once before, but that’s not how I recognized her. Even from this distance, I felt her. She pulled at something inside me. My blood roared in recognition. It was similar to the response I’d had to Jack but more protective. “Caroline?” Her head snapped up. “Caroline Bedford?”

Still she hesitated.

“It’s ok,” I added quickly. I wanted very badly to go to her, this child afraid to set foot in my town square. The force of it shocked me. But she was a wild thing, and injured besides, on the inside where things were hardest to fix. I could so easily scare her away. My palms flared with Shadows, so I crossed my arms behind my back. I felt Jack stiffen in surprise beside me. “It really is ok,” I tried again. “My name is Caspia, and this is my town. Jack brought you here, and we won’t let anything happen to you.”

She inched forward. “Is it true you’re an Azalene warrior?” she asked, an ugly skepticism that had no place on a child’s face challenging me. “The last one besides Jack?”

I risked a quick sideways lash with my eyes. He’d pressed his lips into a tight line, like he was trying hard not to smile. We were side by side now; Shadows flared almost painfully at my back. That blackmailing bastard, I thought. To Caroline, I said carefully, “That’s what Jack said, and he’s as good as his word.” I bumped him with my hip. “Isn’t he?” Freezing ants marched up and down my arms.

Jack exhaled heavily. He slipped an arm between us, groping for my hands. I pulled away, angry, but he found my tightly clenched fists first. For one breathless second, his arm lit up like the trees around us. The ink on his skin pulsed an intense electric blue. It only lasted a second, maybe two, and then he turned me loose.

The painful Shadows were gone. Instantly. He’d absorbed them, somehow. He shrugged. “What? Did you think I was trying to hold your hand?”

For once, I could think of absolutely nothing to say.

The girl stood just a few feet from the fountain now, eyeing us with interest. “It really is ok, Caroline,” Jack said at last. “I don’t know how long we can stay, so you should make the most of it.”

“Can Marley come out? Please?” For the first time, she looked like an almost normal twelve year old. “He has to stay hidden, where we are.”

“Oh, is he your puppy?” I asked. Jack made an odd coughing sound. Caroline nodded eagerly. “Of course he can. This is a great park for dogs. During the day all kinds of people bring them,” I took an involuntary step backwards, almost landing in the fountain. “…here,” I finished weakly.

Marley wasn’t a dog. He was more like a wolf. A monster wolf. He’d come shooting out of the trees at her low whistle, and now angled himself protectively in front of her while she buried her face in his neck and pulled on his ears. “He’s not a real wolf,” she said dismissively, as if explaining something basic to a stupid person. “He’s more like a guardian spirit. He was my mother’s,” she said, very softly. The wolf spirit thing, or whatever it was, licked her.

“Hey,” Jack said gently. “Try and have some fun while you’re here, ok? Caspia and I need to talk.” The wolf, at least, seemed to take the hint. He pulled on her nightgown with his teeth until they were in a grassy part of the park, where they started playing an enthusiastic game of chase.

“Thank you,” he said after a while.

“You don’t have to thank me. We read about her abduction. It’s what made us realize what was going on. Poor thing. To lose her mother in an accident, and now this.” The girl and her spirit wolf had stopped playing chase. Now she was riding him, using his ears for reins. I shook my head to clear it.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

“Excuse me?”

“Caroline Bedford’s mother was killed. She was gifted, like Caroline. But Marley couldn’t save them both. Her mother ordered him to save her daughter.”

“How do you know this, Jack?” I asked quietly. “Why would they kill one of us? Aren’t they trying to collect us?” The horizon of what I considered possible had exploded tonight.

“Depends on which ‘they’ you’re talking about.” Silver sparked in the void of his irises. He paced like a caged version of the monster playing with the kidnapped child. “There are two sides in any war. The minute we became part of one side’s army, the other side started trying to exterminate us.” He was suddenly so close I could see his jaw clench. “All of us, because to them, we’re all potential weapons.” Marley howled. I wondered if he’d heard us. We both looked, Jack and I, to see girl and wolf wrestling in the grass.

“What are you saying, Jack?” My words were strangled and I felt Shadows wreathe my hands. This time, he did nothing to stop them. “That the Light is murdering its own descendants?”

He didn’t look away. “It’s happened before. I know it’s a lot to take in. Our people need sanctuary, Caspia. I will find a way to get them out. But that won’t help us if we’re still being hunted out here.”

“Sanctuary,” I repeated.

“Someplace where nothing ever happens would be ideal.”

“Oh, hell,” I swore.

He nodded at my Shadow-wreathed hands. “I know you don’t believe me about being a warrior. But have you noticed how you explode into Shadows when you’re threatened or feel the need to defend? That’s the kind of fighter you are, Caspia. A defender. The one time you used the Shadows offensively, you almost died. When you saw Caroline, protecting her was your first instinct, wasn’t it? Tell me you don’t feel the need to protect us, and I’ll go away and never bother you again.”

I stared at my hands. Ethan’s silver bracelets shone through the darkness. “I can’t tell you that,” I said at last.

He took my hands in his, and once again, the darkness dampened out as the ink on his hands flared briefly.

“But I’m not a fighter!” I jerked my hands away. “I don’t know how. I make coffee and go to art school.”

Jack just shook his head. “You just don’t think like one. And art’s actually not bad training for Shadows.” I was silent, remembering the day by the river with Ethan, how it seemed I was getting the hang of them by pretending I was drawing. He grinned. “Just don’t make yourself sick again.”

“What about the others?” I asked at last. “The gifted who’ve disappeared, are they safe?”

He looked away and wouldn’t answer. “Remember that he’s hunting you. He can’t take his real form here, but he has agents.”

Marley the wolf-monster rose up on all fours and gave an ear-splitting howl. He took Caroline’s nightgown in his teeth and began pulling her towards us. “We have to go,” Jack said, low and urgent. And then he was gone; everything was, the fountain, the park. I knew a moment’s intense darkness. I opened my eyes to find myself curled around Ethan’s back, exactly where I had been when I had fallen asleep. It was as if I hadn’t gone anywhere at all.

Except I had, and my mind whirled with unanswered questions. But even more than answers, I desperately wanted to hang onto the night. Something told me that when the sun rose, I wasn’t going to like the answers I found.

Chapter Fourteen:

Splinters

Awareness of my surroundings slammed into me like an anvil. Like drowning, but in reverse, I choked against light, oxygen, and reality as I blinked into Ethan’s frantic face. He straddled me, shaking my shoulders so forcefully that I knew his next step would have been to try slapping me. I was alarmed at how deeply under the Dreamwalking seemed to pull me, but then Ethan’s actual words penetrated.

“…on fire. They don’t think anyone’s hurt.”

Icy horror gave strength to my struggle against him. “What’s on fire? Where?” I demanded, jumping up the second he let go of me. I got tangled up in the sheet that had been our make believe tent the night before and almost fell. He was there in an instant, steadying me like he used to before the change, except his skin was soft and warm and he stumbled with me. Mutual effort kept us from falling this time. He hauled me upright by the waist, tangled sheet and all.

“It’s the coffee shop,” he said, even as I smelled the smoke. If I could smell smoke from two stores away, it had to be bad.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “Oh please no.” I stood in the middle of my bedroom in Ethan’s arms, wearing a bed sheet and pajamas, and realized I’d never really known what being in shock meant. In my case, it meant a mind gone truly blank, incapable of processing the next step. On fire, I thought stupidly, my mind whirling like a record stuck in a groove. The Whitfield Coffee Shop is on fire. Today’s special is supposed to be Vanilla Chai. I knew I should put pants on and do something, but the actual steps involved in finding pants, putting them on, getting to the coffee shop, and then deciding what to do weren’t something my brain could process. Fire, it’s on fire…

Ethan shoved some jeans at me, breaking the spell. He was bare-chested in the early morning darkness. The muscles of his arms moved as he bent, seemingly prepared to dress me himself if that’s what it took. I realized it wasn’t quite dawn yet, and there was no sign of my brother. “Where’s Logan?”

Ethan just looked at me. He didn’t answer because he couldn’t.

Surely not, I thought. Surely Logan hadn’t stopped off to bring us coffee and a bag of muffins after his run on today of all days. Surely he was still trying to make me drink his godawful healthy weed concoction…

I snatched my jeans from Ethan and ran, barefoot, for the stairs.

When I hit the sidewalk outside Moore’s Hardware, all I could see of the Whitfield Coffee Shop were big black columns of smoke. They rose towards the lightening sky over the heads of the gathering crowd. Police had blocked off the street in front of my house. The crowd fanned out in a semi-circle all the way to the park, every single head turned toward the place where I had worked since I turned sixteen. Logan was nowhere to be seen.

The smell was even stronger here; thick and acrid, it worked its way towards me through the crowd, its black fingers smearing bits of ash and choking smoke to coat my eyes and throat. I rubbed at my face and tried to push my way through the crowd anyway. The coffee shop was like my second home. My co-workers and Mr. Markov were the closest thing I had to an extended family, especially after my parents died. The thought that any of them had been caught in the blaze made me frantic. I pushed through the crowd even more forcefully, stopping only when Ethan’s arms around my waist made me.

Black smoke whirled and churned behind the window where I’d lit tea lights every night I’d worked a shift. Orange flames leapt and danced. Together, the smoke and flames looked as if they were performing some kind of demented tug-of-war behind the glass. The heat burned my face and made my eyes sting. I smelled charred wood but also something chemical underneath. What surprised me most was the sound. I didn’t know intense fires had sounds, but this one literally roared and pounded like waves gone mad, with the occasional groan of heavier things buckling.

“Miss, you have to get back to a safe distance,” a uniformed police officer told me. I didn’t recognize him. Ethan’s arm around my waist kept dragging me backwards. I realized the crowd was gone; everyone else had moved back. Only I stayed, fixated on the horror, the police officer’s warnings drowned out by the roar of the fire. I tried to remember whose turn it had been to open that morning. Amelie? Nicolas? Or was Mr. Markov himself trapped in there?

“Get down now!” roared a familiar voice. Something knocked my feet out from under me. I found myself planted face-first on the concrete, Ethan’s arms completely blocking all light. The sound of breaking glass rained down all around us; the front windows had exploded. I had two unrelated, bizarre thoughts at the same time: that breaking glass sounded really pretty, and that Ethan was going to need the first aid kit again since he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Something sharp rapped against my anklebone. I yelped. “In shock again,” Mr. Markov commented, in his absent, philosophical way.

Ethan rolled off me, checking us both for damage before hauling me to my feet. I ran my hands up and down his chest, amazed that he wasn’t cut to ribbons. I examined his back just as thoroughly. Nothing. The glass seemed to have landed around us in a tight but perfect sphere, exactly as if we’d been encased in a protective bubble. But that was crazy. That would be like…

“Magic,” I hissed, low and dangerous. Mr. Markov merely raised an eyebrow. I grabbed his forearm. “What’s happening? Do you know what caused the fire?” I swallowed convulsively, no longer sure if my eyes were tearing up because of smoke or emotions or some combination of the two. “Is everyone all right?”

My boss’s sightless eyes fixed somewhere over my head. He slid his arm through mine and led me back through the crowd, towards the park. “No one was hurt,” he said gently. He sounded old and tired, as if he had been up a long time and had done his share of grieving already. The new morning sun shone down on a town square full of shell-shocked citizens. Many of them were covered with ash. Some of them were crying. All of them gave Mr. Markov, Ethan and I a wide berth as the three of us made our way towards the fountain. “But the fire was intentional. Someone wanted to send a message.”

Oh, no. No, no, no. “What message?” I made myself ask. I remembered Jack’s warning from my dream. He can’t take his full form there. You’re too well protected. He’ll send messengers after you. Dread coiled in my stomach as I wondered if that extended to people I loved, as well. “What happened?” I demanded as I pulled out my cell phone from my back pocket and scrolled through my messages. One from Logan. I exhaled heavily in relief. He was spending the night at Amberlyn’s.

Mr. Markov’s expression did not change, but he shook his graying head. “Caspia,” he said, and I could hear the thunder underneath his words. “This is not your fault. You and Amelie and Nicolas are under my protection, as surely as if you were my own children. When our visitors last night couldn’t take you, they destroyed my property instead.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ethan assured me again, gathering me into his arms. I wanted to pull away, to correct him. He needed to know it absolutely was my fault, that everything going wrong in Whitfield could be traced back to me, to the darkness I carried in my blood. But I was weak. It felt so good to let someone support me that I didn’t pull away.

“You don’t understand,” I said at last, much too softly. I should have been louder, more insistent in claiming responsibility. “This is my fault. Even the fact that they found the twins is my fault.”

“If they wanted you, it was strictly as a side job,” Nicolas said. “They came for my sister and me.”

I didn’t recognize the two figures standing beside us in the park. I had to look twice to make sure, but yes, there stood Amelie, my gloriously beautiful co-worker, practically glued to her twin’s hip. I had never seen her in an outfit that cost less than two hundred dollars, and I’d never ever seen her without make-up, a manicure, and perfect hair. Today, however, she could have passed for a very clean homeless person. She wore a plain gray hoodie and straight-leg, slightly baggie jeans. They had a rip in one knee and were slightly too long for her, bunching up over her scuffed black combat boots. Without make-up, she looked young and pretty in a fragile sort of way. Her usually elaborately styled hair hung in one thick silver braid over one shoulder. The hood of her cheap jacket shadowed her pale gray eyes.

“Don’t say anything,” she warned, ducking further under her hood. “I already feel like a circus freak.”

“It’s necessary,” Nicolas said severely. He was dressed exactly like his twin, except that his hoodie was black, and bulged suspiciously in the exact same places I would stash a weapon or two. I stared and he caught me, meeting my curious gaze with a fierce frown. “You met our visitors last night,” he reminded me. He flipped his wrists out and angled them upwards. He wore black leather wrist sheaths, the kind that carried knives for easy access. I wondered what he carried concealed in his boots. “It’s worth taking every precaution.”

“Who were they, Nic?” I asked when I got my voice back.

“Our family,” Amelie said in a voice flat with despair. “My uncle’s children. Twins like us. Twins run in our family.” She squared her shoulders and gave me a watery smile. “In our race, actually.” It seemed to take everything she had, because she collapsed in on herself. She couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “My uncle has been looking for me for a very long time. He’s quite insane. We escaped him once, and came to Whitfield. I won’t go back to him again.”

“You don’t have to,” I said, catching her up in a fierce hug. She felt delicate in my arms, although I knew she was anything but. How long had I worked beside her and failed to see past the pretty illusions she wore as masks? The callous cruelty of the night before was her life- until she came here. To Whitfield. I felt the Shadows move deep within me, but for some reason, I wasn’t afraid of them this time. I thought of Jack’s tattoos and saw the glint of Ethan’s silver bracelets as I pulled down Amelie’s hood. What had happened to her? What had driven her and Nicolas to hide out as orphans in a strange town? I wondered these things and knew without doubt that I could control the Shadows if it meant protecting her. She was part of my screwed up little family. Jack was wrong. I wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t sure if I ever could be. But I was, and always had been, a protector.  I could damn sure defend my own. And when it came down to fighting, what was the difference between offense and defense?

Semantics. And field position.

“We have a very dysfunctional family, Caspia. I am sorrier than I can express that we have brought them to your door.” Amelie tried again to apologize for something that wasn’t her fault. It only made me angrier.

“But, you can’t just leave,” I insisted. “They said they were bounty hunters. They wanted me and Erik.”

“It’s not that simple.” Nic carried himself differently. He seemed surer, stronger. I wondered how much of his quiet coffee shop persona had been illusion, as well. “It’s because they are bounty hunters that we must track them. What’s happened here is typical ‘hunting’ behavior. We have to stop them because we can.” Nicolas and his sister picked up plain canvas backpacks and slung them across their shoulders. I looked frantically at Mr. Markov for support. Surely he wasn’t going to just let them walk away? What about protecting them as if they were his own children, and all that?

“They are bounty hunters, of a sort,” Amelie said. I could smell her perfume mixed with smoke from the burning coffee shop: frost roses and ash. “Slavery is closer to the truth. Our cousins are out ‘collecting’ for the Summer Court. They were coming here for us anyway, but when they were offered a bounty for delivering you and stumbled across Erik at the same time…” She stepped back and studied me. “Caspia, we have to go. We got news that Erik left town roughly the same time they did. Supposedly he’s just going to play a festival in Birmingham, but with our family roaming loose, we can’t risk it. It is no longer safe for us here, and we might be able to stop them.”

“You’re not exactly human, are you?” I said after a long moment. I tried to think of a polite way to phrase my suspicions. “Are you and Nic… are you, um, Summer Court, too?”

Her eyes flashed and narrowed, exactly like an angry cat’s. For a moment, she was the old Amelie, the one who flirted with every cute boy who walked in the door and who played the new coffee guessing game with me every night. “Do I look like a Summer girl to you?” Her spine arched and I shivered as an arctic blast enveloped us. I swear I saw a snowstorm reflected in the depths of her eyes. Her icy breath raised gooseflesh across my skin. “I’m a Winter Court royal. I kill Summer flowers with frost when I yawn.”

Ok then.

“It will be fine,” Mr. Markov said, making his words a command as much as a reassurance. “You will both let me know how you are doing at least once a week, or you will not like the results.”

Nicolas finally managed something like a small smile. “Yes, sir,” he said, taking his sister’s arm. Amelie’s eyes had gone from snowstorms to suspicious wetness. She pressed a set of keys in my hands. “Please check in on our little cottage,” she said, blinking furiously. “I do not know what will fit, but you are welcome to whatever you find.”

I just nodded. I was much more a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl. There was little chance I’d be wearing Amelie’s silk and leather anytime soon, but if it made her feel better, I’d pretend. The three of us watched them disappear into the trees, Ethan and I still barefoot. The sun was fully overhead, and smoke clung to our hair and clothes. I needed a shower and a change of clothes but I didn’t want to move. Moving would close another chapter, make what had happened irrevocably real. I groped blindly for Ethan’s hand as I watched Amelie and Nicolas until I couldn’t see them anymore.

“Well,” Mr. Markov said. “That is that, then.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. My brain just couldn’t wrap itself around the event yet. “What are you going to do?” I asked Mr. Markov.

“Maybe I’ll take a vacation,” he said.

Ethan and I both stared. He didn’t look like he had a head injury.

“But maybe I’ll just go and pester Alice until the rebuilding begins.”

I actually felt Ethan exhale in relief. Then I smacked myself in the forehead.

“Oh god,” I moaned. “I’ve got class today. With my least favorite teacher, and where am I going to get decent coffee now?”

“I thought you were supposed to be quitting,” Ethan said, smiling down at me.

“I am,” I insisted defensively. “I mean, I can. If I want to. When I want to.”

He just raised an eyebrow at me.

“Don’t tell Logan,” I moaned.

The smoke suddenly had a hint of coffee scent to it. All that delicious, wonderful, life-giving coffee. Gone up in smoke.

“You know, you really don’t have to go,” Ethan said. “This would probably count as an excused absence if anything would.”

“You don’t know Dr. Christian,” I muttered. “I think that man is the devil himself.”

Ethan gave me a funny look as we walked back towards the apartment.

Chapter Fifteen:

Snakes and Angels

On the far raised platform, Dr. Christian lectured from his podium. Behind him on the monitor, power point bullets of his syllabus faded in and out. He rattled off office hours, attendance policies, and the due dates of major assignments. Almost every person in the room leaned forward eagerly as he spoke, as enraptured as if he were reciting love poems in French. The cold feeling I almost always felt in his presence now rippled across my spine again. It was almost like a low-grade Shadow eruption warning. But this was more insidious; this man had worked his way inside my brain.

“Caspia.” Amberlyn hissed my name as a warning, shocking me back to reality. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted in a low voice. “It’s him. Dr. Christian. Something’s wrong.” I frowned, not sure how to articulate something that was more a feeling than properly formed suspicions.

Amberlyn watched me with concern. “What makes you say that?”

I took a deep breath and tried to arrange my scrambled thoughts. “There’s just something about him that really, really bothers me.” If only she knew how much, I thought, then realized how lame that sounded. I tried again. “Mrs. Kenner was attacked, brutally, but he wouldn’t give any details and he even made fun of me when I asked about her. He has the whole class pretty much hypnotized. Just look at them.” I gave the class a swift glance of disapproval.

She looked around us swiftly and turned back to me. “Everybody just seems really into the class. That’s a good thing, right?” My knees drummed out their anxiety against my desk. She felt it and frowned. “Look, I know you had a really stressful morning. I’m surprised you made it in. Why don’t you just slip out the back or something? I’ll cover for you.” Neither of us bothered stating the obvious: Dr. Christian would never give me a pass out of his class once it started.

I shook my head slightly, my vision narrowed in on him like a hunter’s. “That would mean he wins.” Amberlyn’s pupils widened slightly in the darkness. Great, now she really thought I was loosing it. I tried again. “I just don’t trust him. He’s just… too good looking, or something. Plastic, like a Ken doll.”

If I had any chance of convincing Amberlyn, I lost her on the Ken doll bit. She looked like she was trying not to giggle. Why on earth had I said that? I leaned forward to start another furious whispering campaign.

“Miss Chastain.”

No one ever managed to inject my name with as much ice and venom as Dr. Christian right at that moment. I froze, not even daring to look at him. This class was turning into my worst nightmare. I wondered if I could arrange to drop it. But then I remembered what I’d told Amberlyn: that would mean he won.

I shook my head, trying to clear it. Win what? When had I devolved into fighting imaginary wars with teachers I hated when there were real ones going on?

Dr. Christian waited until the class finished laughing at me. “I have been quite patient with your outbursts thus far, but I am afraid I have reached the end of my tolerance. Since you persist in talking through my class, I will have to ask you to stay and talk to me afterwards.” More worshipful titters. I’m sure my face was white. “Now. If I may have everyone’s attention, we can start today’s lecture. Can someone tell me where Mrs. Kenner left off?” I sat frozen in my seat, burning with a combination of fury and embarrassment.

A girl with perfectly styled blond hair raised her hand, practically bouncing in her seat to get his attention. At his majestic nod, she gushed in one long string of syllables, “We were studying cave paintings in France and today I think we were supposed to study some Babylonian sculpture and also read some passages in the Epic of Gilgamesh where it made some references to the images.” As if exhausted by the effort it took to speak in front of Dr. Christian, she collapsed back against her chair.

He nodded, considering her words. “I’m sure Mrs. Kenner had a fascinating lesson planned out. But I find the ancient Babylonians a little dry, don’t you?” He paused for the light laughter he knew would come.

I rolled my eyes. Ancient Babylonians. As if there were any other kinds.

But my attention snapped back to the front of the room at the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. I looked up to see he had thrown a large, musty-looking book down on the raised platform between him and the rest of the class. He stood over the antique volume like it had issued him a personal challenge. The sound it made when hitting the hollow wooden platform echoed across the auditorium like heavy artillery. I jumped. It was bound in red leather and looked heavy enough to use as a weapon.

“We’re going to skip all that,” he said, crossing to stand over the book as if it offended him. “Now, I know in some parts of the world, what I’m about to do is considered controversial.” The blond girl who’d spoken earlier trembled in eagerness at the way he said the word. “The idea of the Bible as literature has sparked complaints, and even protests, in other schools. There will be none of that in my class.” He let his eyes skip around the classroom, fixing random students with his blue-eyed glare. I heard nothing except for the occasional indrawn breath when he drew someone’s attention. “Anyone who objects,” he stared straight at me, “to what we’re about to discuss can drop my class. Is that understood?”

