 
Stained

Book One of the Stained Series

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * *

Stained

Copyright © 2012 by Ella James

ISBN: 9781476247618

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination and are purely fictitious. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.

PLEASE DO NOT PIRATE THIS BOOK. PIRACY SUCKS.

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Chapter One

The monster clawed the dark sky, hissing and spitting and belching ash. Its fat orange talons twisted the little house until it cracked, until the walls caved and the roof collapsed.

Neighbors sprang from their quiet homes and stumbled to the yard, drunk from the light, shouting for help. And for nothing. No one inside was alive.

Julia knew.

She watched the fire as it swelled, as it swallowed glass and gulped brick. She watched while her clothes and books and, oh God, the bodies of her parents, burned away.

The wet Memphis wind whipped smoke through her hair as the remains of the little house on Galloway Avenue rained over the street.

Sirens wailed—God why were there sirens, hurrying drivers running red lights, when no one was alive?—and as Julia stood there, stone still, something in the smoke plume caught her eye. It looked like...wings. She squinted, and the cloud formed a torso, arms, and legs.

She rubbed her eyes, and when she looked again, he was corporeal: a huge, dark-skinned, black-winged man with a sick grin and sharp red eyes.

The Angel of Death, she thought dazedly. He turned a slow circle, looking for someone else to claim, but Julia was tucked into the shadows of the lawn. She held her breath; an instant later he was gone—up so fast, she knew she was hallucinating.

The sirens grew louder and she staggered into the small pine grove behind her house. A straw path led to Dirk and Dwight's, through two tidy yards and down three doors.

She shook her head, squeezed her eyes shut. It hadn't been late. Not that late. Dirk had Ms. Botch for pre-cal. Ms. Bitch. He couldn't do math, and Dwight just plain couldn't do school, so Julia had laced up her new pink All-Stars, slipped her notes into her pocket, and sneaked out the window. She hadn't bothered peeking into her parents' room. They were snorers, so she knew they were asleep.

She had sat on the boys' front porch and explained trigonometric functions, her cereal-box watch reading 12:40 a.m. when she arrived. Now it read 1:08. Twenty-eight minutes. Twenty-eight minutes and this.

The neighbors stayed near the crumbling curb, bobbing heads together, palms pressed over eager mouths. Soon they would be talking. That foster girl and that poor, sweet couple. Such a shame.

Julia searched for a cue in their script, but she didn't have any lines. Because she would be dead.

She couldn't go back to the state, not after five years of paradise. Harry and Suzanne had been her parents since she was twelve, and she would follow them into the annals of the neighborhood's folklore.

As red and white and orange light jumped across cotton gowns and tragic faces, and the sirens out-whined the noise of the inferno, Julia walked away.

*

It was the water that startled her out of it—startled her awake. Somehow, she'd gone to sleep standing, and when Julia came to, she was a long way from home. The girl who could barely do two miles for PhysEd had walked—well...her brain didn't seem capable of guesstimation, but it was a stretch. From Overton all the way to the muddy Mississippi.

She was a gunshot from downtown, her pink All-Stars mired in the wet grass that fringed the river. She took a few wobbly steps back, almost into Riverside Drive, and an angry driver honked.

Heart pounding, Julia weaved her way across the street. She followed the sidewalk past a steep hill bearing a row of river-view homes, until the neighborhood folded into itself and the pretty painted houses became old gas stations, abandoned buildings, and squalid apartment complexes.

She sank her nails into her palms as she passed a patch of deserted warehouses. One, a white brick ruin with a faded pecan mural, caught her eye. She ripped three weathered boards off a busted-out window and shimmied inside.

Suzanne had always bought a giant bag of roasted pecans for Christmas, and that's what the place smelled like: Christmas. And mildew.

It looked like a nightmare. Crates and boxes and overturned chairs littered the floor. Thick cobwebs covered the corners, and every surface was caked with a thick layer of grime.

For just a second, she glanced back at the window, where sickly bluish light from a battered street lamp filtered in. Her stomach flip-flopped. Did she really want to do this?

She took another deep breath and the roasted pecan smell turned into the smell of pecans burning. Not pecans sitting on a pan in the oven, but the oven melting in an inferno.

Her breaths came loud and hard, and before she knew it, her body was shaking like a seizure. She turned a wobbly circle, trying to get away from herself. Failing. She saw a snapshot image of Suzanne padding to bed in her favorite blue fleece nightgown. And randomly, their toothbrushes: Harry's green, Suzanne's purple; always Oral-B. Julia had a hot pink one in her own little cup. She pictured it crumpling in the heat. There had been water in the sink and the bathroom rug had still been damp.

What happens to the water in the pipes?

She imagined the pipes bursting, the water evaporating in an instant, and put a hand to her stomach.

"Omigod. OMIGOD." She stumbled toward the bluish light, tripping on a crate, dry-heaving on the floor.

She crawled the rest of the way to the window, shoved her boneless body between the nail-riddled boards; one gashed her upper arm and she wiped numbly at the blood.

The ground was damp. As her eyes slid shut, she thought: What about the Angel of Death? He had claimed Suzanne and Harry but not her. Luck or fate, she wondered as she hugged herself.

*

Sometime much later, Julia opened her eyes and found herself face-to-face with the skinny trunk of a young maple tree. To her shock, she was curled in the fetal position, mere inches from a graffiti'd sidewalk in the old warehouse district. She looked up at the tree then glanced down the narrow, foggy street. Empty.

For a full minute she marveled at where she was.

And then it hit her.

"Oh God. Oh God," she exhaled, remembering. She looked down at herself, at her spaghetti-strapped beige night shirt. It smelled like smoke. She stuck out her legs, clad in jeans she'd pulled on when she'd walked to the twins' house—skinny jeans Suzanne had bought for her from Abercrombie.

They hadn't helped her win any new friends at school, but they did make her butt look pretty decent. That didn't matter, now, because no one at school was going to look at her butt. Now her butt was nonexistent.

She was nonexistent.

Julia thought about the twins and had to make herself breathe. If it went right, the cops would think she was dead, so she couldn't see Dirk and Dwight again. Not even at school, which she would never again have to attend. Suzanne and Harry would have knocked her a good one for dropping out, but she didn't care. School was a non-issue. She'd always been smart.

She was smart enough not to get jumped on the way to a gas station, and to get a good five-finger discount on two Kit-Kat bars, a can of Grapico, and some scissors. Back in the warehouse, she chopped her silky, hip-length tresses to her shoulder blades and frowned at the cloudy mirror.

The girl frowning back was a stranger. Without the flowing ebony curtain distracting from her face, her smallish mouth and unremarkable nose stood out. Her big brown eyes looked even bigger. She could see too much of her high cheekbones and pale skin.

All she could think was that it didn't matter. It didn't matter how she looked. She could let her teeth rot out. Who would know?

The thought made her feel oh so very, very tired.

She found a ratty old tarp draped over a pile of crates and dragged it into the cleanest corner of the warehouse, where she curled into a little ball and tried to pretend the floor wasn't digging into her shoulder until she counted her way to sleep.

The sleep was beautiful and dreamless.

The next morning she stole a bottle of NyQuil, and she spent an entire day sleeping.

She might have slept forever, but a loud thud woke her sometime late that third night. Julia jerked up, heart pounding, senses strangely alight.

There it was again: a series of thuds on the warehouse roof. She pulled the tarp to her chin as clouds of dust rained over her. The banging continued for probably half a minute before it stopped. Half a minute in which she hoped her death would be a fast one. Julia counted to ten before she opened her eyes, and several more seconds passed before she dared to breathe.

"What the—"

Julia covered her head as wood beams and chunks of concrete crashed down around her. She crouched with her back against the wall, paralyzed with fear until suddenly everything was quiet. When the dust cleared, she peeked over a pile of rubble and gasped.

Dozens of glossy charcoal feathers settled around a hole in the floor at least half a foot deep. A guy was inside. She swiftly registered broad shoulders, hard muscle, and dark hair.

A hot guy. Very hot. He had, too literally, fallen at her feet.
Chapter Two

He lay awkwardly on his back, one arm across his wide, thick chest. His knuckles were raw, like he'd been fighting. She stared at his face over the shallow rise and fall of his chest, struck by how stunning he was. Almost statuesque.

Even flat on his ass, he had huge presence; she half expected him to stand up, dust his rugged blue jeans off, and saunter outside to a waiting band bus.

Sorry mates. Just a tour prank.

A mop of shaggy chestnut hair splayed around his pale, scraped face—a face that seemed jaded and wise, even without the light of consciousness.

Long lashes fluttered below dark brows, above generous lips and a straight-line nose. His eyes were deep green, and when his emerald gaze found Julia, she lost her breath. Then his eyes slipped shut, and he deflated with a soft whoosh.

Oh no!

Julia opened her Sight as she scrambled to his side, wincing when she reached him. Injuries were usually glowing white chains that knotted wherever someone was hurt. His chain—like the aura "behind" it—was a strange, shimmery silver, and bursting with gnarls.

"Holey moley," she breathed.

She stroked his damp forehead as she catalogued each knot. One, over his heart, was tightening fast. She snatched it and her own chest ached. She crisscrossed and unlooped until it hurt to breathe.

As quickly as she could, she moved to the knot over his skull. It was a scary mess of tangles—tangles made of tangles, and throbbing brighter every second. She tried to be careful, to be gentle, but she was moving fast, and his handsome face contorted as she worked.

It was intense; more than anything Julia had tried to do before. Just half a minute in, and her nose started to bleed.  
She should have stopped then, but there were so many knots, each one urgent. She dove deeper, mixing her aura with his, and caught impressions of him in color: the red flare of anger, the riptide orange of vengeance, a shameful green regret. Confusion was prevalent, a blinding pink. But the black was strongest: rage and sorrow, an almost even blend that stained him.

And over that, translucent scenes. A worn adobe home in a dry Midwestern neighborhood, slanted roof steaming under the summer sun. Splotches of gray sky, and below it a wide log cabin heaped with snow. Fistfulls of stone, and a flower for her. And suddenly, agony. Purple pain that made her weak—so weak.

For too long, the ripping ache was all she knew.

Then she saw skin like darkest ebony. Frightened amber eyes. She felt the sting of muscle straining, heard screams so real they stung.

Oh. They were coming from her throat.

She closed her Sight, panting, spinning; too much energy in a battered body. Healing had never been that intense before. That intimate.

When she could, she lifted her head from the cradle of her hands, and the ramshackle warehouse blinked to life. Those heavy-lashed green eyes were open, frantic jade searching her own.

He was still pale, but not sickly sallow like before. She noticed a jagged white scar across his throat and felt a wriggling warmth deep in her belly. She wanted to fix that, too. She wanted to fix all of him.

"Are you okay?" she panted.

"Get outta here," he groaned. He rolled onto his side, and Julia shied back, as startled by him as she was interested.

"Huh?"

"You gotta—" The guy stopped, eyes jerking toward the ceiling. "He's here. Go!"

Julia followed his gaze and froze. Clearly, she had lost her mind, because the Angel of Death was above her: the nutty hallucination she'd seen above her burning house—only this time, he wasn't a hallucination.

Shock made her cold and still as he sailed through the hole in the roof and extended two massive raven wings. They slunk in and out of the shadows, stretching until they seemed to fill the room.

Her first thought was that the lovely darkness of his skin was familiar from somewhere else. She realized it was a detail from the injured guy's memory. He had encountered Death before.

She cowered underneath the creature's soul-shriveling glare; his eyes were blood red, his voice a chilling baritone. "You're supposed to be dead." With one brow arched, like he was surprised to find Julia alive, he looked at the wounded guy, and his lip curled like he was enjoying a dirty inside joke. "So are you."

Then Death dove.

He was a breath away before she could blink, and then he was gone, rammed by the guy she'd saved. He flung Death into the wall, shaking the building like an earthquake, and landed a quick punch before Death kneed him in the chest.

Julia winced.

She wanted to watch, to watch out for him, but the floor lurched up to meet her. When the room stopped spinning, her savior was kneeling in front of her, his muscled arms stretched out as if to shield her.

Death hung in the dusty air; his ear was bleeding, one of his wings looked rumpled, and his horrible brown and black aura showed glowing amber chains around his head and arm. His crimson eyes narrowed, and as Julia pushed herself up on her elbows, his mouth pinched.

"Again?" He sneered, looking to Julia before returning his gaze to her protector, who stood in front of her with his arms crossed. "You are a fool. Go down this path, and you will be the enemy of all."

With one flap of his wings he was gone, up through the roof so fast he blurred.

Tall, Dark, and Seriously Lacking in Judgment Re: Friends took two steps after him, green eyes to the busted roof, scraped fists clenched at his sides. He looked so beautiful, so powerful and so defiant, that Julia almost felt afraid.

Then his breath hitched, and his breathtaking body seemed to deflate. Something that looked like disappointment dragged on his features, and he waited a long moment before he turned to her, his gaze rolling from her dirty hair to her smudged pink All Stars. "Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" Her voice cracked on the word. She looked at the ceiling, then back at him. "Of course not."

His lips quirked before his face set with an intensity that sliced her nerves.

Julia forced herself to return his stare. In her most chill tone—in a tone that said nothing of the wild disbelief she felt—she asked, "What was that thing?"

His eyes narrowed and, with a strange poise, he drew himself up; standing tall, he was even more statuesque, all shoulders and hard, round muscle. "Probably what you think."

"I think it was—" the Angel of Death, but how exactly could she admit that and not sound crazy? She didn't get a chance to figure it out before the guy's brows pinched skeptically.

"What exactly are you?"

Julia giggled. She sounded unhinged, but she couldn't help it. "I'm a person," she gasped.

He stepped closer, eyes damning. "You touched me."

She hedged back.

"You healed me." It was an accusation.

"Maybe."

"How'd you do it?"

"I—" She had never tried to explain it before. Because it was a secret. She looked him over, trying to decide if she should share. "I don't know how. I just did."

His eyes were emerald drills, digging into her. Her eyes dug right back. She had the sense that he was going to say something—something that would help her make sense of the freak fest that was her life. Instead he just said, "Thank you."

And turned away.

"Wait!" Julia cried, lunging for the sleeve of his tattered gray t-shirt. "You can't go!"

"I can't?" He arched a brow.

"What about me?"

"What about you?"

"You can't just leave me here!"

He rolled his eyes. "Isn't this where I found you?"

Julia wanted to scream, but she forced herself to take a deep breath. "You have to at least explain what's going on. Who that guy was?"

"No I don't," he said flatly. Through the strands of his hair, she saw his jaw flex. "You need to forget about it."

"You owe me!"

"No I don't."

"But I have to know!"

"No you don't."

Desperate, she leapt after him. "That thing killed my family!"

The words were like razors dragged through her throat, and they stopped him. Julia bumped into his back. "Ow." She jumped away, flushing with anger, and something else that made it hard to say: "I need to know. Who— no, what is that thing?"

The guy's eyes narrowed, and Julia didn't need her Sight to see the fury written on his face. When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"His name is Samyaza. He's... You would call him a half-demon."
Chapter Three

Julia shouldn't have been shocked. Samy-whatever did, after all, have wings. But hearing it aloud made it real. A demon—half-demon, whatever difference that made—had killed Suzanne and Harry. Had thought he'd killed her, too.

So it was her fault.

Well, of course it was. She was a freak, wasn't she? And didn't freaks attract freakishness? She'd heard it in her first foster home, had known it all her life.

"Why did he do it," the guy asked.

"What?"

"Kill your family?"

"How should I know?"

"Do you think it had anything to do with you?" His voice was skeptical, and Julia threw her hands up. "Didn't you hear what he just said? 'You're supposed to be dead.'"

"He's thorough," the guy said sharply. "Why aren't you?"

It took her a minute to work the words out of her throat, and when she did, they wobbled. "He burned my house down...but I wasn't inside."

Seconds passed, seconds in which the two of them were so still she could see dust floating in the air around them. Seconds where she looked at his face and felt her stomach clenching in that weird way again.

"Did you have any siblings?"

She shook her head no.

"Both parents passed?"

She nodded.

"Could they do what you can do?"

Julia shook her head. "If they could...I didn't know." She swallowed a sob, then gritted her teeth. She would not cry in front of this guy.

He regarded her for a long moment, then turned and started walking away, footsteps echoing in the empty warehouse. "I don't know what to tell you," he said over his shoulder.

"Yes you do! You've gotta tell me something," she yelled at his broad back. "Who are you?"

The word echoed back at her as he pushed through the warehouse door: "Cayne."

She dashed after him. "All right. Cayne."

His long legs made uncomfortably big strides over the cracked pavement, but Julia edged ahead, noticing, in the dim moonlight, a deep cut over his eye. Without thought she reached for his face. It would only take her fingertips brushing his jaw—

Her hand grasped air, and then her wrist was breaking. Julia yelped as Cayne twisted her arm. As fast as he caught it, he dropped it. She stumbled back, stunned.

"Ow." Her eyes stung. "You prick! I was trying to—" She pointed to his face. "You have a cut." Oh, great. She was crying now.

He frowned, and her anger piqued. "There." She pointed at the spot again, and his finger trailed the ruddy outline around it.

"Oh."

"Yeah." She sniffed. "Way to overreact."

Cayne frowned. "You should be careful when you're grabbing at someone's face."

"You should apologize," she said thickly.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned away, walking in long, forceful bursts through the damp dirt.

Julia stuck on him. "I'm feeling generous," she tried. "I'll still fix your cut...and all the other stuff I didn't get—if you'll just talk to me. A little."

But he wouldn't talk to her. He wouldn't even look at her. He stepped fluidly over a broken bottle, moving on the balls of his feet like a big scary cat.

"Hel-lo, Cayne. Stonewalling is not polite. And it isn't going to make me go away." She raised her voice, projecting it over the dim roar of traffic a few blocks over. "Why were you fighting with Samy-whatever on my roof? How did you even get up there?"

This time he looked down to glare.

"Aaah, he's not catatonic!" She clapped. "Let me guess— dang, you walk fast. I'm not going to bite you." He was walking so quickly she had to jog to keep up. She followed him through an abandoned stockyard, hopping over coils of wire. "Let's start with something easy. How about age? I'm going to go with something like eighteen."

"Sure. Now leave me alone."

"I can't. Someone is trying to kill me."

Cayne stopped walking, fixed those brilliant eyes on her. "GO. AWAY."

The command in his voice was almost overpowering, but Julia wasn't in an obedient mood. "No."

His jade eyes narrowed. "Leave."

She shook her head.

He seemed surprised, then frustrated. He spun, and Julia scampered behind him, silently cursing him and her life. "Sorry. Okay. No more questions about you. I just have to know what—"

"Stop." It was almost a plea, and for a moment she did stop. Cayne turned, exhaustion plain on his face.

"Why were you fighting that thing?" she asked softly. "The half-demon."

Those beautiful, hard-as-stone eyes looked blue under the moon. "He has something I need."

Julia took the tiniest step closer and noticed they were in the tall grass now, near the river. She had been chasing him for nearly a mile.

"Okay, so—"

His hand jerked up, and her mouth snapped shut. She followed him on putty legs to the shore, where he bent to unlace his big, black Vans.

"You really don't know why he's trying to kill you? What's...going on?" He asked over his shoulder as his fingers worked the laces. Julia shook her head. His eyes narrowed, like he thought she was lying. "You never told me what you are."

The interest in his eyes made her shy, even though that was stupid. She folded her arms over her chest and tried to look unaffected. Like she didn't think he was hot. Like she didn't have a thing for shaggy hair and tight-ish t-shirts and good sneakers. "As you can plainly see, I'm a girl."

His gaze rolled over her, making her warmer. "You are?"

"Yes."

"A girl that heals people."

"Um-hmmm."

"And lives in an old warehouse?"

"Like I told you, my house—" She cut herself off, cringing at the thought of saying it again. "I needed somewhere to stay for a little while."

Cayne looked almost uncomfortable as he crossed his arms. "You're sure they didn't have special...abilities? Even if they were different from yours?"

"No. But they weren't my biological parents. Those died when I was little." Julia had wondered in a Take Me to Hogwarts kind of way if her birth parents had been like her. Cayne seemed to think so, which for some reason made her feel even more alone.

He pulled off his right shoe and both his ankle-length white socks and tossed them in the grass beside the left shoe. "I'm, uh...going to clean up." He nodded at the river, and Julia turned up her nose.

"You're joking, right? That's gotta be like the dirtiest water you could ask for."

"I've see worse," he said over his shoulder. He rolled up his jeans legs, revealing muscled calves, waded in ankle-deep, and crouched to duck his head into the water. Julia sat in the damp grass, crossed her legs, and, when she was sure he intended to take his time, let her tears flow.

She sobbed for at least ten minutes—during which time Cayne, having noticed her tear fest, decided to strip down to his boxers and take a swim. She knew she was in a bad place when her eyes stopped leaking and her gaze swept his hard, ripped back. He swam gracefully. More gracefully than she'd expected.

And tears filled her eyes again, because she'd cut her own hair and it probably looked horrible.

He got out when she'd been tear-free for a few minutes and approached warily. "Feeling better?" he asked, in a low voice that carried a hint of some distant, not-Southern accent.

She nodded quickly, blinking away more tears.

"Good." Cayne nodded down at her, water rolling down his gorgeous chest. "'Cause I was thinking..."

"Hurt yourself?"

He raised his brows, and Julia smiled a little.

"Okay. Thinking what?"

"You want answers. I want another shot at getting mine. And then I want him dead."

"Yeah. I mean, I also, ah...would like him to die."

Cayne nodded. "I have a plan." He looked her over, head to toe, in a way that made her aware of her general grubbiness. His eyes gleamed; that handsome mouth curved like he'd just thought of something clever. "We use you as bait."
Chapter Four

"Excuse me?"

"We—"

Julia held up her hand. "I got what you said. It's just that...why do I have to be the bait?"

Cayne grunted as he tugged his shirt over his wet head. "I thought you wanted to—"

"I do," she said, standing and wiping the butt of her jeans. "But I'm not going to be the cheese in your mousetrap."

"It's a solid plan, really." He smiled roguishly, handsome features exaggerated by his slick hair.

The problem, Julia realized as she studied his smug grin, was that Cayne knew what was going on and she didn't. He didn't need her, but she needed him. Unless, of course, she wanted to continue living in an abandoned pecan factory, hiding under her tarp, terrified that Death—er, Samy-whatever—would return to do her in.

She took a deep breath, then asked the question that weighed most on her mind. "Why is he after me, anyway?"

One look from him, and she knew he wasn't going to tell her. At least not right then.

She gritted her teeth. "So what's your plan?"

His dark brows wiggled. "I'll follow you through the city and you try to draw him to us."

"That's it?"

Cayne nodded.

"That doesn't seem very safe, for me."

"I'll protect you," he said.

"Riiiight." Julia eyed the blood stain on the collar of his shirt. "The guy who just got creamed is going to protect me."

Even in the pre-dawn dark, she saw his nostrils flare. "Only because he caught me off guard. I followed him to Memphis, and I was going to approach him when he doubled back on me. When I'm not caught off-guard, I can take him. Why do you think he ran away? Why do you think you're alive?"

"Whatever. I have yet to see what's so great about this plan."

Cayne rubbed his eye; the cut beside it still oozed blood. "It's true I've got shit with him, but he traveled here for you. And if he came himself, he really wants you dead." Julia's throat tightened as Cayne shifted his weight and crossed those rugged arms—the consummate expert on all things Death. "He'll come back for you—again and again and again. You need me."

Julia felt unsteady, so she crouched down on a nearby tree root. "You would have died if I wasn't there."

One dark brow arched. "Same to you."

She drew her knees to her chest. "What can't you answer any of my questions?"

"What's your name?"

"That's not an answer." She dropped her head into her palm. When, after a few seconds, he looked down the street—like maybe he was about to walk away—she looked back up at him. "Julia," she said grimly, with a little wave. "I'm Julia."

"Julia, do you have a st— a birthmark?"

"What's that got to do with anything?"

He shrugged, shrewd. "Just curious."

On its own, Julia's hand slid to the back of her neck. She caught herself mid-motion, but Cayne walked behind her and lifted her hair. His fingers skated gently over her skin, igniting a wave of prickly heat that moved from her shoulders to her toes.

"I thought so," he murmured.

She jerked away. He stepped back in front of her, and she pressed down on the hair that usually hid the freaky, ruddy starburst. "You thought what?" Her heart was pounding.

Cayne's mouth pinched, like he was trying to decide if he should tell.

"Get on with it! How did you know I had a birthmark?"

He shook his head. "Consider yourself the down payment on your answers. After we kill him, I'll tell you what I know. You can even choose not to hear the reasons. They won't matter anymore. Your problem will be gone."

Julia's jaw dropped. "You think I'm going to use my life as a down payment because...why again?"

His eyes hardened. "Because without me, you won't last another week."

"And what if I don't trust you?"

"You can go back to your warehouse alone."

His tone was cold—and almost cruel, but it was what she needed. She was living in a warehouse because she'd lost Suzanne and Harry. She had lost her family because of the winged thing. The half-demon. She—the secret freak, the cast-off girl—was all alone again, twice orphaned, and it was all that black-winged motherlover's fault.

His eyes on hers, Cayne stuck out his hand, and after a second, Julia took it.
Chapter Five

"So you're really not going to tell me what my birthmark means?" Julia looked out over the rim of her orange soda can, giving Mr. Mystery her best glare.

He shook his head, and Julia went to her Zen place, created an hour earlier when Cayne had left at the pecan warehouse, saying he'd be right back.

For a while she'd been pretty sure he'd gone for good, so she created this whole plan to hide out in the Peabody Hotel; if Samyaza wanted to come after her, he'd have to get through a downtown Memphis landmark first.

But Cayne did come back, with a plastic grocery bag of five dripping sodas, six bags of Doritos, one bag of peanut M&Ms, and two jumbo cinnamon rolls.

"Well, at least I know it means something."

Even stuffing his face full of cinnamon roll, Cayne managed to look shrewd. His dark eyebrows were expressive in a way that might have been charming if it wasn't so infuriating. As he'd done a few times now, he communicated using only his face, scrunching his brows and pulling his lips into a pinch that said: No way am I telling you shit. Then he took another bite out of his roll.

Julia opened her mouth to say she'd still help him even if he told her what he knew. She shut it when she realized that wasn't true.

"I'll help you for one day," she told him. "Max."

He gave her that look again—the one that said No way—and she stuck her tongue out. She tore open her bag of M&Ms, separating them in her palm by color. When he still didn't say anything, she slid a glance his way. He was sitting in a corner, on a plastic chair with rusted legs, looking like a model for Runaway Teen Weekly.

Well, just because he was hot as Hades didn't mean he'd win their little war of wills.

"So... You asked if my parents could do weird stuff. And you knew about the birthmark. Which makes me think obviously it's connected to what I can do. But that seems silly. I have a birthmark and I can heal people. No relation, right?"

He licked the icing remnants from his lips and gave her a truly infuriating poker face.

"Why don't you tell me what Sam has of yours? I can help you try to get it when we fight him."

His mouth quirked. "We?"

"Yes, we."

Cayne stared into her eyes. After a second, he simply shook his head.

Julia sighed. "Can you tell me where're you from?" she pressed.

This time, he simply blinked at her.

"Okaaay." She threw all her sarcasm into it, but she could feel her cheeks burning.

She finished off her M&Ms and came to the conclusion that if they were in school, Cayne would be the kind of guy that sat at the punk degenerates' table (she could see him with a pierced eyebrow) or maybe even the athletes' table (a wrestler?).

She stood up and brushed off her dirty jeans. "Are you going to tell me anything about yourself? Or am I to narrate your life for you?"

Cayne grabbed a paint can filled with old cigarette butts and tossed his trash inside. He straightened his shoulders, and again, she thought how tall he was. How handsome.

"You don't have to do anything but walk around," he told her flatly.

*

Walking with Cayne was like walking with a stalker. Julia had never had one, but she had to assume. He stayed behind her, always ten or fifteen feet. He could blend into a crowd like nobody's business, so she rarely saw him but she could always sense his presence.

She led him all around town, past the Orpheum Theater, down Beale Street. Past the Peabody Hotel, famous for its parade of ducks. She managed to keep her mood distant and frosty until early afternoon, when her bravado bled out and her feet started to throb just as she walked past the Bean Bag, a café Suzanne had loved. Cayne's nearness kept her from sinking into despair, and it was only later that night that Julia thought that maybe she should be thankful he was around. Maybe.

The next day was much the same. Cayne followed her across the bridge into West Memphis, always lurking in the corner of her eye. She entertained herself, and kept her mind off more pressing issues, filling in Cayne's story the best she could.

He seemed confident he could kill a half-demon—and he'd hurt its wing back in the warehouse—so he must have some kind of supernatural ability. Then again, she'd had to resuscitate him, so maybe he was just crazy.

Or, she realized, he could be someone like her. It made sense. She could heal people and she had an ugly birthmark, but she wasn't anything special otherwise. She was, as she had told him, just a girl.

She wished she could remember his aura. She remembered its brightness, but mostly she remembered all the wounds...and memories. She considered taking another peak, then decided it was too risky. She didn't want to make him mad, not until he spilled some information.

Finally, at the end of their second day of Samyaza stake-out, Cayne was "kind" enough to explain that he had followed the half-demon to Memphis from Charlotte, North Carolina. And that was it.

"Because he has something you want," Julia tried. "Are we talking like a magical stone, or like, your girlfriend?"

He shook his head.

"So you plan to get whatever he has that you need, and kill him? How? Are you some kind of professional demon slayer?"

He smirked, then lifted one eyebrow, and that was the end of it. Obviously he got off on being oh-so-mysterious. Sometimes she wanted to slap him. Most of the time she just kept to herself. Prim. Angry. Extremely put out.

Of course, it was worth it, if barely, for the peace of mind. As stodgy as he was, she felt certain Cayne had her back. Which was better than being a sitting duck, alone.

On their third day together, he moved them into an old tin furniture depot with a flat wood roof—because it was easier for Sam to penetrate. (Nice.)

That night, as Julia lay under a rain coat she'd swiped from a coat rack in a bookstore, he said, out of nowhere, "We need to get you some stuff."

"Huh?" The comment was so random, it almost made her laugh. "What kind of stuff?"

"Clothes, for one. A blanket to sleep on. And, I don't know, whatever you need."

He wanted to get her clothes... She suppressed a little smile, trying to keep the odd pleasure she felt out of her voice.

"And how are we going to pay for these things?"

In the dark, she saw a flash of teeth. "I've got it covered."
Chapter Six

The next morning, Cayne shook her awake and led her to a bright yellow taxi, parked outside their warehouse.

A grumpy Indian man drove them to one of Memphis' many Targets, where Julia quickly noticed that everyone Cayne encountered seemed to love him. All the customers smiled, like he was a good friend. So did the store's cashiers. Even the men seemed charmed.

"What's going on?" she asked him, as they passed the $1 discount shelves at the front of the store.

"What?" he said with an innocent face.

She rolled her eyes. "Everyone seems to love you."

"You think I'm not lovable?" He said it dead-pan, and Julia couldn't keep herself from smiling.

"How much can we spend?"

Cayne's mouth quirked. "It doesn't matter."

"Are you sure?" Julia was suspicious. He seemed...amused.

Cayne nodded, and when she asked a third time, he said, "Trust me. Money is not a concern."

So she got a pocket-sized bottle of designer shampoo, strawberry flavored lip gloss, cocoa vanilla body lotion, and a stick of deodorant. The rest of the essentials she had already klepto'd. In the women's section, she grabbed a new pair of jeans, a pack of underwear (which she shoved under her blue jeans), a Rolling Stones t-shirt, and a hooded black sweatshirt, plus two pairs of fluffy socks.

When they rolled their buggy to the register, Julia was surprised to find a sleeping bag waiting in a plastic Target bag. A shapely woman in a red vest smiled at Cayne. "I thought you might need this," she explained as she handed it to him.

Cayne returned her cheerful smile—that was weird—and passed it to Julia. Then an old guy with an Assistant Manager nametag appeared. He slapped Cayne once on the back and waved him to the door, wishing him and Julia an "excellent" day.

To Julia's utter astonishment, Cayne pushed their cart outside without dropping a penny. He seemed oblivious.

She glanced behind them twice, convinced that the cops would storm up any second, and then waited till they got into the parking lot to ask him, "What the hell?"

He looked into the buggy, and when her brows hurt from arching at him, he winked and graced her with a rare, brief smile. "I told you I had it covered."

"How did you do that? That was crazy!"

It turned out "crazy" was an understatement.

Mind control.

Cayne practiced mind control.

He explained it after a taxi cab pulled up—unbidden, as far as Julia could see—sliding closer to her and speaking very quietly while the driver followed his orders to "Just drive around for a while."

"Are you in my head right now?" she asked. "Is that why I'm doing this crazy Me as Bait plan? Because—"

"No."

"And why should I believe you?" She thought of how little she'd cried over Suzanne and Harry. She'd actually been handling things remarkably well. "Are you the reason that I haven't had a breakdown—because you hypnotized me?"

"I can't do it with you."

"Oh, and I believe that, Edward."

"Edward?"

"Twilight!" He didn't seem to recognize it. "You've never heard of Twilight?"

"No."

Amazing. "Well whatever. I still don't believe you."

"You should."

"Why?"

"Because. "And he broke into a radiant smile. "If I could influence your mind," he waved, "there would be none of this."

That was the last night they stayed in the warehouse. After Cayne explained that his mind control wasn't actually mind control—more like heavy suggestion, which most people were pleased to accept—they moved to the Peabody. Julia didn't necessarily approve of his voodoo, but she was tired of bathing with the fishes. Plus, she'd always wanted to stay there.

When they got to their room—okay, a penthouse suite with rooms that must have been furnished for visiting royalty—Julia flopped down on an overstuffed couch, set her gaze on a wall of sparkly windows, and said, "Now this is a talent worth having. How do you do it?"

"I'll tell you," he said, cryptically, "when you tell me how you do what you do."

She crossed her legs and stuffed a seashell-shaped pillow behind her head—the better to view the sunset.

"You've been holding out on me, huh?"

He arched one brow, and for a second, she figured he wouldn't reply. Finally, he sat in a wing-backed chair and said, "It didn't seem fair, you helping me for all these days."

Julia nodded, impressed. "I'm glad you came clean. Especially since I saved your tail."

"I would've been okay."

She snorted. "Right."

While Cayne ordered a plate of oysters—of all things—Julia got a long, steamy shower. Then they walked to the adjoining mall to "shop."

She racked up in a major way, and was thinking of heading back to the hotel when she realized Cayne hadn't gotten anything for himself. She had the feeling Mr. Mystery wouldn't know stripes from solids, so she took the liberty of picking him a few new outfits. He refused all but three shirts and two pairs of jeans, which helped alleviate her conscience. Because, well, she felt a little guilty, but she wasn't just going to refuse free clothes. Who would?

When, that night, Julia asked if he had a birthmark like hers, he actually laughed—so hard, in fact, that she decided to quit guessing.

*

Julia awoke to stark white light. She groaned and pulled the covers over her head. Too... early... to... be... so... "Ugh."

She heard laughter, low and thick, like morning fog.

Cayne.

She curled into a ball, thankful for the protective shell of her thick gold comforter.

She still hadn't gotten used to that: Cayne, who did not sleep, awake with her while she did. Cayne, who was movie-star hot, seeing her with bed-head.

It was crazy. She hardly even knew the guy and they were sharing a hotel room. Sure, they were friendly-ish now, and it wasn't like he was a serial killer or anything. He was...well, she didn't really know, now did she? Maybe human? Maybe not?

Julia frowned. She was going to find out. Today.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes. After a week in warehouses, the lavish suite made her head spin. It was all rich colors and wealth—delicate crystal glasses and hand-painted plates set on end tables, spider-like chandeliers and heavy drapes. And lots of windows.

Cayne stood before one of them, his big body angled so he could see Julia, the door, and most of the room. He gave her a look. It might have been irritation, or maybe curiosity. No, she decided as his brows bunched—definitely irritation.

"You slept long enough."

Julia scowled as she slid off the super-high bed. "Good morning to you too. Did you stand there all night?"

"Maybe."

"You're creepy."

"You snore."

"You're wearing clothes that went out of style in 2001."

Cayne, looking puzzled, glanced down at his t-shirt—the same fitted gray one he'd worn every day since Julia met him.

"Why don't you wear the stuff I picked out?" His frown deepened, and Julia snapped her fingers. "Oh, I've got it. Because then you might pass as almost cool."

"I—"

"I know. That would be too much for you."

Cayne gave her the evil eye, and she took a small step back, tripping over one of his Vans.

"Like walking is too much for you?" he said.

"Like taking a shower is too much for you."

"Like not drooling when you sleep is too much for you."

Youch. Em-bar-rass-ing.

"Yeah, whatever." She grabbed the channel changer and hurled it at him. Cayne snatched it from the air.

"Watch some TV," she said. "Might help your people skills. If they can be helped."

"Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?" At his vacant stare, she rolled her eyes. "I'm taking a shower."

"You already had one."

"Daily, Cayne. Most people bathe daily. I know I got a bath last night, but this is this morning. A new day."

"We have important things to do."

Julia threw up her hands. "I'm a girl. I like to stay clean. Unlike someone, who still smells like the river."

She smiled tightly as she closed the bathroom door, feeling bouncy and slightly breathless. Being with him in an enclosed space was something new. He was just so...magnetic. It was awful. Among other amazing things—the simple beauty of his hands, the not-brown-not-black color of his soft-seeming shaggy hair, infinite etceteras—Cayne did in fact not smell like the river. He smelled like...nature, the pure, clean kind. She'd caught herself trying to stand close to him just to catch a sniff. Ridiculous.

As Julia scrubbed her arms, she reminded herself to watch out. She should trust him less. She should remember she hardly knew him. Instead, she remembered the dream she'd just had. He had been holding her, stroking her hair, his lips trailing down her— dude, was she serious?

She dressed quickly, eager to get out of the steamy bathroom, and found Cayne cross-legged on the foot of the bed. He was staring at the TV, transfixed.

Two girls in criminally small bikinis were bouncing around. Best of MTV's Spring Break.

Julia turned turned the TV off. "Didn't you say we had important things to do?
Chapter Seven

Several hours later, Julia leaned on a sign outside the Memphis Zoo and groaned. The last thing she wanted to do was move. "Cayne, this is horrible."

He grinned. "It's what?"

"Hor-ri-ble." So he liked the accent. "Could it be any hotter out here?"

"Maybe if you complain more, the temperature will change."

"Maybe you should shut up."

Cayne smirked as Julia trudged behind him. He was in a weird mood. Too upbeat. She grabbed his sleeve as they moved through a sea of elementary school kids—a sea that parted gladly as they passed.

They shot the breeze as they walked their usual haunts, high-rise-less areas where Sam could easily swoop down. Julia wasn't thrilled with the location—it was hard to keep her mind off Harry and Suzanne when they were so close to her old home—but Cayne had insisted.

The sidewalks were cracked, the buildings had break-in bars, busted cars lined the street, and there was a lot of barbed wire. Even the trees seemed run down. They were thin, crooked things with spindly branches and plastic-looking leaves.

A woman in a blue button-up rushed out from a nearby Minute-Mart, fountain drink in hand. Julia thanked the lady, who smiled vacantly and sprinted back to the building. Her big boobs bounced, and Cayne tried to hide a smile. Julia laughed.

"You're such a perv," she said.

"Perv-ess."

"You can't say that. –Ess only applies to stuff like heiress or princess." She swatted his shoulder. "Isn't that what you meant to say? Princess?"

He drew away, and Julia saw goose bumps on his forearm. His pace quickened, and she hurried to keep up.

Cayne gave her an incredulous look. A look he was giving her often now.

"I'm going as fast as I can," she whined.

"I've seen the infirm move faster."

She folded her arms.

"Lepers have a longer gait."

"Ewww, lepers?"

"Lepers."

Julia laughed. "When would you have seen a leper?"

Cayne shrugged.

"Okay, Mr. Mysterio, just chill."

"Are you scanning auras?"

Julia elbowed him. "Quiet. And yes."

Her Sight worked all the time, but auras were barely discernible smudges when she wasn't focusing; they ballooned to all-out color bubbles when she was.

Cayne had told her that the more she used her Sight, the easier it would be for Sam to find her. It sent up a red flag...

Or something like that. Julia had tried not to think much about her starring role as The Bait.

"See anything?"

"Mmm...mostly not-so-good stuff. Brown. A lot of people are brown. Not all-out done for, you know, just sad or maybe tired, that day-to-day blah stuff."

"What else?"

"I'm seeing more yellow-green than usual," she said quietly. "That's sick. A lot of them are red, too. Mad."

"Has anyone ever noticed when you read them?"

"Some of my friends thought I was psychic sometimes. And sometimes it would make me act weird, knowing stuff I shouldn't know. Like if Suzanne—" Julia drew in a breath. "Um...if someone was sad and they didn't want me to know, I would if I was looking."

"That seems useful."

She nodded. "I can always spot a rat. I can tell if you're a pink person or a blue one or a red one in general, because your undertone is always the same. Everyone has a certain look."

Cayne looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "What do you think of mine?"

Julia hesitated, and his nerves flared in Christmas colors. She pasted on a grin. "That's going to cost you an answer to one of my questions."

Cayne actually looked tempted, if only for a second. Then he shook his head.

"All right." She rolled her eyes. As she did, she caught something red. About fifty yards away, above a cluster of oak trees, she saw a giant crimson flare, and then an explosion of purple pain.

She gasped, and Cayne moved in front of her. "Is it him?"

Julia shook her head. They'd been going in a circle and were almost back to where they'd started, near a little park beside the Minute-Mart.

Cayne's fingers pressed into the tender skin inside her elbow. "What is it?"

"I don't know. A fight or something."

"Then it doesn't concern..." he trailed off as Morris Park came into view and a ghastly pot-bellied man slapped a woman's cheek. His aura was red. Hers was purple-black.

The woman slapped him back, and then he hit her again.

"Oh my God. We have to do something," Julia insisted, but Cayne was pulling her away. "That woman needs help! You're a guy! You're bigger than him, Cayne! Chivalry!"

The woman was dashing out in front now, the man chasing after her. Julia looked desperately for someone, anyone, but a wino on the other side of the street was shuffling away, and the few passing cars didn't slow.

"What if that was me?"

She looked at Cayne with wide, sad eyes, and he nodded. "Stay close."

Julia followed him across the street, and the abuser didn't even notice their silent approach. Cayne walked up behind the man, wrapped his fingers around his throat, and squeezed—all done calmly, like he was in complete control. The woman fumbled to her feet and ran, sobbing, down the sidewalk.

The man, now red-faced, clawed at Cayne's arm. He made a garbled screaming sound, and Cayne said, in a serious voice, "Calm down."

The mad did, but with unintended consequences. He stopped clawing at Cayne's arm and reached inside his coat.

*

Cayne jerked as a bullet exploded out his back. Julia ducked as a second blast knocked him a step back. He didn't let go of the gunman. Instead, his grip tightened, and the man's neck snapped with a horrifying pop.

Cayne pushed the corpse away and sagged to one knee, more kneeling than falling. Blood bloomed around the golf ball-sized hole over his kidney, where jagged pink flesh framed an ink pit of crimson that ran onto his jeans.

"Cayne!"

He shoved Julia away and was standing before she was, one hand pressed against a smaller leak in his lower ribcage, the other over the gory spot below his pec.

Before she could speak or get her hands on him to start healing, Cayne started toward the Minute-Mart.

"Cayne," Julia moaned. He kept moving.

"Stop and let me help you!"

He grunted and shook her off. Julia ran in front of him and planted herself in his path. "What are you doing? Let me heal you!"

Cayne's eyes narrowed. "I don't need it."

"You're bleeding to death!"

"I'm fine!" he snapped.

Having no idea what else to do and terrified that he would fall, Julia wedged herself under his shoulder and wrapped her right arm around his waist. She glanced at his shirt, stuck to his skin; she could see his quivering muscles, bunching and flattening with each step.

The woman from the Minute-Mart met them at the entrance, her arms filled with gauze and ointments. Julia took the supplies, and the woman locked the glass doors behind them. Under the fluorescent lights, the scene took on a dream-like quality: Cayne, shot twice. Not dead. Still standing. Still walking on his own.

He lumbered into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, blood dripping from the wound above his pec. It splattered red against the porcelain.

"I need to get the bullets out," he said without lifting his head.

Right. Julia was too scared to feel stupid. But she noticed that his voice sounded strong and his legs seemed sturdy. Was he really okay? After two shots at point-blank range?

Cayne angled himself away from her and fumbled with the water knobs. When the mirror began to steam, he pushed his hands under the water, closed his eyes, and sighed.

He wasn't dead yet, so Julia set the gauze down on a paper towel dispenser and focused on reigning in her urge to heal. At least until he got the bullet out.

Cayne pulled his right arm inside his shirt. He groaned, and Julia decided sadism was not her thing.

"Stay still." She took a small pair of scissors from the first aid pile. Her stomach lurched when she lifted the back of his shirt; it was soaked with still-warm blood. Holding her breath, she cut it in half.

Cayne didn't flinch as she peeled the fabric off the wound on his back, making it bleed anew.

As she moved to examine his chest, he snatched the shirt from her, dabbed two mean half-dollar holes on his chest, and with quick precision, stuck two fingers into the top hole. He swore softly and pulled out a bullet.

Julia slid to the floor.

The slug clanked on the sink. After a few labored breaths, Cayne seemed fine. He washed his hands and splashed his face. As water dripped off his chin, he started to unravel the gauze.

"Wait." Julia pulled herself to her feet and handed him an economy-sized tube of Neosporin.

Cayne smiled tightly and shook his head.

"You—"

"Don't need it." He held out the gauze and she took it, feeling a little light on her feet. As Julia used the coarse gas-station paper towels to mop the blood away and wrapped his chest with gauze, she could have sworn she saw the wounds shrinking.

By the time they left the bathroom, her head was spinning. Cayne, though more snarky than usual, seemed almost fine. He took her elbow and led her past the cashier, who was mopping blood off the floor; she smiled and waved as if strange guys almost bled out in her store every day.

In the parking lot, a man stepped out of his Volvo and handed Cayne a bomber jacket. Julia helped him into it.

The walk to the hotel seemed to take forever, and by the time they reached their door, Julia was burning with questions, but she knew she wouldn't get far.

"What should I do for you?" was what she settled on. She had a clawing urge to heal him, even though he'd said he didn't need it.

Cayne eased himself onto the couch, and a spasm of something—maybe pain—crossed his face. Then he sighed. "You've done it."

Julia felt fussy, so she fetched an über-fluffed pillow from the bedroom and a bottle of water from the minibar. She stuffed the pillow behind his back, stuck the water in his hand, and propped her own hands on her hips. "Are you sure you don't need anything else?"

He grinned. "I should get shot more often."

When she felt sure there was nothing more that she could do, she fled to the shower, where she shed a few post-trauma tears. Now more than ever, she wanted to know the secret of what he was, felt he owed her an explanation. But the shooting seemed to have changed her personality.

It was just the trauma, and it would have to wear off...but Julia was curiously, stupidly, unacceptably tongue-tied. Her cheeks had blushed practically the whole way home. Her hands were clammy. And inside their suite, things had gotten even worse.

Her stomach was in knots, and she seemed to have split personalities; one wanted to slap Cayne, and the other—God, she really hoped he told the truth when he said he couldn't get into her mind—wanted to put her arms around him and snuggle her face into his shaggy hair.

There was something wrong with her.

Of course, when she got out of the shower, Cayne, twice gunshot Cayne, seemed normal. A big, quiet, mysterious, obviously not-normal normal, deep in sleep.

He woke up maybe an hour later in a mood; he was quiet, taut, over-obsessed with the windows and doors. As she fell asleep, he took up his usual post, beside a peacock-sized flower arrangement, watching her and the room. Maybe it was her imagination, but his eyes seemed to linger on her a little longer than usual.
Chapter Eight

She was drifting, gliding under a moonless sky, in the shadow of a million stars, over a bare landscape of stone and dirt, through wisps of clouds. Miles and miles ahead, her destination jutted from the dead earth: a crystal pyramid, sparkling in its perfection.

It was the new Babel, a tower that touched the sky, a ladder to the gods. But the sun god peeled away the night in strips, and the light showed someone hovering above the pyramid's tip; Cayne, circling, searching for her.

Now she was frantic, beating her wings and desperate to reach him, filled with an urgency she didn't understand.

And the closer she came, the closer the sun, and the night was completely gone and Julia was flying at breathtaking speed.

The heat was too much. She felt her wings molt, white feathers fluttering off her bones in bundles. She began to sink, falling farther from Cayne, who was shedding his charcoal feathers. He flapped like a wounded bird, and she screamed when his face melted and his body fell. It bounced off the tip of the pyramid, and she watched it catch fire as it slid down the side.

Her skin began to peel as she screamed, and her eyes burned out of her head, but she could still see the sun as it drew closer and closer to the earth, as the desert erupted and everything burned, and the light came closer and closer and closer for a kiss...

*

Someone was shaking Julia's shoulder. She snuggled deeper into her cocoon and covered her face with the satiny sheets. The shaking became more insistent, and her eyes popped open: Cayne.

She let her stomach recover from its emergency nose-dive. She was  
hot—sweating; the sheets stuck to her legs. He shook her again and, more than mortified, Julia jerked the sheet off her head.

Cayne's face glowed in the morning light; the sun-kissed trimmings on the ceiling, the velveteen wallpaper, and even the sparkling chandelier paled in comparison.

He was wearing clean clothes, underneath which, she was willing to bet, his wounds were smooth scars. His rich brown hair fell past his ears in the usual not-brushed-but-not-stringy look that made longish hair okay—at least on him.

Julia smoothed her own crazy locks and waited while he stuck his hands in his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels, like he was putting off whatever he had to say.

"What is it?"

"Samyaza's gone. He's traveling west." There was a phantom pause while he inhaled, that broad chest rising and falling. "I'm going after him."

"Oh, okay." Her own decision was almost immediate. "Me too."

"You think so?"

"Didn't you say he would kill me, like, for sure? I'm still in danger, aren't I?"

She was surprised when Cayne nodded.

"Transportation's going to be a problem. I can get around by myself, but not with you."

"You don't have a car?"

"No."

"Do you have a motorcycle?"

"No."

"A bus pass?"

"No."

"Then how do you..." Julia sighed as he smirked. "Should I even ask?"

"No."

"I guess it'd be pointless to ask how you know where he's headed."

Cayne grinned as he walked over to the window; he pulled the curtains back, stared down at the city for a second, then said he'd "go find something," which in Cayne-speak meant that someone would give him a car. Julia banished the disapproving voice of her childhood Sunday school teacher from her head. Desperate times.

While she gathered their few belongings, Cayne "borrowed" a sleek black Infiniti. She met him in the parking lot and whistled.

"Wow."

"You like my ride?"

Julia rolled her eyes and opened the passenger door. She wondered, as she buckled in, when the owner would realize his or her car was missing. She thought about asking Cayne, but he was intent on figuring out his seatbelt, so she closed her eyes, folded her arms, and relished that new car smell.

Then her head banged into the window. Julia shrieked as the car shot out of the parking deck and jumped a curb. A glance at Cayne showed him wide-eyed with teeth bared, wresting with the steering wheel like it was a living thing.

"STOP!"

The car spun past an open-mouthed valet and barely missed a limo.

"Shit! The breaks! The breaks!"

But he stomped the pedal again, and they lurched through a gate and crashed into Union Avenue.

Like a lightning bolt, it struck her that he didn't know gas from breaks. "The one on the left!" she shouted. "Left!"

Cars, trucks, and vans sped toward them, and as their horns blared Julia went limp. She clamped her eyes shut and screamed, "ON THE LEFT!"

Their car spun, breaks squealed, metal crunched metal. Nothing touched them.

When Julia opened her eyes they were parallel with the curb on the other side of the street, facing a stream of oncoming traffic. Cayne seemed confused; he was peering at the speedometer. Julia couldn't stop shaking. Even her teeth knocked together.

The wailing sirens snapped her out of it.

"Shit."

Cayne glanced at her. "It's harder than it looks."

"Obviously!" Julia threw her door open, heedless of the van beside her. It swerved into the other lane, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the nose of a black Mustang kiss the trunk of a beige Corolla. The sirens were closer. "Shit!"

She ran around the car, flung Cayne's door open, and grabbed his arm, slinging him out of the seat. "Passenger side! Put it in park first!"

He opened his mouth, but Julia shoved him. "Go around! Get in the passenger's seat!"

He did, and she slid behind the wheel. "Listen," she said, waving at the trail of cars before shifting into reverse. "We want to get let into traffic. Then we need to get out of here fast."

Cayne nodded, and the cars did what she wanted. What he desired. Everyone stopped to let them in, then moved to the right lane, leaving the left open for Julia. To fly. She didn't breathe again until I-55 North, and when she did, she had to refrain from screaming.

"Cayne," she said, breaking a long, tired silence, "when exactly is the last time you drove?"

"I don't think I ever have."

"Never?"

He looked chagrinned. "Yeah."

She shook her head, unable for a moment to comprehend. "You have never driven a car? Never ever. Ever. Driven a car."

Cayne rubbed his head.

If she hadn't been driving, Julia would have stared. Heck, she stared anyway. And he stared back. Face innocent. Eyes challenging. For a moment, she was speechless. Then she was rambling. And then she started laughing. The giggles bubbled through her body, soothing her nerves, loosening the knots in her chest. Cayne chuckled with her.

"I thought I'd be a natural," he admitted.

Julia cackled again. It went on longer than it should have—nerves.

"How is it," she asked when her cheeks stopped hurting and she could breathe again, "that you never learned to drive?"

He shrugged. "Just never learned."
Chapter Nine

The sun was almost kissing the horizon; it painted the road pink, like cotton candy. Carnival tents popped up on the right, outside a small strip mall, just far enough away to be tempting. Julia ignored them. She had her own freak show.

"So you don't ever eat anything but crap? No fruits and veggies?"

"Nope."

"Not even apples?"

"Nope."

"What's wrong with apples?"

Cayne's lip curled. "They taste like sweet tree bark."

Julia laughed. "You eat bark, do you?"

"Who doesn't?"

"Um, normal people. They eat fruit, too. And salads. And they drive."

"What are you trying to say?"

"You're a strange one, bark boy."

Cayne frowned. "Leaf me alone."

It was laugh-out-loud corny, and Julia giggled for a full minute. She sighed when she finally got herself under control. She was comfortable. Things were okay. Maybe that was why she hadn't yet pressed Cayne about any of her pressing questions. A part of her—a large and forceful, negligent, and foolish part of her— wanted things to go on as they were.