Oh, thank God, I thought. Here’s my chance to drop the class. All I had to do was develop a sudden and intense religious conviction, and then, no more Dr. Christian.

Like robots, nearly one hundred young voices responded in near-perfect unison: “Yes, Dr. Christian.”

It was as if a single ventriloquist had suddenly developed a hundred vocal chords.  Instantly, the cold feeling down my spine was back. I could feel the pulse points of my wrists throbbing through the wing-shaped clasps of Ethan’s bracelets. “Amberlyn,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth. “I have a bad feeling about this.” Dr. Christian stood, ominous and forbidding, over the red leather Bible he’d tossed on the floor like an open challenge. Whatever kind of challenge it might be, I knew I couldn’t leave without finding out.

Then Dr. Christian’s booming voice cut through my confusion, and every thought, every feeling, every anchor to the here and now was ruthlessly severed.

On the auditorium screen in front of us, projected for the entire class to see, a tall, majestic angel with wings of light and a flaming sword grasped a kneeling woman by her long dark hair. The woman held her hands together, as if in prayer or supplication. The angel was clearly about to cut off her head, and the woman was just as clearly begging him to spare her.

Sometimes when something terrible happened to me, my mind had a way of slipping sideways. It would file the horrible thing, whatever it was, away for later, when I was safe and I could take it out and process it safely. My mind did that now. I found myself focusing on the details of the thing, circling around the greater meaning of the violent image. Oil, I thought. Late Renaissance? But who was the artist? What artist could possible have gotten the wings right? Because instead of painting the angel as a golden haired, feathered bird-hybrid, this artist had come close to reality. Layers of Light, thin as gossamer in some places, thicker gold in others, crossed the space behind the creature’s back. In some places the layers of Light intersected, creating planes so intensely bright they seemed as if they might burst into tiny golden sparkles in the otherwise bleak landscape of the painting. The angel stood in profile, hiding his full identity, but the artist had shown his strength and beauty.

Right down to the bloody sword in his hand and the cruel twist to his lips as he held the woman by her dark hair, preparing to draw more blood.

But the personal horror of the painting didn’t end there.

Faint shadows curled outward from the kneeling woman’s clasped hands. Dark hair hung down to her shoulder blades. The unknown artist had done an excellent job capturing the reddish brown highlights as she knelt before the merciless angel, holding her Shadow-wreathed hands out in a clear plea for mercy. My mind skittered sideways again: such luminous oils, to capture the red in her hair. Reddish-brown hair like mine. And Shadows wreathed her hands. Shadows like the ones I felt tingling in my palms right then and there. Not here, please not here, I begged whatever mad, capricious power might be listening. I concentrated on how the wing-shaped clasps, Ethan’s gift, felt against my pulse points. Then I sat on my still- tingling hands.

Dr. Christian spoke. “This image depicts a little-known abomination referred to in the Christian Bible as the Nephilim, or children of women and angels.” He sneered. “Looks helpless, doesn’t she? However, the Bible and many other cultures make it quite clear that she and others like her were nothing more than monsters with freakish powers. This woman is the real reason humankind was almost wiped off the face of the earth in the event known as the Great Flood.”

Blood roared and crashed in my ears. The universe became a slowly closing tunnel with dark edges.

“Before the Great Flood, which, incidentally, has been reported in the mythology of almost every major ancient civilization, angels walked the earth and procreated with human women.” He looked as if he wanted to brush himself off as soon as he spoke the words. My dark tunnel of a universe got a little darker and smaller. “Their offspring were born with the celestial gifts of their fathers. Gifts no human should have. Gifts that they later used to challenge Heaven itself.”

Amberlyn was trying to tell me something. I felt her hand, warm against my icy spine. I felt frozen and sick, lost in a dark nightmare wasteland.

Why hadn’t they told me? Either of my angels, Ethan or Asheroth? Surely they knew. But they would have told me if they did. Ethan would have for sure. Maybe he wasn’t that old. Maybe he wasn’t around back then.

Why wouldn’t he tell me if he knew?

Dr. Christian bent and retrieved the red leather bound book. “From Genesis Six: The sons of heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth after the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them sons.”

Beads of sweat coalesced on my forehead. “Angel sex,” I heard a guy whisper from two rows away. “Wicked kinky. Is he gonna show us pictures of that?”

I silently wished the plague would consume him.

Images slid across the screen in a slick sickening Power Point procession:

Paintings of Nephilim and humans with families and homes and villages, and those villages were burning, wings shaped of Light and Dark in the midst of destruction and death, while battle raged and bodies lay on the ground. Beautiful humans destroying villages, killing angels. Fighting back.

Chaos. Destruction. War.

Dr. Christian continued while the class hung on his every word. “These abominations turned their powers against Heaven itself. And so the whole world suffered; you know the story of Noah. Almost all humankind was destroyed in an attempt to stop these Nephilim with their terrible powers.”

The portraits flashed by in the darkness. With each one, my horror grew; I felt a fear so deep and primal I wanted to beg for comfort. I wanted my dead parents back, I wanted my Gran. I needed her to tell me there were no such things as monsters, and that even if there were, they could never, ever be me.

“Such was the Nephilim and their children’s rebellion against Heaven,” a cold voice intoned from far away. “Their punishment was swift and merciless, as you can tell. Memorize these portraits. I’ve prepared a packet of them for you to take home. Memorize them so well you can name their title and composer for the test on Monday. Does anyone have any questions?” Dr. Christian asked.

If anyone had any, they were lost to me as I laid my head against the cool hard surface and focused on not passing out. Papers rattled around me. I refused to take one of his damned packets. I wouldn’t be taking that test. I was dropping this class as soon as I could. Hesitant fingers stroked my hair, pushing it back from my forehead.

“Caspia?” Amberlyn sounded as if she spoke from underwater. “Can you hear me?” More rattling papers. “I got your packet for you. It’s in your knapsack. Talk to me, hon.”

“Can’t,” I managed. Cold. I was so cold. I kept picturing the dark haired woman, pleading for her life before an angel with a flaming sword. An angel with wings like planes of Light, not feathers. An angel like Ethan had been, not that long ago.

I had dark hair. I could make Shadows like the woman in the painting.

Why hadn’t Ethan told me?

Is this what Asheroth meant about war coming to Whitfield? Was it happening again? I clung to my desk as waves of nausea and fear and sorrow rocked me.

“Are you unwell, Miss Chastain? I was so very looking forward to talking with you in my office. Remember?” His voice rolled over me like a cold fog that deepened into a kind of spreading numbness until all I could do was lay there like a beached jellyfish. “Gather her things, Amberlyn. It’s time she came with me anyway.”

Numb. Freezing. I couldn’t move. I must move. I hated this man. He was going to take me. He knew about Nephilim, he called us abominations, Nephilim descendents were disappearing, and he was going to take me. Realization, when it hit me, was the coldest sensation yet.

Oh, Ethan. Why did you have to fall in love with someone who was so very, very stupid?

Why had I not known?

Why had he waited so long?

“Take her where, Dr. Christian?” Amberlyn sounded like a zombified version of herself. I wanted to scream at her, to plead with her, but I couldn’t. No parts of me worked except the silent ones, the places in my brain shrieking soundlessly with fear and rage. “I don’t think she’s feeling very well.”

“She’s fine, Amberlyn.” His voice was very soft, very convincing. “We’ll just have a nice little talk here for a moment, then. I can make certain no one disturbs us.”

“Oh…kay,” Amberlyn agreed in a puzzled monotone, but to me, it was the sound of a trap snapping shut.

Then he laid his hand across my neck, and ancient Shadows stirred the darkness in my blood.

Almost as if he could hear my fears, Dr. Christian patted me absently. “An associate of mine has been waiting to meet you for a very long time, Caspia. He’ll be so pleased when I bring you to him.”

Chapter Sixteen:

The Devil You Know

I don’t think Dr. Christian had ever touched me. Not skin on skin, anyway. But when he slid his palm across the sensitive nerve endings of my neck, it was as if the two of us stood alone together in a very dark room. I could feel him, a dark energy, invading me, testing me.

I was still pinned to my desk.

I didn’t know it was possible to sob in my head, but it was, and I did.

“What did you think of today’s lesson?” he asked out loud.

“What?” Amberlyn sounded startled. “Oh, um, it was kind of intense. Evil half-breeds trying to bring down Heaven.” She laughed nervously. “Dr. Christian? Is Caspia going to be ok?”

No! I thought furiously.

His thumb pressed down hard on the tendons at the base of my neck. If I’d been able, I would have whimpered. It hurt. When I tried again to reach for the Shadows, they slipped just out of my reach, as if a net of numbing power had slipped under my skin. “I’m going to release you,” he said calmly, almost politely, as if we were sitting down to tea. “Just enough to talk.” His hand slipped from my neck and I could move again. I sat up so quickly all the blood rushed to my head. I ignored it, though, and tried to push myself to my feet and run.

I couldn’t. My body stayed glued firmly to my desk. He shook his perfect blond head in mock disappointment. “Surely you didn’t think me that stupid?”

“What are you?” I asked when I discovered my vocal cords could work again. “A demon?”

His blue eyes narrowed. “To be a demon, one must first be an angel. No, I am nothing like that. Nothing immortal or,” his perfect lips twisted on the word, “unnatural. All you need to know is that I am powerful, and that the entity that wants you shares a common enemy with me.” He lounged backwards in the tiny auditorium chair like it was a plush sofa. A brief flash of too-white teeth disturbed me. I wondered if it was meant to pass for a smile. “He wants me to talk to you, Caspia.”

“Why?” I watched as Amberlyn slipped quietly into a chair next to Dr. Christian. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, staring off into space. “What’s the point?”

“Did you expect me to hit you over the head and drag you away?” Dr. Christian leaned forward. His eyes narrowed, transforming his whole face into something sharp and hungry. “I am actually trying to reason with you, you stupid girl. He remains convinced you will come to him of your own free will, if you just hear the right argument.” My shock must have been plain, because Dr. Christian snorted and leaned away. “Yes, exactly. I agree with you about this little conversation. It was a lost cause before it began, but Belial is not someone you say no to.”

“Belial?” I rolled the name on my tongue, memorizing it.

“Yes.” His eyes were blue fire. “Belial. I’ll spell it if you need me to. Belial. A Rebel angel.”

“A demon, you mean,” I challenged.

He lounged backwards again. His expensive Italian leather shoe came perilously close to kicking Amberlyn. She didn’t seem to notice. “I told him this would be pointless.”

“Don’t you hurt her,” I warned. I put as much venom into my voice as I could, since I couldn’t actually stop him at the moment.

He barely glanced at the perfectly still Amberlyn. “I won’t hurt her,” he said impatiently. “I can’t. The Compact between Light and Dark forbids it.”

I waited for his words to make sense. They didn’t. “The what?” I asked.

He looked as if I’d given him a present. “They haven’t told you? It’s only Whitfield’s most important supernatural law. And they don’t trust you with it?” I didn’t let him see my curiosity or my disappointment. Because no, no one had told me. I’d heard Cassandra mention something about it in passing, but that was all. He smiled, drumming his long fingers on my desk. “Simple, really. It’s an oath not to harm mortals and innocents. It’s what allows us to live together in relative peace. We can neither harm those citizens who don’t know of our existence, nor engage in attacks on each other that would hurt them or the town.” His long tapping fingers moved to my immobile arms. One of them caressed the back of my hand. Immediately, a frisson of cold power pulsed through me.

“But look what you’ve done to Amberlyn,” I protested. “And you’re going to harm me, I’m pretty damn sure, if you’re going to hand me over to a demon and the Dark Realms.”

“Amberlyn hasn’t been harmed,” he corrected smoothly. I watched as he turned to her and pulled gently on one of her springy loose curls. She just sat and stared off into the distance. “She won’t remember any of this. As for you, I won’t be doing any of the hurting. I’m merely delivering you out of the city limits. And even if I were to develop a desire to,” he smiled again, like an eager, hungry cat, “hurt you, the Compact doesn’t prohibit that. All kinds of supernaturals live here, some of us with long histories of animosity towards each other, both personal and otherwise. Naturally, tensions erupt between us sometimes. As long as the town in general, and innocents in specific aren’t caught up in the cross fire, this rarely becomes a problem.”

“So you’re telling me,” I said slowly, trying to wrap my head around this new information, “that my whole life, supernatural mini wars have been going on all around me, and I haven’t even know about it?” I heard my voice climb at the end, surprising even me. Why hadn’t someone told me?

“You are right to feel anger,” Dr. Christian said in an eerie echo of my own thoughts. “It would have taken so little to enlighten you. One sentence. Perhaps two. And yet, none of your so-called friends or protectors saw fit to do so. What else are they keeping from you, Caspia?” I dropped my eyes to my frozen arms. I wouldn’t think of that now. I would think about getting away from this man, and then I would see about getting some questions answered. “Perhaps they’ve even been lying about Belial, the war, and the Dark Realms,” he said softly.

“Now that I just can’t believe,” I snapped. “I’ve seen the evidence for myself. He’s kidnapping gifted children, for God’s sake. What kind of monster does that?”

“One who wants to keep them safe,” Dr. Christian answered softly. “Not everyone can live here, in this sheltered valley, Caspia. Belial may be taking them, but other forces are killing them. Which is better? And since he’s forbidden from coming here himself, what other choice does he have, really?” He shrugged, an elegant gesture that looked oddly out of place on him. “If the Guardians hadn’t banned him, specifically…”

“Wait, what?” I interrupted. Again, something Cassandra had mentioned but not expounded on. Ok, to be fair, we’d had a lot of wine by then, but someone should have told me. “What Guardians?”

“How can you continue to put your faith in a group of people who don’t even inform you about their basic governing structure?” I shifted against my invisible bonds. “Guardians are powerful members of the different groups that live here. Belial and other rebel angels are just one of the many kinds of creatures that the Whitfield Guardians have deemed undesirable,” he said the word with a sneer, “and decided to ban. So you see that the council has left him little choice.”

“And this is supposed to make me decide to pity him, somehow?” I looked at Amberlyn. She remained seated just like a puppet.

“No,” he sighed. “I never expected it to. I merely promised him I would try to convince you first. He thinks you will change your mind.” Dr. Christian’s look of disgust let me know what he thought of that possibility. “It’s for the best, Caspia. The longer you stay, the harder he will try to extract you, and the more people will be hurt. It’s only a matter of time before you turn yourself over, if not exactly willingly, then because you’ll be desperate to stop the damage to the town and the people you claim to love.” He slid from his chair with leonine grace. “All you ever have to do is step one little toe outside the city limits,” he whispered into my ear. “Just even slightly, and he’ll know. He’s watching for you, oh so closely. It’s only a matter of time.”

His hand touched my neck, and I went completely limp again. His voice was soft and wet directly in my ear. Impossibly, disgustingly, he lifted me up in his arms. “You’ve always been so well guarded. He’s been very patient with me, waiting for me to bring you to him.” I found myself crushed against his expensive suit and smothered with his designer cologne. My eyes were barely open slits. “Come along, Amberlyn,” he said to my docile best friend. “You may come with us now.” She got up and trailed us obediently, carrying both our books.

I hoped he meant it, that he couldn’t harm her.

He mounted the podium, moving through the professor’s entrance and the lesser-used corridors behind it. Damn and hell. There was much less of a chance someone would see us, someone I knew, and stop us.

“It’s your phone, Caspia,” Amberlyn said unexpectedly. I’d forgotten; she was holding my purse, which was so full of junk, it rattled like crazy when my phone vibrated. “It’s Logan. Should I…”

Before Dr. Christian could get a word out, I dove deep for the Shadows.

I reached for the darkness that throbbed inside me and pulled on the Shadows with everything I had, visualizing them erupting across me like a small storm.

Only to find a colder darkness twined with mine.

And suddenly, it really was like trying to grapple with live snakes. Whatever power Dr. Christian wielded, whatever darkness he’d driven into me, to control me, to test me, and it was much older and much more vicious than anything I’d ever touched. I found myself wrapped in darkness so ancient and total it was self-aware. Searing cold, predator-hungry, I pushed against it as hard as I could.

My monumental effort won me a few moments’ partial freedom. I could breathe again, and see, but Dr. Christian still held me tightly in his arms.

“…Logan?” Amberlyn asked. She held the phone, blankly but expectantly. Had she answered it? I couldn’t tell.

Dr. Christian smashed his hand over my mouth. I tasted blood. “Put Caspia’s things down and leave now.” He spoke in a voice like tectonic plates shifting. “Class ended normally. You went home alone.”

My best friend since junior high turned and walked off without a backwards glance. I couldn’t even be outraged because it meant he couldn’t do anything terrible to her now. I felt the gray immobility seeping in again, and I started to struggle before I lost my hard-won breath of consciousness. I didn’t expect it to do much good, except that I had to try.

“Excuse me,” I heard someone call out through the gathering gray numbness. “Is something wrong? Do you need help here?”

Dr. Christian stiffened. Yes, I thought furiously through his hand over my mouth. “No, she’s fine,” he said, a beatific but concerned half-smile springing into place. “Just felt a little faint in class. Must have missed breakfast. I have a couch in my office. We were just headed that way.”

This helpful person would not take Dr. Christian’s hint, for which I was fiercely grateful. “Really?” he said, coming closer. His voice sounded familiar. “I’m trained in CPR. Maybe I should take a…”

“That won’t be necessary,” Dr. Christian snapped. The gray numbness got stronger. At any moment, I thought, this stranger would succumb to Dr. Christian’s influence, just like everyone else. I wondered what would happen to him then.

There was a short, tense silence. “Why do you have your hand over her mouth?”

My phone vibrated again.

“That’s really none of your…” Dr. Christian sputtered.

“She needs air, if she fainted,” the stranger said. “I’m a trained lifeguard. Let me take her outside.” His voice had gotten noticeably lower, more gravelly. “And someone’s trying to call her.”

Dr. Christian tried again while I lay there, aware but otherwise absent from the proceedings. “Go. Now.” Even I heard the power in his voice, heard the double-layered sibilance underpinning his words.

But the stranger responded with words so gravelly, they could have been a low growl: “I smell blood spilled in violence.” My torn lip throbbed under Dr. Christian’s palm at the reminder.

And suddenly, it was as if I was in a small space with two animals. Growling and hissing erupted around me. I was torn from Dr. Christian’s tight hold, only to fall so hard against the linoleum floor I banged my head and shoulder. Momentarily stunned, I decided I didn’t care what had happened to free me. The important thing was that Dr. Christian and the stranger were both gone, strange sounds and all, but I was still in a deserted corridor behind Andreas Auditorium and who knew when either one of them might come back for me.

One of them wanted to take me for his army. The other could smell blood and violence. I didn’t feel like waiting around to find out what had happened to either of them.

My phone was in my hand and I was desperate for the air, for trees and sky and freedom while my shaking fingers speed dialed one. He answered on the first ring. “Dr. Christian,” I panted into the phone. I stumbled to my feet, half crawling to the main hallway. “He took me. Was taking me.” Students stopped and stared as I lurched towards the glass doors that stood between freedom and me. My knapsack swung from the crook of my elbow. It felt like the heaviest thing I’d ever had to carry.

Somehow I made it down the stairs. I realized Ethan was yelling at the top of his lungs into the phone as I went. I couldn’t make sense of his words.

Green grass at my back, the sky swimming oddly. “He was taking me. To Belial. Nephilim, monsters… I’ve been so stupid.”

“Who, Caspia?” Ethan demanded. “Who had you?” He sounded like he was running. “Where did you hear that name?”

I tried to answer him, but something heavy was sitting on my chest, making it hard to breathe. Strange faces crowded over me. “Give her room,” one of them said.

“Call 911,” said another.

“I know CPR.” That familiar voice, the one I should know. The one I should be afraid of.

I smell blood spilled in violence.

He was here. I wanted to scream, to warn Ethan, but most of all, to breathe. More weight on my chest. A strange mouth covering mine. Ethan’s voice in my ear, screaming at me, frantic through the phone, but I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t move. The sky again, I could see it for a minute, so deeply blue until it changed and all I could think of were his eyes, Dr. Christian’s; his blue wrong eyes cracked through with white fire that burned down my spine and exploded in my heart.

Chapter Seventeen:

Ethical Dilemma

Something tickled my nose. I smacked blindly at the air and curled in on myself.

“She’s coming to.” Cotton, leather, and sun-warmed grass surrounded me. I curled into a ball and tried to retreat into oblivion again.

“You didn’t have to take her clothes off,” an angry female voice hissed sharply.

“Don’t be so dramatic, Becca. I’m a lifeguard. She needed CPR.”

“You did CPR on two people at the country club last summer, and you didn’t take their clothes off,” the angry girl insisted.

The young man answered her with the worn patience of long practice. “Because they were wearing swimsuits, Becca. There was no restrictive clothing to loosen. And one of them was a guy.” Several snickers followed this announcement, whether at Becca or the lifeguard, I couldn’t tell.

Fingers traced their way down through my hair all the way along my jaw line. I became aware of another arm, steady and warm, cradling my upper body across crossed legs. “Hey there,” Ethan said quietly. He pulled his black leather jacket, a gift from another life, tighter around me as I lay sprawled across his lap. “Are you back with us?”

I dared to open my eyes a crack. He needed a haircut. His dark brown hair framed his face in crazy rumpled waves. Gold highlights refracted the sunlight. “That depends,” I croaked, surprised by how dry and rough my throat felt. I reached a hand up towards his face. Ethan grabbed it like I’d thrown him a lifeline and stared at me with very worried eyes. I felt like I’d spent too much time in the dentist’s chair, hooked up to the laughing gas. “Is anyone going to try to kidnap me in the next few minutes?”

He smoothed my hair out of my eyes. “Why don’t you tell me where you heard that name,” he leaned really, really close. “Belial,” he barely whispered. “Try to remember, Caspia. It’s really important.”

I touched my forehead to his. He filled up my entire world: sight, smell, even the sound of his winded breathing. “There’s so much,” I said softly. “Dr. Christian was taking me to him. And last night, the boy from my dreams tried to warn me that ‘he’ had agents looking for me.” Ethan looked very unhappy when I said that. Great. “There’s a lot I don’t know: about Belial, and Azazel, and some kind of sword.” Ethan had gone completely rigid. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me there had been a war? That your kind killed my kind long ago, and that we were abominations and monsters and the reason for humanity’s near-destruction?”

He jerked back like he’d been electrocuted. He went as pale as alabaster, as pale as Asheroth. “Who told you that?” he demanded.

“I saw it,” I whispered. “Dr. Christian showed us. He had paintings. One woman,” I choked. I couldn’t help it. “One woman was about to get her head cut off. She had Shadows painted across her hands. She looked just like me.” He looked as if I’d stuck a knife in him. “The angel was beautiful. He had a bloody sword. His wings were sheer Light; radiant and perfect, not like feathers at all.”

His jaw tightened, and he looked away. “I’ve never wanted to kill someone so much as I do right now,” he said so softly I had to strain to hear him.