After they'd escaped Memphis, they'd spent three mostly silent hours in the car, and the craziness of what Julia was doing hit home. She was going who-knew-where with who-knew-who—who couldn't drive but could control people's minds—in search of a half-demon that had tried to kill her and would probably love to try again. Wasn't that enough to swallow? She wasn't sure she could handle knowing more, at least not quite yet.

She drove faster than she ever had, counting on Cayne to keep the cops away. When her energy finally waned, somewhere in Southern Missouri, she pulled off the Interstate and into the almost-empty parking lot of a hotel called the Lucky Deuce. She was going to have to teach Cayne how to drive.

Julia explained the pedals, the blinkers, ten and two, stoplights and stop signs, merging, even parallel parking—everything she could think of. She felt a sharp prick of sorrow when she realized she was teaching him the same way Suzanne had taught her just a year before. Mr. Perceptive noticed her sad moment, but he didn't press.

Fifteen minutes later, she gave him a passing grade, and after convincing him to stay under 90 miles per hour (too fast for her liking, but a whole lot better than 120), her shoulders began to unknot.

She passed the time trying to get to know Cayne. Of course, she couldn't ask any of her burning questions. Not until she buttered him up. So she spent an hour lobbing softballs. Sure, she was interested in his favorite animal (the leopard), but after an hour learning his likes—rare steak; pizza with anchovies; reading mysteries (how fitting); '60s and '70s rock, especially The Rolling Stones (and especially the song Sympathy for the Devil); Vivaldi's "Four Seasons"; bagpipes; the first few weeks of autumn—and his dislikes—nearly every vegetable; every fruit; rain clouds; crossword puzzles (he claimed he didn't understand any of the pop culture questions); and television, since he didn't care enough to watch it—she was ready for something meatier.

"So you've really never done this before?" she asked as she stretched her arms. The ride was so smooth she could have fallen asleep. It had been that way since Cayne took the wheel.

"Had a conversation?"

Julia rolled her eyes. "Driven."

"Never."

"Hmph. Boy wonder."

"What?"

"You're a prodigy."

"Oh?"

"Very impressive."

Cayne nodded. "I'm forced to agree."

"You're very humble, too."

He winked. "Very."

Julia giggled, and she had to resist the urge to touch his arm. It was weird.

The twinkling lights of the city had faded away, and rows of fir trees shadowed the land that framed the road. Julia remembered her first Christmas with Harry and Suzanne, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth. She searched for something to clear her mental palate, but everything brought her back to the life she'd lost. Thoughts of friends were no good, so school was out. And of course Harry and Suzanne were way off limits.

She glanced at Cayne and imagined his face covered with ice cream. He loved the stuff, and could never pass up a chance to get a few free cones.

It was their last day in Memphis, and they were at the zoo. He was being difficult—she couldn't remember how—and she'd decided to smash his cone into his face. She'd laughed at his floored expression, and he'd chased her, trying but failing to replicate her feat.

Julia smiled.

Of course then they'd left, and their path took them to the park where Cayne got shot. More bad memories.

She wrapped her arms around herself, remembering how helpless she'd felt.

"Cayne?"

"Mmmm?"

"About yesterday..." He tensed, but Julia was determined to get at least one question answered. "How did that guy manage to shoot you?"

"I assume because I didn't want to be involved."

Julia waited for him to elaborate, but he didn't seem to want to do that, either. She sighed. "Well, how do you feel now?"

"Fine." He stared straight out, lips pressed flat. Then took one hand off the wheel and turned to face her. "Turn on the light."

Julia did, and he pulled up his shirt, revealing omigod AMAZNIG abs. Seriously. Her throat went so dry she thought she might choke. "See?" he said, and she did choke just a little. She blinked and came back down to Earth, realizing that his hand was resting atop a shiny pink scar just below his ribcage.

She couldn't help gaping, though for a totally different reason. "Wow."

Cayne arched a brow and turned the light back off. Julia laid her head on the window. "I guess you wouldn't want to explain—"

"You guessed right."

She poked out her bottom lip. "You don't trust me," she said, and the hurt in her voice was more real than she meant it to be.

He smiled softly. "It has nothing to do with you."

"But it affects me."

"I know it does."

His admission took Julia's curiosity to wild new levels, but what could she do? Cayne's brow furrowed.

"You know," he began, and Julia held her breath. "Now that I think about it," he said, "I do like grape juice. Does that count as a fruit?"

*

The trees gave way to fields of moon-white corn. Julia imagined stopping at one of the brightly lit farmhouses that winked at the road. She wondered what the night would look like from behind the panes of an attic window. She on a straw mattress, Cayne a silent shadow above her.

They hadn't spoken since the moon rose, but it was a cozy kind of silence. Julia loved the way the dim light glistened on streams and tractors and grain silos. The way it turned his skin white.

"Cayne?"

"Yeah."

"Are you tired of driving?"

He shook his head.

"Won't you get tired? I was thinking we should stop soon."

"Can you sleep here?" He waved at her seat.

"In the car? Yeah."

"Then we don't need to stop."

She remembered what he'd said that morning. I can get around by myself... How exactly? She almost took another shot at finding out, but instead asked, "Where are we going?"

"I'll know when we get there," he said. "All I have to do is find him."

Julia wondered what would happen if he found the half-demon in the middle of nowhere. Or somewhere in the sky. How would they reach him then?

"Is it hard to follow him?"

"No."

"What's it like?"

"Like holding your hand under a faucet and slowly increasing the flow of hot water. The closer we get, the warmer he feels."

That didn't explain anything at all, but Julia knew that was all she was going to get. She crossed her arms and turned to the window, peeved but trying not to be. She glanced at him, and his lips parted. He pressed them back together.

"What?" she asked.

Cayne cleared his throat. "What year are you in?"

"Huh?"

"At school."

Right. That's what she thought she'd heard. Captain Random. "I was a senior," she said sullenly.

"Do you like it?"

"Did you like it. Past tense. And no, not really."

"Why not?"

"I liked some parts okay. But no one really likes school."

"Really?"

"Don't tell me you did."

Cayne smirked. "I'm asking the questions now."

"And you expect me to answer!"

He smirked. "Were you a good student?"

She sighed. "Honor roll."

"Where were you born?"

"In Memphis."

"And you always lived there," he said.

"Yes."

"How old are you?"

"I'm seventeen," she said primly. "See, some of us know how to answer questions about ourselves."

And she had a lot to answer.

What was her favorite time of day? (Dawn.)

What was her favorite time or year? (Fall.)

What was her favorite bird? (Duck.)

What was her favorite thing to think about? (Interpreted to mean favorite shareable fantasy: swimming with manatees.)

What she most afraid of? (Spiders. No, Samyaza.)

What was her earliest memory? (Trying to use a kid potty when she was two. He thought that was hilarious).

Did she prefer being with people or being alone? (Alone, but with exceptions.)

And then Cayne asked what she wanted most, and Julia thought of Harry and Suzanne and couldn't answer. Cayne seemed to get that she was tired of talking—or maybe he was—and by then she was just tired period, and he was driving so well that she reclined her chair and closed her eyes.

*

She dreamed of enormous charcoal wings, flapping in great whooshes that became whistles. They beat faster and faster and faster, and the air pressed her still. She saw the landscape below her dangling feet; it was flying too, flying beneath her, flat and colorful like a map. She was excited. She was terrified.

Through the cold night she flew, to the pyramid that touched the sky. It was gargantuan, wider than her mind could comprehend and larger than the tallest mountain. And Julia, flying too fast and too low, was going to crash into it. She tried to increase her altitude, to use the momentum that propelled her to avoid the giant crystal, but she couldn't fly high enough.

Up and up she went, and up and up it went, until the fat clouds were cotton balls stretched around her and the air was too thin to breathe and still the pyramid stretched, all the way up to heaven.
Chapter Ten

The charcoal feathers fluttered away, the Power Ranger curtains folded into the mist, and Nathan's feet touched stone. He ran a hand through his short brown hair as his dark eyes peered across the expanse of flat stone. They were there, as they always were: three lights in the dark.

Nathan understood the need for the crossing—the need to master himself and his history before he faced The Three—but a part of him, a weak part that he couldn't quash, wished he saw, if not happier, than at least less painful visions of his past.

He fingered the small scar on his right check and counted backward until his mind was calm and his actions were automatic. His feet carried him up three steps onto the other half of the massive underground cave—the hidden half.

It was enormous: more than 1,000 feet long, 500 feet wide, and 300 feet high. While the cave was illuminated by the moon and the stars on the common side, The Three's half of the pit was all shadows and water. Thirty torches staggered the length of the underground theater, a path of light that led to them and only them. There was no other reason to make the crossing. They were all that was.

His footsteps sounded like drum beats in the silence. His breaths were gasps. The dark outside the glow of the torches seemed both to stretch forever and to pin him in. Room to hide but no escape. Just like his life.

Nathan allowed himself a moment to wonder why he had been summoned. Last time, it was because one of the Candidates had disappeared. Perhaps she had been found?

He reached the halfway point, when the last of the lake's mist receded and the hidden gods revealed themselves. Like each time he had appeared before them since the first, Nathan searched for changes in their appearance. He was both comforted and disappointed, as their features became visible, that he found none.

The right and left, or left and right, might have been twins. Both were old, impossibly old, with slick bald scalps that rumpled at the forehead, bushy gray caterpillars for eyebrows, and age-lined faces. They sat in thrones raised seven feet, yet their thick gray beards touched the floor.

They flanked the middle, who was even older. His eyes had sunken to slits in his face, his nose was no more than a gnarl above thin lips, his skin was crisscrossed with a millennium's scars, and his beard stretched 30 feet; 10 feet from his perch above the other two to the ground and another 20, to where Nathan bent to kiss it.

Here he would wait for them to speak.

He did not wait long.

"Our minds are turned toward hers," the right said. His voice was like thunder, and Nathan had to touch the floor to steady himself.

"We shall make contact soon," the left said, his voice like the hiss of steam.

Nathan nodded. "What do I need to do?"

"Make yourself ready," the right said.

"Ready for what?"

The right and left were silent. They were deliberating with the middle, Nathan knew. He, the oldest and greatest, who never spoke aloud. Only to two minds did he project his thoughts; they, the right and left, were his voice.

"The tracker we sent to fetch this Candidate from her home did not return," the right said.

"Perhaps the Hunter," the left mused.

Nathan blinked in surprise. He was not aware that a tracker had been dispatched. That he had failed was alarming.

"We cannot lose her," the right thundered.

"We cannot allow him to have her," the left hissed.

The hairs on Nathan's arms stood up. Someone had her? "Who? Is she in danger? Do I—"

"We cannot determine his motives," the right declared. "His mind blocks ours."

"Very unusual for a Nephilim," the left whispered.

They lapsed into silence again, and Nathan turned his attention to the middle. He was still as stone. Nathan had wondered before if the tall, thin man who was more than man was even alive at all.

The voice of the right shook him out of his musings. "She is with a Hunter."

Nathan nearly choked on his tongue. The familiar fear and rage grabbed him inside, a cold burn that threatened to strip his control, to leave him bare before the gods. "A Hunter," he exclaimed. "Then what the hell are we waiting for? I've got to get her now! He could kill her!"

"He has been her companion for a week," the left said.

"What?" It didn't make any sense. "Does he know she's one of us?"

"We cannot say," the right said.

"The time for action is approaching, regardless," the left said.

Nathan wanted to scream at them, to challenge them, to disobey them, but he stayed his temper. He was as a fly before them. He had to trust their judgment. "I am to retrieve her?"

"Yes," the right said.

Nathan nodded. "I will assemble my team."

He waited for them to dismiss him, but no word came. They were conferring again, and Nathan was not prepared for the bombshell they were about to drop.

"Child of the Light," the right said, "this Hunter is among their most deadly."

"And," the left whispered, "he is one with whom you are acquainted."
Chapter Eleven

Julia spent the black a.m. hours with her eyes shut, listening to the purr of the wheels on the road and thinking about Cayne.

Losing her first and only real family could've put her in some hellish new foster home, or even in a homeless shelter or hospital. But here she sat, comfy in the air-conditioning, reclining in a leather seat, wearing the sort of clothes she'd wanted in her closet for most of her life. And under the protection of someone who looked like a Ralph Lauren model. She couldn't help but feel grateful, despite Cayne's persistent less-than-chattiness.

She rested her forehead on the window, scrutinizing her sidekick through the thickness of her half-shut lashes.

Of course he didn't scrutinize back. He didn't do anything but be intense.

For a while she watched his eyes jump from the rear-view mirror to the road to the sky and back again, a rhythm so practiced she doubted it was conscious. When her eyes finally tired of following his, she gazed at the landscape, rolling hills with lonely trees and grass that looked Etch-A-Sketched under the dim light of the night sky.

It was just as dim in her dreams, where it appeared in broken, smeared images. Cayne was there, too, surrounded by massive mountains. He was younger; much younger: a child.

The pyramid was a real stone and mud pyramid, but she was underneath it, looking up. She saw Cayne fly over it. He was listening to an iPod, snapping his fingers to a tune she couldn't hear. The sky was dark gray. Charcoal.

Julia awoke when her ears began to pop, but for a moment she feigned sleep and watched him out of the corner of her eye. He was humming with the radio and watching the road like a cat eying a mouse. She could tell he was onto something, so she pushed herself up and tucked her hair behind her ears.

"Where are we?" she murmured.

Cayne's eyes slid over her. "In Utah. Twenty miles outside Salt Lake City."

"Did you have any trouble getting gas?"

"No."

"How long was I out?" she asked, opening the visor mirror to inspect her hair.

"Almost six hours."

"Mmm." Julia stretched. "Can we pull over and get me a drink?"

Cayne's mouth tightened; he inhaled. "I've found our friend."

"You have?"

He nodded. "Somewhere in Salt Lake City."

"Somewhere," she said. "So what's the plan?"

He stared ahead, remote as the sun. "Find him."

The mountains that lorded over the city were massive, purple, snow-capped towers of earth. They made Julia's heart thrum with misplaced elation. It was crazy to be so excited about hunting a demon—well, a half-demon. But as Cayne navigated the widening Interstate, her heart pumped 100 miles per hour.

They bypassed the city, and Cayne grew quieter, tucked into himself. He seemed ready. Julia wondered if she was.

He exited a few miles west of town, and her eyes jumped from dusty buildings to matchbox houses and service stations. Several miles later, she was mostly watching trees.

Cayne muttered something about being close. The car slowed. Julia chewed her cheeks as he turned onto a dirt road that twisted between rows of pines. The sun had all but vanished behind the great blue bags that filled the sky. Julia wondered if rain would be good or bad. Could Samyaza fly with wet wings?

Better question: Could Cayne really take him? She wondered about what he'd told her back in Memphis. About how Samyaza had caught him off guard. If they caught Samyaza off guard, would they come out on top?

Their path led to a squat wood building hidden behind a copse of pines. It had two shuddered windows and a steel door. Someone had painted it the same brown as the tree trunks around it. Definitely not inviting. Julia counted her breaths as Cayne parked in a pine straw circle about a dozen feet away.

He closed his eyes, and Julia thought she might have a heart attack while she waited for them to open. She blew out a hot breath when they finally did; they were sharp. Wary.

"He already left," Cayne said flatly, not looking at her. "Recently."

Julia was more relieved than disappointed. "So what now?"

"Something happened..."

"What?"

He shook his head as he opened his door. "You stay in the car."

"No way."

"I don't think you want—"

"I'm safer with you than by myself."

"Yeah," he said. "That's true, but I don't think you want to see what's in there."

Julia didn't have to guess at what he meant. And he was probably right. But she didn't care. She felt compelled to follow him.

She let her anger fill her up as she slid out of the car and followed Cayne's rigid form to the door. The wind blew her hair off her back and sent a chill down her spine. Even with the breeze, there was a stillness in the air—the feeling that they were the only living people left on Earth. Julia wrapped her arms around herself.

Cayne sniffed the air, following the doorframe like a cartoon bloodhound. He twisted the knob. It turned. He glanced at her, she nodded, and he swung the door open.

Julia knew when the foul air rushed to meet her that something bad had indeed happened. She could taste it on the roof her mouth. For one long moment, she thought of turning back. Going back to the car, turning on the radio, pretending she was somewhere else. Then she noticed Cayne's eyes on her. Assessing.

She followed him inside.

The entry hall was no larger than a closet. A bare bulb cast dirty light over four drab walls and a simple stone floor.

To Julia's surprise, Cayne's hand closed around hers, and they walked together down a long, narrow hall, her heart pounding in time with their footsteps. When they approached two wide, wood doors, spots of color bloomed behind her eyes. Pain. Lots of it.

Cayne placed a hand and an ear against one of the doors. He looked at her, his eyes offering one last chance. She almost took it.

"I'm staying," she hissed.

Carefully, quietly, and so slowly Julia thought she might faint from the tension, Cayne pushed one of the doors open, revealing a wide common room. And there, past the round ridge of his shoulder, Julia saw death. Everywhere, death. Bodies—naked, mangled. A severed head lay beneath a tall-backed chair in one corner, brown hair matted by blood. Julia could see veins and tendons in the middle of a flapping circle of skin, and the neck bone, sticking out into the carpet. The body lay sprawled nearby, a gruesome gash where his kidneys would have been.

So much blood: painting the walls, staining the carpet. Men and women, young and old, missing hearts, limbs, intestines. And the parts, scattered about like so much garbage.

Julia stepped back and a spongy noise drew her eyes to her shoes. Blood pooled around her All-Stars.

Her knees gave out, and Cayne's strong arms encircled her. He turned her into his chest. "Don't look."

His long fingers dug into her shoulders; the pain brought her down, so instead of floating, dizzy, Julia focused on the fabric of his shirt. She smelled him, that lovely blend of guy and grass, mixed with the blood and death.

Past his arm she saw what spun her world. The starburst, Julia's starburst, the crimson stain on the back of her neck. The body by the table had an identical mark just under her collarbone.

Julia couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. Seconds were hours, minutes were days. From some still-functioning place inside her mind, she saw Cayne's brows clench, and she saw him lift his right hand. Then he slapped her, a good, strong hit that echoed through the room. He grabbed her elbows to steady her. He whispered things like look and listen. She struggled to follow.

But she saw the mark on others. On a stomach that was sliced open. On an arm bent at a broken angle.

Her eyes jerked to the—oh my God—the head. The head that was lying on the floor. To the neck. Her imagination made it thinner, framed it with dark hair. Her hair. Any of these people could be her. And suddenly she knew why Cayne hadn't told her anything.

Because it was too horrible.

Her body jerked like a puppet's, wooden legs carrying her out into the hall.

"Cayne..." Her mouth snapped shut.

"I'm sorry." His arm came snug around her shoulders, pasting her to him. Making her safe. "We're leaving now. I shouldn't have—"

"My mark," she squeaked; even to her own ears it sounded pitiful. Julia cleared her throat and tried again. "They have my birthmark."

Cayne's thick arm tightened around her.

"Will you...?" Julia swallowed the bile that sloshed in her throat. "Will you check them? Will you look at all of them?"

"I don't need to," he said. He led her down the hall, to the car, where he found some hand sanitizer in the glove box and leaned out the door, cleaning his hands.

Once they pulled off dirt and onto pavement, Julia's pulse stopped hammering. When she was able to breathe again, she ordered Cayne to pull over and stumbled out of the car. He tried to follow, but she yelled at him to stay put. She was not going to puke in front of him.

"I want to know now," Julia said ten minutes later, back in the car and finally able to speak. "What does he want? What do I have in common with those people?"

Cayne seemed deep in thought, and Julia felt a bolt of anger. "Aren't you going to say something?"

He hesitated. Julia knew it. After almost a week, she knew his mannerisms. Knew when he wasn't being open. A quick glance at his aura confirmed her suspicions: Cayne's radiant silver was touched with brownish green.

"You're thinking about not telling me."

He said nothing, and she drew her knees to her chest. "Yeah, just keep not telling me, all right? Why don't you just keep it to yourself! So I'll be like that, and you won't be able to find my birthmark because my head's ripped off!" Cayne's mouth opened, but nothing came out. "What the hell does he want with me? What's wrong with me? Tell me now."

But he didn't. He didn't say a word.

"I deserve to know."

Cayne sighed, and she waited. While he examined her. While he glanced out the window. While he sighed again.

Finally, quietly, so his voice barely rose above the hum of the engine, he said, "I didn't say anything—about anything—because I was...concerned."

"Concerned?" She hated the hitch in her voice. "About what?"

"How you would react when I told you the...whole truth."

Julia's stomach hit her toes. "So what is it?"

"I'm a half-demon." Cayne's eyes grabbed hers. "Like Samyaza."
Chapter Twelve

She'd heard him wrong. Obviously she had. Her trauma had turned into paranoia, which was manifesting itself as a hallucination. Julia looked at Cayne's now familiar face—the sharp green eyes, those beautiful lips, the shaggy brown hair that hung down almost to his brows.

"I'm sorry but... What?"

His smile was tight. "Nephilim," he said. "You heard of them?"

"Like fallen angels?"

Cayne was looking intently at the road, which had widened as they neared a rural neighborhood. For a moment, his face seemed blank. Then she saw a flicker of tension near his mouth, but it was quickly snuffed out by a forced calm that matched his toneless voice. "We're the offspring of a human woman and a male demon."

"We."

His gaze slid over hers, like he was trying to communicate without sound.

So it was we. "You and Samyaza..."

"Are not the same." His knuckles were white around the steering wheel.

"Are you...on his side?" she choked.

"Samyaza's side?"

She nodded, light-headed.

"Are you asking if I want you dead?"

"I guess."

"Of course not."

"Good. Then it's not such a big deal. I think."

His eyes widened, and he looked at her with so much disbelief that she laughed. Weakly. "What? It's not like I thought you were a human."

And, hey, at least he was part human. Julia had at one point thought he was an angel—a bad, bad angel, but still an angel.

"I was worried," he said, relief coloring every syllable. "How are you not afraid?"

"Well...it's you. Believe it or not, you're not that scary."

Salt Lake City glowed ahead of them, a million false promises twinkling under a dark mirror. Cayne steered them to it, giving Julia the Teenage Girl's Guide to Nephilim. The abridged version.

Demons existed. They didn't "obey some guy with red horns," but a lot of them were close enough to brimstone and hellfire that it didn't make much difference.

They existed "elsewhere," and years ago, they'd gotten in the habit of coming to the physical world. When they did, they took physical form. And the ones that took the form of humans had trouble keeping their pants on.

Demon-human couplings rarely resulted in pregnancy, and even more rarely in a child. If one was carried to term, it was always male.

"You still haven't said what it has to do with...those people and me." Julia's throat felt too full, and her eyes stung. She swallowed and inhaled through her nose. She wasn't going to go to pieces; she had hardly even cried for Harry and Suzanne. "Why is he doing this?"

Cayne rubbed his face. "That's what we need to find out. But..."

He let the word linger, and Julia's stomach made like a yo-yo. "But?" Cayne didn't say anything, and the yo-yo became a boomerang. "But what?"

"I've hunted Samyaza for more than three years now, and that's not the first killing field I've found."

"Did they all..."

"Yeah. They all had the same mark."

"H-he's been hunting us for three years?" It sounded strange, the word "us." But that's how it was. These people she'd never met were in the same boat she was.

"Longer, I'm pretty sure."

The boomerang became a NASCAR race. "Longer?"

"For decades."

Shit.

"Julia?"

"I think I'm going to be sick again."

She wasn't, but it was a close call. Cayne pulled over and she staggered out of the car. She sat on a downtown bench, head between her legs. A breeze turned her sweat cool as Cayne stood guard over her. When she was able, she sat up, just in time to take an unopened can of Coke from a passing stranger. She glanced at Cayne and put it on the ground.

"Cayne. You should have told me this from the beginning. Regardless."

"I should have," he said solemnly. "There's no excuse."

"Make one up."

"Do you want that?"

"Yes. I need a reason to not slap you."

Under the glow of the streetlamp his eyes were yellow. He cast them down. "At first, I didn't trust you. I thought Samyaza would reveal himself in Memphis. I thought I'd kill him or die trying to. When I realized it wouldn't be that simple..." He shrugged. "I didn't want you to worry."

Julia laughed bitterly. Not worry. As if. "Is there anything else I should know?"

"I think the people with your mark are getting together. That cabin was a meeting room. I can also tell Samyaza is rushing, even if I don't know why. It's causing him to be more aggressive. And to...make mistakes."

His implication was clear: Julia was a mistake. She should be dead. "Why?" she asked. "Why me? Why people with a birthmark? It seems so arbitrary."

"As for the why..." Cayne shrugged.

Julia buried her face in her hands. "So what you're saying is you don't have any answers."

Cayne must have sensed her hopelessness. He knelt before her, so his eyes were level with hers, and grabbed her small hands in his big, warm ones.

"We'll figure this out," he said as he squeezed her fingers. "I promise."

The sincerity of his words was written across his beautiful face, underlined in his deep green eyes. Julia wanted to kiss him. But she couldn't, because just holding his hands was making her heart pound.

She forced herself to release them. "Let's go."

In the car, everything in her head congealed into dumb, thick terror. She tried to bat it back. Logic. She needed to be logical. There was an explanation somewhere; she just needed to find it.

She glanced at Cayne. He winked, and despite everything, she felt almost okay. She tried to hold onto the feeling as the lights of downtown shrank behind them.

"Where are we going?" she finally asked.

"To a bar."

"Um, we're underage."

"The people there won't care."

"They won't? Is it a crazy creatures' bar?"

Cayne's mouth twisted. "You could say that."

Julia saw a flash of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and laughed, half ecstatic, half terrified. "You can't be serious."

He nodded.

"A Nephilim bar? In Utah?"

"A normal bar," he corrected. "One owned by a friend. André. He's a Walker. They live as humans and stay out of politics. Other Nephilim naturally feel less exposed at his place, so they go there a lot."

"Yeah, but why are we going there?"

"I'm hoping someone will know something about you."

They were driving through urban neighborhoods, past stout brick homes with small lawns and little gardens that reminded Julia of her old street. A thin film of pale clouds pressed low to the mountains, and she wondered what would pin them in first: the narrowing streets or the sky.

She shut her eyes and tried to think happy thoughts. Instead, something else occurred to her. She turned in her seat and looked at Cayne. "Hey, you still haven't told me: Why are you after Samyaza?"

He fixed his mouth into a little pinch, and she got a distinct "closed" vibe from him. A couple of days ago, she might have let it go, but they were friends now. Weren't they? Friends could prod each other.

"You said you've been chasing him for three years, right? So why?"

"Because...he stole something from me."

She didn't have time to comprehend his wild-eyed look, or think about the odd dullness of his voice. Something smashed into the van, and Julia screamed. Cayne jerked the wheel left, and they raced toward a row of trees.
Chapter Thirteen

Before Julia knew what was happening, Cayne had ripped her seatbelt in two and pulled her into his arms. She screamed as they burst through the windshield. Their momentum carried them up and away in a blast of glass and metal.

Cayne flipped onto his back when they reached the top of their arch and jerked her body close to his. He landed on his feet like a parkour pro, absorbing most of the shock with a low "oomph."

She felt his arms around her, hard and warm, and then he was pushing her down, sinking into a crouch, and clutching a wicked crimson knife. Julia's head spun. She tried to get up, but he jerked her down again.

"Hey!"

"Stay low," he hissed.

She had an instant to take in their location—the edge of a wide, long lawn surrounding a small, white house on an ordinary-looking residential street—before a shadow flew at them.

Julia yelped as Cayne caught the dark-haired assailant and slung him into a storage shed. Cayne fell on Julia, shielding her as the wall exploded, rocketing fragments of tin into cars and trees.

Julia saw their second attacker, stout and blond, from beneath the crook of Cayne's elbow.

"Cayne!"

He rolled to his feet and leapt at the blond. Their impact caused a shock wave that lifted Julia's hair. Cayne came down on top and savagely rammed his blade into his opponent's chest.

The blond ripped into Cayne's side with his own red knife. Cayne reared, and the blond bucked up. Cayne forced him back down and began to strangle him.

The darker Nephilim shot out of the rubble, moving so fast Julia thought he was a gust of wind. He kicked Cayne off the blond and moved to strike, but Cayne stabbed him in the chest.

Someone screamed.

Julia's head jerked to her left. An elderly couple had emerged from the white house. The woman, a plump white-haired grandmother type in a heavy blue nightgown, covered her mouth. Her eyes flew from the mangled car to her damaged shed to the melee in her yard. The man, bald and heavy-set, in boxers and a white undershirt, hefted a shotgun into the crook of his arm. He seemed equally bewildered.

In a flash of inspiration, Julia ran at the old man and pointed at the dark-haired Nephilim. "That one!"

With all her might, she willed the old man to heed her words. The dark-haired Nephilim turned. He raised his dagger, Cayne's blood dripping down his arm, and a boom ripped the air.

The shot hit the Nephilim in the chest, and he stumbled. That was all the advantage Cayne needed. He grabbed his opponent from behind and flipped him over.

All at once, dozens of neighbors poured from their homes. A man with a goatee had a revolver. "Herbert! What the hell?"

The old man shook his head. He was staring stupidly at the gun in his hand.

"The blond and the one with dark, short hair attacked us," Julia supplied.

The old man started. "What?"

"They attacked us."

He nodded shakily. "That darker one...I killed him."

He probably didn't, but Julia wasn't going to explain. Cayne was wailing on the blond once again and the dark-haired one was...staggering to his feet.

The hole in his chest was still spitting up blood. Several of the women screamed. The old man raised his gun again. "Don't you come one step closer!

"Cayne!"

The bleeding Nephilim leapt for Julia but crumpled in mid-air. He thudded to the ground, Cayne's knife protruding from his neck.

Cayne quickly pinned the blond Nephilim against a tree trunk. "Tell me why!"

"Y-You should—know why. Traitor."

Cayne leaned in so his face was inches from his captive's. "I think you should tell me."

The blond Nephilim pursed his lips and spat blood in Cayne's face. He tried one last time to break free, but with a flick of his wrist, Cayne snapped his neck.

A beat of silence followed the crunch of bone, and then a chorus of gasps filled the air. The bystanders stared fearfully at Cayne as he staggered toward Julia.

He was covered in blood; it tangled his hair, stained his busted face, dripped down his arms, and oozed out of his torso. He was moving carefully, like someone hurting, but Julia didn't move to help him. His savage display had frozen her bones.

"Don't you dare," the old man—Herbert—warned as he hefted his shotgun. His arms trembled as he pointed the barrel at Cayne.

"Stop!" Julia cried.

The old man's wide eyes rolled into his head, and his gun clattered onto the porch. Cayne's eyes were closed, and he swayed drunkenly.

"Cayne?"

She opened her Sight and saw something that horrified her more than the blood that seemed to cover every inch of him. Bright, silver tendrils stretched from his aura and wrapped themselves around the man, whose own amber light was becoming dimmer by the minute.

"Cayne!" Julia rushed to him and gave him a hard push.

Immediately he released the man, and when he looked at Julia his eyes were fractionally clearer. She wrapped an arm around his waist and steered him to the guy with the goatee.

"Cayne," she said through clenched teeth, "tell this nice man how much we'd like to borrow his car."
Chapter Fourteen

Julia cracked the window of the pearly Audi and glanced at Cayne.

He'd manipulated the witnesses' minds. His pretty little power didn't fix broken cars or busted buildings, but he'd convinced them to forget his and Julia's faces. He'd convinced two police cruisers to stop following them, too. And after they ditched goatee man's Honda, Cayne had even been able to convince someone else to donate their car.

But Julia wasn't worried about twelve frightened Utahans. Or the cops. Or the Audi-less woman and her son. She was worried about the old guy Cayne had almost taken out.

They'd been idling at the helm of a wooded park for going on six minutes—Julia practicing her patience and Cayne staring out the passenger's window. An old street lamp bathed his face in brown light, sharpening the lines of his features.

"Well?"

He sighed. "It's kind of a conditioned response."

"Conditioned."

"Trained."

Julia bit her lip. "I know what 'conditioned' means."

He rubbed tired-looking eyes, and she felt a quick twist of nerves. She could get all sweaty if she thought about the fight the wrong way, so she was trying not to think about it at all. Except the end. Where Cayne had almost killed an old person.

"I know what conditioned means," she said slowly. "I'm waiting for you to explain how that makes it okay."

Cayne's eyes found the windshield. She saw his mouth tighten. He rubbed one hand over his face, wiping the expression away. "I don't remember anything from before three years ago. I woke up in a logger's camp in Alberta. I knew my name, and I knew Samyaza's. I had this image of him sneering. And I knew that he'd taken my memories. But I didn't know why."

"Are you serious?"

Cayne nodded. "Within maybe half a minute of waking up, I'd drained the life from one of my rescuers. I didn't mean to. It was just...automatic."

Julia clutched the wheel. She didn't really know what it was she saw when she used her Sight. She called them auras, but for all she knew they could be souls.

No way. He wouldn't eat souls.

Cayne was watching her unhappily. "I called it a conditioned behavior because it is. It's instinct. It helps me heal." As evidence, Cayne lifted his shirt. Where a jagged gash tore his left side not twenty minutes before, there was now a large, healthy scab. "I locate the closest, easiest source of energy and absorb it. It isn't something that's easy to control."

Cayne traced the bottom of the window with his thumb, silent for a moment. "I've got some friends that I would trust to keep you safe." He glanced at Julia. "We were going to see one—André."

Julia waited for him to elaborate, but he appeared lost in thought. Stomach sinking, she said, "So?"

"Maybe it would be better if he helped you."

"Um...are you insane?"

"I can deal with Samyaza on my own."

"That's not the point!"

"I know." He looked up, meeting her eyes. "I'm thinking of you, too."

"How so?"

"I don't know a thing about my past. It—"

"I don't care."

Cayne shifted impatiently. "I have Nephilim coming for me. Dozens, probably, just like those back there."

"And I've got the head honcho after me! Maybe you remember what we found this afternoon? A bunch of dead people who have the same birthmark I do?" Julia hardened her tone. "I'm staying with you."

Cayne opened his mouth, but she talked over him. "Whether you like it or not, we're in this together." Julia took a deep breath and tried to hold on to her courage. "I think other things have changed, too. I...like you, now. As a friend. So I want to stay together."

He raised his eyebrows, and she added, "But no sucking innocent people's...auras. Energy. Whatever."

Cayne shrugged. "You're the boss."

"You're right I am." Julia crossed her arms. "So...the boss wants to know about what happened after you woke up. In the cabin."

Cayne rubbed a hand back through his hair, and he was quiet—remembering. Eventually, he said, "Some things came back in pieces. It didn't take me long to start directing people's wills. And my body... I left six days after they found me near dead. In six days I'd recovered from broken limbs and ribs, serious blood loss, and I re-grew half of my right hand." He laughed, dry and low. "I was pretty sure whatever I was, I wasn't human.

"It was easy to find other Nephilim. I could...sense them. Almost like a smell." He wrinkled his nose and shrugged. "From there, it was just relearning some of what I'd lost. I found out I was a Hunter about a month after I left the camp. This appeared in the middle of a fight." His fingers spread, and his wicked-looking crimson dagger materialized in his hand. "It's my blood. Only Hunters have one."

Julia gaped; the blade was much freakier up close. Almost a foot long, it seemed to pulse as Cayne twisted his wrist. She opened her Sight and saw it glowing silver. She was trying to decide whether or not to prod it when, like magic, the thing disappeared.

"I spent two years trying to relearn whatever I could, but it was hard. I wanted to keep myself hidden." He shrugged. "I didn't find much, but what I did..." Another shrug. "When I finally felt ready, I went after Samyaza."

As his story sank in, Julia felt empathy. They were, in a sense, the same. Cut off from a part of their history. Not whole. "No one looked for you? Or came after you?"

"I only revealed my identity to two people. Samyaza's crew thought I was dead. Which was the way I wanted it."

His eyes found hers, and Julia couldn't break the gaze. This...confusion so colored who he was, that not knowing of it had hidden a part of him. A part that she could see now. A part that made her sad.

She bit her tongue. It struck her that a large part of him was probably pristine, programmed, a bundle of uninformed instinct. Every decision he made was based on...what? Not history. He didn't have history.

He didn't have anyone.

Just like her.

"So you think you can get your memory back? I mean, how will you get him to..."

Cayne lifted his shoulders, his jaw locked. "I've only gotten close to him a few times, never as close as I was in Memphis. I don't know yet, but I'll find a way. I'll keep you safe, too. And when I kill him, we'll both be free."

Julia nodded. She couldn't help but see the sorrow in his aura, and she longed to wrap her arms around him. Instead, she pulled away from the curb.
Chapter Fifteen

Cayne was picky about their night's stay. It took him thirty minutes to settle on a modest motel just off the Interstate, and ten more to circle the parking lot. Finally, after he'd patrolled all three floors three times, he sent Julia into the lobby to request one of the corner rooms on the ground floor. All three were filled, but as "luck" would have it, the occupants of room 107 decided to check out minutes later.

Cayne led her into the tiny, humid room, dropped their bags by the door, and eased himself onto one of the shabby twin beds, weariness dragging on his features.

Julia saw a stack of plastic cups by the sink and hurried to fill one. She felt Cayne's eyes on her as she brought it to him.

He took the cup, and his fingers brushed hers. "Thank you."

"No problem."

He drained it in one gulp, rested his head on the cedar headboard, and closed his eyes. With his head back as it was, the scar at his throat gleamed in the light. Julia wondered what it was like for him, not knowing how he'd gotten it.

She wondered, too, about his fight with the other Nephilim. If he could take Samyaza, their king, how had he gotten so injured by two fellow Hunters? He'd wanted answers, so maybe he'd held back.

Julia spent a few minutes staring at his sleeping form. When the butterflies in her stomach were too much to bear, she rummaged through the drawers and found an old newspaper—complete with a crossword puzzle.

After what must have been an hour, Cayne jerked awake. His face looked stricken.

"What's wrong?" Julia, on the opposite bed, leaned forward as he swung his feet off the mattress and hunched to squeeze the bridge of his nose. He shook his head, but she could see his shoulders trembling.

"Cayne—" She started to get up.

He pushed off his bed and, almost clumsily, hurried for the bathroom. Halfway there, he turned and looked at her. "Dream," he muttered. And that's when Julia realized why he kept such distance. For a badass half-demon, the boy had no poker face once you knew his tells.

The shower was off in less than five minutes. Julia pressed her cheek against the bathroom door and heard the soft swish of fabric. Then nothing. Cayne didn't come out for almost half an hour. When he did, he was calm and clean and shirtless, and Julia nearly swallowed her tongue.

"That was nice."

She arched a brow, trying very hard not to look at his chest—which was, because of the many blots on his torso, totally impossible. "Oh yeah?"

Cayne nodded, stepping in front of the mirror to examine his wounds. The largest stretched from the soft skin above his hip to the middle of his rib cage. His fingers traveled its length. He gingerly pressed there, and Julia saw a faint gray knot in his aura chain. Blood daggers must have packed supernatural punch, because after what happened with the old man, a meal, some water, a nap, and several hours, it didn't look like his wounds would heal tonight.

Julia bit her lip. "I just had a thought."

"What?"

"I don't think you'll like it."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

"Well?"

She put her hands on her hips, hooking her thumbs into the charcoal jeans she'd gotten from Anthropologie. "I'm afraid we might need to cut your hair."

Cayne froze, and she laughed. "I told you."

His eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. His long locks bounced in rebellion. "Why?"

"That," she pointed at the scab, "is why. Remember the hundreds of Nephilim that are after you? They know you as Cayne with long hair. Right?"

"It's been that way since...I can remember."

"I know. But—"

"Changing my hair won't do much to hide my trail. Or yours, if we do anything that leaves one."

"Yeah. But I thought any advantage we could—"

"You're right." He turned to lean on the counter. "Cut it."

The row of bulbs over the mirror made his damp skin glisten. Julia allowed herself a brief glance at his amazing, chiseled torso, but her face got so hot she fled to grab a desk chair. Damn shirtlessness.

"Sit there," she said, and reached for her bag.

Cayne rested his arms on his knees. He looked at her through the mirror and his mouth quirked. Softly, he said, "This reminds me of a story."

"What?"

"Guess."

Julia stepped closer and raised the comb to his head. She was nearly undone by the heat coming off his back. She felt each of his breaths in the bottom of her stomach.

"You have to give me a hint," she managed.

"It's a Bible story."

"That's fitting." She murmured. It only took her a second to get it. "Do you feel like Sampson?"

Cayne straightened his huge shoulders. "Do you feel like Delilah?"

Slowly, for her hands were clumsy this close, Julia ran the comb through his hair. He tilted his head. She pressed her fingers to his crown and again drew the comb. She slid her palm as she went, moving down his scalp to brace against tangles. Cayne closed his eyes.

She kept her pace steady as she stepped around him, brushing his hair until it was straight and his breathing was so soft she hardly heard it. Then she started to cut. His eyes opened once, and he touched a strand near his face. After that, he relaxed, waiting still and patient while the scissors made their swishing sound and his hair fell to her feet.

When it was finally short, she ran her hands through, gently tousling. He made a noise that sent a shiver down her spine, so she played with it some more, emitting what she hoped would be an unnoticeable amount of healing energy. He leaned into her. His head was inches from her stomach, and she knew, just knew, that he was hearing her pounding heart.

When every inch of her was slick with sweat, Julia announced that she was finished and went quickly to bed. She hoped the energy she'd sent him would keep his dreams sweet.
Chapter Sixteen

Julia woke the next morning to the smell of breakfast in bed.

"Cayne."

His eyes sparkled in the sunlit room. He nodded at a white Styrofoam box on the bedside table and Julia blushed. He was even hotter than usual with his new haircut. It wasn't a buzz cut, but it was short enough to accentuate his features—especially those beautiful green eyes.

She straightened her posture and tried to look unaffected. But when she flipped the lid back and the hot, tangy smell of steak reached her nose, she blanched. Steak. Breakfast steak, and medium rare at that.

Julia couldn't hold in a giggle. Cayne half-shrugged, obviously confused, and because he looked so cute, she let him squirm for a second.

"...No?"

Julia shook her head, smiling. She cradled the take-out box. "Is this what you eat for breakfast?"

"It's got lots of protein." His smile was crooked. "But now that I think about it...I guess that's kind of odd for most people."

Julia held her fingers apart. "Only a little."

She stopped by McDonald's on their way out of town—Cayne was not a fan of their sausage biscuit—and, once on the Interstate, she rolled her window down and floored it.

The Audi was a wonderful car. Its pale hood glistened like a wet pearl under the late morning sun that flung blinding light over the stark mountains and dry desert valleys of the Great Basin. They were still headed west, at Cayne's orders.

While Julia drove, he sat, shoulders loose, long legs stretched, staring out the window.

They had a brief battle over the radio, and Julia won an hour of pop. After that, they listened to classic rock.

Cayne's color was almost back to normal, and most of his scabs had disappeared. The big one was almost a scar. Julia wondered how his regenerative powers worked. After a seven-song marathon, she decided to ask.

"How fast do you heal?"

Cayne blinked, and she rolled her eyes. "Oh my gosh, it's a question!"

"I was going to answer, but now—"

"You have to!"

"Oh I do, do I?"

Julia grinned from ear to ear. She still felt butterflies every time he teased her. "Yep. Tell me right now, or I'll pull this car over."

"And spank me?"

Julia gaped. He winked, and she was sure her face looked like a tomato. That dirty jerk. Making her blush. "If you're lucky," she managed. She was pleased when Cayne cleared his throat.

"I heal fast."

"No joke."

"Under the right conditions."

"And what are those conditions?"

"That it's something minor. Most injuries I shake off in a few hours." He paused, assessing her out of the corner of his eye.

She nodded.

"But if that doesn't happen, I need sleep. Like last night."

"And how often do you sleep?"

"Not often," he said. "I'm not a fan of sleep."

Not a fan? Julia had a feeling he wasn't willing to share any details about his nightmares. Naturally, that jacked up her curiosity. She thought about what she'd done the night before and hoped it had helped a little. Finally she said, "That sucks."

"It has advantages."

She batted her lashes. "Like watching pretty girls when they sleep?"

"Is that what you wish I did?"

"I know how you guys are."

Cayne laughed. "I'm probably not what you're used to."

"Hmmm... Fine, fine." She was so not blushing again. No way. "So what's so great about not sleeping?"

He shrugged. "I'm productive. And unlike you, I can see danger when it comes."

"Unlike me?"

"You sleep like the dead."

"I do not!"

"Do so."

"Whatever." She tossed her hair at him. "I guess you think you're some kind of bad ass?"

"I was." He ran a hand over his head. "But not anymore."

"Not anymore," she echoed, and then reached over to ruffle his hair.

It was supposed to be a quick, friendly gesture. But once her fingers sifted through the soft strands, they didn't want to leave.

He shifted under her touch; it made Julia's stomach tighten. Flustered, she slid her hand away and pasted on a very false smile. "I like it short."

He laughed, low and sexy. "Do you?"

"Yes." She rubbed her eyes. It was definitely time to change the subject. "So how long do you think it will take us to find Sam?"

Cayne gave her a sideways smile. "Weeks," he said, and that made her heart flutter.

But he must have wanted them to get where they were going fast, because every car on the road was in the right lane. They covered a lot of ground in a just a few hours and were somewhere outside Elko, Nevada, when Cayne lifted his shirt and smiled proudly.

Left with no other choice, Julia peeked at his six-pack. A soft, pink line was all that was left of the gushing wound he'd received the night before.

"That's amazing," she said. "My biggest scar's on my calf, and it took weeks to heal."

"What happened?"

"I fell off a four-wheeler once, and the motor kind of ran over me."

He looked appalled. "Someone ran over you?"

Julia explained ATVs and mudding, and she told him how she flipped after another four-wheeler cut her off in the woods. Cayne was all questions, so Julia explained that she was eleven and at a youth camp with some of her foster siblings.

"You had those?" He looked surprised.

"One at my first house, three at the second. None with...my last parents."

Cayne frowned. "You lived with more than one family?"

"Yep."

He considered this, and a part of her was amazed that his beautiful face was twisted in puzzlement over her mundane life. Stranger, still, when he asked for more details.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Julia drummed the steering wheel and delivered the spiel: Her biological parents died when she was a baby. She was told it was a car accident. She lived at a group home until she was four, when she went to live with the Raysons, her first foster family. She stayed until fifth grade. She left because of some problems with their son, Billy. She—

"Problems?" Cayne asked.

"Problems."

"What happened?"

"I went back to group home." She could evade questions, too.

She went back to group home for three months before Sally and Frank Murchinson took her. She stayed with them until she was twelve, when Harry and Suzanne brought her home.

When she said their names, Cayne grunted softly.

"Yes. They're the ones."

It was too hard to say. Maybe even harder than it had been a few days ago. Now that she was thousands of miles from her home, it was finally real. With Cayne and her stealing cars and fighting Nephilim and chasing Samyaza, Harry and Suzanne were about all that seemed real.

Cayne laid his hand on her arm, his fingertips stroking her wrist—for half a second. "I'm sorry."

She nodded, because she didn't trust her voice.

For a long time, her eyes didn't stray from the Interstate. The mountains receded and the desert stretched out before them, dry and dead. The setting sun made everything look faded, and later blue, and then gray, and then colorless as night came.

When she could finally look at him again, Cayne had his eyes closed. As the stars came out and the land began to roll, he said, "We're closer."

"Do you know where he is?"

"No. Just that we're closer."

They went through Reno under a full moon, and under the glare of the flashing casino lights, Julia started getting angry. She let it simmer until they neared the California border, and then it bubbled over.

"I can't wait until we find him. Stupid bastard Nephilim." She waved at Cayne. "No offense."

He nodded.

"I need to talk about it," she said. "I want to talk about how he..." And that was all there was. Her shoulders shook with so much grief that it was all she could do to keep her hands squeezing the wheel. Cayne was a steady presence beside her. When the pent-up sobs died down, and it became clear that she wasn't going to talk, he asked, "They were most like your parents, Harry and Suzanne?"

She sniffed and nodded, and he passed her a napkin for her eyes.

"Are you ready to find out why he did this?"

"Yes," she choked. "And what he did to you."

Cayne squeezed her shoulder. His touch, so unexpected, stopped her tears.

"He's near San Francisco," he said softly. "Have you been there?"

"No."

"When we're finished, I'll take you to the bay. I think you'll like it."

"I'd like to kill Samyaza."

"I'd like that too."

"I'll help you," she promised.

"I know."
Chapter Seventeen

Every time Julia was almost asleep, the horizon would brighten and exit signs would appear. Casa Loma, seven miles. Dutch Flat, five miles. A teensy town would peek over a hill or around a bend, and for a full minute the windshield would flash in reds and yellows.

As quickly as they appeared, the oases would vanish. The dark would return, and Julia's eyes would slip shut as she gazed at the black sky. Then the horizon would light up again.

They were near the California border. Or maybe they had crossed it. Julia couldn't remember. The land looked the same: small, rolling hills, trees in twos, threes, and fours, and little communities gone as quickly as they popped up. Half asleep, it was hard to tell where the road ended and her dreams began.

She tried to imagine herself in a town smaller than her old high school. Were these the sorts of places that embraced lonely, hunted girls and half-demons with missing memories? Or was anything out of the ordinary out of the question?

Cayne, who would probably stick out like a broken middle finger anywhere—okay, he might fit in at an Unnaturally Good Looking People Who Are Also Kind of Intimidating Convention—made an impatient noise. In the hour or so since they'd passed through Reno, he had again gone the way of the mute. Or the almost mute. The grumpy, noise-making almost mute. He was driving, and Julia hoped he was concentrating on the road—at more than 100 miles per hour, he needed to—but she felt sickly certain that something less mundane had his boxers in a wad.

"Are those marbles in your mouth, or are you just unhappy to see me?"

"...I think you may have the wrong expression."

"But the right impression," she said.

"Huh?"

"You're unhappy."

"Pensive."

"Pensive?"

He nodded. "I thought ladies liked the strong, silent type."

"We don't."

"Hmmmm..." He pressed his lips together, so his mouth seemed to disappear. He glanced in the rearview mirror. "I've got a feeling."

Goosebumps spread across Julia's body. "Is it Samyaza?"

"No. But it's something."

"Bad?"

"Is it ever good?"

It hadn't been last time.

Julia wondered what he was feeling, because all of a sudden she was feeling it, too. It was like a rock in a shoe, or a shopping cart that pulled left, or a missing button. Something just wasn't right.

"Should we pull over?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded, and Julia settled back in her seat, hoping he sensed something like a thunderstorm. She glanced at the sky. It was completely clear.

They passed several more towns, and Julia's unease increased. Each new village was exactly like the one that preceded it, but to her eyes they had changed. They had been havens from whatever was lurking in the night; now they were traps ready to spring.

They were near an itty bitty place called Gold Run when Julia noticed Cayne was paying too much attention to the rearview. "Watch the road."

He grunted and looked down. "We have company."

Julia glanced around her headrest. At first she didn't notice anything, but once they started climbing a hill, two small white dots appeared, maybe a mile behind them.

"So?" she asked.

"They're gaining."

Julia glanced at the speedometer. They were hovering around 105. After a minute or more, the lights were visible in the side mirror. Definitely closer.

"So?" Julia asked. Maybe they were drag racers or something.

"So I can't get them to stop."

"Crap." She wondered who was behind the wheel and just felt sicker. It wasn't Sam, but neither were the two Nephilim that had almost killed them last. The vehicle was too far away to make out its size. What if it was a bus full of Hunters? "Could it be a cop?"

"Do cops ride motorcycles?"

"Yes. Those are motorcycles?" Cayne nodded, and Julia felt a little relieved. "Well, pull off!" she snapped. "Up here. Exit 143!"

"Our best bet is to stay on the road."

"Why?"

Cayne's jaw twitched. "They haven't tried to hide. I'm thinking they want us to pull off."

"Are they Nephilim?"

"No."

"Then they're people!"

Cayne glanced at her. "If you mean human," he said sourly, "I don't think so." He glanced at the mirror again. "Try to look at their auras."

Julia had never tried anything long-distance, but she couldn't think of a reason why it wouldn't work. Which sucked, because she really didn't want to try.

Nervously, she opened herself and pushed her energy toward the specs of light she could see in the side mirror. It kind of felt like pulling putty until it was very long and very thin, except Julia was the putty. "Nothing." She found nothing but cold, and felt sick again. "What do we do?"

The engine revved and the car lurched forward. Julia sank into her leather seat.

"Let's see if we can outrun them," Cayne said.

Julia bit her tongue and checked her seatbelt. The Audi was hugging curves and shooting over hilltops. The shadows made the rollercoaster ride ten times worse. Each dip into the dark was like freefalling through space. And the race kept getting faster. 115. 120. 125. 130. The car topped at 140.

Julia watched the mirror until her eyes ached. For several amazing minutes, they seemed to put some distance between themselves and their pursuers. Then motorcycle headlights appeared over a hill.

"They're closer!"

Cayne swore and eased his foot off the pedal. "We can't outrun them." He checked his side mirror and gritted his teeth. "You steer."

Cayne turned around in his seat, and Julia lunged for the wheel. "What the hell are you doing?!"

He glanced back. "We've got a minute, maybe. Buckled in?" She nodded, and he wrapped both hands around the wheel. "Push the seat back as far as you can."

"Why?"

Julia could see the motorcycles now. They were the souped-up racing kind that a lot of the guys in her class had wanted. The drivers were dressed in dark clothes; they looked large and vaporous under the city-bright sky, and for a terrible moment she thought they were ghosts. "They're getting closer!"

"I know," Cayne growled. They were climbing another hill, and he pushed the pedal to the floor. Julia shut her eyes. Her stomach flipped. She opened them.

They had just crested the top and were speeding down. At the bottom of the hill, the road was straight and relatively level.

"Brace yourself," he said softly.

Julia could hear the engines of the bikes, straining to catch up. She could see the red of the Audi's taillights glint off their rims. They were too close. Within 100 yards, easy. She felt like she was going to suffocate. Halfway down the hill they were within spitting distance. Too close. She saw the driver on the right reach into his black leather jacket. She thought she saw a gun.

"Cayne!"

"One second." He sounded strained.

They hit the bottom of the hill at more than 100 miles per hour and the front of the Audi scraping asphalt before it lurched up a good foot. Cayne slammed on the breaks and jerked the wheel to the left. The tires screeched, the car spun, and Julia felt gravity release it. They were going to tip over. "Shit!"