“It’s ok,” I said, reaching for him. “I think Dr. Christian’s gone. At least for now.” But Ethan just looked at me, blank and lost and tortured.

“…not breathing, you loosen tight clothing and clear airways. Jesus, Becca!”

Oh, hell. I dragged the jacket over my head, blocking all light. I wished I could add soundproof to demon-repellant on the list of Ethan’s jacket’s amazing abilities. I was completely clothed. My shirt, however, had been opened in a hurry. Buttons were missing, but nothing that should make a sane girlfriend mad.

“Shh, it’s ok,” Ethan said, rubbing my back. “You weren’t breathing.” His shaking hands clenched. “If that…person…hadn’t been here, I don’t know what might have…well.”

I tried to think of a way to phrase it: Ethan, he smelled blood on me somehow, managed to resist Dr. Christian, and I think he knocked me out of his arms. Oh, and I’m pretty sure he’s not human. How’s that for complicated feelings towards a rescue? Instead, I just said, “His girlfriend’s a real bitch.” I inched the jacket down to just below my nose and wrinkled it at him. “Not that I mind being in your lap,” I added quickly. As I’d hoped, Ethan smiled a little. Deep lines of worry marked his forehead and mouth, though, and his hold on me was a bit too possessive to be anything but fearful.

“How long have you been holding on to this information, Caspia?” he asked, watching me with the predatory attention Abigail paid to untied bathrobe sashes. The lifeguard and his bitchy girlfriend had retreated a little farther away to continue their argument. Boy, did I feel sorry for that guy.

I forced myself to pay attention to Ethan’s question. “I don’t know where to begin,” I said at last. “Nobody really came after me directly until last night. Starting with the Summer Court. And then there was Jack.” I sucked in my lower lap. There hadn’t been full disclosure about him. But then, what was I supposed to say? Half the time I thought I’d made him up, half the time I dismissed the dreams as not important, and half the time I didn’t want to make Ethan think something was going on when clearly… I frowned. Three halves didn’t add up to a whole, even in my bizarre universe. I groaned.

Only a slight increase in his breathing and a sudden ashy paleness gave any clue that I’d disturbed him. “Really?” he said, his fingers stroking my hair again. A muscle bulged in his jaw. “Why don’t you start with, ‘It’s him, I know it’s him.’ That would be a great place to start.”

“Um, well. I was in class, with Amberlyn.” I frowned up at the sky. “Dr. Christian started his lecture. It was about Nephilim.” He had to lean very close to hear my whisperings. “It was terrible. He called us monsters, with terrible powers. He knew. He had paintings, and verses from the Bible, and…” I choked on a sob. “In one painting, there was woman with dark hair, like mine. She could call Shadows, and an angel was… was…” He pulled me tight against him, stroking my hair, so that my next words came out in an exhalation against his ear. “An angel was about to cut off her head.”

“Son of a bitch.” His arms tightened around me, rocking me.

“He talked about the Great Flood. How it was our fault, the Nephilim, for almost wiping out human kind. Because we’re monsters. I got… very upset, I guess. And then…” I frowned. Ethan was watching me very, very intently now. I shrugged helplessly. “He took me,” I whispered hoarsely. “He was taking me away. I tried to fight him, I did, I swear, but he got inside my head, and he just made me numb,” I almost gagged on my own helplessness. “If that lifeguard hadn’t smelled my blood…”

Ethan looked at me sharply, and then looked around for my rescuer. He said nothing, though. “You know what he is,” I guessed. Ethan nodded uneasily. “Are you going to tell me?” I pressed.

“It’s not that simple.” He frowned at the lifeguard. “It’s not easy to tell what, exactly. And when I can tell, should I? If he’s gone through the trouble of hiding what he is, should I, you know, out him?”

“Wow. A whole new subset of magical ethical dilemmas to ponder,” I teased, but not before a person-shaped shadow blocked out the sky.

“Hi there,” it said, and knelt. “I’m Ryan. How are we feeling?”

We? I thought in confusion, until I noticed Ethan’s hand had gone from comforting strokes through my hair to a tightly possessive hold around my shoulders. In fact, he seemed to be trying to reel me into his lap like a fish. No wonder; Ryan the Lifeguard was crazy gorgeous, in addition to being blood sensitive and demon resistant. With dark hair, a deep tan, brown eyes framed by the kind of eyelashes girls would kill for, he had ropy muscles that looked like he actually performed labor to get them. Add in the fact that he’d performed a life-saving act that required skin and mouth contact, and he was every boyfriend’s worst nightmare. Ryan kept his eyes trained carefully on Ethan’s and included him in questions about my welfare. Clearly, this guy had experience with Significant Other freakouts.

“Better,” I answered, pushing myself into a sitting position to get a look at him.

“She’s fine,” Ethan snapped, and pulled me right back against him. Hard. I let out an involuntary squeal of surprise.

“Ok then,” Ryan said doubtfully. “Um.” Finally, he looked at me. “Do you mind if I check your pulse? I’m still not sure you shouldn’t go to the hospital. Just, you know, to be sure.” I bit my lip and nodded. Strong fingers took my wrist in his while he stared down at his watch.

“Well?” Ethan asked testily. Ryan dropped my wrist and leaned back on his heels, watching me through narrowed eyes.

“Fine,” he said after a long moment. “Her pulse is a little slow, but not what I’d expect after her, um,” he cleared his throat. “Ordeal.” He and Ethan locked gazes, and some invisible message passed between them.

“What?” I demanded, finally forcing myself free from Ethan’s iron hold. I pulled the jacket close around me, like the shield it actually was. “What do you mean, my ordeal?” I looked from one man to the other. Neither would meet my eyes.

“He’s gone. The one who had her,” Ryan said quietly. “I smelled fresh blood on her, and violence; the one who had her reeked of dark magic, but the forbidden kind. Blood sacrifice.” A low growl came from his solar plexus. “I do not know where he went, or for how long, but you had best be on your guard. I’ll let my people know, and trust you to alert yours.”

Ryan excused himself.  As the sun framed him from behind, I remembered who he reminded me of. Dylan, the hospital intern who’d been so kind to me when Logan was there. They could have been twins.

“Shifter,” Ethan said, as if reading my mind. “He’s flickering too much to know what kind. But it’s something with really sharp teeth.” He grimaced. “It’s really hard to stay calm while something with sharp teeth and claws performs CPR on your girlfriend.”

I could have lived a long, happy life without that piece of information. “I see what you mean about not ‘outing’ people,” I agreed. I looked at the wrist Ryan had just released. “Exactly how big were these claws?”

But he ignored me. Ethan leaned in towards me, his face that of a man on fire. “Caspia, I don’t have to tell you how bad this is. I should have seen this; I should have kept you safe.” Mutely, I shook my head. I could see the echoes of my once-avenging angel. I wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault, I should have known long before he did, but he turned away from me before I could.

“There’s something else,” I said at last.

He looked sharply at me. “Before I came to you, the universe was simple. Light and Dark. Good and evil. I was Light, and my actions were good.” River bright eyes, fragile as flakes of jade, burned into mine. “But humans don’t live in a bisected world. You… your world… is made of shades of gray. I look back on an eternity of black and white choices from my shades of gray world and I don’t like what I see, Caspia. I don’t like what I was, what I did. I think I understand Asheroth and his madness a little better, now.”

“You’re scaring me.” I pulled at him, wrapping myself around him.

“Don’t be.”

Was this the real curse of being mortal, the real reason people died? Not because our bodies gave out with age, or caught diseases, or stopped working? I wondered if it wasn’t the weight of life itself that brought us down in the end. Death by inches, bought by the slow unfolding of pain-filled knowledge? The realization that, no matter whom we loved or how well or for how long, we all walked into death alone, with only our experiences for company?

A new shadow loomed over us, long and slanted in the afternoon sun. Logan stood watching us with his body squared and arms crossed.

“You’re all right,” he said, as if he expected no less of me.

I nodded and struggled back into Ethan’s jacket. There weren’t enough buttons left to close my shirt properly. If my brother noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Were we right?” Ethan asked cryptically.

Logan nodded very slightly. “It’s possible,” he said at last. “Likely, even.”

“Damn,” Ethan swore softly. He scanned the buildings surrounding the Quad quickly.

“What are you guys talking about?”

Logan pulled me into a loose hug. “We know who’s been hunting you, Cas. And we know where to find sanctuary,” he whispered into my ear. Then he let me go, and brushed strands of my hair off my forehead. “But we can’t talk about it here, ok? You’re going to have to trust us, because things are about to get a little weird.”

My heart slammed against my ribcage. All I could manage was a quick, jerky nod. I let them pull me off the Quad and towards the visitor’s parking lot, Ethan on one side of me and Logan on the other.

In the car, total silence reigned. Ethan sat behind me with one hand on my shoulder the entire time. The words “hunting you” and “sanctuary” kept echoing around in my head. So did Ethan’s pronouncement: “I don’t like what I was, what I did.” I didn’t ask where we were going, and the landscape passed by in a blur.

Chapter Eighteen:

Strange Passage

Wrapped in dark thoughts, I didn’t notice where we were driving. I felt strangely detached. My brain kept replaying events and images. Angels killing Nephilim descendents. Dr. Christian’s voice in my head, his arms holding me immobile against him. How monumentally stupid I was. How badly my stupidity might have endangered Ethan, Logan, and even Amberlyn. Hell, even the whole town. By the time the car rolled to a stop, I had a dull headache and my stomach rolled with nausea.

“Where are we?” I asked, cranky and worn out. I didn’t recognize my surroundings at all. Ethan and Logan had been silent the entire trip, giving me nothing to go on. When we rolled to a stop, Logan slammed his car door with grim fury. I slipped from the car, following them slowly as I tried to place my surroundings.

Whoever lived here really liked privacy. The street was wide and bordered with huge lawns and patches of dense trees. It looked well tended, but there were absolutely no houses or other signs of habitation. I looked all around but couldn’t see any driveways besides the one we’d parked in. I felt Ethan touch my elbow, guiding me up a gray flagstone walkway to a gate that was at least as tall as our apartment ceiling.

“What now?” Logan asked, stealing the words straight from my throat. He’d come to stand at my other elbow, his solid bulk pressing me against Ethan. The two of them kept me firmly between them. They hadn’t stopped since we’d left the Quad. At first, I’d found it comforting. Now, it was beginning to wear on me.

“We go in. Or try to.” The tall stone gate had a door made of thick metal bars sunk deep into it. Ethan let go of me long enough to push on the heavy metal bars with all his weight.

Nothing happened.

“Let me try,” Logan offered. He gave me ‘the look,’ which I recognized from a lifetime as his little sister. It promised terrible punishment if I messed up his plans. When we were very young, ‘the look’ meant he’d put gum in my hair if I told on him. Later, it meant I kept my mouth shut when he snuck out, or he’d humiliate me in front of every boy I might ever like.

“Ok already,” I said, spreading my arms wide open to show my innocence. “I’m not going anywhere.” Both boys began to throw themselves against the security gate with single-minded determination. I watched them use brawn instead of brains until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

That’s when I noticed the slowly thickening mist coiling around us while they grunted and shoved. It was delicate and cool against my skin. I stared at it, fascinated. I was used to dark, hungry Shadows exploding across my skin with little or no warning. This mist seemed almost friendly in comparison. Damp cool air, white and swirling, curled around my ankles and tugged on my outstretched fingers.

“Not. Going. To. Budge,” Logan panted, still pushing against the door with his considerable strength. Why did boys get to a point where brute strength was their only answer? Ethan paused to examine the lock itself, looking for a trick to the mechanism.

The air between us became thicker and harder to see through. “Um, guys?” A tendril of mist, thicker than the rest had been, wrapped itself around my wrist. “Should we be worried?” The finger of mist wrapped around my own didn’t seem like something alarming. I tugged back, and it coiled more thickly around my finger.

“It started right about the same time that we touched the gate,” Logan said. “Any chance this is another security measure?”

“I didn’t think even he would be so paranoid as to activate the mist wall. Unless it’s arrogance,” he said thoughtfully. “That would fit. Or,” he looked thoughtful. “All of the Guardians have done so.”

“Is it dangerous?” I asked.

“Not once you’re inside it,” Ethan said cheerfully. “From the inside, it’s the best possible defense.”

The mist had grown heavier, turning a deeper gray as it thickened. “You could let me try,” I suggested quietly. Very quickly, the mist was changing from something pretty and soothing to something heavy and ominous. “Unless either of you have another plan. And throwing yourselves against something that’s clearly not going to budge does not count as a plan.”

Ethan reached for me. I felt his hand like a cuff, just above the silver bracelet. “I don’t want to stand out here in it any longer than we have to. But we also don’t know how it will react to Shadows.”

“Because they’re made of darkness,” I said more softly than I meant to.

A rough thumb found my pulse point and stroked it through the wing clasp. “But you are not. Just be careful.”

Darkness explodes out of me every chance it gets, I thought grimly. That didn’t happen to people made of sunshine and butterflies. “Right,” I said instead, and drew close to the gate. As soon as I placed my hands on it, I felt the rippling chills pooling in my palms. It wouldn’t take much; the lock was small, and I was right up against it. I felt the nervous energy that made it so hard to stand still when I pulled Shadows.

There was a click. The lock twisted open with hardly any effort from me. Logan pounded me enthusiastically on the shoulder and pushed the gate open.

But something was wrong. The Shadows remained pooled in my hands as the mist got even thicker around me. When it began to form tendrils, thick and white like bare winter branches, Shadows ignited from my palms and snaked up my arms. White mist followed, wrapping itself around me as if chasing its dark twin. The sensation was terrible. The razor chills of Shadows combined with a wet heaviness I knew would smother me if it got thick enough. I tried to force myself to calm down enough to get either one off me.

“It’s attacking her,” Ethan said, much more calmly than I felt. He held me tightly by the shoulders.  He stood behind me and pushed me forward through the open gate. “We have to keep moving. Concentrate, Cas. It’s attacking the darkness, not you.” He propelled me as I tried to focus on his words.

But there was no way to separate the darkness I carried in my blood from the abilities I’d been born with. Of course the mist attacked me. Everything happened so fast. I tried to focus on the Shadows and block out everything else. As if I could ignore the heavy wet fingers reaching for me as Ethan propelled me across gravel and through a passageway.

It always felt as if someone was walking over my grave when the Shadows crawled across me. The mist had that same skin-crawling creepiness to it. I flipped my wrists up. It helped, seeing Ethan’s gift, the empty wings right over my pulse points. I envisioned pulling the darkness slowly back into me, like rewinding an old reel of film in slow motion. It came too easily, like slipping on a pair of plush velvet gloves. I was getting altogether too comfortable with my darkness.

We rushed down a path bordered by overgrown hedges. Mist still clung to me like greedy fingers, but it lost its powerful hold when the Shadows went. The pathway was a new threat, though. Hedges reached out to us as if they could tell we were there, and didn’t like it. Their green branches snatched at us like grasping hands and pulled at my hair and clothes. They were alive and angry, determined to catch us and keep us from reaching the end of the path. Thicker branches snaked around an ankle. Pebbles and roots crunched underneath my feet. I might have tripped if not for Ethan’s iron grip on my shoulders. Logan remained several steps in front of me, punching and shoving at the hedges as they tried to block his way.

He stopped abruptly as the wild, overgrown hedge formed a solid wall right in front of us. There was no way forward, and the branches darted forward, pinning us in.

“That can’t be right,” Ethan murmured, studying the wall of green in front of us as if it was a particularly troublesome section of a crossword puzzle. “Unless…” He walked slowly back and forth in front of it, one corner of his bottom lip caught between his teeth. He stopped in the exact center as Logan and I both pulled leaves and snapped branches as fast as we could.

“Logan! See if you can push through and feel a wall through there.” My brother obeyed, thrusting his arm shoulder-deep into angry greenery while Ethan and I continued to fight against the encroaching hedges. They seemed more frantic now that we had reached the wall.

But they stopped entirely as soon as Logan reached through the overgrown hedges. “There’s something back here,” he confirmed.

As if hearing the call of a silent snake charmer, the vines and branches blocking our way melted away at Logan’s touch. When the overgrown greenery withered away, he stood in front of another gate resembling the first one we’d used. This one was solid gray stone, door and all. It had a very modern touch screen set into the stone next to the door at shoulder level. “That was strange,” he said at last.

“Uh, yeah,” I seconded. “Why don’t you come away from there, Logan? Because any sane person would be leaving right now, instead of standing there like he was trying to figure out how to get inside, and he certainly wouldn’t be dragging his sister along without telling her what the hell is going on.” My voice climbed on the last few words. A pair of birds screeched their indignation and flew away over the hedge. Smart birds.

“It’s ok, Caspia,” Ethan said as he released me. He examined the touch screen closely. “We’ve been here before. You’ve been here before.”

“That does not make me feel better,” I ground out.

“This wasn’t here, though.” Logan ran his fingers along the sides of the touch screen. “I don’t see a key pad… how do you…”

Ethan said a single word in a language strange. He said it only once, but he said it loudly and with complete confidence. I didn’t understand the word, but I recognized the flowing beauty of it.

Nephilim spoke it.

The touch screen flared as if lit from within. Strange symbols scrolled across it in perfect lines.

I got a cold, squirmy feeling in my stomach. “Ethan,” I half-whispered, “where are we?” But part of me was pretty sure I knew.

The more important question had suddenly become why, not where.

Ethan studied the scrolling symbols. “I can’t open it,” he told Logan. “Not anymore.” He could not disguise his bitterness. “It has to be one of you. Just a drop should do.” Logan turned and saw me staring, saw the fear and confusion growing in my eyes, and gave Ethan a curt nod.

“I’ll do it. You’ll take care of her?”

“What are you talking about, Logan?” I demanded. “What stupid thing am I about to have to stop you from doing?”

There was only one Nephilim besides my brother and me in all of Whitfield, and if he had security to keep people without Nephilim blood out, then I sure as hell didn’t want to go in.

Ethan held me around the waist so fast I had no chance to lunge for my brother, no chance to grab the folding utility tool he always carried with him. The same tool had once belonged to our father. It had a good blade on it, kept sharp and in good repair just as Dad had taught him. A dull blade is more dangerous than a sharp one, Dad told him when he gave it to him. It had only to kiss my brother’s palm to bring the blood welling to the surface. Very dimly I heard Ethan at my ear, talking, trying to calm me, but his words didn’t register as Logan pressed his bleeding palm to the touch screen.

The ground beneath us rumbled, then shook. Ethan dropped with me to the ground. I found myself staring at gray stones set in earth. For a brief moment all was chaos. Sounds blended together in nonsensical ways while the earth rebelled. Mist descended on us and just as rapidly dissipated. Birds cried out against groaning stone, and threaded through it all was howling wind and… was that a piano? Then everything was still and silent, the massive stone door stood wide open, and my brother stood just inside it, his hand a bloody mess.

“Caspia?” Ethan’s strong hands hauled me up, smoothed my hair, and checked me for damage. “Are you all right?” I could see the relief in his eyes when I nodded.

“And you?” I asked. I pulled a twig from Ethan’s hair. “I’m going to check on Logan.” I glided closer to my brother, cradling his bloody hand in my own. “It’s a shallow cut,” I said carefully, not meeting his eyes.

“Those bleed the most, sometimes.” Logan was rattled, I could tell. I almost felt sorry for him.

Almost.

Then I thought about how he’d sliced himself open and caused a small earthquake to bring all three of us straight to Asheroth. He and Ethan both.

I braced one hand on each of his shoulders.  “Don’t you ever, ever, ever do anything like that to me again. I watched you die once already and I won’t do it again, do you understand me?”

It took me a minute to realize that, although my hands were still braced against his shoulders, he’d picked me up by my elbows and now held me dangling several inches above the ground. It didn’t even wind him. He had no trouble breathing, no trouble saying, “Wait a minute, Cas. I wasn’t anywhere near dying. It just took Nephilim blood to open…”

“Stop it!” I howled. “How was I supposed to know? You won’t tell me anything! You wouldn’t even tell me where we…” He peeled my fingers from his throat and dumped me on my butt. I landed with a shocked thud. “…Are,” I finished uncertainly, looking around me at last.

At an incredibly beautiful expanse of twilight sky above a wide meadow ringed by dense forest. I swept my gaze around me quickly; wisps of white mist floated through the trees. To my left, the meadow disappeared in an abrupt cliff side drop broken only by the outlines of a low structure.

“Where we are,” Ethan said softly, almost regretfully, “is safe.”

I looked around at the beautiful, naturally enclosed space. If Asheroth’s living space was suddenly their idea of safe, we were in worse trouble than even I knew about. Ethan’s warmth and his scent of icy juniper at my back made me wish, more than anything, that we were home.

Chapter Nineteen:

The St. Clare

“There’s a reason for that,” Logan said, offering me a hand up. I took it while I stared at the beautiful house and grounds that opened up in front of me. “This isn’t just any safe house, Cas. It’s one of four guard posts, I guess you’d call them,” he raised an eyebrow at Ethan, “that keep Whitfield... what it is.”

“And Asheroth just happens to be here too,” I said flatly. “Could you possibly be any more cryptic?”

“We couldn’t take the chance that Belial might have more agents nearby, listening or waiting to follow us. And,” he shrugged, “we thought if you knew who it belonged to you might not come,” Ethan seconded.

“Well, that’s not an unreasonable fear,” I admitted, turning around in a slow circle. Late afternoon threatened to melt away into early evening, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen a more beautiful place in early twilight. “I’m having a hard time associating this place with someone like Asheroth. He always struck me as more the damp rotten dungeon type.” A house with wall-length windows rose from a series of low stone steps connected by a series of patios. The house appeared to have several loosely connected wings, spreading out in a scattered way rather than rising in stories. I loved it instantly, although I tried really hard not to. It blended seamlessly into the dense woods around it. Verandas made of light colored wood ringed what appeared to be the main part of the house. I realized with a quiet inhalation of pleasure that the house almost literally hung off the side of a cliff. “Is that…?”

“The St. Clare?” Ethan smiled. “Yes.” I started towards the cliff, but he stopped me with a gentle tug on my hand. “Caspia.” His looked pained. “I am sorry. I wish there was another way.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Is this the same place he took me when he kidnapped me?”

“I’m afraid so.”

I looked around again. Nope, still beautiful. “It couldn’t look less like it,” I admitted.

“The more, uh, secure parts are underground.”

“Of course they are. I knew someone like Asheroth just had to have a dungeon lying around.” I tried to ignore the breathtaking natural beauty around me. “What are we doing here? What do you mean, this is one of four ‘guard posts’ around Whitfield? Insane homicidal Fallen angels aside, it wasn’t exactly easy getting here. I don’t understand why you’re suddenly so eager to risk our lives.”

Ethan stood with his back to the cliff side and the oncoming twilight. When I took his hand, twining my fingers through his, something relaxed between us. He pulled me close against him, close enough to feel the gentle thrum of his heart. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that, if Dr. Christian was telling the truth, if someone as powerful as Belial is after you, then it’s no longer safe to stay in town.”

“What do you mean, no longer safe? It’s my town. I was born there. I’ve always been safe there.”

“Yes, but this time, the town isn’t safe from you.”

Ouch. Guilt blossomed. Darkness simmered in my blood. Dark creatures hunted me. Of course I was a threat to the town I loved. I should have left it a long time ago, before people got hurt and the coffee shop burned.