The bike on the left smashed into their ride with bone-shattering force. It flipped in the air and landed on the hood, miraculously bringing the Audi back to earth.

Cayne cut the wheel right and the car wobbled. The second driver shot past them but looped back around. Cayne grabbed Julia's shoulders and forced her down as the back window exploded. The biker fired two more rounds at the back tires, hitting both. The car spun into a ditch and Julia watched in horror as Cayne flew through the windshield.

"Cayne!"

She tried to unsnap her seatbelt, but she couldn't find the buckle. Then the passenger's side window burst open. The biker reached in and unfastened it for her.

She tried to scramble away, but he caught her wrist. "Come," he commanded. His hand was cold and his voice was empty.

He tried to pull Julia out the window but she twisted and managed to claw him in the face. He snapped her wrist and she screamed.

Pain made her light and fuzzy, nearly unaware of what was going on as the grip on her arm loosened and she fell back, stunned. Her wrist hurt worse than anything had ever hurt before. Her good hand hovered over it, stunned by the pain, bumping into something that slid down to her forearm. It was thick and wet. She screamed again. Blood oozed from the biker's severed hand, now resting in her lap. She didn't see the rest of him—and it didn't take her long to find out why.

Cayne ripped the door off the car, scooped Julia into his arms, and carried her to a patch of grass. She gasped for air but couldn't get any. She saw the starry sky framing Cayne's face—his bleeding face. His hands cradled her head, and low voice rumbled in her ear.

"It's okay," he murmured. "You're safe now."

He looked at her face, eyes wide and concerned, and then his mouth flattened and he pulled her ear to his chest. "Listen to my heart." He wrapped both arms around her, so she was sitting in his lap. "Listen to my lungs."

They were steady. Steady and soothing. Julia tried to emulate them.

She felt Cayne's hand moving up and down her back, fingers stroking like they were strumming a pattern on a guitar. "I think your wrist is broken."

She nodded.

"I'm sorry."

She wanted to cry, but she felt dizzy and empty. Still hopped up on adrenaline, she pulled away from Cayne and looked into his face. He'd wiped the blood away and he didn't seem hurt; she figured him jumping out the windshield had been intentional. But she gasped when she noticed a spot of blood on his shoulder. "You are hurt."

He shook his head. "I'm fine. One of the bullets nicked me."

Julia touched the spot, wanting to heal it. Before she could, her throat made a high-pitched sound and her body shuddered. A jolt of pain shot through her arm, and she leaned over, stifling a sob; failing to stifle another one.

Cayne's hands were on her shoulders; he gathered her hair atop her back and leaned in, cradling her body in between his raised knees, leaning close to speak into her ear. "It hurts," he said, half question; his voice was throaty, like the notion hurt him, too. "We'll take you to a doctor."

She gritted her teeth, willing herself not to cry because the movement—any movement—put her in agony.

Cayne's hand, still holding her hair back, was a solid, soothing weight between her shoulder blades. "We can wrap it," he said softly. "I think it would make it feel better."

"Okay." Julia sat still as Cayne gently disentangled his big body from hers.

"There's probably something in the car," she panted.

The pain was getting crazy. Her brain shorted out while Cayne helped her up. He leaned her against the mangled car and rummaged through the wreckage, while she stared dumbly at the dead biker. Tar-like blood oozed from several wounds on his torso, chest, and neck. His shirt was tattered, and just under one tear, on a blood-free piece of skin, Julia saw something that made her forget her pain.

Carefully, she bent over the body and tore the piece of fabric away. Oh, shit.

"Cayne!"

He looked at the biker's birthmark, blew a breath out of his nose, and trotted a few yards up the road. Julia followed him more slowly. They found the second bike beside a tree. Its driver had vanished.
Chapter Eighteen

Almost nothing could make the first twelve hours with a broken wrist bearable.

Almost nothing.

Julia was discovering that being fawned over by your gorgeous, usually stoic traveling companion made just about anything okay.

Sure, the cast was about as cool as sandals with socks, the sling scrubbed the skin off her neck, and the thing hurt like...well, a broken bone, but in the context of her new life, it wasn't such a big deal.

What caused the bone to break—a zombie-like person with her birthmark (and oh yeah, he had a friend that got away)—was a significantly bigger deal.

Julia assumed that Samyaza sent the birthmarked zombies. Cayne had conditionally agreed (his condition: don't be 100 percent—or even 50 percent). Julia assumed Samyaza sent them to 1) snatch her and/or 2) kill her. Again, Cayne had conditionally agreed (same condition). Julia had decided there wasn't much she could do about it, and she tried to be attentive when the doctor explained how to take care of her arm.

The good doc was kind enough to remove the bullet from Cayne's shoulder, too. (Yeah, that's right. Mr. I Can Take a Bullet wasn't just grazed.) Then the entire staff was kind enough to forget about the two banged-up drifters that rode in on a stolen motorcycle. West Coast people were cool like that.

So, after a night of pain pills and panic and a day lost to sleep, Julia was trying not to think about what had happened. They were moving on, to San Francisco.

Cayne had said they were very close to Samyaza, and maybe that colored her lens, but the main things Julia noted about the city were that it was busy and cold. The San Francisco Bay Bridge, all elegant angles and beams that touched the light-stained sky; the skyscrapers, glittering like the pyramid from her dreams: Everything reflected their situation.

Cayne drove along the bay, where the pale, gleaming wake line of a sailboat ran parallel to the shore. He hung a left into Chinatown, then took a right, then a left, then a right and a left and a left...

Eventually he let the car crawl beside a strip of doll house-looking houses that seemed conjoined at the sides.

"Almost there," he said.

Julia thought she might puke. Here terror, previously masked by the lingering ache in her arm and the new city whoa factor, reasserted itself.

Samyaza, the creature that had killed her family, that had almost killed her—almost killed Cayne—was close.

Cayne's fingers traced a line from Julia's ear to her chin. He turned her head so she had to look at him. "He won't hurt you." His eyes were full of conviction. "I won't let him."

His hand moved to her shoulder, and he squeezed it. Not even that could calm her. "Is he in one of these houses?" she asked, trembling.

Cayne shut his eyes, and when he opened them, they gleamed. "I'm not sure."

"What?" The shrillness was back. "Why can't you tell?"

"Do you remember my dagger?" Julia nodded. "When I use it, some of my blood seeps into my victims. It works as a tracking system." He flexed his right hand. "I'm following Samyaza's blood. I sense it near, but it may be in someone else."

Julia cringed, and he said, "That's not going to happen to you."

"Or you."

"Or me."

He turned their new car, a blue Subaru Outback, onto a side street lined with slim two-story homes in Easter egg colors. Downtown sprang from behind them like a giant steel forest with leaves of light. They stopped in front of a pale yellow house and got out.

Cayne took the lead and cut through the yard, and Julia noticed a light on in one of the downstairs rooms. She took it as a good sign, until Cayne opened the door without knocking.

A familiar odor filled Julia's nose, and just two steps inside, she found the source. A young family of three was dead at their kitchen table. The mom and dad slumped into their plates. Pasta. The mom's arm was still reaching for her son.

Julia backed into the wall, wide eyes devouring everything. Theirs were open, too, staring dully at the blood that pooled around their heads. It was still dripping onto the floor.

Julia felt a whoosh of air go by and yelped. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a shadow flitting deeper into the house.

"Cayne," she cried, but he was already dashing down the hall.

Julia stayed on his heels, cradling her pink cast as she listened for the danger she sensed but couldn't see. They went through a living room and a library and then up cedar stairs.

The little boy's room was the first on the right. The walls were bright green; the windows were open, and the long navy curtains rippled like tiny waves on a cool breeze. His bed had a sailboat spread and tiny pillows shaped like fish. A kiddie laptop sat at its center, the screen still flashing.

Julia covered her mouth, and Cayne squeezed her elbow. "We need to search the rest of the floor."

She nodded and followed him into the parents' room. All clear.

"Maybe I just imagined it?"

She was hopeful, but Cayne shook his head. "I saw it, too."

He also probably felt it. Julia certainly did. There was a dark presence in the house with them. Malice. Danger.

She was almost relieved when something creaked in the hall. Cayne summoned his dagger and sprinted lightly to the door. He motioned for Julia to stay in the bedroom, but that wasn't going to happen. She grabbed Cayne's free hand and, quietly, they crept out of the bedroom.

Both of their gazes darted to the only second-floor space they hadn't checked: the bathroom across from the stairs.

The door was slightly ajar, but Julia couldn't see anything but shadows within. She bit her lip and dropped several paces behind, so Cayne passed the boy's bedroom a few feet ahead of her.

That's when the shadow darted out.

Julia screamed as Samyaza thrust his dagger at her. Cayne lunged to deflect the blade, stopping it not an inch from Julia's chest. He backhanded Sam and drove his knife into the dark Nephilim's side.

Samyaza tackled Cayne, and the two rolled down the stairs in a heap. The Nephilim king landed on top, and he brought his fist down on Cayne's face. When Julia caught up, she did one of the bravest things she had ever done in her life: She plucked a framed picture from the wall and tossed it at his back.

It bounced off harmlessly, and Samyaza whirled. Cayne locked his legs around the Nephilim king and punched him in the chest. They wrestled in what could only be described as fast-forward, tumbling through the living room at sprinting speeds.

Cayne wrapped his arms around Samyaza's neck, but Samyaza pushed off the floor and rammed Cayne into a wall. Cayne's grip loosened, and Samyaza tossed him over a couch. Julia, who was still standing on the lowest stair, realized there was nothing between her and the murderous Nephilim. Samyaza realized it, too.

He dove for her, but Cayne's dagger sliced through the space between them. Samyaza dodged the blade and crashed head-first into the wall. Cayne plucked Julia off the stairs and tried to whisk her away, but Samyaza grabbed his leg.

Cayne and Julia landed hard on the floor. Cayne pushed Julia forward and rolled to kick at Samyaza, catching his jaw. Cayne leapt to his feet, shoved Julia behind him, and raised his dagger. Samyaza matched his pose.

While the two eyed each other, Julia tried to find a weapon. Fighting Samyaza was second to last on her fun things to do list, but letting Cayne get killed was at the bottom.

Unfortunately, the only thing she was able to find was the dead family. She made a small "eek" noise—she had briefly forgotten they were still at the kitchen table—and Samyaza turned his crimson eyes on her.

"You see what happens to the Stained."

Julia stepped toward Cayne. He glared at Samyaza and asked, "Stained?"

"Don't play the fool, Cayuzul."

"It's Cayne. And I'm not playing."

Samyaza snorted. "It matters not what you call yourself. But changing your name does not change your mission."

"My mission?"

Samyaza glanced at Julia and laughed his frightening, hoarse laugh. "He is playing games."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Cayuzul, I tire of this. I tired of you." Samyaza's voice was firm. He lifted a hand, waving at Julia, who still stood behind Cayne. "Give me the Stained, or I will take her."

"Not a chance."

Before Cayne had even finished speaking, Samyaza was on him. Cayne deflected his first blow, but Samyaza caught him with an elbow to the jaw.

Cayne's head snapped back, and Samyaza seized the moment, stabbing Cayne viciously in the chest. He moaned and staggered back, clutching his chest, where blood bloomed behind his fingers. Julia heard her own voice scream his name, but there was nothing she could do. The horror just kept coming.

Samyaza swiped at Cayne's contorted face, laughing at his agony. Then the Nephilim king sliced Cayne's throat along the scar.

Julia screamed as Cayne slid to his knees, curling in on himself as blood poured down the front of him and he clutched his throat, choking and coughing. But that wasn't enough. Samyaza descended on him like an animal, punching and kicking and cutting in a blur.

Julia's heart seemed to double in size and white light pulsed behind her eyes. She reached for Cayne's aura and screamed as Samyaza drove his blade again into his heart.

Cayne crumpled like a ragdoll, kissing the ground, and Julia became a valve. Her energy poured into him like a lake exploding through a dam, taking his pain, healing his wounds.

She watched her bright light flow into the flickering shadow of his aura. Her vision blanked, the scene before her replaced by foreign faces. Lips folding back to scream in agony. Young men. Old men. Women. All gasping for a dying breath. And then, as if in memory, she saw Cayne. He was different somehow. Smiling. Watching with joy a head of soft brown curls, amber eyes blinking as she smiled at him...

As Julia's body gave out, she saw two huge charcoal wings sprout from his back.

*

For a while she knew only dream things: feathers and blood and snow and feathers and kisses and curls and covers and caves and snow and snow and blood.

Cognizance came, a flash of light.

She was aware of something heavy and soft tucked snugly around her. Other things, soft things, crawled across her cheeks. Stroking. Someone was holding her. Beneath a thorough numbness ran agony, hot and bright. It pulled her down.
Chapter Nineteen

Nathan scowled. The object of his displeasure smiled sweetly. She even batted her long lashes. Infuriating.

"The common room—"

"Is a common room," she interrupted. Her dark eyes sparkled as she waved her left arm across the great stone space. "For commoners."

Nathan clenched his fists to his sides and ground his teeth. Of the two dozen or so people milling about, only a few were paying them any attention. But even one was too many. Why did she insist on undermining him? Why did she continue to insult his position? Because he followed the rules? Because he was dedicated to their cause? It didn't make sense.

Summoning all his patience, Nathan tried to reason with the unreasonable. "Meredith, the common room is a place for fellowship, not sunbathing." He glanced up at the crystal prism that stretched hundreds of feet above their heads. Thousands of stars twinkled in the dark sky. "And the sun went down four hours ago."

She shrugged. "It was up when I fell asleep. And look," she tugged on a filmy sash tied around her waist, "I changed."

Nathan suppressed a sigh. The flimsy fabric did little to hide what was underneath. "Meredith, I—"

"Want to ruin everyone's fun," she supplied with a smile. She tossed her long, black hair over her suntanned shoulder. "Or maybe you can't control Little Nate when there's a girl in a bathing suit around?"

She giggled and bent at the waste, offering him a view into the top of her yellow bikini. Nathan kept his eyes on hers.

"You are the only woman that sunbathes in the common room."

"I'm the only woman that dresses like a woman, too."

"Communal dress codes—"

"Get you hot, right?" She puckered her lips. "If I dress in gray can I trust myself around you, captain?"

"Come on Nathan." A tall boy with dusty blond hair entered the argument. "She's not hurting anyone."

Randy. Nathan struggled to control his face. Of course it was Randy.

Of the five hundred people living at their haven, only a few dozen were girls around Meredith's age. And all of those had embraced the communal rules. Except Meredith.

In the time since she'd come to their compound, Nathan had found himself at odds with several of the younger men. They misinterpreted her ridicule for teasing, which apparently in some circles meant flirting. And since she was the object of most of their desires, they resented Nathan. Some, like Randy, even challenged him openly.

"My hero." Meredith reached up to ruffle Randy's hair. "At least someone knows how to talk to a lady."

Nathan ground his teeth. Never mind that he was four years older than Randy. Or that Meredith, at seventeen, was three.

"This has nothing to do with you."

"Wow, Nathan, I didn't know they'd made you the Fourth." Randy laughed, and Meredith flashed him a dazzling smile. She encouraged this crap. And she got away with it. Because she was one of the Candidates. Because no one could punish her except one of The Three. And he hoped that never happened.

Nathan turned his attention to Randy, a target that he could reach. "Why don't you—"

But that was all Nathan got out. Something electric traveled up his spine and a white light ballooned behind his eyes. He glanced about the common room. Nearly everyone seemed to be experiencing something. Some more than others. Meredith was bent at the waist.

Nathan sank to his knees and grabbed her shoulder. "What do you see?"

"Give her a second," Randy snapped from her other side.

"We don't have a second."

"She needs space to breathe."

"She needs to tell me what she sees," Nathan snarled.

"You self-righteous asshole. You don't care—"

"You will be quiet!"

Randy fell as if he'd been hit. He struggled to open his mouth, but nothing came out. He looked horrified.

Nathan felt a flash of remorse, which he quickly buried. In theory, all of their brethren had the ability to exercise the same control, but personality and environment heightened some gifts. Nathan's was his voice. Only the most strong-willed could refuse direct command.

He turned his attention back to the swaying girl beside him. Hers was empathy. "Meredith."

"It's dark," she whispered. "She's in a house. It smells like blood."

As Meredith spoke, images appeared in Nathan's mind like cloudy photos or impressionist paintings. He saw a large living room. He saw three figures. The girl was off to the side, watching the two males fight. Nephilim, Nathan realized. Which meant the girl—

"She has to help him. She needs to help him. He's killing him."

Nathan watched, awed, as the girl pushed an impossible amount of energy into the dying Hunter. Bile swam in his throat as he sensed the ease with which it was delivered. She had saved this monster before.

This girl, the Candidate for whom they were searching, collapsed under the stress of her effort, and she slipped into unconsciousness. But not before Nathan saw the Hunter she had healed throw the other off. He turned to her. And Nathan saw his face.
Chapter Twenty

Julia opened her eyes and saw him at the window.

Her heart went staccato, like a bongo drum. She slowed it with a long breath, taking care that he didn't hear. While her eyes danced over Cayne, her brain began to reboot. She was torn for a moment between the overwhelming urge to save him and the realization that he was fine, standing right in front of her, raking his fingers through his hair, as it looked like he had a hundred times.

She realized something else: He had, at one point, been in bed with her.

Eyes still half closed, Julia assessed her surroundings—a pistachio hotel room with rose garden prints and pink curtains—and herself. She was underneath heavy layers of fabric. A scratchy thin comforter, a few velour blankets, a cotton robe and...a robe!

Julia's hands swished under the covers and found, to her dismay, lots of skin beneath that robe. She was still wearing her bra and underwear, but her jacket, Stones shirt, gray jeans, and All-Stars were MIA.

She gasped at the thought of Cayne undressing her, and her sharp inhalation made him spin.

The change on his face was almost comic. His eyes, wide under raised brows, dropped shut, while his worry-tight lips relaxed to part. Every muscle in his body seemed to deflate. He rubbed his hand over his face and smiled wanly. "You're awake."

Julia nodded. She couldn't take her eyes off his face. It was still moving, a million little expressions ricocheting through skin and muscle, as if he couldn't decide how to feel.

Then he was sitting at the foot of the bed, looking at Julia like he had never seen her before. "How do you feel?"

She stretched, testing her limbs. Unfortunately, her eyes zeroed in on her pink cast—and the robe around it—and she remembered that Cayne had seen her half-naked. She turned lipstick red, and he noticed. And she was sure that this time, his cheeks actually got a bit pinker.

"Your nose bled." He pointed to his own. "It got all over your clothes. And they were dirty anyway."

Julia couldn't make her mouth work, and after a moment, Cayne continued. "I didn't want to leave you in those things—"

Oh no.

"And you didn't wake up—"

Don't say it.

"So I undressed you."

There it was. Out loud. Between them. Cayne undressing her. Cayne taking off her clothes. Cayne seeing her. And he knew that she knew.

Julia slid back down her pillow and pulled the blankets over her head. She didn't care how childish she looked. She couldn't bear another second under his earnest gaze. Now every time he saw her he'd see her half naked.

From the other side of the covers, Cayne asked, "Should I have left you alone?"

She shook her head.

"I waited several hours."

"Mmmmmk," she mumbled.

"What?"

Julia poked her head back out. "It's okay."

Relief smoothed his face, and he nodded. "You never said how you feel."

It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. When she did, a fever vision made her shiver, and a flood of memories swept her out of the room and into the past.

She was swamped with light—bursting from her, flowing unerringly into him. Cayne. His light had almost gone out, and the need to heal him had consumed her. Everything she was, good and bad, rushed into his fading form.

Some of him rushed into her as well. Julia registered the sensations of his life like an emotional seismograph. Each fleeting memory jolted her up and down, up and down. The brine of lake water, wet on his face, gladness a balloon inside his chest, and Cayne, younger Cayne, pushing his boat into the lake.

The comfort of the familiar. His warm bed. His mother, dozing in the next room.

Knowing came like a needle. The pain of understanding. Julia felt it sink into his skin. A cloak of gray fell over the vibrant green world, and under the charcoal sky men in odd clothes leered, livid faces animated by hate sharper than the rocks against his bare back. And then a blade along his throat, cutting him until his own blood made him sticky.

When he left, nothing but terror and moonlight to help him up the mountain. It was too high; he was choking on blood as their terrified cries filled his ears.

A blur of death and war followed, a maelstrom of pain and blood, until the tide deposited Julia in a bed. She stretched languidly and rolled to find a pair of large, amber eyes smiling at her.

"Nothing can harm us," the ghost whispered.

Julia blinked. Cayne was shaking her. "Huh?"

He took a step back, and she felt her face get hot. "Sorry." She'd only spaced for a few seconds, but everything she remembered must have shown on her face.

Cayne was rigid. "No, I am."

"Why?"

He sighed, and when she looked up, his shoulders had slumped. "You shouldn't have done it."

"Cayne," she said. "Come on!"

His face was mildly disapproving, and Julia wondered how much of her had slipped into him. It should have worried her, but for some reason it didn't.

"It's time to find out what's going on with you," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"That should be our focus."

Julia's first thought was Samyaza, but she realized that she didn't know if he was still an issue. "Cayne...what happened to him?"

"Samyaza left the city. I don't know for where."

Julia felt about a hundred times heavier. Of course he was still out there. "Shouldn't we go after him?"

Cayne shook his head. "I lost his trail yesterday afternoon."

"Afternoon?" Her stomach clenched. "I've been asleep for two days?"

Quietly, he said, "Three days."

"Three days!" Julia's voice cracked; she put a hand to her throat.

"It's okay." Cayne pushed off the bed. The cold in his eyes melted as he looked down and, almost smiling, said, "We're leaving today."

*

Julia wrapped herself in a towel and pressed her ear to the bathroom door. "Cayne," she called and waited, dripping, for an answer from the other side. None came.

She wiggled into a fresh pair of jeans and had her bra almost on when she heard his low voice through the crack. "Yeah."

Julia backed into the tub, embarrassed. She'd only wanted to be sure he was there. "Just...um, checking!"

She heard him move on the other side of the door.

"Never mind." God, she was so not smooth. "Just never mind."

A pause and then, "Are you all right?"

"Yeah."

"Having fun in there?"

Julia pressed her face to the door and spoke loudly through the crack. "Umm, can you do me a favor?"

"Yeah."

"Go stand outside."

He said nothing.

"Of the room. It's all stuffy in here, and I want to be able to breathe when I change." It came out a little harder than she'd intended; even her voice was charged with this fidgety new zeal.

When Julia heard the door close, she twirled out of the bathroom and grinned at herself in the mirror—until something caught her eye: bloody tissues in the trash can beneath the sink. She scooped them up, flushed them, and watched until the last scrap was sucked away.

As she styled her hair, her mind wandered. Remembered. She saw him, clear as real time, as their daggers sliced his flesh. She saw his aura dim, felt the ghost of cold panic drift through her. She had felt so helpless just standing there, watching Samyaza hurt him.

And what about the things she'd seen? All the images had condensed into a sort of vague sorrow, but if she thought hard, she could still see the faces, feel the pain—physical and not. Were the things she saw and felt real, or were they delusions? And what about the woman with the pretty eyes?

Julia banished that thought immediately. No way. Really, was it even possible for her to remember pieces of Cayne's life that he couldn't?

After pulling on the black hoodie, lacing up her All-Stars, and giving herself a tentative smile in the mirror, she tiptoed to the window and peeked outside, into the motel's parking lot. Cayne was leaning against the railing, looking charmingly ruffled. Julia grinned and swung the door open. "Boo!"

He did not look startled by her stealth attack, so she took a step that was almost a leap in his direction and asked, "Where are we going?"

Cayne moved past her and began gathering their bags. "We're going to see someone who can help you."

Julia followed him onto the walkway, frowning at his back. He didn't seem at all aware of her good mood. Or the lengths she had taken to make herself presentable. He was too busy scanning the parking lot—because Samyaza was so going to jump out from behind a bush at the Tiger Inn at 10 a.m.—to notice her.

But dang, did she notice him. His piercing green eyes and the way his now-shorter chestnut hair whirled in gentle waves. The width of his shoulders and the tension at his elbows. Even the way he moved was appealing.

They reached the Subaru and Cayne popped the trunk. Julia watched the muscles of his forearm bunch when he set the bags by the spare tire. His eyes slid over her. They fell when she caught him looking. And then, in just such a way so as to make her heart hammer, they slid back.

"You look nice," he said.
Chapter Twenty-One

Julia was dancing inside. Despite the grim memories—his memories—that played in fast forward every time she closed her eyes, despite Cayne's unusual hot-and-cold mood, despite the four-hour car drive that was mostly busy Interstate, she was totally alight.

They were together, they were safe, and they were racing between giant green hills with curvy spines and wildflower robes.

She felt a new kind of cozy, snuggled into a liberated hotel pillow, her body singing and softening all at once. She let her eyes close with the knowledge that his gaze was on her, moving over her all the time, and dreamed of charcoal feathers and Cayne's mouth.

Julia awoke to eight lanes of too-fast traffic spilling around the car, and Cayne driving with white knuckles. His lower lip was caught between his teeth.

So this was L.A.—nothing like she'd imagined. She couldn't even see the Hollywood sign. There was only this ugly Interstate leading them east, to the home of a "seer" Cayne said he'd met before he started his quest to kill Samyaza. Julia doubted Miss Crystal Ball could help them.

"So," she began, trying to keep skepticism out of her voice, "what did you ask Rosa about the first time you saw her?"

"This girl I liked."

Julia was appalled to catch herself frowning. Cayne caught her too, and laughed. "What do you think I asked her about?"

Julia rolled her eyes. "Oh, I don't know, the hidden health benefits of the cinnamon roll?"

"Longevity." He winked.

"How long do you think your lifespan is?"

One dark brow arched; he looked surprised. "You serious?"

"Um, yeah?"

He gave her a little mocking smile. "From what I gather...pretty long."

*

The Interstate poured them onto a worn East L.A. four-lane, the kind of place where people staggered down the road in hooded sweatshirts with smoke clouds hovering around their heads.

Funnily, it wasn't the people or the burned-out buildings that bothered Julia most, but the telephone poles. They were haggard and rotten, like burned trees, their thin black wires sagging between gas stations and liquor stores.

Julia studied everything, scanning the streets for danger the way Cayne did. Her breath hitched when, for a moment, she saw a familiar-seeming biker just out of the corner of her eye. Julia turned, but he was gone.

Cayne didn't seem to have noticed. As he turned onto a small street lined with stucco homes, Julia tried to decide whether she should mention anything. She decided no.

"So tell me about her."

"Rosa? She's Touched."

"By an Angel?"

"No, she's human—and not Stained."

Julia giggled nervously. "We have got to get you in front of a television."

"Why?"

As she explained her joke, Cayne pulled into the drive of a pink stucco house with a yard of lush green grass tucked neatly around a cement porch. Julia followed Cayne to the door, and when he knocked, she felt each beat of his knuckles in her bones.

It occurred to her that this woman might tell her something awful. Maybe she really could see—Julia could swear she felt an "otherworldly" vibe from somewhere within the house—and maybe she'd see Julia's death. Or Cayne's.

She glanced at him. His hard face was serene. That, for some reason, made her more nervous.

Before she had time to really work her stomach into knots, the door swooshed open, revealing the largest man Julia had ever seen. He was gigantic—easily more than eight feet tall and wider than a refrigerator. He stooped through the doorway and nodded at Cayne.