Ethan didn’t try to feed me some empty comfort about how everything was going to be ok. He walked towards the house and turned to see if I would follow. When I did, he walked straight for the edge of the largest veranda, leaning over the edge where a several hundred feet drop waited. “He’s not going to stop coming after you. Even if Belial can’t come after you personally, the town is still at risk as long as you’re in it. We have to get you away from mortals and innocents until we can come up with a plan. It’s for your protection as much as the town’s.”

“Great,” I said flatly. “I can’t even go home.” I kicked at the railing. “I suppose Asheroth doesn’t care if this place burns down like the coffee shop, then?” I let the railing carry my weight as I slumped in on myself. “I know that was my fault.” Looking down at the swiftly moving current, I let myself feel its loss. I was convinced it was my fault that the coffee shop burned and that Amelie and Nicolas had left. I could put Mrs. Kenner’s assault in my column, too. None of the bad things had started happening until the kidnappings. Until Nephilim descendents started disappearing. Except that for some reason I didn’t completely understand, I wasn’t as easy to get.

“It’s not your fault,” Ethan said, bumping me sideways with his shoulder. “I can tell what you’re thinking and it’s not your fault.”

Did it matter, I wondered? Like called to like. Jack found me in the Dreamtime because he had gifted blood like me. Perhaps Belial sensed my secret darkness, knew how easily I’d turn if he could get me away from my safeguards and circle. “Maybe if I went and turned myself in at the city limits everything would go back to normal,” I said softly.

“Obviously I need to work on my cheering you up routine,” Ethan said with a sigh. “That is the worst thing you could do. Trust me.” He straightened. Muscles stretched underneath his t-shirt, reminding me of how much he’d changed physically in the few months since I’d first seen him in Mrs. Alice’s shop. “This Jack. The Dreamwalker. Why does he visit you?”

This was dangerous territory. I hadn’t been exactly forthcoming with Ethan about my dreamtime rendezvous. “I think it’s the only way he can escape the horrible place he’s being kept, along with the rest of the Nephilim gifted.” I tugged on my jacket. Ethan’s jacket. “I’m not entirely sure. Sometimes he has horrible cuts and bruises, even in the dreams. I think he comes to warn me. And to teach me about Shadows.” I frowned. “He has total control of them, Ethan. No one else can teach me that. But mostly he gets mad at how little I know. About Whitfield and my own history.”

“But you admit you’re not entirely sure,” he insisted. “About why he comes to you in dreams.”

I couldn’t read his face, and I didn’t like what he was implying. “No, I’m not entirely sure,” I repeated.

“Then how can you trust him?” He didn’t look at me, so I couldn’t tell what he was thinking from his expression. I studied the map of his body instead, the taut way he held himself, the way his fingers splayed across the wooden railing as if he could rip it up and use it as a weapon. He hated that I’d kept this from him; I could see that in the way he held himself ready to strike.

At me, at Belial, at himself. I didn’t know whom he wanted to hit, exactly.

I just knew I hated what I had to tell him next.

“I met him first in a dream.” Logan had the fire going well by now. Its orange warmth chased away the dark if not the chill. “That night after we practiced for so long by the river, I was sick. He called it Shadow-sickness. He said I was burning out, and I believed him.” Ethan straightened; I barely heard his softly indrawn breath. “I believed him because I knew then that we were alike, Jack and I. Blood calling to blood, that’s the only way I can describe it. He fixed it. The Shadow-sickness. So yes, Ethan.” I slipped my hand over his; it had somehow become a fist against the railing. “I trust him. Mostly.”

“Mostly,” Ethan echoed through clenched teeth. “But not entirely.”

“No.” I sighed. “I suppose not entirely.”

“That’s why none of us knows more about these places that protect Whitfield. We don’t know how long Dr. Christian has been under Belial’s influence. We don’t know if there are others under his influence, too, or if he’s found entirely new ways to get through our defenses. We were only told we had to bring you here. Logan and I would never have brought you through something like that mist, or pathway, had we any other choice.”

“I know that.”

He fingered my bracelet. “I know a bit about the different kinds of gifts of Nephilim descendents. The next time this Jack comes to you, tell him to bring me over.” A finger found the bare skin of my pulse. “He’ll know what it means.”

I leaned into him, towards warmth and light. I was tired of the dark and uncertainty, of the way he spoke about Jack like I’d done something wrong. I wanted the day to be over. I wanted the uncertainty to be settled, to know where I was going to sleep so I could close my eyes and open them again on a new day that didn’t contain an attempt to kidnap me, burn something down, or hurt someone I loved.

I hated to say it, but I wanted Asheroth to hurry up get here so I could invade his shockingly lovely home.

“It’s beautiful here.” I couldn’t keep a note of wistfulness out as I stared at the sprawling airy house and beautiful grounds. The back of the house was even more stunning than the front. A long porch hugged the back of the house, which was all glass and light. I could just make out the masses of differently hued darkness that I knew were patches of trees and thick forest on the other shore. “Did you know I was trying to sketch this river when I drew you for the first time, and started this whole thing?” I wrapped Ethan’s jacket around me more tightly. I hadn’t had a chance to change out of my ruined shirt. Logan waved at us from the fire pit on the side of the veranda. “Just think, if I hadn’t come to the river that day…”

“Then you might never have had the pleasure of breaking through dangerous security to invade my house,” Asheroth said cheerfully from behind me. “For which I assume there must be some extreme emergency. As pleased as I am to have at least one of you as my guest, coming here could so easily have ended in all of your deaths.”

I spun; there he stood, in the deepening shadows, his red leather jacket meticulously buttoned all the way up to his throat. His words were polite, and that terrified me more than anything. A mad and gibbering Asheroth was preferable to a focused one. It was when he was sane that he got deadly. “Is this some kind of sick joke, Ethan?” I asked, taking an involuntary step backwards. Right into his waiting arms. “Didn’t he know we would be here?”

“I don’t know,” he said simply. “I only know I had to take you someplace safe, even if it angered him.”

Ethan’s hold on me tightened and refused to let me go.

“Ethan,” I said, as calmly as I could. “What are you doing?”

Ethan held firm. We definitely had Asheroth’s interest now. He prowled closer. I could see the facets of his diamond-white eyes, the perfect lines of his blood red lips. I saw the exact moment his face changed, when sanity fled. It was when the wind changed directions, swirling around us in a sudden gust, tangling our scents. Asheroth stopped, inches from me, his face contorted with rage. The tendons of his smooth stone skin stood out like ropes knotted with tension. “What did you do, E’than’i’el?” he thundered. “Why does she carry the scent of the Dark Realms?”

Dark Realms? Me? But I hadn’t gone…

“Belial sent someone for her today,” he said. I admired the way his voice didn’t waver once. “And the night before. Supposedly he can’t manifest within Whitfield. We need to know if this is true.”

Asheroth said nothing, only continued to stare at the two of us as if trying to remember who we were.

Logan was suddenly at my other side. “Ethan,” he hissed. “He won’t hurt her. You know that. Let her go now.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Ethan said, almost calmly. I struggled wildly against him now. “If this is true,” he continued carefully, maintaining eye contact with Asheroth, “then you must give her sanctuary. You must. You named yourself her Guardian.”

“Please, Asheroth,” I heard myself say. “It’s ok, Ethan didn’t do anything, really, just calm down.” But Asheroth just looked at me, his nostrils flaring. By the time twin voids of darkness unfurled on his back, I was beyond panicked. “Ethan, you have to let me go this minute.” Shadows flared to life in my palms, raced up and down my arms; I swear I felt them wrapping around my neck and even my belly. “Something’s wrong with him. More than usual.”

I thought, at the time, that Ethan was trying to protect me. I didn’t realize that I was the shield keeping Asheroth from killing him.

I had almost wiggled entirely out of Ethan’s jacket when Asheroth really lost it. I remember thinking if I could slip out of the jacket, I could loosen Ethan’s hold on me. Instead, as it slipped down my shoulders, Asheroth went perfectly still. As still and brilliant as carved crystal, I wondered briefly how any creature could shine in the dark. Too late, I realized how I must look. I was struggling and restrained and wearing torn, ruined clothing. The Dark Nephilim’s diamond eyes narrowed to slits as he stared at my bare stomach and ruined shirt.

Then, with an inhuman growl, he shoved me flat on my stomach. For the second time that day, I listened with my face against the ground to the sound of breaking glass.

Chapter Twenty:

This Delicate Madness

I felt smooth wood across my bare stomach. My hands registered splinters as I levered myself up. Some very tiny part of my mind that hadn’t gone into shock marveled at the incredible beauty behind me, at the starlit cliff-rimmed river reflected in the towering windows right before they shattered into millions of tiny pieces when Asheroth threw Ethan through them.

My bare stomach reminded me that I’d left the jacket behind when I’d wiggled out Ethan’s arms. As I rolled over into a crouch, I realized it might be the only chance he had of surviving Asheroth’s wrath.

He lay on the carpet on his side, curled in on himself, its black leather pulled up over his head and spread out over his upper body. It was the exact twin of Asheroth’s own jacket, except for the color. The modern version of Nephilim battle armor, I knew from first hand experience it would withstand any kind of direct assault. It was why Ethan had given it to me, before he’d become mortal. Even after, he’d refused to take it back. I watched, frozen, as Asheroth pummeled him in a blind fury, sickly grateful I’d slipped out of it before the mad Nephilim threw me to the ground.

It still wasn’t going to keep Ethan from dying if I didn’t do something.

“Stop it!” I launched myself into the fight. Glass crunched beneath my heel as I stepped through the shattered window. Once before I’d been a spectator to something like this, helpless and ignorant of my heritage. But as I watched the blur of blood red leather and the dark abysses that acted as wings, I reached for the darkness I carried inside me.

Ethan was mortal. Asheroth would kill him.

I was mortal, too, but I wouldn’t just stand by and do nothing. I did the only thing I could think of: as my entire body shivered with Shadows, I launched myself at the mad Nephilim’s back.

I was no match for him in strength, but I surprised him enough that he checked his attack for just a moment. I wrapped my Shadow-blackened arms around his solid stone neck and held on as tightly as I could. Never before had I channeled so much dark energy. I had no idea where it was coming from, and the idea that I had that much darkness inside me, even if I could channel it into a weapon, scared the hell out of me. Ethan took advantage of the break to roll sideways, crunching glass as he went. I watched him try to stagger to his feet. He was hurt. Badly. Something snapped inside me, some fragile barrier holding back my own madness.

“He didn’t do anything,” I hissed. My entire body felt cold and electric. “Think, you crazy bastard. He’s mortal. How could he take me to the Dark Realms?”

Asheroth had me by the waist, in that instant way they move, and it was as if the rest of the world fell away to just the two of us. His eyes danced like cheap Christmas lights, and I remembered the last time he held me like this, the last time he had me alone. Except I wasn’t the same frightened girl anymore.

“A human,” he hissed, and I saw a new thing behind the madness. I saw pain that walked hand in hand with fear, as it had for who knew how many centuries. “Why? Why him? He’ll hurt you, and you’ll die, and there will be nothing left of you but faint echoes in the flesh of those who come after.” He shook me violently. I refused to look away or cry out; I held his gaze and held onto him, Shadows breaking across us both in waves now, until I couldn’t tell who held who.

“Look at me. Look at me, Caspia, the artist who works in a coffee shop and has a brother named Logan.” His grip on my arms was getting tighter and tighter. The Shadows were growing stronger, too, as if his madness called to them, made them greedy. My entire body shook with cold and fear. “You don’t love me, and I don’t love you,” I tried again.

Oh, so not the right thing to say.

He slammed me against the glass-spangled carpet, his furious white face so beautiful and terrible over mine. “The Dark Realms cannot have you either,” he half-purred, half-hissed. He straddled me, pulling my forearms up in mid-air. “You carry their energy all over you. They will come for you, take you to the Darkest Realms where none but the lost and the damned can go…”

“That’s enough.” I don’t what I found more horrifying: Asheroth’s nightmare tirade, or watching Ethan trying to pry him off me. Watching as Asheroth gave Ethan a brief sideways glance and hit him across the chest with his forearm, sending him staggering. I heard bones crack.

And then, as quickly as the space between breaths, Asheroth was gone. I could breathe again, and see, and Ethan lay on his side several feet away. He wasn’t moving, but he was breathing, and I started to go to him. But he saw me coming and shook his head, pointing behind me instead.

Where my brother held Asheroth pinned in a headlock.

Panicked, I scrambled to my feet, ready to throw myself at Asheroth when he turned on Logan. Which would be happening any second, because there was no way my brother could hold him. It was a miracle he’d been able to pull him off me at all. I thought of stories I’d heard about bursts of adrenaline that gave people moments of almost superhuman strength.

It couldn’t last for more than a few moments. It never did, in the stories. I had to reach them before it wore off and Asheroth tried to kill Logan, too. He didn’t have Nephilim battle armor to protect him.

“Cas, wait.” Ethan called to me before I had taken two steps towards them. He had rolled over so that he propped himself up on one side. His was very pale and held one arm tightly against his chest. The other gripped me around the ankle.

Logan still had Asheroth in a headlock. Maybe I was hallucinating. I kept my eyes glued on the two of them as I ran my fingers over my scalp. Nope, no nasty bleeding head wounds or obvious bumps.

“But Asheroth… any second he’ll shake off Logan’s hold,” I hissed, confused and infuriated by Ethan’s iron grip on my ankle. Did he want my brother dead?

Asheroth didn’t slip Logan’s headlock; he was thrown from it, through the broken window. He hit the veranda several feet from my brother, twisting in midair like an angry cat to catch his balance. He landed solidly, already tensed and ready to spring.

I watched with equal parts amazement and horror as the two of them circled each other like feral animals. They moved parallel and sideways, never taking their eyes off each other. With dark hair and similar builds, they could have been brothers.

I must have cried out when I stumbled backwards because I broke Asheroth’s concentration. He whipped his head around, startled, perhaps to check and see if I was all right, perhaps for strange reasons known only to himself. Whatever the reason, I set events in motion with my one pathetic cry, events that echo across worlds even still. If I hadn’t cried out, maybe I wouldn’t have caught Asheroth’s attention and given Logan the opening he needed. Maybe Logan would never have discovered the things he could do. And if he didn’t know, then neither would I. The ‘ifs’ were endless. They still are.

My brother sprang at Asheroth like a demented thing. His strength and speed were not human. He made sounds low in the back of his throat, threatening sounds my human voice couldn’t reproduce if I wanted to. I’d seen his hands do many things, from pushing me on the swings to holding mine at our parent’s double funeral, but nothing was as shocking as watching them close around the mad Nephilim’s throat.

Nothing, that is, except watching as his familiar brown eyes deepened into black ringed with crimson fire that radiated out from his pupils like flames.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. Only then did I realize I had literally been holding my breath. “He’s… changed.” I felt warmth and leather at my back. Trembling from shock or pain, Ethan leaned against me. He just shook his head wordlessly. “What happened? Do you know?” I brushed dark hair back from Ethan’s forehead. His skin was cold and damp to the touch. Shock setting in, I thought.

“Just like when you…” he hissed sharply when I touched his right shoulder. Ethan’s lips were a thin white line as he spoke. “Like that day in the orchard.” Another sharp gasp as I tried to lift his arm off his chest. Sweat beaded thickly across his forehead. “Your first Shadows. Because you thought Logan was in danger. Remember?”

I narrowed my eyes, trying to see what was happening between my brother and the mad Nephilim. They moved too fast; I caught only the occasional glimpse of blood-red leather and darkness. I hated it that Logan wasn’t wearing armor, but I didn’t hear any terrible cries of pain either. “So because I was in danger, you think Logan suddenly discovered some kind of buried gift?” I whispered to Ethan, straining to see.

Ethan shook his head very slightly. “Not buried.” He spoke every word like it was being pulled from him. “Come back to life. When he died.”

“You mean…” I trailed off as they came to a stop, immediately circling again. Heavy twin voids of darkness loomed at Asheroth’s back but Logan didn’t seem intimidated. Unlike most people, I could see the darkness at the Nephilim’s back for what it was: a kind of abyss, or portal, into a place I didn’t want to think about, let alone go. Most people processed the dimensions of Light and Dark that Nephilim carried as actual wings. My Nephilim blood gave me the ability to see beyond all that. Now that Logan was demonstrating active gifts, I wondered what he saw when he looked at mad, lost Asheroth.

Whatever it was, it didn’t frighten him. Logan stood his ground.

Asheroth moved faster than thought; the darkness at his back let him literally sidestep space and time. He reappeared directly behind my brother, so quickly I didn’t even have time to scream out a warning. I don’t know if Asheroth would have hurt him or was just playing with him at this point. Logan was a descendent of his long-dead human love, too, and Asheroth had sworn to protect all of her bloodline. Logan either didn’t know that or didn’t care, because the second he sensed Asheroth behind him, he spun to face him with hands crackling with Light. Logan held palms full of layered light that crackled like golden sparklers at the edges. It was beautiful, just like Ethan’s wings had once been.

Oh no, I thought. Not him. Not now. Not when the forces of darkness wanted to kidnap and kill us. “Back to life,” I managed to croak, remembering the second and last time I’d channeled Light, straight from Ethan and into Logan, restarting his heart.

It made a twisted kind of sense. Maybe I did have Light in me once. I’d just given it all to Logan as part of the price for his life. And Ethan, surrendering his immortality, surrendered some of his immortal abilities too?

Logan laid his Light enwrapped hands, palms out, on Asheroth’s chest. The entire time I’d known him, I’d never once seen the mad Nephilim shocked into silence, but he was now. He stared at Logan as if at a stranger as a single pulse from my brother’s hands knocked him several feet backward in the grass. He didn’t get up.

My brother stood motionless, staring at his hands. I couldn’t see his face. A delicate trembling had started in my shoulders and was making its way across the rest of my body. Ethan pulled me to him with one arm. “It’s ok,” he whispered. “It’s going to be ok.”

I didn’t believe him but I turned to him anyway. Unlike everyone else in the starlit meadow, he was someone I could actually help.

I carefully worked on the buttons of his shirt. By the time I had the first four undone, I had to bite my lips together to keep from crying out. His chest was a nasty, bruised mess. Broken blood vessels bloomed crimson just below the surface. He caught my fingers in his own. “It’s ok,” he said. “I know it’s bad. I know better than anyone what Asheroth is capable of.”

I couldn’t stop the tears before they dripped down to hit him in the face. I watched roll down the tip of his nose. “Why, then? He could have killed you.” He might have anyway, I silently added.

“His reaction was… much worse than I thought.” Ethan’s words were barely more than disturbances in the air. “I didn’t think he would become so confused. I just knew that whatever happened to me, this is one place where you would be safe.” He looked over at the inert Nephilim. “And you will be.”

“What, because he’s unconscious?” I sniffled. “What happens when he wakes up? He’ll try and kill Logan again?”

Ethan smiled faintly. “He can certainly try. You saw how well that went for him. He may be insane, but Asheroth is far from stupid.”

An extra Nephilim descendant with gifted blood and a target painted on his back, I thought darkly, but didn’t say.

Logan knelt down beside us. He caught me up in a one-armed hug. “Hey,” he said, ruffling my already hopelessly bedraggled hair. His brown eyes were still so dark they were almost black, and fissures of deep red still radiated outward from the pupils.

“Hey yourself.” I melted into his hug. The desire to let him be my big brother and take over was strong. But I felt desperate and wild and angry. So instead of facing any of my feelings, I stuffed them down and made a joke. “In our next lives, I want the super-strength and pretty lights, and you can have the creepy Shadows, ok?”

He laughed a little before he saw Ethan’s exposed chest and inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Oh, damn, you look rough. We need to get you to a hospital.”

Ethan shook his head sharply in the negative. “I’ll be fine here.”

I kept my silence. Logan had most likely just saved our lives. Even if Asheroth had come to his senses before he killed me, he’d definitely saved Ethan’s.

But in doing so he’d manifested the absolute last thing any of us needed right now. Another Nephilim descendent with gifted blood was just another reason for Belial to attack. My brother checked me over and I answered when asked direct questions, but I could only stare in mute shock as he poked and prodded a visibly battered Ethan.

The stakes had just gotten a whole hell of a lot higher for me. I had not just a town to protect, but my brother too.

I watched the two men in my life talking in low voices and caught myself wondering not if turning myself over to Belial’s forces would be the best thing for the town, but rather, how I could best go about it.

Jack. I’d talk to Jack. I’d try to find him tonight, instead of waiting for him to come to me. I had managed once before.

Only then did I realize that Asheroth was gone.

Chapter Twenty-One:

Shared Purposes

I didn’t feel safe in the house until I found the rose.

It had already lost a couple of petals by the time I made my way down to the bedrooms on the lower levels. A note, written in an elegant, flowing script on heavy folded paper, taunted me to make myself comfortable, and to ‘please forget all about the home invasion.’

The house was as much a contradiction as its owner. The upper levels were open and airy. They consisted of a series of large rooms that ran together without doors. The walls were white, the furniture sleek and modern. With the exception of the single broken window, it couldn’t have looked less like Asheroth lived there.

But when I found a heavy open door with a security keypad beside it leading down into narrow darkness, I knew this had to be a dungeon level I’d been worried about. Of course it would be where Asheroth kept the bedrooms.

Only a couple of doors were barred; the rest were open and comfortable. They didn’t have any windows and the doors had heavy locks, but the rooms themselves were large and well lit.

The middle bedroom out of five or six had a huge bed with snowy white covers. One corner of the coverlet was turned down, and on its pillow rested the familiar orange-red rose that had been a favorite of my ancestress. Asheroth had given me one once before as a kind of peace offering. I could only hope that’s what it meant now. I placed it on the nightstand and went to look for things we needed, like food and first aid.

Later, with Ethan tucked under the snowy white coverlet, I slipped into the hall with Logan.

“Did you find anything?” I asked again. “Food? Medicine? Anything at all?”

Logan shook his head. The skin around his left eye had already darkened, but he insisted it didn’t hurt. It was hard to get upset when I compared him to battered Ethan. “I don’t think there’s enough to keep a mouse alive here.”

I sagged against the wall. “We’ll have to do something then. One of us will have to get supplies in the morning.”

“Me, obviously. The whole point of all this was to keep you here. Because of the vengeful forces of darkness hunting you? Remember them?”

The fact that he managed to say this with minimum sarcasm reminded me how far things had spiraled out of control. “You should stay. If Asheroth shows up, you’re the only one who has a chance at fighting him.”

What I was really thinking was that Logan was at risk now, too, but he just rolled his eyes at me. “Asheroth won’t hurt you, Cas. Just throw yourself over Ethan or something.”

I buried my face in my hands. “Yeah. That will totally work. I’ll try that with every threat we encounter from now on.”

He rubbed my shoulders roughly. “Hey now. Just get some rest. We’ll worry about the morning when it comes.”

For the first time in over a decade, I let my brother tuck me into bed. I stared at Asheroth’s rose, its petals almost black in the darkness, and thought of Jack.

Please come, Jack, I chanted softly, thinking of his strange tattoos like some people count sheep. Please, Jack. I don’t know where else to turn.