"She's waiting for you."

Definitely. Not. Human. His voice was far too deep. Like, from the darkest depths of the earth deep.

As Julia calculated her escape route, Cayne knelt right there on the stoop and began unlacing his shoes. She was about to ask him what he was doing when she noticed two other pairs by the door; one was gigantic. Julia smiled nervously at their host and bent to work off her All-Stars. "A little warning, please," she hissed.

Cayne looked at her oddly. "Sorry."

They followed the big, Hispanic guy inside, where the air smelled like lemons and spice. He led them to the heart of the house, past a small green and white kitchen and a sunflower-themed bedroom. They found Rosa in a sitting room comfortingly devoid of psychic-looking stuff.

When Julia saw the seer, she felt some of the butterflies in her stomach fly away. Rosa looked...normal. She wore a white sundress and sat in a purple recliner, her short, plump legs crossed at the ankles. When Julia saw Rosa's eyes, she gaped. They were crossed. Like, so crossed there was no way that they worked.

Her suspicion was confirmed when Rosa greeted Cayne with an outstretched arm. She kissed his cheek and nodded at Julia. "You brought one of the Stained with you."

"The Stained?" He seemed to be chewing on the word.

"There are other names, but most Nephilim use that one," Rosa said.

Julia cleared her throat, and he said, "Her name is Julia. She has questions."

The seer nodded. "I could have predicted that."

Julia glanced nervously at Cayne, who rolled his eyes. Rosa chuckled. "You need to relax, honey."

How much, exactly, could this blind seer see? "I'm trying."

Rosa shook her head. "This'll wait until tomorrow. You're too tense, and I believe you could use a good night's rest on a comfortable mattress." The giant reappeared, squeezing through the open doorway. Julia stepped back as the massive guy lumbered to Rosa's chair. He lifted the seer into his arms and cradled her as if she were a baby. Julia noticed that the older woman's legs swayed limply.

"When I lost my sight, I lost my legs, too," she said. "Most of them, anyway. This is Malachi."

The big guy said nothing as the seer affectionately rubbed his cheek. He swooped out the doorway, and Cayne extended a hand for Julia.

"You okay?" he whispered.

"I think so."

Cayne squeezed her fingers and offered a small smile. "I think she likes you."

Bemused, Julia followed him back through the house to a small, pink living room. Its large windows were open, letting in warm air and the muted sounds of the neighborhood at play. Rosa was waiting on a faux leather couch. Julia settled on a matching love seat. Cayne stood beside her.

"There's no need for that here," Rosa fussed. "If anything comes, I'll see it."

"An extra lookout won't hurt," Cayne said.

"Except my pride," Rosa muttered. She turned her attention to Julia, who fidgeted in her seat. "You must be hungry. Malachi is fixing rice and beans."

"Thanks, but you don't have to."

Rosa smiled. "I know I don't." She wagged her finger. "Now relax."

Julia ducked her head to catch her breath. "I'm sorry. I just feel...overwhelmed."

"I understand." Rosa jerked a thumb at Cayne. "Especially if you've been with this guy."

Julia smiled at his scowl. "He hasn't been so bad."

"I'm sure that's not true."

Cayne glared at the seer. "Our hostess is too kind."

"And ready to show off. Honey, let me see that arm."

Hesitantly, Julia held out her cast-bound wrist. Rosa glanced at Cayne. He cut the cast away with his dagger, and the seer began to massage the swollen skin. Julia winced.

"You heal fast," the woman said as Julia's skin warmed under her hands. Julia felt a thousand pricks around her bone and yelped. Rosa released her. "You'll need to wear that sling for another day or two. But that should help."

Julia moved her wrist. It throbbed dully, but the biting pain was gone. "How did you do that?"

"You're not the only person who can mend bones," Rosa said.

"Are you like me?" The seer shook her head, and Julia swallowed a bubble of disappointment. "Thanks."

Rosa waved. "My price is a story." She folded her hands and rested them in her lap. "Now, how did you two meet?"

After glancing at Cayne, Julia launched into an account of their first meeting. With a little prompting from Rosa, she told the whole story of her journey, from finding her home in flames to the fight in San Francisco. She even told Rosa about the frightening dreams that sometimes woke her.

Julia was amazed that she spoke so openly with a complete stranger, even more so when she entered the murky Feelings Zone. Julia talked about the loneliness she had felt in the Memphis pecan warehouse, surrounded by a million strangers. It was a gale-force emotion, but one she had known in smaller bursts her whole life.

She told the seer about Harry and Suzanne, her brief respite from the storm. She missed them so much she sometimes thought her chest would split open, but even with them she had know she was different. There had been a sense, even in their warm home, that she didn't belong.

And then Cayne came, and everything changed.

For the first time in her life, Julia felt comfortable. Not comfortable with him, at least not at first, but comfortable with herself. She had wondered before what it was about Cayne that made her feel that way. She realized as she spoke to Rosa: He accepted her. Sure, there were probably things he'd change about her if he could—she laughed when Rosa asked what he could possibly dislike—but he accepted who she was at her core. And if she wasn't reading too much into it, he even liked it.

Julia took a deep breath when she was finished. It was like she was waking up after a long, peaceful sleep. She felt wonderful.

Until she remembered everything she'd said. She covered her mouth in horror and glanced behind her. Cayne was gone!

She tried to control her imagination, but every time she blinked she saw his eyes widen in horror at her until-then secret feelings. What if he thought she was a freak? What if he told her he didn't feel the same way? What if—

"He stepped out shortly after you began," Rosa said.

Julia sighed.

The older woman smiled. "I take it you haven't told him how you feel."

"No," Julia said tiredly. She needed to be on her guard. She was way too open with this woman. "There's nothing to tell, anyway."

Rosa smirked. "You forget who you're talking to."

"Really, there's—"

"He can't hear you."

One of the things Julia had missed most during her journey with Cayne was girl talk. She could be forgiven if she was more open with the older woman than she might ordinarily be. And if Cayne trusted her, why couldn't Julia?

"I don't know what to tell him," she said. "I don't even know how I feel."

Rosa clucked. "You're an intelligent woman. I don't believe you're feelings are so mysterious."

"It's too confusing," Julia moaned. "I've seen so many sides of him. Ones I really like. But I..." She shrugged. "I don't know. It's hard to explain."

"It often is."

"I feel good when I'm with him. And I feel..." Julia folded her arms. "It's like before I knew him I felt everything through a blanket, and then he came and ripped it off."

"And now you're exposed?"

Julia rolled her eyes at the pathetic truth. "Sometimes I want the blanket back."

"Oh, hush." Rosa shooed her. "Who would prefer ignorance to experience?"

"Isn't ignorance bliss?"

"Ignorance is drunkenness," the seer chided. "You have experienced a lot, and it can seem, as you say, to be too much."

"I don't even know what of."

"You're afraid that you're going to lose someone else important to you. You fear that he will be taken away."

Julia nodded, embarrassed at her own transparency.

Rosa leaned across the small, glass-topped coffee table and touched Julia's forehead. "Peace shall be yours. You have nothing to fear."

"How? Samyaza still wants to kill me and I have no idea why. I don't even know what I am."

"And that frightens you?"

"Yes. And Cayne... I don't know a whole lot about him, either."

Rosa lowered her voice. "You will have the chance to learn, and you must remember to seize it when it comes. To truly love someone like Cayne, you must love all of them."

The older woman glanced out the window. "Did you know that Malachi is my son?" Julia's jaw dropped, and Rosa chuckled. "I suppose you didn't. Cayne probably didn't even mention him, did he?"

Julia shook her head, wondering if the woman had "seen" her reaction. When Rosa didn't respond, Julia added, "He didn't."

"That's like him, I suppose. Like all of them."

"All of them? Wait, Malachi's a Nephilim?"

Rosa nodded. "They don't talk about each other. I don't know why." She sighed. "My son is one of the large ones. A blessing and a curse. If he had been Cayuzul's size, they would have come for him."

"Come for him?"

"That is what they do. When the child is young, they take him." Rosa shivered. "Cayne was taken from his family, whoever they were. I suppose you know he is a Hunter?"

"Yes."

Rosa smiled. "Malachi is not. He is what they call Waste. Too large to hide himself among people. The Waste are usually killed. But his conception helped open my gifts. I was able to hide him from them."

Rosa's face was a mask, but Julia could sense the sorrow and pride behind her voice.

"He grew fast—they tend to do that—and he grew strong. He was as tall as me when he entered kindergarten." She smiled softly. "He was six feet tall before he turned ten."

Julia chewed on her lip. She already had a vague sense that this walk down memory lane didn't end happily.

"I think my motivation was guilt. I gave myself to a half-demon, and my son had to suffer for it." Rosa shook her head. "Regardless, I vowed the moment Malachi was born that I wouldn't tell him about his father. That he would grow up with no knowledge of his other nature.

"Of course he wasn't normal. That was obvious to anyone that looked. He was human and something more, and in ignoring that something more, I blinded myself to all that my son was. The good and the bad." Rosa turned from the window, and fixed Julia with a sightless stare. "His second year in high school, I arranged a prom date with one of the girls from our old neighborhood." She smiled sadly. "Malachi was nervous, but so exited. I had saved for nearly an entire year to have a tuxedo made, and he looked so handsome in it."

Julia glanced about the room, expecting but not finding a picture of a younger and maybe shorter giant in dress clothes.

"The young lady's last beau and a few of his friends attacked Malachi as he was walking up her drive. I had sensed something would happen, just a few minutes after my son left. I ran as fast as I could to the girl's house, but I was too late." Rosa took a deep breath. "Malachi killed two of them, and when I tried to intervene, he turned on me."

The room was silent as a tomb. Even the sounds drifting from outside had ceased.

"One part human, one part not. The part that isn't, the part I ignored, the part my son wasn't aware of, it came out that night.

"Malachi wasn't prepared for his rage. He had not learned to control it. Cayne has. But that part of him is still there. The demon."

Julia stilled. The demon. Cayne was violent and didn't seem to have what most people would call a normal moral compass, but he seemed about as demonic as the woman before her.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

Rosa smiled. "I don't mean to frighten you or to steer you one way or the other. Cayne is a wonderful man." She leaned forward. "But you must understand that to truly love him, you must love all of him: the part that is human and the part that isn't."
Chapter Twenty-Two

Rosa sank back into her couch, story over, warning given. "Now, enough doom and gloom. Why don't you see if the boys are ready for dinner?"

Dumbly, Julia rose and walked to the kitchen. She was shaken out of her dark stupor by the sight of Cayne wearing a pink apron and stirring a pot on a stove.

"Hey."

He spun and nearly knocked over the bowl. He glanced down at the apron and immediately began to untie the string around his neck.

"Keep it," Julia said. "It's cute."

"Cute?"

She nodded.

"Is everything okay?"

Julia stretched her mouth into what she hoped was a smile and said, "Yeah. Keep the apron on."

Cayne wore it through dinner, which he, she, Rosa and Malachi enjoyed in the sitting room.

Julia spent most of the meal considering Rosa's story. And her advice. She wanted to know Cayne. To know all of him: the good and the bad.

But how could she, when Cayne didn't even know? If the vague pictures Julia had seen were any indication, his missing memories weren't very pleasant. She wondered if he would change if he found them. The thought made her feel slightly sick.

Cayne laughed at something Rosa said, and Julia turned her attention back to the conversation. The seer was telling the story of the first time he visited her, almost three years before. He had barged in unannounced, looking for a seer, and encountered Malachi instead. The two tore up the kitchen before Rosa broke up the fight.

"I made them fix it, too. Took three days. Cayne had to rebuild the cabinets," she recalled. "Next time he pretends to be tough, you just hit his thumb with a hammer. He'll cry like a little baby."

Julia forced a smile as Cayne defended his manliness. Malachi, who other than his greeting at the door a couple of hours before hadn't spoken all evening, laughed softly.

Where was his monster? She glanced at Cayne. Where was his? She wanted to see the demon. Was almost desperate to.

Julia spent another hour with the three in the living room, but the more stories Rosa told the heavier Julia's eyelids became. She interrupted one with a huge yawn and, blushing, apologized.

The seer smiled and pointed to a door behind her. "You need to sleep. Go through the bath. The guest room is ready."

Cayne stood, but Julia pushed him back down. "It's just the other side of the bathroom."

He frowned. "The moment we let our guard down—"

"Cayne, just chill." She hoped she didn't sound rude, but she was too tired to make sure she didn't. "Have fun."

He seemed uncertain, so Julia looked to Rosa for help. "Stay up with me for another hour, at least," the seer said.

Reluctantly, Cayne agreed.

The little bedroom was white, airy, and comfortable. Feeling relaxed for the first time since that terrible night in Memphis, Julia cracked one of the windows and settled into bed. But once she was warm under the covers, her sleepiness vanished. She had too many things running through her mind, and she didn't have the energy to deal with them. Instead, she tried to catch snatches of chatter from the living room.

When Cayne entered, probably an hour later on the dot, Julia held her breath. For some reason, she didn't want him to know she was awake—not yet, anyway. He hovered at the edge of the queen-sized bed, and she could feel his gaze on her. Then he moved to shut the window.

Casually as she could, Julia rolled onto her side and inched her left eye open. He was staring at the swatch of glass visible between the two curtains. A slither of pale light cut his face in half.

"Cayne?"

"Yes?" He didn't startle. Of course he had known she was awake.

Julia bit her lip, suddenly unsure. "Um...you seem to like Rosa a lot."

"She's been good to me."

"That's good." Julia wished she wasn't braless and in bed. She already felt awkward. "Rosa told me about Malachi."

He made a noise that didn't seem to mean anything, and Julia added, "About what happened when he was in high school."

Cayne turned to face her, and Julia diverted her gaze. "So that's what's had you in knots," he said.

"What?"

"You've acted strange all night. I thought I had upset you."

"No, not at all."

He seemed to be waiting for something, and when she didn't offer it, he asked, "Is it still on your mind?"

Julia closed her eyes. "Yeah." She heard Cayne shift, and she opened her right eye. He had turned back to the window.

"You're looking for my demon."

"Yes."

He sighed. "So am I."

Rosa and her son must have gone to bed, because the silence in the house was absolute. Julia held her breath, afraid that she would break it.

"I feel it all the time," Cayne said, "like a second skin under my first. It writhes when I'm angry. Or when you're in danger." He smiled at that. "It's like...something I see in the corner of my eye. No matter how often I turn, it's just out of sight. But it's always there." She didn't say anything, and he tacked on, "Does that make sense?"

Julia wasn't sure. And, for some reason, she blurted the first thing that came to her. "Have you ever killed anyone?" She gasped, and her hand smacked her mouth.

Cayne didn't seem bothered by the question. "You were there."

She remembered the abusive man in the park and the motorcyclist, but shook her head. "I mean other times."

He hesitated, but only for a moment. "Yes."

"Would you tell me about it?"

"Do you really want to know?"

Julia had the feeling his question was about more than the times he had killed. And she did want to know. She told him so.

"A few, that I can remember. All within the range of what most people would consider justified."

Julia wasn't so sure. His face was troubled again, remembering. He was leaving something out.

"But there's a long period of time I can't remember," he said. "From what I've gathered, I think... a lot of it is unpleasant."

Julia wanted to ask what exactly he had 'gathered', but she decided not to press. She already felt terrible, like she was forcing him to prove himself. Maybe she was. But she had one more question, and she was determined to ask it. "Will you tell me what it feels like?"

"Killing?" She nodded. "It doesn't feel like anything."

Said so bluntly and so casually that Julia almost didn't believe him. But then he looked at her, and she saw the truth in his eyes. To Cayne, death and life were just different sides of the same coin. She didn't think he enjoyed it, but when the toss landed the right way, he wouldn't hesitate.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

With me, his voice added.

"Yes."

Cayne stared at her, searching her face for something. When he found it, he nodded and turned back to the window. But Julia wanted to show him how okay with it she was.

"Come to bed."

Cayne's eyes became saucers as his head jerked up. Julia's face was on fire, but she didn't care. "Just lay on top of the covers until I fall asleep," she amended. "Please?"

Cayne stared. With a so not steady hand, she rubbed the bare spot beside her. After several heartbeats, he complied.

He sat with his back facing her, and she said, "Lie down."

He did, stiffly. He crossed his legs and clasped his hands over his flat stomach. Julia gathered all her courage and snuggled into his side. It was warm.

"You won't leave me, will you?" she whispered.

Cayne's fingers found her hair, and with his other arm he pulled her closer. "No."

*

"I don't bite," Rosa laughed.

Julia grinned weakly as she eased herself onto a purple cushion. She was so not prepared for this.

Cayne had woken her just before noon with a joke about beauty sleep, a little awkward I-shared-a-bed-with-you-and-played-with-your-hair-ness, and a message from Rosa to spend the next four hours clearing her mind. Then he had disappeared, leaving a light breakfast and a confused Julia behind. He came back with an afternoon snack, and then an hour later when it was time for her to visit the seer. Julia had told him she wasn't ready. She had spent the entire day in knots. And she had barely seen him!

"My mind's like a dump," she pleaded.

"Ordinarily I'd agree. But you're ready."

"Funny. And no I'm not."

"She thinks you are."

Cayne smiled softly when he left her by the back room, which was now separated from the rest of the home by a thick, dark curtain. Julia took a moment to steady her wobbling knees and then ducked into shadows and candlelight. Incense was burning in the corner, and she began to feel lightheaded as she worked her way to the small table in the center of the room.

"I hope you slept well last night." Rosa's voice was smug.

Julia almost blushed. The seer couldn't know how she'd fallen asleep, right? "I did."

Rosa nodded. "Were you able to wipe your mind clean?"

Julia shook her head, embarrassed to admit it.

"Good. That will make it easier."

"But you said—"

"What I needed to say. All that mumbo jumbo about clearing your mind is nonsense."

"It is?"

"I can't help you figure out where your road is leading you if you get rid of the signs, can I?"

Julia wasn't sure, but she shook her head.

"Now let's sit down. I want you to cross your legs, close your eyes, and hold your breath."

"What?"

Rosa shushed her with a hand. "Go on."

Sighing inside, Julia did as the seer instructed.

"Do not breathe until you have to. When you do, make sure it is steady and slow. Now count backwards from one hundred."

As Julia counted, she felt Rosa wave something around her face. When she took her first breath she smelled it: incense. It was hot and heavy in her lungs.

Julia began to have trouble somewhere around sixty-three. Everything started to jumble, so sixty-two preceded twenty-seven but followed forty-four. She tried to get back on track, but the numbers kept leaking out of her head.

"Julia, where are you in your counting?"

Rosa's voice sounded muffled. So did Julia's when she replied, "I lost count...I think."

"Where are you?"

"Where...am I?" Julia opened her eyes and saw that she was no longer in the seer's home. She was somewhere bright—so bright she had to close her eyes. "Rosa!"

"Everything is fine," the woman cooed. "Just relax and tell me what you see."

"Light." Julia squinted at her hands. Thick gray static obscured the corners of her vision, limiting her sight to a hazy circle. She looked down to her legs, and then to the cot upon which she lay. She followed it to the gray floor and was able to pick out the pattern of the carpet. Then her vision expanded. She was in a cramped, white room. It was shaking and swaying so violently she felt dizzy.

There was a window just before her, but a glare obscured whatever was on its other side. She put her head between her knees and tried to swallow the bile that was rising up her throat.

"Julia?"

Rosa's voice sounded far away. Julia's heart thrummed harder. Did she really leave the seer's home? Things like that couldn't happen. This couldn't be real. How was she going to—

"Control yourself."

Julia closed her eyes. The drum drum drum drum drum drum drum drum of the room was a little more tolerable that way.

"I'm in a small room," she whispered. "It's shaking. I think it's moving."

"Where is this room?"

Julia shook her head. "I don't know." She glanced at the window again. There was an easy enough way to find out, but she didn't trust the floor.

"Julia."

She took a deep breath and slid off the cot. The floor shook beneath her, and she felt like she was going to fall. "I'm going to the window," she gasped.

She stumbled several steps, then put her forehead against the glass and looked out. "A train." She was on a speeding train. It moved so fast she couldn't tell what was outside. White and green and blue and black and red and yellow and she was going to be sick.

"It's going too fast," she moaned as she sank to her knees.

"Julia, listen to me." Rosa's voice was clearer now, and very calm. "Slow it down."

Julia licked her lips. Her mouth tasted like chalk. "What?"

"Think of something calming."

Julia grasped for something to aid her. She found Cayne's face and focused on his eyes, deep green pools of calm. She thought about the way he'd looked at her when he squeezed her hand. She thought about how his fingers felt in her hair. She thought about his smile.

Miraculously, her panic abated, and with it the train's terrible swaying. It still hummed beneath her, but only the way trains were supposed to hum.

Julia opened her eyes. "It slowed down now."

"Good," Rosa said. She sounded more distant again. "Now, look out the window."

Julia did. Her gaze landed on a giant white pillar jutting into the sky. "The Washington Memorial," she said. As the train continued, she saw other famous landmarks. The Capitol building. The White House. "I'm in Washington."

"Very good." Rosa's voice was a whisper now. "Are you alone in the room?"

Julia nodded. It was tiny. No place for anyone to hide. She checked the small closet and shower, to be safe. No people and no clues. No bags, even.

Having some idea of what she was supposed to do, Julia said, "I'm going to check the train."

Rosa didn't respond, which Julia took as an affirmation. She strode to the door and thrust it open.
Chapter Twenty-Three

A warm breeze lifted Julia's bangs off her forehead. It tickled the tiny hairs on her arms and— Bangs?

She squinted in the bright sunlight as she brought a hand to the crown of her head.

"What the hell?" She jumped at the sound of her voice. It was too high. She rubbed her temples with her hands, then squealed when she saw them. They were too small! Like her arms and legs and the rest of her. "What the..."

She was standing on a familiar white wood porch, surveying a familiar back yard: the Raysons' backyard. It was a large rectangle framed by colorful flowerbeds that ran along a weather-beaten wood fence. They dead-ended before a row of oaks, one of which had a rope swing. Several boards had been nailed between two trees, creating a crude clubhouse. Billy and his friend Richard were on the other side. They were snickering at something.

Julia tried to remember why she had come outside. She usually avoided Billy. He had never been all that nice, but for about a year, since he turned twelve, he had gone out of his way to torment her.

It had only gotten worse since Julia had her first period. For some reason, Jan had told Billy about it. And what it meant. Julia could've died of embarrassment. And Billy? The jerk went snooping in her bathroom, and when he found her girl things he showed them to all the kids on the street.

Julia's fists clenched. Jan hadn't believed her when she'd told. She had looked up from making their pimento-cheese sandwiches and—

Lunch. That was it. She was supposed to tell them lunch was ready. Julia considered yelling it across the yard, but she changed her mind when something behind the clubhouse squeaked.

They couldn't be doing anything too bad. Whenever Richard was around, Billy tended to behave better. But it still might be a good idea to check.

Julia hopped down the stairs and tried to not skip the rest of the way. Julia Pratchet. Mrs. Richard Pratchet. Mrs. Julia Richard Pratchet.

She rounded the corner and both boys' heads jerked up. Billy had short, dirty blond hair that he didn't comb, blue eyes that were large and cold, and a crooked nose that took the rest of his face with it. He was taller than Richard, who had soft brown hair that curled when it grew and beautiful green eyes.

They were hovering over a clear plastic box. It was open-side down, and there was a small cat inside. It was mewing mournfully and looked injured.

"What are you doing!" Julia demanded.

Both boys jumped. Billy looked at her angrily. Richard looked like a deer caught in headlights.

"Get out of here," Billy growled.

Julia shook her head. The cat was definitely hurt. Its front right paw seemed broken, and it had blood matting parts of its speckled fur. "I'm gonna tell Ms. Jan."

Billy's face hardened. "She won't believe you."

"Then I'll tell your father." Billy said he wouldn't believe it either, but Julia didn't care. "I'll tell anyway."

She turned to leave, but like a striking snake Billy grabbed her hand and jerked her to the ground. "You will not."

"Ow!" His fingers were like a vice on her arm. Julia trembled as he leaned over her. His face was red and angry. "Stop it!"

"Let her go, Rayson."

"Shut up, Richard!" Billy turned his attention back to Julia. "You ain't gonna say a word."

"Let me go!" she pleaded.

Billy didn't. He put a hand over her mouth and put his knees on her stomach, pushing the wind out of her. He grabbed both of her arms and pinned them above her head.

"Stop it!" Richard was hovering over them. "Let her go!"

Billy turned purple, and Julia thought his head was going to explode. "I told you to shut up!"

"Let her go!"

"Make me."

Richard tackled Billy, and the force of their impact squashed Julia's lungs. She wheezed as they struggled. Predictably, Billy got the upper hand. He hit Richard in the stomach, then in the face, then stood and kicked him in the side.

Richard moaned as Billy stalked back to Julia. She tried to get to her feet, but he grabbed her shoulder and threw her back to the ground.

"You bitch," he yelled, and then his hands were on her shirt.

Julia saw the same bright light behind her eyes. She pushed it out, and the whole backyard became a supernova. She heard Billy scream, and Richard cry out. For a second everything was dark, but when her sight returned, she saw that Billy was on his back, unconscious. So was Richard. The cat was on its side. It wasn't moving.

Shaking so hard she almost couldn't move, Julia pulled herself up off the ground and ran into the house.

As she approached the house, Julia somehow knew what she would find. Jan and John would be unconscious, Jan on the kitchen floor and John on the couch in the den. Mr. Jenkins, their next-door neighbor, would be waiting in the kitchen. He would usher Julia up to her room and tell her to hide under the bed. He would call 911. He would tell the police that Billy and Richard had created some sort of bomb. He would tell Julia to never tell anyone what really happened.

Julia shook her head. How did she know that? And what was she doing here, anyway? Wasn't she supposed to be taking a trip?

Julia opened the back door and remembered. She was supposed to be on a train!

"Julia!" That was Billy, screaming her name.

Julia whirled, shocked, but it wasn't the Billy she knew. He was taller and wider. He had a shadow on his face. His arms were heavily muscled.

Julia was back to her real age: seventeen. Which meant Billy was nineteen.

Julia stared at him, amazed. He was supposed to be in the hospital. He and Richard both. He'd wake up in about two weeks. Richard wouldn't.

She felt a sharp pain in her heart. She had willed that awesome light away because of what she did to the boy that tried to help her. It had left her empty even then, and she never could forgive herself.

"I'm gonna kill you!" the teenage Billy screamed.

He charged, and she slammed the backdoor. "Help!" she cried, hoping she was right about Mr. Jenkins. She dashed into the kitchen and slid to a stop. It was empty. "Mr. Jenkins! Jan! John!"

Julia heard the back door crash open. Billy swaggered into the kitchen, and she screamed for Mr. Jenkins again. She ran to the den, but Billy dove and grabbed her foot. She landed hard on the wood floor. She kicked back with as much strength as she could, hitting Billy in the face.

He screamed, and she scrambled away, through the small entry hall and up the stairs, with Billy hot on her heels. Julia dove for her door and slammed it shut.

She locked it just as Billy plowed into it.
Chapter Twenty-Four

Julia threw her weight against the door and screamed for Rosa and Cayne. The wood groaned under the force of Billy's blows. A splinter spun past her, then another.

She searched her mind for the secret she had buried that day in the backyard. She needed that wild power now—even if she couldn't control it.

Past fractured faces of friends and the muted colors of their auras, through pieces of memory and imagination, Julia searched. Deep in the hidden spaces of her mind, wading in the experiences she had buried and the actions she regretted, Julia searched. And there, in the depths of her shame, she saw it: her light, pulsing, calling...

The pounding stopped and the white behind Julia's eyes disappeared. The loss left a frightening ache in her chest. She had been only moments away from obliterating Billy. Probably the entire house. Cautiously, she rested her head against the door and held her breath. She didn't hear him.

She turned to survey her room, but was shocked to discover she wasn't in it. She was standing in a small, square hall that seemed to be made of dark red mud. To her right, the hall was completely dark; she had no idea how far it stretched. To the left, she could see a speck of light, maybe a mile or more away.

Julia shivered. The place was horror-movie creepy. There was a draft, and the air felt wet. She ran her hand along the wall, looking for the door, but it had disappeared.

"Rosa?" she whispered.

Julia heard a small hiss, but she couldn't make out the words.

"Rosa?"

A sound like thunder answered from the right. An instant later a gust of wind sent her tumbling several yards. Julia huddled on the floor, bruised and aching, as the wind passed. It snuffed out whatever light illuminated the far reaches of the left side of the hall, and she realized the difference even a spec of orange made. Terrified, she called for Cayne until the noise died and her voice echoed around her.

The little light returned a moment later.

"Rosa?"

Julia resisted the urge to stand where she was. She needed to move, and she decided to go left, toward the light.

She tried to count the minutes she spent in the unchanging hall. About five after the first blast of wind, a second came. By the third, she knew to hit the floor the moment she heard the distant rumble.

It was horrifying, waiting in the absolute dark that followed the hall's outbursts. Julia half expected some monster or murderer to appear beside her when the light returned. Neither did, but she had to endure two more gusts before something changed.

Carpet. The cold, stone floor had, at some point, become carpet. Julia wasn't sure when, but she noticed as she picked herself up after the fifth gust. She also realized that she could see her hands.

She almost jumped for joy.

Sooner than she expected, she was close enough to see the source of the light: a candle in a stand, about chest height. The second she saw it, others appeared, spaced dozens of feet apart, mounted on both sides of the hall.

Julia stopped to get her bearings when she reached the first candle. Then she noticed something on the wall beside the others that sent a shiver up her spine.

Heart hammering, Julia leaned toward the picture—actually five similar pictures in a row.

They were crude, and they seemed to be carved into the wall rather than drawn. The lines were shaky and the characters were basic stick forms that reminded her of caveman drawings. All the images were dominated by a huge circle filled with smaller, semi-circle blobs. For some reason, it reminded her of the Earth.

In the first scene, a man-like figure sat atop the circle, surrounded by rudimentary stars that looked almost like the keyboard asterisk. Beside him, not quite at the top of what she thought of as Earth, another character had his arms up, and rather than a line for a mouth, this one had a circle—as if he was screaming.

In the second scene, the man surrounded by stars was pictured atop the angry one. Even in caveman form, Julia could tell Mr. Star was kicking Mr. Angry's butt.

In the third scene, the man surrounded by stars was back on his perch, atop the Earth, and the angry man was below the Earth.

The fourth scene: the angry man on the Earth. He had his hands on his hips, and something about his form looked proud. He was, hilariously, encircled by women.

In the last scene, there were more men, all looking just like the angry man, only this time, they had wings. They were still surrounded by women, as well as children. The children had stars atop their heads.

Suddenly she had a creepy feeling that she wasn't alone. She glanced left. All she could see were candles. She glanced right. And screamed.

Julia crab-crawled away from the man that had appeared before her. He was old, with a long white beard and weather-ruined face. And he wasn't very solid; his body seemed to shift and shrink and stretch and bend, and although he was obviously speaking there was no sound.

Julia watched him lecture her about something. He went through several rounds, gesturing wildly and staring at her like a disappointed father, before a gust surprised them both. The mystery man shriveled into dust, and Julia rolled several feet. Her candle clattered away. She waited, breath held, for the light to return.

It did, and the man was still gone. But the candle on the floor was rolled onto its side, and the carpet blazed like kindling. Julia gasped as flames fanned around her and licked the walls. As the blaze grew, it colored her hands crimson. Dumbly, Julia sniffed it. Blood.

It began to leak out of the mud walls, and she screamed for Rosa as she struggled to her feet.

As the fire grew, and she ran down the hall, her sides ached and her lungs burned. Her legs felt like rubber bands stretched too far, and the heat against her back was searing. If this kept on much longer...

A door! She saw it, at the end of the hall.

Julia found her second wind and ran harder.

She was close. So close. Almost there. Just a few more—

Julia's head jerked to the left. Another painting, this one modern and realistic; its subject: Cayne. He was sporting a pair of majestic wings, but they were spread out, along with his arms, which were pinned to the side of what looked like a real Egyptian pyramid. His legs were bent the wrong way, and he was bleeding—badly. At the foot of the pyramid... At the foot of the pyramid was her. Julia with her head bowed. Julia with her arms outstretched, holding a ball of light.

She knew what it was without having to ask. The light was her energy, and she was offering it to Cayne.

Julia turned from the picture. She ran a few more steps and then she threw herself against the door. She bounced off it, landing on her back facing the painting of Cayne—so detailed, she could see the death on his slack face, see his last labored breath.

The fire roared, and she dove for the door. Cayne's lifeless eyes followed her as she tumbled through it.
Chapter Twenty-Five

Julia tumbled into a brightly lit room, and the clatter of dishes and chatter of conversation snuffed into silence. Her face burned with embarrassment as more than a dozen pairs of eyes settled on her.

She was on the train again, in what appeared to be a posh dining room. Huge windows let in dazzling sunlight and splotches of the city: D.C. Three crystal chandeliers hung from a curved roof that boasted complex trimmings. The twenty or so tables that lined each side of the space were covered with white tablecloths. The diners were dressed in expensive-looking suits and dresses. Julia felt completely out of place.

An elderly waiter in a pressed white shirt and black pants cleared his throat. Julia smiled nervously and stood. She dusted herself off, and the cart's occupants went back to their business. Most of them, anyway.

Two were watching her: a boy and a girl about her age. He was a little older. Attractive with short brown hair and brown eyes, he wore a simple gray long-sleeved shirt and slightly darker gray slacks. He stared at her earnestly. The girl was a complete contrast. Her almond-shaped eyes crinkled as she smiled, and her silky black hair flowed like a waterfall over a yellow sundress that showed off her cleavage.

She stood and waved Julia over. The boy grabbed her arm and jerked her back into her seat.

Carefully, nervously, Julia picked her way through the dining hall to where the two sat, at the back.

"Hi."

"Hi."

The girl smiled. "You can sit, you know."

"Oh, right." Julia pulled a chair from the table. She was painfully aware of her smoky clothes. "Sorry for the smell. I just...got out of a fire."

The girl shrugged. "It doesn't bother me."

The boy, Julia noticed, was talking—to himself. His lips moved, but she didn't hear any words. His intense eyes were boring into her shoulder.

"Be glad you can't hear him," the girl said.

"But why can't I?"

"I dunno. Just be glad. He rarely has anything good to say."

"Oh."

The girl laughed. "So it's you."

"Uh...yeah."

"Sorry. We've been looking for you. Well, he has." She jerked a thumb at the guy.

"Why?"

"Because you're like me."

"And what does that mean?"

The girl shrugged. "I'm not important enough to know."

"Is he?"

"Yeah."

Julia sighed. "Well who are you?"

The girl looked puzzled. "You know...I'm not sure." She bit her bottom lip, then her eyes widened and she stood. "I think I'm supposed to show you this, though." Julia was horrified when the girl lifted her dress, revealing lilac panties. The boy didn't seem to notice. Neither did anyone else. "Follow my finger," the girl teased as she pointed to a starburst just above her left hip.

"Oh my God!" The girl dropped her dress, and Julia exclaimed, "You're Stained!"

"If you say so."

"But I just saw your mark."

The girl leaned across the table and tapped Julia's forehead. "Where do you think we are right now?"

"Oh. So there's a chance you're just made up?"

"Yeah, but I don't think so."

Julia felt some of the hope she had lost return. She liked the girl. Then she thought about what the girl had said. "Wait, so y'all have been looking for me?"

"Some of us. Not that I wouldn't if I could, it's just, like I said," she shrugged, "not that important."

"So how come no one found me?"

"Hmmmm. Good question. They're usually pretty efficient at that sort of thing." She tapped her glass of water with a candy-apple-red nail.

Julia's adventure in the fire-filled hallway caught up to her. She was tired, smelly, and in no mood for riddles. "So let's get to the point. What am I doing here?"

"Didn't you choose to be here?"

"Well yeah, but what am I supposed to be doing right now?" She jerked her thumb at the talking boy. "And I still want to know what's up with that."

The girl laughed. "He's kind of cute, isn't he?"

"Yeah, I guess so." She smiled wanly. "Are you two...?"

"No way!" The girl seemed appalled. She glanced at the boy in dismay. Then she smiled again. "What about that Hunter hottie you're traveling with? Things seem to be heating up."

Julia blushed. "How do you even know about him?"

"Oh, I have my ways." The girl laughed. "Anyway, to answer your question..." She pointed behind her, to three doors at the end of the cart. "Choose one."

"How?"

"You could do eeny-meeny-miney-moe."

"You can't give me any clues?" The girl shook her head. Julia took a deep breath. "I guess this is it then?"

The girl smiled as Julia stood. "I look forward to meeting you. I think we'll be best friends."

Julia wanted to feel the same way, but she reminded herself that a figment of her imagination would, naturally, want to be her friend.

The girl turned back to her silent partner. She said something Julia couldn't hear, and the poor guy finally stopped talking. He looked at Julia mournfully. Julia looked away and walked to the doors.

She touched each. The one on the left felt cold, the one on the right felt hot, and the one in the middle didn't feel any way at all. Definitely the middle.

Julia turned the knob and stepped into what at first appeared to be a dark closet. She saw a dim light directly in front of her and for a moment felt a thrill of panic. Was she back in the hall?

"Ow!"

Nope. Last time she checked, there wasn't a workbench there.

Julia rubbed her right knee as her eyes adjusted. She was in a tool shed. A bizarre one. A saw, a rake, and three hammers shared wall space with several spears, two crossbows, and a collection of swords. A wrench set sat next to a dusty pair of armored gloves (the medieval type) on the bench. Other strange things Julia couldn't name were stacked on the ground, bunching between lawnmowers and weed eaters and shovels.

Mystified, Julia stepped to the door, and the cloudy window through which she could see a hazy image of someone's back yard. She heard odd voices, raised in laughter. Without hesitating—what was the point anymore?—she pushed the squeaky door open.

She had to shield her eyes against the light. It wasn't bright; it was, in a weird way, dark. But there was a lot of it. Julia blinked through the canopy above her. The sky was so solidly gray that she wondered if someone had forgotten to draw it.

The smoky, tangy scent of barbecue slid up her nose, and Julia followed the smell to a middle-aged black man. He wore a purple Polo and khaki shorts, covered in the front by a pink and white gingham apron. Back half-turned, he was manning a grill and talking to two women who sat on opposite sides of a picnic table to his left. Julia couldn't understand anything he said. His voice was high-pitched, and his words were a fast jumble of nonsense, like someone had placed his mouth on rewind.

The women sounded the same. The first, whose back was to Julia, seemed about the same age as the man. She wore suede-looking leggings, boots, a stylish white tunic, and had long, curly brown hair the exact color of milk chocolate.

The woman facing Julia seemed so familiar, for a split second Julia scanned her memory trying to remember who she was. Then she realized: That was her. Her, with tactful makeup that made her brown eyes pop. Her with a stylish, layered haircut. Her in a green and white dress, with leaf-shaped ivory earrings. Her, carrying ten more pounds—but most of it in her boobs. Heck, yeah.

The home's glass porch door slid open and someone familiar bounded down three stone steps: Cayne! Except different. His green eyes were brighter, his mouth curved into a smile. Muscles bulged from beneath a blue Polo, but they somehow a little less cut, as if the only action they saw was in a gym.

His hair was short and his face was clean-shaven.

He called something to the man at the grill in that disconcerting language and, smiling hugely, sat down next to her.

Julia felt her throat tighten with happiness, with want, and she reminded herself that it wasn't real. That wasn't her Cayne, even if he had the same beautiful face.

A roll of thunder helped her forget the bittersweet feeling. The group, now together at the table, didn't seem to notice. Julia had the vague sense that she should warn them about the storm, but then she felt her eyes droop, and felt something hook in her head and begin to carry her away, and the house and the table and Cayne and the gray sky and the older Julia smeared together and rearranged themselves as cushions and a dark room.

Rosa was swaying slightly, and her eyes were closed.
Chapter Twenty-Six

Julia blinked at the seer. Her chin was titled, and in the shadows her eyes looked like two dark holes. Her back was strait, and she seemed to sway to a tune Julia could almost hear.

"A great power from long ago is stirring," the seer intoned. "A conflict long buried is resuming. And you are being called to play your part."

"Part? What part?"

The seer rearranged herself on the cushion, took a long breath, and said, "You have many questions. Only one—the ancient one—can answer them. He pursues you and he waits for you at once."

Julia felt a tingle down her spine. The girl in the dining cart that wasn't a dining cart had implied that the other Stained were looking for her. "How do I find them?"

"Stay on your path," Rosa said. "But remember that it is your path. Trust your instincts, and be wary of those that would have you act against them."

"Where am I going?"

"The city you saw is a seat of power. Your answers wait for you there."

Julia sighed. Great. How many times could she and Cayne get attacked traveling back across the country? "Can't you tell me anything? What did all of the things I saw mean? Billy? The train? The guy and girl in the dining cart? And what about being Stained? You never told me anything about that!"

Rosa's face became grave. She opened her mouth, and then snapped it shut. Her skin seemed to lose its color, and she shook her head fearfully. "I have been blinded," she gasped, and then the curtain ripped in two.

Cayne dove into the room, tackling Julia. Malachi followed as the ceiling exploded and pieces of wood and tile rained down on them.

Through the crook of Cayne's elbow, Julia saw the giant Nephilim hunched protectively over his mother. A blood dagger protruded from his back. Rosa, beneath him, was wheezing; her breaths sounded wet.

Through a hole in the ceiling Julia saw a dark form knocking an arrow. She opened her mouth to warn Cayne, but he was one step ahead, hurling his dagger through the hole. Its target thudded onto the carpet beside them.

Cayne yanked his dagger free and tossed it to Julia. He claimed the dead Nephilim's bow and arrows. Julia watched, astonished, as the thing's wings folded in on themselves and disappeared. Poof.

"They're Samyaza's," he said. "And there are others."

"There are?"

Cayne glanced at Rosa and her son, his face pained. "Take care of them."

As Julia frantically wondered what she could do, the several Nephilim fell through the ceiling, bringing roof tiles and debris with them. Before the air had even cleared, Cayne sent an arrow through one's neck and shot another through the heart. Julia stopped holding her breath, and three more tackled him.

"Cayne!"

He reared, throwing two of the Nephilim off his back. He shoved the third away, and Julia crawled to where Rosa and Malachi lay. Using all of her strength, she pushed the huge man off the seer. Rosa gasped and spit up blood. "My son."

Julia prodded his aura. It was too weak. She tried to keep the sorrow off her face as she turned her attention to Rosa.

With a flick of her hand, the seer closed her aura off. "My son," she pleaded.

Julia looked away. "He...he's too far—"

She stopped when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw an Indian Nephilim with his hands around Cayne's neck. Julia grabbed a boom box from a corner and swung at the Nephilim's head. The blow knocked him off Cayne, but attracted the attention of a Nephilim with stringy blond hair. As Cayne grappled with the Indian Nephilim, Julia's attacker advanced.

She held Cayne's dagger in front of her, and the Nephilim laughed. "It will take more than that," he taunted in a voice like broken glass.

He jabbed at her with his dagger, but Julia jumped out of its path. She stumbled over an overturned chair, but he was in front of her, moving faster than she could see. "Stupid Stained bitch. Time to die."

Something crashed through a window and tackled Julia's attacker. She screamed when she realized it was the second biker that had attacked them that night—the one who had gone missing. The biker smashed the Nephilim against the wall, and the Nephilim kneed the biker in the gut. Then he stabbed the biker in the back of the neck, and the biker fell.

The Nephilim smiled at Julia. Cayne stepped up behind him, slitting his throat. Panting hard and bleeding from a swollen lip, Cayne blinked at the biker's body, then turned slowly around. "Rosa?"

The woman had pushed herself into a half-sitting position, and she was holding her son in her lap. "The blood of...my killer has reached my heart. His poison has done its work." Rosa coughed. "There's no help...now."

Cayne crouched over Malachi. The great Nephilim was still drawing breath, but it was slow and laborious. Cayne looked anguished as he knelt by the seer. "Rosa, I'm so sorry."

The woman tried to smile. "You should be."

Cayne blinked, and the woman laughed weakly. "The only thing we can govern, Cayne, is our choices."

"Then let Julia heal you."

"No. My place is with my son."

Julia watched the woman's beautiful pearly aura wane. It wouldn't be long. Cayne closed his eyes and placed a hand over the seer's wrist. Julia took the woman's other hand, and together they sat, quiet on the rug, until Rosa's light died.

Cayne stared at the woman's face.

Julia felt as desolate as he looked.

"We need to go," he said quietly.

He helped Julia up and tucked her under his arm.

"Can we go out the front? My shoes..." Julia felt ridiculous, but with tears already streaming down her face, she thought she'd really lose it if she had to part with her last tie to Suzanne.

"Yeah," Cayne murmured.

They put on their shoes, Cayne expressionless, Julia trying not to sob, and moved together onto the porch. The instant her feet touched the cement, Julia saw something large and black out of the corner of her eye. After that, everything happened very quickly.

Cayne was tossed aside, and Julia felt strong hands under her arms. She screamed as Samyaza lifted her off the ground, swinging her like a rag doll as they rose above the house. Julia fought to push past panic and call for Cayne, now on his feet. She screamed his name and watched him leap into the sky.

Wings seemed to spring from his back—the glossy charcoal feathers of her dreams—but Samyaza was flying high and fast, and too soon Cayne was just a dot.

Rooftops shrank to colored cubes amid big black veins of asphalt. Julia went limp, torn between a clawing desire to fight and her paralyzing fear of being dropped.

Then her brain sped up to realize Samyaza would definitely kill her, and he would use her as bait to get Cayne. Julia thought falling to her death would be better, but it wouldn't come to that anyway because Cayne would save her. She trusted him with fanatical surety.

And so, more than a thousand feet above the ground, Julia pulled Cayne's dagger from her jeans and stabbed Samyaza in the arm.
Chapter Twenty-Seven

Samyaza's attack made Cayne summersault before his head smacked the concrete porch. He watched as cement chunks bottle-rocketed away from the impact. Then the pain came: hot-cold-intense, like a smoldering iron through the ear.

Cayne was up in an instant, his charcoal wings ripping through his shirt as the patio crumbled, his legs leaping before his first cut bled.

He was certain Samyaza was going to kill Julia. The older Nephilim couldn't outfly him with the extra weight, but he could snap her neck. He could grin his stark white grin as he dropped her lifeless body.

Cayne crossed two hundred feet with one flap of his wings. Then three hundred.

Julia was struggling, her face shifting between horror and determination. Her eyes were focused, but her lips trembled and her nostrils flared. She stretched, and Cayne's dagger edged toward Samyaza. It met flesh. Samyaza reeled. She fell.

Cayne threw his momentum over his head, looped in mid-air, and thrust his body toward her falling form, speeding, a whirl, the wind screaming, Samyaza yelling, Julia lounging on air, her body relaxed, waiting.

She fell into his arms, locked her legs around his waist, and buried her face in his shoulder. Her long, dark hair danced under his nose, and everything was vanilla and honey.

Cayne drew her closer. "Hang on."

He felt her body tense as he plunged, as the clouds blurred behind them and the earth sped to meet them. When they touched down beside a grove of spindly trees, Cayne glanced up over his shoulder. Samyaza was hovering. Waiting. Cayne wiped Samyaza's blood from Julia's cheek and clutched her face. "You need to go," he told her sternly. "Find a place to hide. Somewhere public. Somewhere Samyaza wouldn't—"

"No!" She jerked away from him, tripping as she did and falling on her butt. Cayne tugged her up and pulled her to his chest. Her eyes were brown—the color of chocolate—and they were big and angry as they stared up at him.

"Did you see what just happened? I'm better off with you than by myself. Unless you want to get rid of me!"

"Julia, I only want to keep you safe."

"You're doing fine." She glanced up at the gray-blue clouds where Samyaza hung, and Cayne felt a roiling wave of remorse.

"You're never safe with him on your tail. I could focus on distracting him while you try to figure out who the Stained are."

She was shaking her head before he finished. "I'll take my chances with you. Unless you don't want me." She might have said "to." Unless you don't want me to. But that's not how he heard it.

"I do," he murmured—soft and foreign. And found, with a bite of shock, how much he meant it.

Cayne brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Then he summoned his dagger and leapt, covering a thousand feet in three quick beats of his wings.

"You remain swift," Samyaza called as Cayne neared. "But this race is about more than speed."

Samyaza flew to the left and, snarling, Cayne followed.

"How many lives do you have, Cayuzul?" Samyaza taunted.

Cayne lunged for his enemy, but the Nephilim king spun away from the attack. He brought his feet down on Cayne's right wing, and for a moment the sky and earth spun. With difficulty, Cayne righted himself. He hovered in front of Samyaza, struggling not to harm him. "Why did you hunt me three years ago?"

The Nephilim king scowled. "You ask questions that should not need answers."

"I don't know any answers—because of you! Why did you steal my memories?"

Samyaza's brow furrowed. "Cayuzul."

"I said why!"

Something like disbelief crossed the Nephilim lord's ancient face. "What is it you think I did?"

"You know what you did!"

Samyaza grinned cruelly. "I scarcely believe it is true. You have no memories?" He laughed, a rich, low sound. "Then how have you come to hunt me?"

Cayne circled his enemy. "When I woke I knew you'd harmed me. I knew I'd kill you before I knew my own name."

Samyaza's smile was taunting. "Yes, I hunted you. But not even I possess the power to take one's past."

"Liar!" Cayne's hand sliced the air. "Tell me why!"

"Because you broke your oath. Because you ran," Samyaza sneered. "Because you hid."

Samyaza's body stretched and thinned, blinked in and out of focus. Cayne shook his head as his enemy's face morphed into Cayne's own. His youth shone in his wide green eyes. He stood in a Victorian-style home, watching a married couple at the dinner table. Watching them retire to their bedroom.

Samyaza was goading him—again. And this time...

Their blood was his paint, their bed his canvas. One stroke wet the brush, three more finished his masterpiece. Against the grays and whites, red was alone and beautiful.

"You stank of humanity then, and you stink of it now. Hunters are steel, never yielding, never breaking. You are a weed to be plucked."

An image came—another time, another place: A cabin door opened, and two amber eyes peaked in.

Through a haze of blood he saw her face, tender and forgiving. He saw her hair, her skin, her teeth, her lips, her breasts, her toes, her thighs, her navel, her hips. He smelled her, heard the ghost of her laugh. A whisper, a touch, a fire. They were curled up in the rocking chair, watching the snow fall. And then blood. Her blood, spilled by the bucketful, staining the snow. Rage blinding like the sun.

Cayne choked on a sob. Through the cacophony in his head, Samyaza's laughter. Louder and louder. As her clothes are torn. As he pleads for her life. As she screams her last breath as her eyes promise love as her blood drips from his hands—

And he remembered.

He remembered everything.

Reality returned with horrible clarity and his rage consumed him. Everything was red as he burst toward Samyaza. Cayne sliced his enemy across the gut, then through the shoulder. He stabbed him in the leg, the arm, the chest. He readied his killing blow, but Samyaza was able to twist free. He darted away and Cayne followed, down left right up down right; they crisscrossed the sky.

Then Samyaza's knife was an inch from Cayne's eye and he had to tumble to avoid it.

Samyaza hovered, watching, a thick coat of sweat glistening across his shaved head. His wounds were already healing, a testament to his incredible power.

Cayne panted as his mind lost its hold on the tide of memories. It was a tsunami of blood.

And failure. His sin. Her death.

Samyaza watched as Cayne drifted, coasting on the air. Distantly, Cayne wondered why the über Nephilim did not finish what he had started. Under the onslaught of emotion, he would almost have welcomed it.

But his mentor only swooped down, drifting in front of him, his face a grim mask as Cayne's heart raced. "You killed her," he said, his voice ragged and weak.

"She was our enemy."

"I loved her!"

Samyaza shook his head. "What's done is done. Now we must consider what is to come."

"Fuck you." Cayne gasped. He blinked against tears that would not come. Tears she never saw. "You—"

"Did what had to be done." There was no anger in Samyaza's voice, and no regret. "You knew the consequence."

"I betrayed nothing."

"You betrayed me!"

Screaming, Cayne lunged again, a sloppy attack Samyaza easily evaded.

"Why don't you kill me now!"

Samyaza's wings beat impatiently as he rose out of Cayne's reach. "As long as you are with one of them, you will always be pursued. You too have become stained."

Samyaza flew up and away; Cayne, lost in the rhythm of his sorrow, did not follow.

*

His mind was an anchor, pulling him down. He saw the first stars peek through their blanket of blue and remembered the day he showed her his wings.

She was in awe. In awe and angry he had never shown her before. She wanted a flight and he was happy—no, eager—to take her. He'd laughed and swooped her off her feet, and a moment later she was shrieking as they soared through the inky sky.

His heart was an anchor, pulling him down. To her smile. To her voice. She was calling him. She was...

Julia was yelling, Cayne realized. Loudly. And waving. He hung in the air for a moment, smoothing the rhythm of his breathing, bringing the world back into focus. Then he let himself slip into a free-fall that landed him almost on top of a tree.

Julia ran over as he struggled to his feet, nearly paralyzed by the fierce clamp around his throat and chest. She was frantic, reaching for him. He moved away.

"Cayne! Please talk to me! Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Then why are you acting so out of it?"

"I...I'm sorry." He set his mouth and murmured, "Hit my head."

"Oh God. Did he hurt you bad?" Resting one hand gently on his arm, Julia immediately began to probe his aura. Cayne could sense surprise, and he resisted the impulse to push her away; she couldn't peer into his mind. He tried to relax as she healed his wounds.

"Thanks." His voice was hoarse, and her eyes were skeptical. Her mouth stuck somewhere between a smile and a frown. "Is everything okay?"

He nodded, hoping she hadn't felt the trembling he didn't seem able to stop. Each shiver was a memory. The onslaught was unyielding. "Are you?" he asked her.

"Oh, abducted by a flying madman, flown hundreds of feet into the air, dropped. No big deal."

He tried to smile, but he must have done a terrible job of it, because she was worried all over again. "Cayne, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Are you sure?"

He nodded. What a liar.

She reached up and touched his temple. "I'm glad you're okay."

"Me too," he said thickly. "I'm glad you're okay."

Julia smiled. And then her eyes narrowed. "I can't believe I've never seen your wings!"

Cayne forced something past the lump in his throat. "They...never came up."

"That's not the sort of thing that has to come up! You should have told me." Julia crossed her arms. "It's my job to know all your secrets."

And oh—how he hoped it really wasn't.
Chapter Twenty-Eight

For several hours, not a cloud had marred the sky as they soared over the moon-drenched earth.