***

I don’t know how long I slept before I managed to wrestle control of my own dreaming. It was nothing like being summoned by Jack and walking straight into a mirror version of the waking world. I opened my eyes to an insubstantial place made of mist and wind. Lightning flashed far in the distance. I found it difficult to walk in a straight line, as if the rules of physics didn’t quite apply, so I stayed where I was and hugged myself in the t-shirt I’d borrowed from my brother.

Some people called this lucid dreaming. It meant that I’d managed to become self-aware while I slept, and it was as different from Jack’s perfect Dreamtime as crawling was from ballet. I was cold. Leave it to me to have cold foggy dreams. Logan’s t-shirt barely skimmed my thighs, but it was all I’d had to sleep in. Asheroth kept as much clothing on hand as he did food. At least I’d brought my clothes with me. I’d had plenty of dreams where I’d realized I was doing something important, only to realize I’d been naked the whole time.

Not naked. Half a point for me, then.

But how to find Jack? I spent several frustrating minutes concentrating on him, hoping thought alone might be enough in this place. When that didn’t work, I started to wander a bit across the spongy, unsteady ground, yelling his name.

Nothing.

I would have collapsed on the ground in frustration, but I wasn’t sure it actually was ground. I walked a bit more instead, and as I did, things began to look more familiar. So much so that it began to really bother me. Where had I seen this before? A world shrouded in mist, with lightning flashing off in the distance?

I suddenly felt lonely and cold and like I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life. I thought of Ethan, battered and sleeping in a soft warm bed.

And then I had it.

I had dreamed this place the first night Ethan came to me. I’d been drawing with Shadows, before I even knew what they were. Drawing dark shapes in the mist that stayed after I’d made them. Ethan held me around the waist and warned me. At the time, I’d been more concerned about the fact that a total stranger was appearing in my dreams and putting his hands on me. But the warning… there had been a warning.

“You’re not supposed to do that yet. It will draw their attention,” he’d said in my dream.

I’d dreamed of them before I could actually summon them, or even knew they existed. Even since the first time I’d set eyes on Ethan, some part of me had know the Shadows were dangerous.

I shivered in the damp mist. Had everything been building to this conflict since that very first day? The idea could make me panic, if I let it. But right then, I needed to draw some attention. So I did what I remembered from my dream, and began to draw. With Shadows.

In this mist world of mine they stayed exactly where I left them. I decided to approach it like any drawing. Both Jack and Ethan seemed to think this was a good approach for me. First, I experimented with a series of lines to get a feel for the way the Shadows would interact with the mist. They came eagerly, obediently; I summoned without fear this time, and without the intention of harming anyone. Perhaps that made a difference. I felt some of that same excitement I always did when confronted with any new blank canvas. The difference was that this was a living canvas with unknown consequences.

After a series of practice lines and scribbles, I tried writing words. They actually hung, suspended, in the mist exactly as if written on a chalkboard. I wrote names: Jack and mine, wondering if that would summon him. When that didn’t work right away, I moved on to basic shapes. And then I had an idea that seemed to come out of nowhere. Very carefully, with attention to detail, I sketched out one of Amberlyn’s paper cranes.

It hung in the mist, a flat version of its colorful counterparts that littered my apartment, Andreas Academy, and just about any other place we went together. I felt a powerful longing for my absent friend. With a few more strokes of my fingers and some reminders from two semesters of sculpture classes, I added enough form and depth to make it three-dimensional. And then, for no reason I could explain, I thought of Amberlyn and blew on the crane, exactly as if blowing out a birthday candle.

When it began to wave its wings and flutter like a live thing, I almost tripped getting away from it. As I struggled for balance on the uncertain spongy mist-floor, the Shadow-crane flitted around exactly like a cross between a crude butterfly and a paper airplane.

“Congratulations,” said a familiar voice behind me. It was not the voice I wanted to hear. “You’ve made your first Shadow-shape. That’s very dangerous, Miss Chastain. Now there’s no way your little town will be safe. There’s nothing Belial won’t do to claim you, and nothing the Realms of Light won’t do to eliminate the threat you pose.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve made more threatening play dough creations.”

Dr. Christian laughed. “Charming, as always.”

“So you aren’t dead,” I said flatly. I didn’t turn. His was the last face I wanted to see, the last voice I wanted to hear, and the last creature I wanted to deal with. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been watching the mist wall,” he said. “When you disappeared from town after our last encounter, I knew this was the only place you could go. Besides,” I felt him behind me, his hand coming to rest briefly in the hollow of my spine. I spun away, outraged. He gestured at my writing and the shapes I’d made. The little Shadow-crane flitted around in the mist, sometimes visible, sometimes not. “Such activity does draw attention. You might as well have put up a sign.” His smile showed teeth, too many and too white.

“You’re still his creature, then? Belial’s?” I squared my shoulders and tried to ignore the fact that I was wearing one of my brother’s Indie rock t-shirts and it barely covered the tops of my thighs. “He didn’t slaughter you after your last epic failure?”

“I am still the one who is going to bring you to him, bound and gagged if necessary, yes,” he replied in iced tones.

I swallowed hard. “Good.” He barely managed to mask his surprise. “I was hoping I might find someone else, really, but you’ll do.” I tried to loosen my hands from the fists they’d automatically curled into. Last chance to back out, I thought, then remembered Logan’s changed eyes; the charred remains of the coffee shop; Amelie’s back as she walked away. “I want all this to stop. I want you to leave my town alone. I don’t want you or Belial or anyone who works for him to bother a single person or place within its boundaries ever again. If you do that, if you swear to it, then I will come with you.”

Dr. Christian’s smile was sickening, but his words were surprisingly soft. “I’m glad you came to your senses before I had to crush this city. I don’t like hurting people, Caspia.”

“What the hell do you think is happening to the Nephilim gifted Belial’s kidnapped, then?” I snapped, incredulous. But he just shook his perfect blond head.

“You’ll see when you come. Things aren’t always as they are represented, Caspia.” But I stalked away so he wouldn’t see the way my eyes had begun to water. I looked for my Shadow-crane, but I couldn’t see it anymore.

“One more thing,” I said at last. “The little girl. Caroline Bedford. The one you took from her father’s house. You let her go when you get me. There’s no room for children in this.”

For once, the look in his eyes didn’t make me feel slimy when he nodded his agreement. Instead I saw… what? Pity? Respect? Coming from Dr. Christian, I didn’t know. “Just get beyond the mist wall. Through the forest, surrounding the estate,” he said at last. “As soon as it’s full dark. South would be ideal, but anywhere though the forest should get you beyond the city limits.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “They’re watching very closely, and the security here is….”

“Try hard.” He examined his spotless fingernails for dirt.  “Should you not appear, we will wait again the next night, and the next. But every night that you do not appear will be bad for this town, Caspia. You must know we have other enemies as well; as long as we wait here for you, Whitfield and everyone you love will be caught in the crossfire.”

I paled. Crossfire. Logan.

And then he was gone, leaving me alone in the mist of my amorphous dreamscape, wondering what the hell I’d just gotten myself into.

I didn’t have to worry long. As easily as punching through a wall made of paper, a familiar tattooed arm appeared in the mist and latched onto my forearm.

Hard.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the mist wall demanded. Exactly half of Jack followed his arm through the opening. “Come with me.” With a terrible scowl, he jerked me behind him. The mist world of my own dream melted around me like warm butter. We stood together on the wide veranda that overlooked the St. Clare. The house was quiet and dark.

I pried his hand from my forearm. “If you don’t mind,” I sighed. “I’ve been dragged around and roughed up pretty much since I woke up today. I could use a break.”

He stared at me like I’d slapped him. “Roughed up? You’ve been roughed up? You’ve been brain damaged, you mean. You just made an agreement to turn yourself over peacefully to our number one enemy.” He squared his body as if preparing to spar. “I’ll repeat my previous question. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Was it possible to fall asleep when you were already dreaming? I sank to the sanded boards beneath my bare feet and pulled my knees to my chest. Logan’s t-shirt tented over my bent legs and came down to my ankles. Jack loomed over me, shirtless as always and faintly blue against the deeply indigo sky. “We sort of match,” I said, looking out at the far banks of the river. “In a backwards way.”

His scowl didn’t loosen one bit. “What makes you think Belial will keep his word?”

“You don’t have a shirt and I don’t have pants. Put us together and you have an outfit.” I started giggling then, tiny noises at first that grew harder and harder to control. Eventually my entire upper body shook with laughter and tears while I buried my head in my knees and tried not to think of anything at all. Jack kept talking at me. I didn’t hear a word he said. Finally, he just reached down and hauled me up to face him, his hands supporting me by the elbows.

“You cannot just hand yourself over,” he said, cold and low. “You have no idea…”

“Don’t you dare say that to me,” I hissed. “I have every idea. You told me once we gifted burn like candles in your Dreamtime.” Now I held his forearms in a death grip between us. “Look into that house behind me and tell me what you see.”

His dark eyes widened as he swept the house behind us. “I don’t understand.”

“Welcome to my life,” I told him tiredly.

“Where did he come from?”

“That,” I said tersely, “is my brother. The one who almost died. The one a full-blooded Nephilim gave up immortality for. My brother who suddenly, inexplicably, fought with Nephilim strength and summoned Light for the first time tonight. I won’t let Belial have him. Surely there’s someone who would make the same sacrifice for you.”

He actually flinched, but he covered it quickly. “Summoned Light?” Jack echoed. I’d stopped feeling cold. The tension between us was fading, too, replaced by a sense of shock and shared purpose. “That will attract…”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. Them. The forces of Light are on the other side of us, Belial’s armies waiting just beyond the mist wall. Logan and I are trapped between. He’ll draw their attention soon, if he hasn’t already, and Whitfield will be even more in the middle than it already is. The very best thing I can do for him and my town is getting the hell out of here and taking the army of darkness with me.” I could feel the desperation in my expression. He looked at me with something like understanding.

Then I saw our arms.

Linked forearm to forearm, Shadows lay across our skin in warm peaceful layers. Always before they had swarmed across me in cold, terrifying waves. Now they seemed energizing. Instead of a sucking black abyss, the layers of Shadow across our joined arms had a hard, polished look to them, like hematite or obsidian. I looked at Jack in amazement.

“Sshh,” he cautioned. “You’re catching on. It’s why he wants the two of us so badly. We can do things together that we could never do apart, like this shielding; not much can get through it. Shared purposes: offense and defense. That’s us.”

I let my arms slip to my side, the Shadows dissipating like smoke. “Good,” I said after a moment. “Because if we’re ever going to be safe, we have to destroy Belial’s army. And that means destroying him.”

I was grateful for his warmth along my side. “You have to remember, no matter what happens, no matter how things look, that I’m on your side, Caspia.”

I nodded. “Me too, Jack.” I felt my eyes grow heavy again, a precursor to waking up. “Will you take me to visit Ethan in his dreams? Can I give him at least that?”

“Yes,” he said, sounding oddly smug. “I promise we’ll pay visits to Ethan. I’m counting on it, actually.”

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Breakfast with Asheroth

When I woke right before dawn, I saw that a silk robe and slippers had been laid under the rose. Asheroth was back. I suppressed the unpleasant image of him watching me sleep. I needed something to wear that wasn’t torn or stained or had belonged to a boy first.

Upstairs, the entire northern wall of the house was made of glass. There were no curtains, no blinds, nothing whatsoever to obscure the view except for a few vines and intrepid branches. I crossed my arms loosely against my chest, reveling in the feel of fine silk against my bare skin. I didn’t want to enjoy myself. I wanted to cling to my anger, my fear, and my sense of edgy desperation. If I didn’t, it would be easy to let the lush security of the upper levels of Asheroth’s compound lull me into a peaceful forgetting. I couldn’t do that, I reminded myself. A whole town’s welfare depended on me getting out of the way.

The carpet was thick and lush between my toes, the silk robe loose and soft against my thighs. The morning light caught the colors of the surrounding forest in perfect, understated hues. It practically begged for a pastel pencil sketch. I tried to remember the last time I had created anything, and couldn’t. I could probably set up an easel and do a fantastic landscape in oil or even watercolor on one of the many wrap-around patios.

Everything about the place was designed to draw me in. It would be so painless to forget everything and live in a state of ever-present Eden here. I roamed around the kitchen in the sinfully soft silk robe. That’s where he found me, digging through cabinets in search of coffee. I’d already given up on food. I kept my fingers crossed for caffeine as I ransacked cabinets and drawers.

“I apologize that I am not better prepared.” His arrival made no sound. I jumped as if I’d been caught stealing. I whirled, my back pressed against the empty refrigerator as he advanced on me. “I was not expecting guests. But I’ve taken steps to rectify the situation.”

It always shocked me, how young and delicate he looked when not gripped by madness or hatred. In the clear strong morning light of his kitchen, he looked as normal as I’d ever seen him. If I’d met him on the street, he might have passed for human. A very dangerous, attractive human. He didn’t even wear his red leather jacket. “Is that what I am?” I asked. “Your guest?”

He studied me in the morning light. I stared right back. I’d never seen him in anything but red. The blindingly white silk shirt he wore almost matched the brightness of his eyes. The rest of him was black. Pants, boots, even a thick leather cuff on his wrist. I felt awkward in my silk robe. But he only held out a hand to me.

“Let us not play this game today,” he said. His cold white fingers were still as firm as a marble statue’s as they closed around mine. “Have breakfast with me.” He gave me a little boy’s smile as he drew me out onto the largest patio. He pulled coffees, pastries, and fruit from a box. “I remembered that you like that terrible bitter bean drink. Paris has some of the best.”

“You went to Paris.” He smile got a little brighter. It was hard not to smile back as he handed me a steaming cardboard cup. Nephilim-quick, he appeared again at my elbow and pulled out a wrought iron chair. “Do you even eat?” I couldn’t resist asking as I scooted up to the table. I couldn’t remember Ethan once eating a thing, before he changed.

He raised one jet-black eyebrow. “You have to ask, after seeing the state of my cupboards?”

“Guess not.” I snagged an interesting looking pastry. The crust flaked away to reveal an almost liquid cheese center. I tried not to drool. It wouldn’t do to reveal too many of my weaknesses. I couldn’t have my sometimes nemesis know how much I loved cheese in pastry form.

“I’ll get whatever you want,” he said softly while I looked at my plate, at the beading on my robe… anything but the warm, cheese-drenched pastry halfway between me and the fallen angel. Damn. He smirked as I caved, pouncing on the pastry like Abigail on a treat.

“Did you happen to find any clothes while you were out?” I murmured, licking errant cheese from my fingers. For about half a second, while I sipped an excellent but very bitter espresso, I almost wished I’d kept my mouth shut. My clothes were what had finally sent him over the edge last night. He poked at a croissant.

“Your clothes were… unacceptable.”

I selected a second cheese pastry, watching him through my eyelashes. He seemed sane this morning, so I decided to risk an explanation. “You do realize that neither Ethan nor Logan had anything to do with the state of my clothing? My demonic minion art teacher tried to take me to the Dark Realms. There was something of a struggle,” I glossed over a whole lot of facts that might upset him again with an airy wave of my hand. “My shirt got ripped when a werewolf gave me CPR. At least, I think he was a werewolf.” I toasted him with my cup. “So you see, it all turned out quite well.”

His expression got darker. “You really must not leave this property without me by your side. I’ll find you more suitable clothing after breakfast. Perhaps we’ll even go to Paris.”

“I don’t want to go to Paris. I have plenty of clothes at my apartment.”

“Your apartment isn’t safe.”

I drained the espresso with one quick flick of my wrist. “It seems like I was pretty well protected last night. My brother and my boyfriend are both still alive, despite your determination to kill them. What makes you think they can’t protect me?” I slammed the empty cup down on the table. “Leaving aside the insulting implication that I can’t take care of myself, of course.”

Oooh, when was I going to learn to humor him? His diamond eyes sparked wild as live wires in a thunderstorm. “The idea that you can take care of yourself in this situation,” he growled, “is pure madness. And I know madness. I won’t let it happen. Neither will the two boys you so blithely accuse me of trying to murder. They have failed at protecting you, Caspia. Why else did they personally deliver you to my doorstep?”

For that, I had no comeback. They would never have brought me here if things weren’t absolutely desperate. I buried my face in my hands and focused on the sounds of the St. Clare rushing below us, trying to calm my simmering temper.

“Good morning. Did you get enough coffee?” Familiar black leather slid over my shoulders. Ethan. I whipped my head up so fast it knocked over my empty cardboard cup.

I was on the verge of throwing my arms around him when I checked myself, halfway out of my chair. “My God. You look awful.” I froze, watching intently as he sat carefully in an empty iron chair.

“I’m fine,” he lied. I could see scraped and bruised knuckles, torn fingernails, and bruised forearms. The way he sat ramrod straight reminded me that he probably had bruised and cracked, if not broken, ribs.

“We have to get you to a hospital,” I said, biting my lip.

“I’m not leaving.” Ethan announced with grim finality. He found his own cardboard cup of coffee. “And neither are you.” After a long drink of unsweetened coffee, Ethan finally acknowledged Asheroth’s presence. “Good morning. Thanks for not assaulting Caspia over breakfast.”

“I assure you,” Asheroth said coldly, “I would never assault Caspia, and I resent the implication.”

“We were kind of counting on that,” Ethan began. “We wouldn’t have brought her here at all if we’d thought you would react like you did last night. The whole point was to bring her some place safe.”

Even I could hear the anger, the reproof in his voice. Asheroth sprang up in Ethan’s face and shouted, “Forgive me for reacting strongly to surprise Dark Realm energy in my home. And may I suggest next time you don’t hide behind your girlfriend.” Ethan jumped up too, ready to fight, broken ribs and all.

Someone had spilled coffee onto the plate with the cheese pastries. I eyed them sadly. “That’s enough. People are missing; my town is under assault; who knows what kind of creatures want me dead, and it’s all my fault. I. Have. Had. Enough.” I jumped up, ready to storm back into the house.

And almost collided with a surprised Cassandra Blackwood.

I was used to seeing her in flowing skirts and sandals. But this morning, she looked like she’d hacked her way through rough terrain to be here. Her long blond hair hung in a single braid over one shoulder. A few leaves and twigs stuck out of it. Her worn hiking boots had tracked bits of forest floor across the veranda. Her kohl-rimmed eyes flickered around the breakfast table quickly before she dumped the heavy backpack she was carrying on the ground with a loud thump. “I’m sorry,” she huffed, out of breath. “I would have been here sooner, but travelling between the compounds was harder than I anticipated.” She gave me a faint but genuine smile.

“Uh, what?” I said, gaping at her.

“The mist wall seems to be active even between Guardian compounds.” Cassandra gave me a quick up and down glance before collapsing into the chair I’d just vacated. She flashed me a grin. “Nice robe. I brought you a change of clothes. Don’t worry; it’s not too witchy. Please tell me there’s coffee.” She rummaged through the remains of breakfast while the rest of us stared at her. “At least, that’s what happened between the Eastern and Southern compounds. I’m going to assume that’s on your end, Asheroth, because Grand’Mere would have mentioned strengthening the wards.” She spoke through a mouthful of muffin. “Next time, warn a girl, ok? I know it’s not enough to be a problem for a full Guardian, but of course she couldn’t come, since you’re all supposed to be channeling your energies into maintaining the perimeter. Although I think it’s smart, considering there’s only one of you. Do you want to send for reinforcements from North and West? I can help, even though I’m just the Eastern apprentice. Grand’Mere won’t mind.”

She seemed to be speaking English, even though I didn’t understand a word of it.

“Cassandra,” Asheroth said, with the murderous patience of a stalking beast. “Please shut up.”

She froze with a cup of coffee half way to her mouth. “No, don’t,” I countered, leaning towards Asheroth on the back of her chair. “Please don’t. Why don’t you go back over that bit about Guardians and compounds and mist walls, please?”

“You mean you don’t know?” She tilted her golden head backwards to look at me. “He hasn’t told you?”

“No, he hasn’t.” Ethan eased himself back into his chair carefully. “Maybe you could fill in the blanks.”

“Sweet goddess,” Cassandra said as she got her first good look at Ethan. “What the hell happened to you?” She launched herself from her chair and bent over him, feeling his forehead while she snapped directions. “Caspia, get me my bag. I knew someone was hurt but you look like someone tried to kill you.” Asheroth had the grace to look embarrassed as I lugged the heavy backpack over. She put both palms over his chest and closed her eyes. “Nothing broken, but you do have two cracked ribs, lots of bruising, some light internal bleeding and swelling, and that’s just your chest. I have some medicine to dissolve in a bath; you should soak first. Then I have a really disgusting tea that will make you sleepy, but should speed up the healing process. You’ll be feeling better by tonight.” She shrugged, as if she didn’t care whether he cooperated. “Or you could go to a regular doctor and suffer for another two or three weeks.”

“He’ll take the witch tea,” I announced, daring him to disagree with my eyes.

“Fine,” Ethan nodded. He even managed a small smile. “But on one condition. Someone tell us about this Guardian compound business, or I’m not moving.”

“Fine,” Asheroth snapped. “As tempted as I am to let you sit here in pain for two weeks, I’ll explain.” He tossed the cardboard box aside. I watched it go a little sadly. There were still a few pastries in there. Asheroth scooped the remains of my breakfast to the center of the table. “This,” he announced, “is Whitfield.”

“Pastry crumbs and a used espresso cup? Go ahead. Tell us how you really feel,” Logan taunted as he joined us at the now crowded veranda table. Asheroth ignored him. My brother nodded at Ethan and squeezed my shoulder. To Cassandra, he gave a shy wave. She stayed where she was, frozen on her heels beside Ethan’s chair. She stared at Logan as if she’d never seen him before.

“As I was saying,” Asheroth continued. “In the center we have Whitfield. Which we all know is something of a safe haven for those with unusual backgrounds.” Logan snorted. Asheroth slammed four empty cups down to make compass points around the mess he’d created. “How is it that so many of us, of such diverse traditions, are drawn to this place? And what keeps us relatively safe here? The simple but nonetheless infuriating answer is that we simply don’t know. All of us process it differently. Witches tend to explain it as something called ley lines; is that right, my dear?” Cassandra shrugged. She hadn’t quit staring at Logan. “The Nephilim, Dark and Light, feel that the Realms are closer here. They are, actually. It’s easier to access them, as if the layers between us and them are thinner.”

“The orchard,” Ethan said thoughtfully. Asheroth nodded. “That’s why it was so easy to bring Caspia through.”

“Yes, to the detriment of us all,” Asheroth snapped.

I pressed both hands to my temples. “Please stop it.”

“Whatever the source of this power, we all see the need to protect it, and thus, the town. Long ago, the founders surrounded it with four compounds, like this one,” he nodded to the house behind him. “Each of the four cardinal directions has one. And each one of those has a Guardian. We maintain a kind of security fence around the area. Most of the time, we don’t do much. Whitfield is fairly quiet and self-policing. But those rare times the town council feels we’re under a clear threat, we go on the defensive. And that means each Guardian puts a lot of his or her energy into an enhanced version of a security fence.”

“The mist wall,” I said slowly. “What does it do?”

“If your intentions are benign, not much,” Asheroth said. He looked at the mess on his table rather mournfully, as if it really was a war-torn Whitfield. “You might get as far as the town limits and decide you’re lost, turn around, and go back the way you came. You might remember you have a life-or-death matter you forgot about. But if your intentions are malicious, it’s like walking straight into a cloud of flesh-eating gas. It gets worse the stronger your magic is. And it triggers an alarm that lets the entire town council know where the wall has been breached, so we all show up to finish you off.” He said this last bit without a trace of remorse, lost in thought while looking at the far bank of the river. He came back to himself with effort. “Does that answer your question?”

“It’s a start,” I said grudgingly. “Ethan? Are you satisfied enough to let Cassandra start to heal you now?”

“I suppose.” He levered himself up carefully. “If you’ll come oversee the torture.”

“Just a bath,” Cassandra said. “As hot as you can stand. Where are we going?” As Ethan gave directions, I turned to my self-appointed guardian. He stood staring at the mess on the table, as if he could see things in it that weren’t there. I padded over to him in my bare feet. “Tell me something.” He looked up, as if he’d entirely forgotten my existence. “How long have you been a Guardian?” I wondered what would make someone like Asheroth agree to something that seemed so selfless, so public-minded. What was he getting out of it? “Why did you do it? Agree to become a Guardian?”

His voice was flat, like his eyes. “She hadn’t spoken for six whole weeks when we got here. Not one word. She was pregnant, and vulnerable, and her family wanted her back very badly. All I wanted was to keep her safe. I had failed at everything else, you see. But they lacked a fourth Guardian. It’s a position of some sacrifice, and not all that easy to fill. I just knew,” he looked around at the trees, the river, as if seeing it again for the first time. “I knew when I understood about the mist wall that I could keep her safe here, inside this compound. Even if the whole city went to hell, I could hold this little part of it, and keep her safe. So I begged them for it.” I tried to imagine it, proud Asheroth begging, and failed. He smiled with only half his face. “Yes, I begged them. I promised them forever. And they took it.”

I was afraid to ask, but I did. “Was she safe here?”

He nodded, a single smooth motion that might have been fierce if not for the sadness that rode him. “Safe, yes. Maybe even happy, at times. I like to think so, anyway.”

I didn’t want to look at him, so I pulled at the sash of my robe. “Just when I think it’s safe to hate you,” I almost-whispered. “I wish I could. It would be easier.”

“Take heart. There’s still time. Forever, in fact.”

I had worked the edge of my sash into a series of tiny, impossible knots. “So she lived here, then? In this house?” I took a huge breath, not waiting to hear his answer. “I’d like to know more about her. I know it’s hard for you and,” I couldn’t keep a brittle laugh from escaping, “dangerous for me, but I’d like you to tell me what you can.” How young he looked when he was still and quiet. It never stopped shocking me. “Please. While I’m here.”

But all he said was, “Your Ethan needs your help, no doubt.” And I ran, rather than look at him standing still and sane in the sunlight.

Chapter Twenty-Three:

Broken Things

Scented steam and muted voices led me to a large downstairs bathroom. It was easily the size of my bedroom. The far side of the room held a large sunken tub, big enough for a full grown adult to submerge and maybe even do a little swimming. It made the antique claw foot tub in my apartment seem tiny in comparison. This one even had Jacuzzi jets. It was easier to suppress my swell of bathtub envy when I realized it was filling up with chalky white water that smelled as bad as it looked.

A double sink stretched across one wall. Ethan leaned against it, flanked by Logan and Cassandra. Shirtless and tight-lipped, he stood patiently while the young witch poked and prodded him. His eyes met mine in mute appeal, but there was nothing I could do. I hadn’t seen the full extent of the damage until now. If his insides looked anything like his outsides, then he was lucky to be breathing. I’d only seen part of his chest, so I wasn’t that shocked to see it in the bright bathroom light. But the rest of his body looked worse than I imagined. Cassandra held his right arm and elbow, bending and flexing it while he struggled not to wince. “Stress fracture, maybe,” she murmured. It was fascinating to watch her work. She performed much of her examination with her eyes closed, resting her hands lightly over different parts of the body. Logan seemed very interested, interrupting her mutterings to ask questions.

“He’ll live,” she announced at last. I slipped up beside a pale Ethan while she went to test the water. “Just try not to pick fights with angry Nephilim in the next few days, and you should be fine.”

“I’m not making any promises,” Ethan said, his face tight with pain.

She rolled her eyes and dipped a finger in the bathwater. When she pulled it back out, it looked as if she’d rolled it in white paint. “Excellent. This should take care of the multiple bone fractures. Grand’Mere sent a tea that should take care of the worst of the internal swelling, and any bleeding. It tastes god-awful, though. And it will make you sleepy for much of the day. Soak up to your neck until the water turns cold.”

She rose to leave, and Logan followed. “I’ll try and find you something to wear,” I promised, slipping my arms very carefully around his neck. “There has to be something here. Asheroth was almost dressed like a civilian, so there have to be men’s clothes somewhere.”

“No red leather,” he warned. I smiled.

“Promise.” I kissed him lightly. “I think your lips are the only non-bruised part of you.”

“Stay with me.” He wove his fingers together at the small of my back. “When I have to drink the terrible torture tea, stay with me until I sleep.”

“I was planning on it. Now hurry up and mend your bones.” I slipped into the adjoining bedroom, where I found a neatly folded pile of clothes. True to her word, they weren’t too witchy, especially when I thought of her regular around town wardrobe. Given my present circumstances, I would have worn one of Cassandra’s tie-dyed skirts and been grateful. But I much preferred the jeans she left me, even though they were a bit snug. I expected that; I was taller than most women I knew. I had mixed emotions about the also-snug burgundy t-shirt that proclaimed ‘Goddess Complex’ right across my breasts. Maybe she was trying to be funny. Then again, the t-shirt was dirt and blood-free, and didn’t belong to a boy, all marks in its favor. No shoes, but I still had my boots from yesterday. Lastly, there was an odd and decidedly witchy looking belt. I almost skipped it. The jeans were snug enough not to need one. But it had a couple of useful looking loops and hooks worked in among the vines and flowers burned into the leather. I put it on at the last minute just to make Cassandra happy.

I could have found my way to the kitchen blindfolded, the brewing tea smelled that bad. Even with all the glass gone from one of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows and both veranda doors wide open, I almost gagged on the fumes. Logan and Cassandra had both pulled their shirts up over their mouths. They were playing some kind of game, ducking behind counters and cabinets while trying to fling spoonfuls of hot tea at each other. They shrieked like children, slipping on the increasingly wet floor as they tried to get past each other to the pot boiling on the stove.

“Isn’t that stuff going to eat holes in your skin?” I asked from behind my cupped hands. My eyes watered. They stopped their game in mid-fling, looking suspiciously guilty. Logan caught a spoonful right on his cheek.

“Ow! No fair! Interference!” he yelled, running to the sink to scrub it off.

“Oh, it only smells like death. It’s really good for you.” Cassandra tried to restore her lost dignity by furiously stirring her tea and entirely ignoring my brother.

“Nice shirt,” Logan said, scrubbing his hands dry on his jeans instead of the perfectly serviceable towel in plain sight by the sink.

“She is the Coffee Goddess,” Cassandra chimed in. “It seemed appropriate. I almost settled for, ‘Rhymes with Witch.’” Then the two of them started snickering again. I looked from one to the other and shook my head.

“What exactly did you put in that tea, Cassandra?” I asked carefully. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

They only laughed harder.

“It’s fine to drink,” she said, after a moment. “The fumes can be intense.” Again, they seemed to find this disproportionately hilarious.

“Ok then. Fresh air is a wonderful thing.” I gave Logan a gentle push towards the stairs. “You. Brother mine. Go find clothing. I know Asheroth has some around here. He was actually wearing almost normal clothes today. I promised Ethan no red leather.” More laughter. I gave him another shove. I just took Cassandra by the wrist and marched her out the door, down the veranda steps, and out into the forest that hugged the house. We didn’t stop until the forest swallowed us up and the house was visible only at our backs.

“Better?” I asked at last.

She turned in a slow circle, her feet moving in time with her deep breathing. “Better,” she promised before sinking down to sit cross-legged on the bare earth. “Oh, wow. Thanks, Caspia. Your brother probably thinks I’m an idiot.”

“No, I think he was happy to find someone on his level, honestly.” I collapsed beside her, much less gracefully. “What was that about?”

Cassandra flopped down flat on her back. “Grand’Mere sent a powerful batch.” She frowned. “She could have warned me. I could have used a lot of warnings today, actually. About the extent of Ethan’s injuries, which were much more severe than I was prepared for. The density of the mist wall surrounding this compound was an unpleasant surprise, too. As is the fact that your brother shows some of the same gifts as you now, Caspia.” She rolled on her side to face me, her eyes narrowed and her face unfriendly. “When were you planning on telling the rest of us about that?”

My throat went dry. I had to clear it to talk. “How could you tell?”

“I’m a witch, and an apprentice Guardian. Of course I could tell.”

“Look.” I sat up so fast my head spun. The world was a blender of green forest with a flash of blond braid. “I don’t even know why it’s important. Not really. I don’t even know what you being an apprentice Guardian means, or why it was so hard to get through the mist wall. So I’m sorry you didn’t know, but none of us did. Logan has always been the normal one. All of this happened last night for the first time, and no one is more shocked or unhappy about it than me.”

At that, her green eyes opened like morning glories taking in sun. “Last night? Are you kidding me?” I nodded miserably. She blinked rapidly. I could almost see her mind working. “Ok, that’s not so bad. I mean, it is, but it does give us the element of surprise. It’s you they’re after. If we move him, they’ll still just see one gifted Nephilim descendent instead of two. If he’s not here, then they won’t know to look for him.” She rubbed her forehead absently. “It’s lame as far as plans go, but it’s all I’ve got. You can at least visit each other. Theoretically, anyway. Travel between compounds is very smooth when we’re forewarned about security.”

“Move him where?”

“The Eastern compound, of course.” She looked puzzled that I hadn’t put it all together. “Blackwood Lodge, of course. Where I live.” She enunciated very carefully, as if I was especially slow. “With Grand’Mere, and my mother, and all my cousins. All the Blackwoods for the last five generations live at the Lodge. I wasn’t kidding when I said we were infested with Blackwoods, almost all of us magical. Logan would get lost there.” She looked behind her, at the almost-empty house. “Not like here, where the both of you stick out like torches in empty space.”

It seemed like the perfect plan for my brother. I hadn’t known about Guardians or Cassandra’s huge magical family standing watch on Whitfield’s Eastern border. I tried to picture a cross between Mrs. Alice’s sternness and Cassandra’s rebel streak. I multiplied it by five generations, added in what I knew of witchcraft, and sprinkled it with dolphin music. “I think Logan would love it there,” I managed to say between muted giggles. “Why don’t I go there too, then?” I asked.

“Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind a bit. Grand’Mere even proposed it. But your Guardian said no. And since he tapped you as his successor, he gets final say.”

Suddenly everything went very still and quiet, as if all the birds in the forest decided to collectively stop their singing. Cassandra’s words echoed and repeated until they were all I heard: his successor. The phrase ran through my head louder and louder, until I thought I might scream the words.

I didn’t, though. I managed to ask, “What did you just say?”

“His successor?” she repeated. “What? You didn’t know?” When I just sat there, frozen, her eyes widened in alarm. She took my hand in hers and rubbed it vigorously. “It’s ok, Caspia. Really. It’s nothing. Asheroth is immortal. He’s lived here for over a hundred years and will live here for hundreds more. Naming you was probably just a formality, like making a will or something.” She began to talk very fast, probably in response to how fast my pulse was racing. “It means you get this house and all this land. That’s good, right? And you get to protect Whitfield one day.” Still I said nothing. “Being Southern Guardian won’t be so bad. I’ll be Eastern Guardian, after Grand’Mere. So we’re in it together, at least. Caspia? Please say something.”

“He has no right,” I said at last.

“No, I suppose not,” she agreed. She looked as miserable as I felt. “It’s not written in stone. You can always just turn him down. If he can’t find a replacement, the town council will look for someone else.” She shrugged. “Maybe Logan…”

“No!” I snapped. I found myself on my feet without having decided to rise. “He doesn’t have to be a part of this. I don’t want him to be. I want his life to be as normal as possible. I don’t ever want him to be at the mercy of some strange power that’s supposed to be a gift, or to know he’s the only one of his kind, or to live in terror of what will happen if he loses control. I just want him to feel safe and normal, even if he isn’t.”

“Caspia,” she said, her voice low with concern. “What are you talking about?”

What was I talking about? Impossible things. Normal had become impossible for Logan the moment he’d pulled Asheroth off me. This was just another reckoning due between us. “I just think you have a good idea. About Logan.” I forced a semblance of a smile onto my face. “Take him, ok? You have to promise me. To the Eastern compound.” She nodded slowly, alarmed by whatever she saw on my face. “I had better go see about Ethan. Is the tea ready?”

***

I found my brother ducking out of one of the downstairs bedrooms. He must have been successful finding spare men’s clothing, because he’d helped himself to a new silk shirt. A spotless snowy white, it made him look softer, younger than he was. He smiled to see me. “Everything the crazy bastard owns is either black and white, or red. But he does have excellent taste. No jeans or t-shirts in this house. Nothing but leather, silk, or cashmere.”

“You look nice.” He did, too. Living day to day with someone, it got really easy to gloss over the whole of his appearance. I tended to focus in on the smaller parts: the shape of his shoulders curved over the stove; the cradle of his arms as he petted a contented Abigail; his long legs propped up on the coffee table as his tall frame overflowed his corner of the sofa. It struck me now how very much he looked like our father. I launched myself into his arms like I was a child again, and he could keep the monsters away.

“Hey there,” he said, hanging onto me even though I pushed his back against the wall with my very adult weight. “Hey now. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I lied. “You looked like Dad is all.”

“Oh.” He gave me a rib-cracking squeeze before pushing me back by my shoulders. “Everything is going to be ok. You know that, right?” He looked me straight in the eyes when he said it, too. That had been our Dad’s line. He believed every human being needed one other person to say everything was going to be fine, no matter what the odds. Whether it was ok or not, it was having that one person say it that was important.

I needed to hear it. Things would be ok, if not in a way he would like. “Cassandra and I had a good talk,” I said, not breaking eye contact. I needed him to believe me. “I think she has a really good idea for keeping us safer. It involves splitting up, but only temporarily.” I pressed my fingers lightly into his chest to stop his automatic protest. “I don’t like it any more than you do. But two Nephilim gifted draws way more attention than just one. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.” I could tell he didn’t like it, but he didn’t deny it. “Will you talk to her about it? Believe me, I’d much rather spend time at the Blackwood compound than stay here with tall, red, and crazy. But Belial and his agents will be looking for me here. It makes more sense for you to go. Besides,” my laugh was genuine this time. “You were the one who wanted to get witch-drunk. Now’s your chance.”

My brother didn’t say anything for a moment. He traced my jaw line with light fingers before chucking me under the chin. I used to hate it when he did that. Now, it made me homesick. “I’ll talk to her. Hell, I’ll go. If you’ll try and take a nap when you bring Ethan that disgusting tea,” Logan conceded. “You look exhausted. I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t.” I didn’t want to tell him that in my case, sleep was no guarantee of rest, so I just nodded. “I’ll try and rest when Ethan does. Just go with Cassandra, and that’ll be one less thing.” I felt his eyes on me as I slipped into one of five identical white bedrooms. “I’ll see you soon, brother mine,” I lied.

Chapter Twenty-Four:

The Other Caspia

I stood tentatively at the border of a white universe. Ethan, like every other male in the house, wore a white silk shirt. He lay limp on top of a white cotton bedspread in a solid white room. The lack of color framed him, made him even more vivid than he should have been. I stood at the door and hardly dared to move. I wanted to remember him this way, as light and life surrounded by emptiness. It reminded me of the first night I’d seen him in my bedroom. He’d reminded of a creature at war with himself.

“Hey,” he said too quickly, breaking the spell. “Have you come to put me to sleep?”

I slid next to him on the white cotton. “Unfortunately, yes. And let me warn you, if it tastes even half as bad as it smells, I’m worried about internal hemorrhaging.”

He shrugged. I was pleased to see he didn’t wince. “Oh well. The bath stuff worked pretty well.” He pulled on the hem of my t-shirt. “I like this, by the way. Cassandra’s?”

“Her idea of a joke.” I faced him cross-legged and handed him the mug. “Ok. Do you want me to sit on you and pour it down your throat?”

He hit me with a pillow. I grinned. He was definitely doing better.

The awful mess stayed down, with no help from me. I just had to promise to stay with him until he fell asleep. He used my lap for a pillow while I relayed all that Cassandra had told me about the Blackwoods, about being Asheroth’s successor, and about Logan returning with her. I traced his jaw lightly with my fingertips while we waited for Mrs. Alice’s potion to take effect.

“I don’t like being here with no one to beat him up,” I complained softly, half jokingly.

“I think he learned his lesson.” Ethan’s eyes stayed closed for longer and longer periods. “Besides, the two of us working together could take him. Logan didn’t give us a chance last time.”

I buried my face in his hair. “I’ll miss you,” I whispered.

“What, while I’m sleeping?” he murmured. “How long is this thing supposed to last?”

“Cassandra said you might sleep through until morning. It depends on how much damage it has to repair.” With Logan gone and Ethan sleeping, that left only Asheroth to evade. I wouldn’t get a better chance to slip away than tonight. Besides, Dr. Christian’s chilling words from my dream were still with me: for every night you don’t come, Whitfield and everyone you love will be caught in the crossfire.

“I don’t trust him.” Ethan’s pronouncement startled me. “Be careful around him, Cas.”

Who, Dr. Christian? I almost asked, but then caught myself. “Oh, Asheroth. Right. If possible, I’d like to avoid him. If not, I’m sure we’ll just snipe at each other as usual. He’s not exactly on my list of favorite people right now.”

“I mean it. I’ve known him a long time.” Ethan was so sleepy he slurred his speech. The drug was taking effect. He rarely, if ever, spoke of the time before he came to live with us, the time when he was a full-blooded Nephilim. It was easy to forget that a very long time ago, he and Asheroth must have known each other. “He’s up to something.”

“Sshh, just sleep,” I tried to reassure him. I felt guilty, because if anyone in this house was being duplicitous, it was me. I was the one planning to turn myself over to my enemies in an attempt to spare the ones I loved pain and suffering. Of course, I also planned to crush those enemies from the inside out. But still. It wouldn’t lessen their pain. “Remember how much I love you, and that I would never ever do anything to hurt you,” I said. But he was already asleep. I don’t know if he heard me or not.

I sat with his head in my lap until his breathing evened out. I went back over the things Dr. Christian had said in my head. I made plans and remade them. I reminded myself that I would have help when I got to the Dark Realms. I would have allies. It’s not like I was going into it blind. I could spare Whitfield and my family and still work to defeat our enemies. It was going to be fine. I willed Ethan to believe me through osmosis as I sat stroking his head.

Eventually I got hungry enough to risk going upstairs again. I poked through cupboards, mildly hopeful. A familiar drawl startled me badly enough to knock my head against the shelf. “The witchling left things in the refrigerator. If you’d prefer I could order out. Paris again, or you could name the cuisine this time.”

I rubbed my head and tried to hang onto my temper. “Any chance you might take me out with you to fetch this cuisine?”

“Not a good idea.” The refrigerator opened behind me. “Sandwiches. How original.”

I spun, the beginnings of a headache rising with my anger. “Thoughtful of her, actually. Unlike some so-called hosts I could name. Or perhaps jailer really is a better term.” I reached around him, careful not to even brush against the red leather, and grabbed the plate of sandwiches. “Don’t come near me,” I snarled for good measure.

“I wasn’t going to,” he protested, amused. Then he perched on the edge of a kitchen chair and watched me eat. “Are you going to tell me why you’re angry with me now?”

“Maybe,” I said with a partially full mouth. “It’s probably easier to tell you why I’m not mad at you.”

“She used to say the exact same thing.” He actually laughed. I paused with half a sandwich on its way to my mouth and glared. How dare he keep comparing me to her? “That exact same thing. She was always mad at me.”

“That.” I dropped the food, my appetite gone. I shoved my chair back from the table. “That right there. Always being compared to her. Having you go bat-shit insane on me or someone I love for no other reason than her. That’s why I’m mad at you. I just decided.” I gave an expansive shrug of my shoulders. “Why not? I was going to say making me your successor, or keeping all of this a secret, or trying to kill us all and triggering Nephilim gifts in my brother, making him a target for demons, or for being a Guardian for over a hundred years, or that there even are Guardians, or that I can’t go home, and there’s no coffee. But really, it does all boil down to one thing. Her.”

He looked impressed by my tirade. He watched me with narrowed eyes, to see if I was done. I wasn’t.

“You said her name was Caspia too. Well, I finally want to know about her.”

He nodded. “Come with me, then.” I took his outstretched hand.

I’ll be damned if he didn’t do that thing they do. I blinked to find myself staring at the very same portrait he’d shown me the first time he’d kidnapped me. My head spun from the sideways slip through time and space that marked travel through the Realms.

“Couldn’t we just use the stairs?” I asked, clutching my stomach.

“She hated the portals too,” he said. I smacked him, and then yelped.

***

“Her name wasn’t Caspia,” he said at last, as I stood in the middle of the hauntingly familiar room and tried to remember to breathe. “That’s the name they gave her when she crossed. They thought she couldn’t speak English, you see.” For once, the hand he gave me was welcome. I took it and clung to it in my dizziness. Only later would I realize he needed reassurance from me, as well.

We stood in front of the portrait. Beautifully done, life sized and in oils, I remembered it vividly from my last experience in this room. With honey colored hair and gray eyes, she looked like trouble. Spoiled, fun, benevolent trouble. “What’s the book?” I asked. I had often wondered. I had drawn it in one of my prophecies. Later, it had helped me escape him. But ever since, I often thought about the unknown book she loved to read so much.

He ignored me. “Of course she spoke English,” he muttered, as if to himself. “She spoke six languages. She just didn’t want to speak to them.”

“Asheroth?” I nudged him gently. Much harder and I would have a bruised hip. “I asked about the book. Remember?”

“Please let me tell this in my own way. It’s hard enough as it is.” He began to pace. “We crossed at Ellis Island, like so many immigrants in those days. She was indistinguishable from the rank masses. I hated it for her, but I also knew it was the only way. Her family hunted for her. They would never have looked for her among the immigrants, sixteen and pregnant and alone. They never understood her incredible strength. But I did. I had been with her since she was quite small.”

“What happened to the baby’s father?” I stumbled over the words. “Was he…?”

His head snapped too quickly in my direction, interrupting his pacing. I decided to try to avoid that in the future. “Was he your ancestor, as well? Yes.” He spat the affirmation. “What happened to him? I broke his neck with my bare hands.”

He said it much too calmly for my comfort. I found myself backing away from him without having decided consciously to do so. “I need to sit, I think,” I said quietly. He ignored me. I stood.

“She was in the deepest kind of shock. Not because of what I did to her husband.” No, of course not, I thought to myself. “Because of what happened before that. What he did, what had happened to her family. And all because of her gift.”

That got my attention. My great-great grandmother fled her homeland and family, pregnant at sixteen, because of her gift? What was it? What new monstrosity lay dormant in my blood? I debated the merits of interrupting him, but he didn’t give me the chance.

“When they asked her name at Ellis Island, she just pointed to a spot on the map.” His face contorted into something between grief and pride. “She indicated her family’s summer home, but the immigration officers just read off the nearest large landmark. The Caspian Sea. One of them, the fat one, decided Caspian wasn’t a girl’s name. So he dropped the last letter. He tacked on the last name of a family who’d taken a liking to her on the ship.”

“That’s so sad.” I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not something so tragic. “To lose not just her family, but her home and her whole identity. And that means my name is based on a lie.” All my life I’d been told parts of her story, but to find out it was such a tragic fraud left me feeling hollow.

“No!” Asheroth lifted my chin with a single stone finger. “Don’t you see how brave she was? How much courage it took, to do what she did?” He stepped away from me and began pacing again. “Of course she doesn’t. She must be made to see.” He turned his back to me and began muttering again.

“Well, you aren’t doing the best job explaining yourself,” I said, in what I hoped was a mild tone. “You just told me all the stories I grew up on were lies, so forgive me if…”

My body reacted before I saw the flash of silver, although I knew that was impossible. Something inside me knew to center my weight in my hips and thighs and let it pull me down. This left my upper body light enough to follow my shoulders as they rolled right and the silver streaked by. My brain still hadn’t caught up to my body, though, because when Asheroth tossed another spinning silver object at me and told me to catch it, I actually obeyed. I would have to have a stern chat with my brain later about how to behave around Asheroth and sharp objects, I thought as I stood holding a silver dagger in between my cupped palms. I stared at it, business end first, my mind wiped totally blank.

Then I felt the anger stir.

“You just threw a dagger at me,” I said, incredulous. Asheroth looked smug. I decided I might want to test it out. He didn’t look so smug anymore. I held it low, like a long lost key, and advanced on him. “Two daggers. Is that right? What the hell were you thinking?” I noticed how pretty the design on the hilt was, and that made me even madder because I couldn’t stop being an artist even when my life was in danger. “You could have killed me.”

Asheroth actually looked frightened. It was a first for him, or I might have realized something significant was happening. But I didn’t. I kept advancing. “But I didn’t kill you,” he reminded me. He stood perfectly still, eyes on the dagger.

“No thanks to you,” I hissed.

“Those were Katerina’s,” he said. He began talking very fast. “Those daggers were hers. They were the reason she ran, the reason her family was killed, and the reason I hid her here. They’re deadly.”

“So naturally you threw them at the one person you keep swearing you’re here to protect,” I hissed. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so angry. I slashed out at his red leather jacket, knowing the blade would break or slide harmlessly off.

It cut through to his stone skin and kept going.

I dropped it in horror. The noise it made as it clattered to the floor was drowned out by his howl of pain. We stared at each other, silver and diamond eyes locked on each other. “An assassin,” he said through clenched teeth. He held his arm out for my inspection. The alabaster beneath the red leather bore a slash about four inches long an inch deep. There was no bleeding. “Katerina was an assassin. She had your gifts, Caspia. And an instinct for these.” He retrieved the dagger and fingered the hilt. “Just as you do, although you may not know it yet. Like you, she was hunted. I have kept these for her.” He slid the lone dagger into a sheath I suddenly found at my belt. It fit perfectly into one of the loops I’d noticed earlier. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Cassandra did have a bit of the Sight, after all. From across the room, Asheroth held up the other dagger. “Your great-great grandmother belonged to a bloodline called the Azalenes, Caspia.”

“Not you too,” I said softly. Jack was right. I badly wanted to sit down.

“For all I know, you are the only one left. When that bloodline dies, so does the secret of these blades, the only ones that can cut Nephilim skin.” Another fitted sheath at my waist and Asheroth was within touching distance again.

“Promise me something,” I said, taking his cut arm in mine.

“Anything.”

“Don’t ever throw daggers at me again.” I collapsed onto the room’s tiny sofa without letting go of his arm. “And swear that this will heal.”

He grimaced. “It will. Eventually.”

“What does that mean? Eventually?” I slapped my palm over his mouth to stop his answer. “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Every time I think I want to know something, you tell me something else that makes me sad or angry or radically changes my worldview. I’m just going to sit here and let my brain implode.”

“Caspia?”

“I said shut up.” I pulled a dagger out and admired the etched design on the hilt. A raven, I think. “Please,” I added, to be polite.

“You like them.” He sounded smug, like a child who got his macaroni art put on the refrigerator.

“Yes, Asheroth. I like them.” I traced the etching with my thumb. I more than liked them. He had given me a way to kill angels. That meant I could kill demons by default. “I more than like them,” I whispered.

I couldn’t wait to tell Jack. I was already planning ways to sneak them into the Dark Realms to assassinate Belial when Ethan found us. He didn’t look happy.

Chapter Twenty-Five:

Break My Bones

“What are you doing here?” Ethan asked. I saw him sweep the room with his eyes. He tensed as he recognized it. “This is the room where he took you,” he said, addressing me and ignoring Asheroth.

I took a deep breath, and nodded. He was upset, but I didn’t entirely understand the edge to his voice. “We were talking about my great-great grandmother,” I tried to clarify. “What are you doing up? Cassandra said the tea would make you sleep for much longer than a couple of hours.”

The look he gave me was full of hurt and accusation. I began to get a cold feeling between my shoulder blades, not unlike the one I used to get around Dr. Christian. Except this was Ethan. “I had some pretty interesting dreams,” he said at last.

Oh no. His blue green eyes bored into mine. Had Jack come to him? Had he told on me? Surely not. But I couldn’t think of another reasonable explanation for the rage on Ethan’s face. “What about?” Ethan wasn’t the type to keep secrets. If Jack had Walked, surely Ethan would tell me.

“I was telling Caspia about her history,” Asheroth added. “About her bloodline.”

Ethan went stark white. “You did what?” he repeated incredulously. He noticed the dagger in my hands. The effect was electric. He actually sagged against the doorframe. “What are you doing with that?”

“Oh, just a little fun with knives,” I tried to joke. “You know how it is. Chatting about old murders, discovering deadly new gifts, dodging sharp objects. You didn’t miss much.” I fumbled with my belt, trying to put the dagger away.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Ethan demanded, marching over to Asheroth. “You have to know what she’ll do with this knowledge. It wasn’t your decision to make.”

“I suppose it was yours, human?” He pronounced the word with even more of a sneer than usual. Asheroth drew himself up to his full height. “I suppose you would rather it just take her by surprise one day, as it did with her unfortunate brother. Forewarned is forearmed. And in case you’d like to know, she did fabulously. She sliced me up quite nicely.” He waved his arm under Ethan’s enraged nose. “That should make you happy.”

“It wasn’t your place,” Ethan challenged.

“Hey now,” I interrupted. “Why shouldn’t I know about my past? I did ask. I appreciate Asheroth’s honesty. I know it was hard.” I gave his red leather arm a gentle squeeze.

This, more than anything else, seemed to enrage Ethan. “Asheroth? Honesty?” He snorted. “Your so-called Guardian is incapable of honesty. If he were to tell you the whole truth about his past, it would crush you.”

“Careful, E’than’i’el-who-used-to-be,” Asheroth hissed softly. “The past is not a nation of one.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, ready to push Asheroth, if necessary.

But Ethan beat me to it. “Tell her about this,” he commanded.

He held up a packet of photocopied sheets of paper. My homework packet from Dr. Christian’s class. Emotions swirled through me so fast I couldn’t have named them if I tried. The images were all so disturbing, especially the one with the woman who had dark hair like mine and Shadows coming from her hands. I would carry the sight of her begging for her life with me to the grave. He held it up between Asheroth and myself.

This time, in the bright light of my forbearer’s shrine, I made the connection I’d been too shocked to see in Dr. Christian’s class.

The picture Ethan held showed a Nephilim walking through a burning village. Bodies lay on the ground, while other figures ran. The Nephilim held a weapon, a blade of some kind. It was dark with blood, a stark contrast to his apparent purity. His wings were a bright, glowing, soaring Light. The artist had painted them nearly right, with light luminous brush strokes instead of the customary feathers. His beautiful pale face was framed by hair so dark it looked black as he went about his mission of destruction.

Asheroth.

Asheroth was the angel in that picture.

As surely as if we shared synapses as well as blood, he dragged his ageless eyes to mine, and I saw one word written there:

Yes.

I felt very faint and very dizzy. A strange rushing sound, like the sea but constant, filled my ears. A heartbeat, mine, drowned everything out as I surged to my feet.

“You killed them,” I heard myself say. I felt very light at the same time that I knew Ethan was bearing almost all my weight. “You were there and you killed them. You were of the Light then, and it didn’t matter.”

Asheroth said nothing. He merely stared at me. He looked at the packet of papers, and back at me. Finally, he nodded. “That was a very long time ago.” It was all the acknowledgement I needed. “I had forgotten.” His voice was soft and wondering, like a child discovering a lost puzzle piece and seeing, at last, the labored whole.

“How. Could. You.” My voice sounded flat, too dead to be angry, even to me.

“I was there,” Asheroth agreed. “And because I was there, because I fought in the Great War against the Nephilim gifted, I know what is to come. I know what to expect. And I know how to protect you.” This last, he said with blazing eyes. Then he closed them, as if wearied beyond belief. “I had almost forgotten,” he said in a whisper. “Almost,” he said again, this time to Ethan. “I thank you for the reminder.”

Ethan didn’t move from my back, but he did answer Asheroth. “Why? Why thank me?”

“For the reminder that not all who serve the Light serve Justice,” he said at last, as I fought to get my breathing under control. I heard the rustling of paper, the snapping of pages. “Just as not all those who are Fallen need surrender to our lowest natures. There are few things I regret doing in the name of the Light, but this was one.” He sounded choked. “Oh yes. This was one.”

Pages of pictures, light as feathers, bridged the space between us. I reached for them with trembling fingers and proceeded to tear them apart. Stone hands I remembered well ran along my cheekbone, angel-quick. But they were cold where Ethan’s had been warm, and I made an inchoate sound of strangled rage while I batted his hand away.

“Don’t touch her,” Ethan warned. I heard flesh strike stone and knew it must have hurt him. It always hurt a human to strike a Nephilim, even accidentally, and I knew Ethan hadn’t done it accidentally. Yet he hadn’t, wouldn’t, cry out. Asheroth said nothing.

Instead, he prowled around, slowly, until he stood facing me, waiting for me to turn my attention solely to him. Asheroth liked that, being the center of attention. My attention. How did I know the shape of his movements? Because we shared blood, however faint, and Ethan and I no longer did? With Ethan’s soothing hand on my neck, I remembered the last time the mad Dark Nephilim and I had met in this place. I shuddered.

“No.” The word echoed, loud and sure. “Madness I can deal with. Murder? Not so much.” I swept up a handful of my shredded homework assignment and threw it straight into Asheroth’s face. “Come on, Ethan.” I turned to go. “I don’t care how safe it is here. We’ll find somewhere else.”

We were almost away when his aristocratic drawl snared me again.

“Shadow stealers. That’s what they called your kind during the first war against heaven.”

“Really.” I spoke through clenched teeth. My voice came out flat and cold.

“Mmm. Because you could steal the Shadows, you see.”

“No kidding.” Mad Dark Nephilim either didn’t get sarcasm, or didn’t care. Asheroth droned on.

“Some few of you could do it with Light. A very few, with both. That’s why you were dangerous.” He almost sang this last word, emphasizing each separate syllable while he appeared suddenly right in front of my face. I stumbled backwards. “We Nephilim only use the Realms for travel. We cannot bend the Realms that shelter us into weapons. So when some few of our human descendants could, at first we thought it a mere curiosity. Since they had only a part of our blood, perhaps this enabled them to touch, to use, the Realms in pieces. There was talk, there was conjecture. And while we talked, while we thought, some very ambitious ones, some Rebellious ones, realized these descendents could do things we could not. They could use the Realms against us. And so the first army of Shadow stealers was formed.”

“Until you had them all killed,” I hissed before I could stop myself.

“No,” he said at last, his diamond eyes gone very distant and cold. He stepped back, almost all the way back, into the dark. “That came later, much later. After all the damage was done.”

“What damage?” I asked, although I didn’t want to.

“It was terrible,” he said quietly. The room seemed to hold its breath. “Many of the Nephilim descendants didn’t want to fight. They were forced to, either by direct threats, or because Rebel angels held loved ones hostage. And we,” he dropped his head. “Many of us had to fight our own descendants. In between, the destruction was terrible. In the end, it took the Flood.”

I was silent, digesting this. Ethan’s strong arm warded off the sudden chill in the air. “How am I here, then? How can I do what I do?”

He stared at me, and he looked like nothing so much as he did a fiercely rabid creature. “Why don’t you ask your Ethan? E’than’i’el was one of the worst of us all.”

***

Asheroth’s words deepened and slowed until he sounded as if he spoke through a long, dark tunnel. It was so strange. He stood only a few feet away, but he seemed to be receding, every part of him, until my world narrowed to a tunnel of nonsense sounds and mixed-up colors. I felt as if the entire world had morphed into a wheel of funhouse mirrors. The only thing anchoring this insane world together was one sentence, repeated again and again:

“E’than’i’el was the worst of us all.”

I wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

Because if I did, part of me would die.

It was dark all around me. When had it gotten dark? And then I realized it was just that my world had turned into a horrible lightless place. I backed away from Asheroth, one foot behind the other, towards the enveloping velvet dark. I crept away, dimly aware of my fist in my mouth, jammed there to stifle any screams. I tasted blood.

Ethan. The worst of them all.

The past is not a nation of one.

No. I wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Those two sentences became my mantra. I would repeat them, over and over, until Asheroth’s terrible lie was erased from my mind.

My back hit a wall. My fist was still jammed in my mouth, tasting of blood. The room was dark with tall windows. There was no longer anyone in the room but the two of us. Asheroth was gone. Coward, I thought.

“Caspia,” Ethan said. He stood, outlined against the door through which I’d just come, every muscle tensed as if to spring. I wanted to laugh, to howl like a madwoman. My shoulders shook, and I realized it wasn’t with laughter. It was sobs. He watched me like a feral cat. Once again, in this room, I was prey.

“Don’t you see?” I gasped out. Teeth marks on my knuckles. Laughter and tears. Ethan’s feather-light touch reaching for me, finding nothing. My chest heaved; there was no air. “It was here. In this room.” I pointed to the wall beside him, to the life-size painting of my ancestress. Katerina? I didn’t even have the right name. “This is where he brought me. All those months ago.”

Lightning flashed in his eyes, again and again. No weight of worlds on his back now. No wings, no planes of Light. Tonight he carried it on his soul, if he had such a thing. I could see the weight of it dragging him down, his shoulders thrown forward as if attached to me by some invisible tether he both fought and cherished. The space between us taut, momentous, made of glass; who would speak and shatter us? Which would reach for the other, who would set in motion a silence made of years? He moved towards me, a slow uncoiling of muscle and sinew. “You’re safe now. I would never let anything hurt you, not anywhere, not anyone.”

“I realized I loved you,” I said against my wall. “Here, in this room. When I thought I was going to die. I wanted… I thought you were…” The fist was back in my mouth.

He ignored my words, focused instead on my body’s language. Exactly like a predator. A benevolent predator, waiting to gather his prey. I sobbed. I had weapons. I was dangerous. I would make him take me seriously. I would force him to tell me the truth.

“Put it down,” he said before I even realized I was holding Katerina’s dagger. “You don’t need it. Not here. No one’s going to hurt you.”

“Did you do it?” The raven etching flashed as I moved it. “Did you kill them?”

To his credit, he didn’t even look at the blade. He never took his eyes off my face. “You’re upset. Of course you are. But I’m not your enemy, Caspia. I’m not even Nephilim, good or bad. Cut me with that and I’ll bleed.” He flipped his wrist up and jerked up his sleeve. Seventeen stitches from mid-wrist to the crook of his elbow. “Remember? Remember the knife in the dishwater? I wanted to cook for you because I never had. But you wouldn’t let me.”

“Because you were so clumsy,” a voice that might have belonged to me whispered.

“Yes! Yes.” At my shaky whisper, Ethan began to breathe again. “Because I was so clumsy. So we decided to make a cheese plate, because you said nothing was safer than cheese. But you started arguing about the three second rule because Logan wanted to eat off the floor.”

“He dropped a piece,” I whispered again.

Ethan inched towards me. “Yes. You said anything on the floor belonged to Abigail. I wanted to start over, but there were no knives, so I tried to wash one.” Don’t hurt yourself, he begged me with his eyes.

“But there was already one in the dishpan.” A moment of relief that his story could bring me back from whatever dark place I’d gone. Then I remembered. I looked again at the dagger in my hand. It was duller than the bracelets he’d given me. They looked like liquid stars in the dark. I shoved the dagger back in my belt. “Did you do it?” I demanded again.

He straightened. “Yes. Yes I did. I fought in the first Nephilim war.”

I flinched. “Did you want to?”

“Yes.” He sounded very far away. “I thought it was the right thing to do. I was very different then. Everything was black or white. Good or evil. It’s not like that now. I would take it back if I could. Remember what I said when Dr. Christian tried to take you? That I had never wanted to kill someone as badly as I did right then?”  I nodded. I couldn’t look at him. “I was talking about myself.”

“It doesn’t matter.” I walked past him blindly. “I’d like to lay down now.”

“Caspia?” he said softly as I passed him. He didn’t try to touch me or stop me. “I’m sorry. I know it’s inadequate, but it’s true. Just please don’t do anything reckless,” he called after me.

It didn’t change anything, except maybe make things a little easier. I wouldn’t feel so bad about what I had decided to do. “Leave me alone, Ethan.” I didn’t look back as I picked a random identical white bedroom to wait for the night.

Chapter Twenty-Six:

White Box

They come to me, both of them, and talk to me.

They want me to talk back. If I do, they’ll feel better. Like I’m no longer a broken thing they don’t know how to fix. They won’t have to think about all the ways they broke me.

Time is funny here. It goes fastest when my mind is blank as the walls, as white as the smooth cotton comforter underneath me. But it drags when I remember.

The pictures. People like me. Hunted, dying. My people. I thought I knew what that meant. All my life I thought I knew what that meant. But now I know there was a whole world of people with darkness in their blood, and light too, and gifts that sang in them and strangled sometimes but always were a part of them, a part they knew and didn’t fight. I’d seen it in those pictures. They died afraid for their lives, not in fear of their blood or their gifts or each other.

I have loved a Nephilim. I have loved a human. I have never loved another like myself because until last night, when my brother exploded with stolen gifts, I’ve always been kept in a safe sterile world. Protected in Whitfield. Protected by wards, by neighbors, by Nephilim. While others like me are hunted, enslaved, forced to fight.

I realize I want to join them not to save my town or my brother, but because I want to. I want to be with my own kind, not a human and a Nephilim who hurt me because they think they love me.

I want to know this darkness in my blood. I want to know myself.

Chapter Twenty-Seven:

Delivery Service

“Caspia,” Asheroth said gently. “You haven’t eaten anything since breakfast. You have to be hungry. I’ll bring you anything you want. Just tell me what it is.”

Of the two of them, he was the only one who had the nerve to sit on the bed with me, perched on the very edge. If either of them had tried to touch me I don’t know what I would have done. Bitten them, maybe. Certainly growled. I think they sensed that and so they stayed away. But Asheroth came in every now and then, and then he’d go away for a while.

He seemed determined to bring me stuff. If he brought me enough stuff, maybe he thought it would make up for all those brutal murders he committed thousands of years ago. Asheroth brought me piles of clothing, still on hangers and in clear plastic bags. “I brought you some things to wear,” he said, his pale skin strangely flat in the darkened bedroom. It was only a few shades lighter than the walls. He brought an odd assortment; evening gowns, a swimsuit, what might have been a fur coat. I turned my back and faced the other identical white wall.

Ethan was in that corner. In his way, he was as traumatized as I was. He didn’t speak or even move. He kept his own silent vigil with me, standing motionless in the same corner, eyes the color of the St. Clare fixed on me the whole time. Eventually, I got tired of feeling his eyes on me. I turned my back on him and faced the other identical white wall.

Asheroth appeared again with various offerings. He brought more clothes, bags and bags of them, from Parisian stores with elegant names. He brought a huge box of art supplies that he set down carefully at the foot of the bed. He pulled out item after item to show me: pastels and so many tubes of oils I had never heard of some of the colors; pencils and boxes of graphite and blending sticks; bottles of linseed oil and turpentine.

I rolled over. Ethan still stared at me, his arms folded across his chest. I felt as if there was an invisible cord of misery tying us together. I rolled back over.

Asheroth brought: shoes, more clothes, books, jewelry, and an entire bag of cheese pastries. Ethan didn’t move. He continued to radiate misery from his corner. He finally told Asheroth to stop bringing me things when the piles around the bed reached ridiculous proportions. Being Asheroth, of course he didn’t listen. He appeared at the side of the huge white bed with full Dark wings at his back. He wasn’t wearing his jacket. I’d never seen him travel the Realms without it. Instead, he held it cradled close to his chest like it was a baby. His cold stone face was a strange mixture of terror and hope.

Then his red leather jacket began to twist in his arms, howling and hissing like a small and very angry demon.

“I brought your cat,” he said, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d done. “Obviously,” he added with distaste.

“Let her go! Are you crazy?” I yelled, making a grab for Asheroth’s jacket. I jerked back as the Nephilim released a very angry Abigail. Abby raced under the bed and yowled her displeasure. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“That Caspia would want her cat,” he said archly, as if transporting cats through time and space wrapped in modern-day celestial battle armor was the most logical thing in the world. “I also watered your plants and checked your mail. Your have a most pressing offer from the cable company.”

Abigail hissed. I stuck my head under the bed, trying to see where she’d gone and gauge the depth of her wrath.

Asheroth cleared his throat. “It is a time sensitive offer, you know. I thought you would be grateful.”

“If you ever touch my cat or my mailbox again, I will carve my name in that stone skin of yours,” I threatened. Asheroth raised an eyebrow. Slightly.

“It means the wards are broken,” Ethan said unexpectedly from his corner. “It would take something very nasty and very powerful to break those wards. I helped set them. If we’d been there, all three of us would be completely vulnerable.”

Asheroth beamed. “Exactly, Ethan. You understand completely how important it was to rescue the cat.”

I groaned and stuck my head under the bed, talking to Abigail in a singsong voice. Eventually she did come out, and snuggled up to my stomach. She hissed at Asheroth every time he came near me. I would never admit it, but I was grateful he’d gone for her.

Ethan continued to watch us mournfully from his corner.

After Asheroth announced that it was dinnertime, I knew it was getting close to dark. Time to put my plan in motion. I felt Abigail’s rumbling purr against my stomach and closed my eyes tight. I was still determined to go. They’d hurt me.

But I loved them still.

“I think I am hungry after all,” I croaked. I hadn’t said a word in what seemed like forever. My throat felt like sandpaper and sounded worse. I let my fingers trail through Abigail’s fur as I rolled flat on my back. It was easier to lie back and look at the ceiling than tell lies to their faces. “Is there anything to eat? I don’t really care what.”

I didn’t even to try to sound pathetic. It came out naturally.

Asheroth was beside me, Nephilim-quick. “Of course,” he said, smiling down at me. “I’ll make you something. Or perhaps you’d prefer delivery. I know a place in Tokyo.”

I nodded. I tugged on the t-shirt Cassandra had given me in what seemed like another life. “I could use a shower. And something to wear.”

“You’ve got plenty of new clothes,” Asheroth soothed. “I’ll take care of everything else. When you’re ready, I’ll be just upstairs. Just call if you need us.” I nodded.

Ethan said stonily, “I’m not leaving.”

The red-clad Nephilim spun on him. “She has to get dressed. She wants privacy.” Ethan didn’t move.

I stared back at Ethan. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said again.

For a moment, I saw images of death and burning, and I winced. He saw it and jerked back like I’d hit him. Amazing, I thought. How could I possibly have known that we could hurt each other in exact proportion to how much we loved?

“Please,” I whispered over cracked lips. “Leave.”

That, too, he took like a blow. “Don’t do this,” he said, leaving his corner for the first time all day. I found myself sitting, facing him. Our knees almost touched. I didn’t remember moving. “Don’t leave.”

He knew. I could see it in his eyes, in the careful way he swayed towards me. Somehow, he had figured it out. But he wouldn’t tell. He’d had hours to tell, and he hadn’t yet.

He was going to let me walk away from him and into his version of Hell if that’s what I wanted. He was going to let me go.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

If I sat there looking at him much longer, I was going to break down and confess, or scream and hurt him. I wasn’t sure which, and I didn’t want to find out. I ran for the bathroom and stood motionless under the steamy water. I hadn’t really intended to take a shower, but I had to get away from that room and the people in it. I started breathing again. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath.

There was a plan. It was time to put it in action.

When I came back out, wrapped in a fluffy towel as white as the bed, Ethan was gone. I pawed through the ridiculous piles of clothes Asheroth had brought. I dressed as sensibly as possible, since everything appeared to be from French boutiques. Dark jeans with what I hoped were rhinestones on the pockets went underneath a whisper-light cashmere sweater. Leather boots with a little too much style for an escape plan were next. I thought about the fact that I was entering a potential combat situation that I knew very little about and stuffed my pockets with the few useful items I could quickly lay my hands on. Last of all was the belt Cassandra had given me. I slipped Katerina’s sheathed silver daggers into the loops at the small of my back and pulled my sweater over them.

I left Ethan’s black leather jacket in the center of the bed. He might need it back. Abigail nuzzled it and lay across it with a proprietary flick of her tail.

I smelled bacon and coffee. They really were cooking for me. For a second, I felt terrible. And hungry. But it passed. I dug through the box of art supplies for the turpentine, cracked it open, and stuffed the first scarf I thought would burn down its neck.

The portrait room was unlocked. I wondered what Katerina, my assassin ancestress, would have done in my situation. I was counting on Asheroth’s attachment to her portrait. Don’t let me down, I thought at her. This is my first demon-killing mission. I lit the scarf and threw it carefully away from her portrait, towards a cloth sofa I’d once occupied lifetimes ago.

God bless modern construction. Before long, the fire alarms went off. I hid in the bathroom under the stairs and silently prayed while Ethan sped down the stairs, beating on doors. I’d locked every single one. He began methodically breaking them down when I didn’t answer. Asheroth used portals to move from room to room trying to find me.

It was too easy to slip up the stairs and out the empty casement. I heard Abigail spitting and hissing as I went. Good girl, I thought, amused. Someone was going to be sorry for rescuing her twice in one day.

I sprinted into the tree line. I just had to make it into the forest, past the mist wall, Dr. Christian had said. If I could do that, they would find me. The mist wall was designed to keep them out more than it was to keep me in. I just had to run in the opposite direction from Whitfield. At least, that’s what I hoped.

South. I had to run south. My sense of direction had never been all that accurate, but I used the St. Clare for orientation. The forest grew thicker as I ran. Pines and oaks grew thicker and taller around me, the forest floor littered with fallen branches and piles of leaves and dense undergrowth in places. My hair got caught on the lower hanging branches and pulled painfully, but I kept running.

The mist grew thicker as I ran. White tendrils of it snaked through my hair, across my skin. Soon it grew so heavy it felt as if I was breathing through a wet blanket. I was forced to go slower because I could barely see. But I kept moving. I was too afraid not to; it was entirely possible I might get so lost now I wouldn’t find either Dr. Christian or my way back to Asheroth’s compound. Given what I’d learned about travel between the compounds, there was no telling where I might accidentally end up.

The mist thinned the further I pushed, but it was still hard to see. I began to hear strange noises, almost as if there were people whispering all around me. It reminded me of the very first time I‘d dreamed of Jack. The same muted whispering voices had urged me onward then, too. But then sometimes they would grow softer and I knew it was nothing but trees. I had no house or river to orient me now, so I could only hope that the vague sense inside me urging me forward was pointing me south still. I heard the unmistakable call of wolves, far away. The mist had thinned enough to make it possible to see tree trunks, so I began to run again. I did not want to encounter wolves, supernatural or mundane.

And then I hit a tree so hard it knocked me flat on my back. I fell so hard I was momentarily blinded and had to struggle for breath. When I could see again, I was almost sorry.

It wasn’t a tree. I’d run straight into someone I knew. Someone I didn’t like very much.

I’m sure the feeling was mutual.

The Dark Nephilim in the snakeskin jacket who had fought with Asheroth against Ethan and I last winter smiled at me. Most unpleasantly, I might add. “What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded between ragged breaths.

“Hello to you too,” he said. He held out a hand. I stared at it, incredulous. He grinned. “I’m the delivery service. What’s the matter? Not who you expected?”

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

The Twilight Kingdom

The Dark Nephilim tried on a smile. It looked as if it wanted to squirm away. “You aren’t planning on being difficult, are you?”

I swallowed my anger, fisting my hands against the Shadows. Not yet. “We had a bargain,” I said as calmly as I could. “No difficulty on my end if there’s none on yours.”

“Ah well, there’s the thing,” he said, shifting his weight. “Belial never had any intention of letting the little one go. Why would he, when she’s cooperating so nicely?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, letting my hands swing loose. Let the Shadows flow if need be. “This is ridiculous. I suppose your buddy is hiding in the trees, waiting to drag me down to the Dark Realms, kicking and screaming, while you keep the girl? I’d be alarmed if your plan was even the slightest bit original.”

“Now honey,” he said, advancing on me. “Don’t be that way.”

“She’s right,” drawled a familiar voice from the mist-shrouded trees. “A terrible plan. Did you think of it by yourself? Or did Nerius? I thought the two of you shared a brain.” A bone white body wrapped in red leather launched itself from the trees, landing between the Dark Nephilim and me. “Caspia,” he said evenly. “You forgot your jacket.” A pile of black leather landed at my feet in a thud. “Please put it on.”

“Oh,” I said stupidly. At that moment, Asheroth frightened me more than anyone else.

“Are you deaf?” he asked. He and the Nephilim in snakeskin had backed slightly away from me and adopted a slow but intense circling pattern.

“Maybe,” I admitted, but I scooped up the familiar, beloved pile of fabric. I held it to me like a teddy bear.

“Nerius isn’t here, Ash,” the Dark Nephilim hissed. Asheroth’s diamond eyes narrowed to slits.

“He hates it when people call him Ash,” Ethan whispered in my ear.

First, I screamed. Ethan anticipated that; his warm hand was right there over my mouth. Then I spun around, completely disregarding the danger behind me. “What are you doing here?” I hissed. “I thought I wouldn’t see you again.”

“Sshh, Cas, it’s ok,” he whispered. He turned us sideways so neither one of us had our backs to danger. “Your Jack told me. He’s come to me twice now since you dreamed up this stupid plan. You can’t think he’d let you just turn yourself over like this. That either of us would. I’m sorry it’s come to this. I didn’t… I wouldn’t…” He squared his shoulders against mine. “We’ll figure it out, ok?”

For the first time I looked at him, really looked at him, in the moonlight. He held a gently curving blade, shining silver like my twin daggers and etched with designs like the ones on Jack’s skin. It was beautiful. “My God, you’ve got it,” I whispered, awed. “Azazel’s blade. And whose jacket is that?”

“It came with the sword. I assume it belongs to your Jack.” He said his name with only a slight twist of his mouth.

“He’s not my…” I started to say, but then Asheroth and the Dark Nephilim went for each other. Ethan took his old jacket, mine now, and held it out.

“He’s right about this. You really should put it on. What were you thinking?”

“I was leaving it for you,” I said as the two Nephilim, one mad and one Dark, fought each other in a fast-moving blur. Ethan had a funny look on his face as he helped me into it.

And then I saw her, a child among the trees. With long blond hair and wide, terrified eyes, she froze as soon as she realized she’d been spotted. “Hey!” I called, elbowing Ethan. “Caroline! Wait! Don’t go anywhere! We’re here for you!” The girl stood perfectly still against one of the larger trees. She didn’t run, but she didn’t lose the look of terror either. “Do you see her, Ethan?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said uneasily. I started for her. I hadn’t gone four steps when he grabbed my forearm, hard. “Caspia, wait! Something’s not right.”

The girl’s face fell. “I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper so soft I almost didn’t hear her. “I don’t want to. But he’ll hurt my dad.”

I have never seen such a look of pure torture on a child’s face. I ached for her. I wanted to do anything to erase it. “What is it, sweetie?” I asked, starting for her again. “Don’t be afraid. You’re safe now. You can come with us, and we can take you to your dad.”

Then I heard the howling. Deep, rumbling howls that raised chills all along my neck and spine and settled in my bones like the dampest winter cold. On and on it went, like tornado sirens but lower and getting closer by the minute, promising that skin would tear and bones would crunch.

“Caspia,” Ethan said. He was white with terror. He shoved me behind him, Azazel’s blade raised before him in both hands. “Run.”

“What?” I staggered and almost fell. The inhuman sounds grew closer. “What is it?”

“Hellhounds,” he said. He stared at the girl. “You’re the kidnapped girl. Caroline. Your gift is animals, and he’s using you to control Hellhounds.” Ethan planted his feet and stared through the trees. “Caspia. You have to warn the town.”

“He’ll hurt my dad,” the girl said. She sobbed, her back plastered against a tree trunk. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to, but the lady has to come with us.”

Arms wreathed with expensive, familiar cologne snaked around my waist. “Miss Chastain. Hello again,” Dr. Christian said against my ear. “You’re doing very well. Just a little bit more of this unpleasantness, and we’ll have you safe and sound with Belial.” His hands held my wrists in an iron grip. Paralyzing cold pinned me against my former professor.

“Ethan,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “Meet Dr. Christian.” White cold exploded behind my eyes, like the worst slushy-induced brain freeze on earth. My knees buckled.

I could see the first of several dark shapes hurtling towards us through the trees. Ethan swore, torn between the approaching threat and the one holding me motionless beside him. “Asheroth!” he screamed, and turned his back on the Hellhounds. “Let her go,” he warned, advancing on Dr. Christian with blade extended.

The former professor’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve heard about you. I didn’t believe it at first. But you really are mortal.” He said it like a curse word. “Your brother will be disappointed. It will make killing you less sporting.”

Brother? Um, what?

Dr. Christian ran his fingers up the back of my neck like spiders, gathering my hair in his fist. He pulled my head up so hard it hurt. “I hope he doesn’t take it out on her.”

Ethan growled like the Nephilim he’d been. “He won’t touch her.” One quick downward slash, almost too fast for sight, proved that Dr. Christian was mortal. Red blood soaked his expensive pants leg in one long ugly gash.

That made me even happier than the fact that he dropped me on my face. If the bastard could bleed, then I was going to kill him.

Strong human hands yanked me to my feet. River bright eyes bored into mine. A whole universe of words lay between us and there was no time. Death on four legs was all around us, its breath hot with sulphur and rage. But all I could do was stand there in the few seconds we had before being ripped apart, maybe literally, and think about how badly I’d fucked everything up. I was a liar and an arsonist and a dream-cheat and I’d just unleashed Hellhounds on my town because I couldn’t even competently turn myself over to the enemy. But I loved him. At that moment, it was all I knew how to do.

I rubbed the wing clasp of his bracelet with my thumb. He nodded once and said one word. I think it was, “Survive.”

And then they were on us, shapes as black as night with red eyes and sharp teeth, and all I could do was scream his name over and over. Caroline was suddenly beside me, and Dr. Christian on my other side. I don’t know if she moved or we did, but she held out both hands to the creatures and snarled at them. They parted around us like an ocean of teeth and shadow. Twelve-year-old Caroline Bedford stood like a boulder parting the waves; my old art professor held me tighter than chains. I stared into the creatures rushing past us towards my town for any glimpse of Ethan or Asheroth, of anything familiar at all.

There was nothing. Ethan was gone, swarmed by a tide of black shapes with wicked sharp claws and teeth and fiery eyes.

I struggled. I screamed. I kicked and clawed and bit and cried and wept. Every kind of Shadow I’d ever summoned erupted from me in waves until I was cocooned in cold darkness. Later, I would realize I’d been brought through a Dark Realm portal. Right then I just knew the unforgiving arms restraining me were gone and I had random thoughts about hurting twelve-year-olds.

Gradually, I became aware of sensations outside of myself. Things even more unpleasant than the shell of darkness I’d woven around myself intruded into my thoughts. I was cold, for one thing. It was a terrible, bone-chilling, and dead-of winter cold. I curled tight into a ball and cried. Eventually I realized I was lying on dusty, rocky terrain and that dirt, sand, and rocks had worked their way into my hair, clothes, and mouth. I didn’t care.

I think I might have stayed there for the rest of my short miserable life if I hadn’t become aware of a gentle, repetitive movement. It took me a while to realize it, but someone was stroking my hair and face through the half-darkness. I wondered who it was, and how long it had been going on. Then I decided I didn’t care again, and ignored things for a while. When the cold got so bad I bit my tongue bloody, the gentle stroking turned into insistent shaking.

“Come on, Caspia,” said a familiar voice. “That’s enough. I’m not going to let you die out here in the wastelands. Not in the plan.”

I pried my sore eyes open. Someone had covered me with a fur-lined jacket. It was kind of pretty, actually; black suede embroidered with silver. Then I hated myself for noticing something so petty when Ethan… I pulled the jacket up over my head and curled back into a ball.

“Ok, we’ll do it the hard way.” The owner of the voice peeled the jacket away and poured freezing water on my face. I scrambled into a sitting position, rubbing my face furiously. Covered with dust, I only managed to make myself muddy. Instead of screams of protest, what came out was a kind of pathetic mewling sound. “Wow. You look terrible in person.”

My jaw dropped. Resting on his heels, barefoot as always, was Jack. He wore black suede pants with the same kind of embroidery as the jacket, and a loose white shirt. His sharp face was creased with concern. I tried to swallow. My throat felt like sandpaper. “You’re wearing clothes,” I croaked out.

The worry lines on his face relaxed a little, and he laughed weakly. “She makes a joke!” He handed me what was left of the water he’d poured on my face. “You had me worried.” He closed his eyes and inhaled as if meditating, or praying, before letting it go. He looked at me with something closer to calm. “More than worried. I’d tell you I’m glad to see you, but I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” He stood and held out a hand. His black eyes held mine steadily. “Can you stand?”

I let him haul me up. “With help, maybe.” My voice was as dead as the landscape. Everything was flat and gray. For miles and miles, there was nothing but rock and gray terrain. Ahead, I could see a gray stone building. It had to be our destination. There was no place else to go. Jack slid an arm around my shoulder. I leaned heavily on him. “Where are we? The Dark Realms?”

“Belial’s piece of them,” he said. Although I moved my feet, Jack pretty much carried me the rest of the way to the gray stone building. As we crossed a long low paved area in front, I realized it was actually huge, consuming the horizon in front of me. He stopped several feet in front of the door. We looked back the way we’d come. The sky was the scintillating purple I remembered from my dream. “Welcome to the Twilight Kingdom, where the sun never quite sets or rises.”

“This was my favorite time of day, back home. The lights in the park would come on right about now, and the fountain would light up.” I grabbed his shirt in both hands. “Oh my God, Jack. Caroline. She set Hellhounds loose…”

He covered my mouth with both of his hands and pulled me close. “Sshh,” he whispered, so softly I could barely hear. “We have to go in now. It’s very dangerous here, and I’ll have to act differently around Belial than I do when we’re alone. Even some of the gifted aren’t safe. Whatever I do or say, you must trust me. I’ll do my best to explain when we’re alone later.”

“Wait,” I hissed. “What do you mean? We’re meeting Belial now?” I pulled away from him, eyeing the ironbound door.

“It’s ok.” He wrapped his hand around my forearm. “Remember, we’re the last two Azalene warriors. Belial wants to keep us happy. Nothing’s going to happen to you.” He pulled me close again and whispered in my ear. “You can Dreamwalk with me later and we’ll make contact with the outside. With Ethan, and anyone else we need.”

I thought of Ethan, of the last vision I had of him before he disappeared in a stream of nightmares. I don’t think he made it, Jack, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “I don’t care,” I said wearily. “I don’t care what happens to me.”

Jack looked alarmed. I focused on my breathing as he led me inside. “For now, you just have to meet Belial,” he said. The ceiling was so high above us I had to squint to see the cross beams. Far in the distance, so far it seemed no bigger than a palm full of sparks, a fireplace kept the chill off. As we drew nearer, it grew until I realized the fireplace was huge. The cavernous room was not unpleasant. Tall bookshelves lined the walls. Thick rugs in black and silver lay scattered around. A few people sat at tables just far enough away that I couldn’t make out their features. They looked up, curious nonetheless. The large chair in front of us could only be…

“Is that Belial?” I whispered. The chair was turned so that we faced its back. Jack pressed against my arm harder than I expected.

“Caspia,” he said, stopping when we drew closer to the circle of firelight. His whisper deepened, grew urgent. “Don’t blame me or Ethan for keeping this from you. We thought you wouldn’t have to find out. But now that you’re here, there is some hope your innocence may protect you.”

“Protect me from what?” Innocence? Me? “Jack, you’re scaring me.”

“Whatever you do, don’t scream.” With those less than encouraging words, Jack the Azalene dragged me around the circle of firelight.

On a raised wooden chair carved with Nephilim symbols, Belial sat wearing the black and silver that was to become a familiar uniform. “Miss Chastain.” His voice was pleasant. Cultured. A red fox with fur like soft bronze stirred in his lap. A jewel-encrusted collar gleamed in the firelight as the creature licked his palm and resettled itself. “You’ve kept me waiting.”

No, I thought. Not this. Please, not this, I silently begged God.

Belial looked exactly like Ethan, down to his hands, his lips, his bone structure, and the golden highlights in his brown hair. He even held his fox as carefully as Ethan handled Abigail.  There was one glaring difference: when he looked at me, the demon’s eyes were as empty as the Dark Realms themselves.

I didn’t scream. Darkness claimed me first.

To be continued in Book III of The Gifted Blood Trilogy,

Coming Fall 2011

Acknowledgements:

A huge thanks, first and foremost, to my readers. Your response to Caspia and Ethan’s story has been amazing. Thank you for following me even further into Whitfield.

To ROW80: thanks for direction, community, and advice. So many amazing writers supported me through this process, including: Stacey Wallace Benefiel, Kait Nolan, Jeff Bryan, Claire Farrell, V.J. Chambers, Claudia LaFeve, and Andrew Mocete. Thanks also to Ann C.’s DC ’09 and ’10 workshops, especially Alina, Gigi, and Mandy. Here’s looking at ’11! To my wonderful editor, because anyone can mark up an ms. It’s a whole other animal to sit down with a new, independent writer, teasing out the patterns underlying her weaknesses and helping her untangle her strengths. This is a better book because of it.

To my edge of the TIAM universe: Creativity is weird. I don’t entirely understand how the Civil Wars plus Standard Deluxe minus shoes equals my newest anti-villain, but it does. The Southeast is an amazing sonic contact zone right now, and it’s cool that TIAM has something to do with that. Thanks to Corey, Nick, and Daniel, for losing their minds and starting a record label (their words!) All the musicians who helped me make word count: The Futurebirds, Middle Brother (but just that one song), Mark Utley, The Archibalds, Ghost Shirt, 13Ghosts, James Jackson Toth, The Only Sons, Glossary.

To Quentin: 1. Insert The Stooges. 2. Press Play. 3. Increase volume and don’t look up ‘til graduation. Maria and Ken, see steps 1-3.

To Tony, for being the sane one, (ha ha, joke’s on you!) and Nathalie, because an unexpected present in spring is better than a pile of them on your birthday.

To Mom, for never teaching me to say “I can’t.”

To Grace, who stands at the threshold of so many magical things.

To Max, whose gentle patience helps me see the good in myself.

Lastly, to Daniel:

You’re my favorite flavor of crazy,

I’m seventh-grade stupid in love with you,

and this book is all your fault.

Love you forever, V.

About the Author:

Vicki Keire grew up in a Nineteenth Century haunted house in the Deep South full of books, abandoned coal chutes, secret rooms, and plenty of places to get into trouble with her siblings. She holds advanced degrees in English Literature with specializations in the Eighteenth Century, Romanticism, and Postcolonial Theory. She most recently taught writing and literature at a large, football-obsessed university while slipping paranormal fiction in between the pages of her textbooks.

She reads so much it borders on obsessive; a book or two a day is not unusual. The domestic arts continue to mystify her well into adulthood. She has been known to buy a new outfit rather than launder an old one. She has eclectic musical tastes, enjoys other people's cooking, and keeps vampire hours. She is fond of lost causes and terrified of storms, and has a tuxedo cat named Chiaroscuro. She still lives in the Deep South with her family and pets, but is pretty sure her house isn't haunted. A person can't be so lucky twice.

As with all her books, the bands and albums mentioned in Darkness are real. They helped make her battle with the blank page a little less cataclysmic. You can learn more about them and listen to playlists on her website. Darkness in the Blood is the second of a trilogy set in the mythical town of Whitfield, where she has several other paranormal series planned. You are invited to stop by her website, www.vickikeire.com, to learn more about upcoming releases, check out free downloads, and connect with her online. She loves hearing from readers.

Website: http://www.vickikeire.com/

Blog: http://vickieire.blogspot.com/

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Chasing Phantoms

Chapter Two: Trouble

Chapter Three: Close to Home

Chapter Four: Shadow Lessons

Chapter Five: Shadow Sick

Chapter Six: The Trouble with Threes

Chapter Seven: Dreaming in Blue

Chapter Eight: Unwelcome Substitutions

Chapter Nine: A Little Wild

Chapter Ten: The Summer People

Chapter Eleven: Such Creatures

Chapter Twelve: Stars

Chapter Thirteen: Azalene

Chapter Fourteen: Splinters

Chapter Fifteen: Snakes and Angels

Chapter Sixteen: The Devil You Know

Chapter Seventeen: Ethical Dilemma

Chapter Eighteen: Strange Passage

Chapter Nineteen: The St. Clare

Chapter Twenty: This Delicate Madness

Chapter Twenty-One: Shared Purposes

Chapter Twenty-Two: Breakfast with Asheroth

Chapter Twenty-Three: Broken Things

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Other Caspia

Chapter Twenty-Five: Break My Bones

Chapter Twenty- Six: White Box

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Delivery Service

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Twilight Kingdom

Acknowledgements

About the Author