At first Julia seemed content just to ride on his back, her arms around his neck. She said nothing about his silence and the shivers that wracked his body. But as moments became minutes, and minutes stretched to an hour, Cayne's reticence became evident. He tried to participate in whatever conversation she forced, but memories flitted through his mind a thousand a second, stealing his voice.

Julia seemed hurt when he rebuffed her questions and soon lapsed into her own silence. Now she was cradled in his arms, asleep, and he was lost in the memory of another nighttime ride.

Cayne wondered if the years he'd languished without his past had taken the maddening edge off his grief or if his mind just hadn't had enough time to absorb what had previously been buried.

The sorrow he hadn't understood just a few hours before was a hot knife in his memory now; maybe paler than it would have been, but far from dull.

Julia stirred, and Cayne's confusion grew. The feelings he had for her mirrored his feelings for the other, and the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to destroy Samyaza.

If anything, the drive was stronger now that he knew what he had to avenge. And what he had to protect. He listened to Julia's heartbeat and swore he wouldn't fail a second time.

"Swallow a bug?"

Despite all his instincts, Cayne almost dropped her. Julia seemed unaware as she gazed up at him, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "Sorry. You just look...like you swallowed a bug."

Cayne shook his head. Her caring voice sliced through the dizzying misery of his memories. It comforted and repelled him. He didn't deserve it.

She sighed. "You don't have to carry me anymore. I can get on your back."

"I'm all right."

"Look, Cayne, just put me up."

"I don't mind carrying you a bit longer."

Julia's mouth hung open.

"What?"

"Your voice. It sounds...I don't know, different. Like, Irish or something."

"Scottish."

"That doesn't..." He could see the wheels turning. Just another moment and— "Oh. Oh my God!"

He nodded, looking out at the black sky, and she didn't say anything more. He knew he should keep his mouth shut; anguish was necessarily private, and his could easily boil over if he wasn't careful. But a moment later her discontent was so obvious that he said, "I remember some things. For instance, I was born in Scotland."

The biting breeze danced with her glossy hair; she shifted in his arms, her movements oddly jerky. "I really want to get on your back now."

Cayne was still lost somewhere between the real and the memory, and holding her, he was ashamed to admit, eased the discomfort. But he slowed so she could move.

For several minutes she said nothing. Then: "How?"

He turned so she could hear him over the wind. "Something Samyaza said... freed my memories."

"When were you going to tell me?"

Cayne closed his eyes. "When I was ready."

She didn't speak until a cloud covered the moon, and then softly, she said, "I understand. About needing space."

Julia laid her head on his back, and he flew for half an hour longer, trying with no success to organize his mind. He wouldn't go to pieces. But he could, if he let himself, get close.

Julia stirred, and for a moment Cayne ached to tell her everything. She should know he wasn't the person he'd been hours before. That she shouldn't give herself to him in sleep. His memories had clarified everything, adding texture and lines to the blank figure he'd been, making him dark.

And dark he had always been.

*

Her name was written in place of the 'Hollywood' sign. It was large and red and very real under the glow of the spotlight that shone across the landscape, slicing the blue night in two. Julia couldn't see from where the light came; it was a bright line stretching over the curve in the earth.

There were other words—smaller versions of the sign—underneath her name, but they were much smaller, and, sitting cross-legged several miles away, Julia couldn't make them out.

Demons and Nephilim circled the moon, high over the hillside mansion, looking down over the battle scene below. Rocketing through the night sky, they dove in pairs, impossibly in sync, and Julia's heart beat faster because she was sure that they would not right themselves, that they would crumble into the earth in twin piles of bone and blood.

But at the last second, the demon and the half-demon pulled up, flapped their great wings, and floated to join the rest. The demon hit the Nephilim, and a battle broke out there as well.

Julia was on the ground now, searching for Cayne in every room of the house, but she couldn't find him anywhere.

Sighing, she started climbing stairs to reach the top floor. There was something important up there. When she climbed the last stair, she found herself face to face with a beautiful man. He reached out his hand and squeezed her throat.

When Julia opened her eyes, she was lying under layers of quilts in a rustic iron bed in the center of a room she'd never seen. Cayne sat in a rocking chair within reach.

"Welcome awake," he said.

Julia tried to swallow, but her throat was blocked by what felt like a giant ball of bubble gum. "Water," she rasped.

Cayne disappeared through a swinging door and returned with a bottle. Julia gulped it down, sighed, and glanced around the room. It was all shiny cedar, with fans hanging from exposed rafters, Native American art, a real-looking bearskin rug, and a pink stone door that led to a roomy porch. Through a big window beside that door, Julia saw a rectangular hot tub, and beyond it, trees with leaves in Crayola hues. She was in a cabin.

"Pretty." Her mood lifted an inch, but fell a foot when she saw Cayne's face. His expression was guarded.

His memory. It had returned, Julia remembered. She remembered how his silence had hurt her, and also what it felt like to fly.

"Thanks again for flying me last night," she said.

He nodded; his expression was detached, like mentally he wasn't even there with her. "How soon can you be ready?"

"Ready for what?" she asked.

"To leave."

"Where are we going?"

He looked at her like she was stupid. "Washington."

"Because—"

"Rosa is never wrong."

Was, Julia thought, stricken by a swift stab of guilt. She wrapped her arms around herself. The warm cabin air seemed to press down on them.

Julia twisted in the bed sheets. She felt no closer to the truth. "Why is this happening—any of it?"

"That's the question we need answered."

"By who?"

"Your kind."

Julia frowned. "My kind?"

"The other Stained." He said it like he was pronouncing a death sentence.

Julia tried to hold his eyes, terrified of what she'd find in them but needing to know. Her heart ached when Cayne glanced at his lap.

"Okay," she said after a minute. "Why don't you tell me what's new."

"New?"

"What you remembered."

"What I remembered?"

Julia sighed loudly. "What happened to make things all awkward and unhappy? Did you remember anything, do anything while I slept."

Cayne pointed to a small stack of People magazines on the bedside table. "Caught up on my reading." He lifted a brow. "Lindsay Lohan. Crazy."

"What about your memories? I feel like...something's changed."

"I don't want to talk about it," he said quickly.

"Okaaay." Julia stared him down, but he actually looked serious. "Okay," she said slowly. "Are you like, nervous? Don't be nervous. We know each other, remember?"

Cayne shook his head.

"What?" She frowned.

"I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"Not at all?"

"No."

"Why?"

His nostrils flared, but he didn't answer. Julia was eerily reminded of the first time they met. Except this was worse.

"I just don't get it."

"Don't try to."

"Um, how am I even supposed to do that?"

"Just do it."

"But that's ridiculous." Cayne was her new best friend. Her only friend. Her only...anything. If something was wrong, Julia had to know. "You can't tell me anything?"

He scowled at her, and Julia had a thought that made her stomach hit her toes. "Did you remember something about me? Something bad?"

What if he'd remembered something terrible, like...well, any number of terrible things. Maybe the Stained were really the bad guys, or maybe they all died by the time they were thirty, or maybe one of them killed Cayne's parents, or maybe—

"We've only know each other a few weeks."

"That's not what I mean!" The way he said it made it sound like just weeks. As in, big deal, a few weeks. Like it could have been a few days for all he cared. "Is it about me?"

He shook his head, and Julia had another thought. "Samyaza."

"What?"

"You remembered why he tried to kill you, right?"

"I remember a lot of things," Cayne growled. "I don't want to share them with you." His whole body shuddered as he drew a deep breath. He stood so fast that Julia gulped. He was trembling from head to foot, his face was red, and for the very first time ever Julia was actually a little bit afraid of him.

He stared at her, his face stricken, and Julia felt things shift. Like there was something toxic inside him that had seeped into her. Both marred, they could no longer connect.

She tried to reach out to him with her eyes.

"What?" The word was like a slap.

"I don't know...."

"Right." Cayne's lip curled. "You don't."
Chapter Twenty-Nine

Julia watched him cross the cabin's lawn and disappear around a copse of pines; she was caught somewhere between shock and panic. Shock because she didn't recognize him. Panic because she wasn't sure if she ever would again.

She banished that last thought and took a hot shower. She dressed, fixed her hair, and surveyed the room. It was messy. Good. Something to do.

Julia packed their things and spent the next hour cleaning the cabin. She tried not to think of Cayne (AKA, Mr. Hyde), but that was about as successful as her campaign to rid the room of that sweat-and-blood smell.

When the place was spotless, she returned the bucket of cleaning supplies to its corner spot in the teensy laundry room and sat cross-legged on the bed. She turned on the television. She applied some make-up she'd found in the owners' drawer. She tried to watch the news.

She hated how still the room felt.

Julia wandered into the kitchen and ran her hands along the counters. She rifled through cabinets and drawers. The silverware and utensils were stainless steel, and she could see her reflection in them. All eyes.

She went back into the bedroom. Ran her feet along the bearskin rug and glanced out the window. Her knees almost buckled.

Cayne was in the hot tub on the porch. His arms were propped on the sides, and his face was lifted to the sky. Steam uncoiled around him. He was perfectly still, but his wet clothes floated in the artificial current. Julia watched his pulse move under the smooth skin of his neck.

God, he was beautiful.

She ached to be near him.

He lay there for a long time, and Julia watched. She imagined a hundred ugly pasts, and eventually had to force herself back into the kitchen.

She was boiling water for chamomile tea when the door squeaked open. She moved into the bedroom, a moth pulled to a flame.

Cayne stood by a bookshelf, clutching a cordless phone, water pooling on the glossy boards beneath his feet. With his clothes stuck to him, he looked big and thick and scary. "You have a seat on a train," he said flatly. "Amtrak. From Los Angeles."

YOU have a seat. Singular. Second person.

"W—" her voice cracked. "What are you going to do?"

He stared at her blankly.

"Aren't you coming with me?"

Cayne eyed her like something dirty. "Of course."

"You are?"

"Is that a problem?"

She shook her head.

*

Julia and Cayne were doing things the hard way. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that there were to be no more "tricks." If they wanted to be absolutely sure they avoided detection and minimize Samyaza's ability to 'trace' Cayne via the link created when he'd been stabbed by the Nephilim king's blood dagger, he wasn't going to be able to use his wings, or his charm, or even his dagger.

So they took a bus back to L.A., where they were to board an Amtrak for an old-fashioned train trip.

On top of the general weirdness of riding in a small space with lots of strangers, the Utah-to-Cally trek was long and strained. Cayne was still a stranger, and Julia felt way too edgy around him. When she tried to talk to him, he was stern and cold, a different person—one she wasn't even sure she liked.

She gave up when they reached the California border and slept the rest of the way.

When Cayne woke her, with a nudge from his elbow, Julia wasn't even able to enjoy the scenery, and by the time they were deposited at Union Station—a large, white building on Alameda Street that looked kind of like a Spanish church (it had a clock tower instead of a steeple)—she was having kittens. Dozens of them.

It had been three hours since she and Cayne last spoke. No, not since they last chatted, since they last spoke a word to each other. The whole thing was totally insane. They were like B.F.F., and then Cayne's memories came back, and...nothing. The boy goes quiet.

And he wasn't just quiet. It was like he was shutting down. Julia didn't know when it had happened, but between the time she woke up and their arrival at the train station, it seemed like someone had pulled his power cord from the wall.

Union Station had shiny marble floors, leather chairs, vaulted ceilings, and people. People everywhere. They milled in groups of threes and fours, lounged on couches and in tall-backed chairs, read newspapers in corners, talked on cell phones, played with iPads.

Cayne marched through the crowd like a man on death row. Julia could feel the tension cascading off him. On the bus he'd strained to make sure they didn't touch, and even now, as they passed through the station, he stayed a few steps ahead, keeping a calculated distance between them as he cut a path through the sea of noisy tourists.

They sat in foldout chairs by the boarding platform. An old man and woman sat next to them and held bony hands. Julia felt sick.

She needed to stop thinking emotionally. She needed to reason out what to do. How to get him comfortable again. Or was it that? Maybe he wasn't weirded out and uncomfortable in his skin. Maybe he simply no longer liked Julia.

It didn't help that they'd only had enough money for one ticket, so she was boarding the Amtrak alone. Cayne planned to drop in from the train's top, through the emergency exit hatch she was supposed to unlock. But she had no way to know if he really would.

When the intercom called her number, she followed him on putty legs.

After her bags were checked and a uniformed lady smiled her on, she looked at him. She tried to memorize every angle of his face. She wished he would smile. He just nodded. She tried to supply the smile, but failed.

When she got to their tiny room, Julia pulled a leather chair under the hatch and unlocked it. Then she turned off the lights, sat on the bottom bunk-cot, and said tongue twisters. The train left the station on time, and the city began to zoom by.

Cayne dropped in a few minutes later. He glanced at her—not long enough to notice the dumb relief on her face—and turned a circle. His bulky frame was boxed in by a sliding rubber door, a school bus-style window, a tiny bathroom, and two bunk-cots.

Julia waved to the tiny leather chair behind him, and Cayne slouched down, rubbing a grease stain on his cheek. She stretched out on the bottom cot. They both looked out the window.

Predictably, he didn't speak, and she was too nervous to break the silence.

She played the crossword puzzle in the complimentary newspaper, but it didn't help. She tried to read the TIME magazine she'd swiped from the cabin, but that didn't help either.

She told herself that she could wait it out. He had just gotten his memories, after all. It made sense that he'd be withdrawn. In a couple of days, things would go back to normal. She'd be patient.

Or try to.

The night was punctuated by her few strained attempts to fill the silence. A woman screamed something about "Mr. Happy," and Julia asked if Cayne had heard it. He nodded. At one point the train seemed to wobble, and she asked him if he felt it. He shook his head.

Later, when she told him there was hamburger steak in the dining car, he glared at her, and Julia retreated to the halls before she said something she'd regret.

She had trouble with brooding people. First, she really, really wanted to look at said brooder's aura. This was a special case, so Julia might have been willing to chunk any ethical complaints, but of course Cayne was Cayne. He would know if she took a peek. (She'd tried it just after he'd gotten his memories back, and she'd been pretty sure he noticed before she got a chance to see anything.)

Then there was all the pouting. Brooders had the whole Ooh, You Can't Touch Me, I'm Brooding thing going.

Sympathy was also a problem. Julia just couldn't watch anyone stew without wanting to heal them. Especially someone like Cayne, who was so much more than just anyone.

Of course in this situation, she also had herself to worry about, and she didn't think it was unreasonable to do so. The only person that knew she existed and didn't want to kill her was doing his best to ignore her.

After a large portion of hamburger steak and another hour reading about The New Russia (which didn't seem so new as far as she was concerned), Julia hung her head off the top bunk and said, "You can get on the bottom if you want. I'm going to sleep here."

Cayne turned to her with half-hearted irritation. "I know."

Julia's blood rushed to her head. She flopped on her back and said, "Okay."

She tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Her thoughts raced, flowing into the future, stretching back in time in a nauseating flurry of fear and disbelief. Her dreams, when at last they came, were nightmares. The kind of you-are-all-alone ones that really filled her with fright. And after such a long time feeling safe.
Chapter Thirty

Julia woke up, and then she threw up.

She stumbled over Cayne in her dash to the bathroom—he had, at some point, moved to the floor beside the cot—and managed to yank the plastic lid open before she got sick.

She spent a full five minutes recovering from the shock. Usually she had an iron stomach. Other than by the road outside of Salt Lake City, Julia hadn't hugged the porcelain bowl since the West Tennessee Fair in seventh grade.

She refused to consider what had made her stomach so upset today; instead, she brushed her teeth three times and took an extra hot shower. When she emerged from the bathroom, still warm and damp, Cayne was sitting in the child-sized leather chair by the window. He looked tired and unhappy in the blue glow of early a.m.

"Good morning," she said, as if everything was normal.

He nodded without smiling. He was looking at her in that searching way of his, and Julia, embarrassed, wasn't in the mood.

"Sleep well?" she asked as sarcastically as she could.

He raised his right eyebrow.

She dropped onto the bottom bunk and stared up at the bed above her, forcing her eyes not to wander to the floor, where, after a moment, Cayne asked, "Are you okay?"

She glared at him as her cheeks pinked. "Fine."

"Are you sure?" She couldn't tell if the intensity in his voice was true concern or obligation.

Julia sighed. "What exactly do you want?"

He shrugged. "To check."

"Consider me checked."

He crossed his arms and turned back to the window. He was radiating doom and gloom, and suddenly Julia just couldn't handle it. She had tricked herself into thinking that a new day would bring an old Cayne; she was beginning to think that Cayne was never coming back.

She'd been foolish to get so comfortable in the first place. To assume that he would like her. That he would continue liking her. Hadn't she learned that never happened? Given enough time, she could ruin any good thing.

"Why didn't you just leave me in Memphis," she said to the back of his head. "Why are you even with me now?"

He turned to her, his handsome face carefully vacant. "I can't leave you alone."

"Yes you can." He shook his head, and her heart broke a little. He wanted to leave her. "Then why not call one of your friends to babysit me? What about that bartender in Utah. Andrew, right?"

"André."

"Whatever. I'm sure he's got a busy flight schedule, but maybe he could take a few days off."

"Maybe that would be best."

Julia's blood froze, then boiled. "Do they have Nephilim shrinks?" she asked flatly.

He looked at her blankly, and Julia twirled her finger around her ear. "Psychologists. Head doctors. For people who're crazy, Cayne. Messed up."

There was a pause, and then, "Okay."

"Ever thought of going to one?"

"No."

"See, the thing is—" She sounded shrill; she lowered her voice. "The thing is, it isn't normal for people to act the way you're acting. So hot and cold."

Cayne seemed hypnotized by the window. "I don't understand the way you're acting."

Julia laughed. It was bitter, and the sound of it made her hurt worse. "Why am I acting this way?" The shrillness was back. "Well, let's see. My parents get killed by this evil half-demon guy, and I find myself a nice little warehouse to chill in. And then you drop by, and you invite me to join your quest to kill the guy that tried to kill me. And I, having nothing better to do, join. Have I gotten it right so far?"

He didn't reply, so she continued. "Killing this guy turns out to be harder than I thought, and along the way I find out that there are a whole bunch of people, just like me, getting killed. And the shit gets crazier. But no matter how bad it got, you were always there. We helped each other. I thought we were friends. I thought..."

Julia couldn't say what she thought, and Cayne didn't ask. "Things were as good as they could be. I mean, maybe you secretly disliked me, but you keep that secret pretty well. Then the other night you get your memory back, and suddenly it's like none of this stuff ever happened. You act like a different person."

"I am a different person."

"A person who doesn't like to be with me."

"Julia, I don't like being around anyone."

"You don't like being around anyone." She smacked her head. "Okay. Wow. And here I thought this whole you not talking to me thing was just me. But it's anyone. Doesn't matter who I was. I could be anyone."

"No," he said softly. "You could not be anyone."

"No, I guess not." She felt sick again. "You know what. Just go get André. Your friend. Whatever his name is. But don't give me anymore of this crap. If you don't want to stay with me, I'd rather you tell me the truth." Julia flipped onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow, painfully aware of how dramatic she was acting, and equally painfully unable to stop herself.

The tears came like clockwork. As soon as her lips stopped forming words, the damn things started letting out sobs and whimpers and other annoying, sniveling sounds.

She pushed her mouth into the pillow and turned so her back was to Cayne. She heard the leather chair creak as he stood. She heard the door open and close.
Chapter Thirty-One

Julia's mini-breakdown was finished not ten minutes after it started. She felt like a drowned cat and took another shower to clear her head. She was tying her All-Stars when Cayne walked in.

He looked down at the floor and cleared his throat. "I called André. He'll go with you from Chicago to Washington."

Julia felt like he had hit her in the stomach with a sledgehammer. "Are you serious? Cayne, why?"

He spoke slowly, like he had just learned how. "I think it would be best."

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.

"It isn't working," Cayne said carefully. "I tried, but I can't." He spread his arms, and let them drop to his jeans.

And the waterworks started. Julia was bawling again in less than one second flat, and Cayne was, of course, horrified.

"Please." He wiped his hands on his blue jeans, looking helpless. "You'll be better without me," he tried.

She shook her head, all decorum lost to pitiful, kindergarten sorrow.

"Staying with you—it's not the right thing. For either of us."

"It's going...fine...for me," she said, sobbing harder.

"It doesn't seem like it."

Julia almost slapped him, but instead she dropped onto the bottom bunk, crying messily into her hands. She cried and cried and cried and cried. She held on to the pillow and totally lost track of time and Cayne and everything but everything she had lost: her parents, the twins, her few school girlfriends she would never see again and the truck Harry drove and college plans.

She missed the French fries at school that made everyone feel sick but that Dirk and Dwight gorged on anyway. She missed getting milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A with Suzanne after test days and listening to her iPod, the new one she'd just gotten, not a week before the house burned down and they left her.

Now Cayne was leaving her, and she missed him, too.

At some point she felt the weight of his hand on her shoulder, but she batted him off. When she wiped her stinging, swollen eyes she found him standing solemnly by the window, looking for all the world like he was the victim. "I'm going to spend the day until Chicago in a room on another car," he said. He told Julia the number, but she didn't hear it.

And he didn't leave.

Cayne showered, he changed, and he planted himself in the leather chair like some kind of beautiful gargoyle. He propped one foot on his knee and picked at his shoe, then glanced up, suddenly seeming almost shy. "I hope you know I, uh...I care about you."

It was the worst thing he could have said. Her whole body got hotter than a white dwarf star and her heart did this ridiculous barrel roll and Julia knew—she really knew—that she was probably in love with him.

She snorted, a knee-jerk reaction that even jerked her tone—into something twisted. "As what? A friend?"

"No. As...as you."

Her shoulders started trembling, and then the rest of her. She put her wobbling hands under her thighs. "So?"

Cayne said nothing as he stood. He pushed his hands into his pockets and looked at his feet. Finally, his eyes flicked to hers; they were soft and honest and sorry. "I'm glad I knew you."

Julia bit her tongue. There were too many things she could have said, and she probably would have regretted all of them.

She prepared to turn her heart into stone. This was obviously how her life was supposed to go. No family or friends, bouncing from place to place. That's how it had always been.

She would cry, sure, but the tears would fade to restless dreams, and when the morning light broke through her compartment window, she would be ready.

He turned to go, and her hand shot out and she cried, "Cayne!"

He turned slowly, and she heard him say, "Yes?" The word was drawn-out, awkward, and she heard it from a far, high place—like she was watching the exchange from the top of a long and winding staircase.

She observed herself: angry. Taking a risk, she noted, but she still said, "Stop."

"This is—"

"The best you can do? Screw your best. Screw whatever you were going to say."

"Julia."

She shook her head. She had to stall. "I...don't want to say bye like this. Can't you stay till Chicago? I don't want to switch trains without you."

She stared at him, her eyes imploring. At last he dropped his small bag and walked to the leather chair.

Slowly, surely, for there was nothing to lose now, Julia knelt in front of him and put her hands on his knees. He looked startled; she was steeled. "How about you tell me what's wrong." She smiled softly. "We're friends at least. And it bothers me, you being unhappy."

Cayne's warm hands enfolded hers, and he set them away, looking down at the floor, at the patterned grayish carpet. For the longest time, he was quiet, and she watched his shoulders rise and fall. Then his gaze jerked up. "I can't."

"You can." She put everything she could into those two words. He would have to talk, because she wasn't going to let things end like this. She was going to keep something.

Cayne closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He seemed to deflate. "I wish I'd never gotten my memory back."

He spoke haltingly, as if each word were dragged from his lungs and up his throat, kicking and screaming. "I didn't know I was...like this."

"Like what?" she whispered.

He motioned to himself.

"What's wrong with you? I like you well enough."

"You don't know me."

"Cayne—"

"Don't tell me I'm wrong," he barked. Julia refused to recoil, and his faced flushed with guilt. "I can't tell you." He looked pained.

Julia twisted the hem of her shirt into a knot. "It's okay if you don't tell me. I don't need to know."

"But you should. If I was at all..." He sighed. "I'm not a good man, Julia."

"I can decide what's good to me."

"You don't have all the facts."

"I don't need them!" She softened her tone and said, "Cayne, I don't need to know about your past, because it's the past. The present is what matters. As far as I'm concerned, you didn't exist until you dropped into my warehouse."

"But that's—"

"The way I feel. Don't you dare tell me I'm wrong or that's stupid."

He looked away. "I was going to say dangerous."

She shook her head. "I've survived this long with you. Because of you."

"That's not enough."

"For you to stay with me?"

"For it to be right."

What was 'it'? Her stomach lurched and she held her breath, but he didn't say anything.

So, slowly and carefully, she closed the space between them. Her face was smooth, her motions infused with the certainty she felt. She slid her hands up his arms and caught his face between her palms. He didn't resist. She smiled, a wobbly, frightened little smile. "Silly demon-boy." Her voice shook. "I'll decide what's right for me."

She took a big, deep breath and leaned in close to kiss him.
Chapter Thirty-Two

Julia opened her eyes and thought she was still dreaming.

Cayne was holding her. Like, bonna fide arms around her, chest pressed to her back, chin pressed to her shoulder holding her. She had her hands over his hands, and his hands were locked around her waist—possessively. It was the closest she'd ever been to a guy. Maybe to any human. But he wasn't human, was he?

Every inch of him that touched her burned. Every breath he exhaled tickled her hair. His heart drummed a rhythm she felt in her bones.

Amazing.

Wanting to feel his skin, feeling daring—oh so daring—she reached back around him and eased her hand under his shirt. He let out a lazy breath and turned his head. Julia turned to kiss the sharp scar at his throat, then stroked his hair off his brow and re-arranged herself so she was facing him.

As she melded herself to the strong curves of his body, she felt what could only have been joy.

The white noise of the moving train, the occasional voice or soft steps in the hall, the high pitch of wind through a crack in the window—no longer notes on a cruel, lonely scale, but the soothing sounds of life, moving straight down a sure path, as she was. The tightness of the room was snug instead of stifling. Even the simple sensation of cloth on her skin was something sensual, to be savored.

She had Cayne. For a neat slip of time, she listened to him breathe, and it was the only thing in her head.

Slowly, in the way of a rain just coming, the deep push and pull of his breath became a shallow whoosh and rasp. His grip on her tightened. Julia kissed his cheek and stroked a hand down his warm back.

He flinched out of her grasp, twisting and groaning as he rolled to face the wall.

"Cayne." He moaned, and Julia shook him. "Hey...wake up."

*

Cayne's heart was pounding when he awoke, and it took several shuddering breaths to slow it down.

For a moment, he was a boy in the woods at night, fighting off a pack of men mad as wild dogs. He opened his eyes, but the fists and the torches and the red faces didn't fade away.

He checked for gashes at the sites of old wounds: his side, his shoulder, his thigh, his back, his throat. He traced the smooth white line there—the only scar he had—and took several deep breaths.

He wasn't dying. "Julia."

"I'm right here." She was beside him, leaning on her elbow, watching with those wide brown eyes.

It had been a long, long time since he'd thought lucidly about that night, but he recalled it now with unpitying clarity. He could still smell the swift summer air. He could see the black dirt, dressed with soft grass and purple wildflowers.

He felt the forest floor as it fit itself around him, the dirt going soggy with blood. He heard their grunts and the thud of their boots on roots and weeds. The clamor rose above the call of an owl and the rush of midnight wind through the bramble.

It was the night they almost killed him. The night he was born again.

It didn't matter now. None of it mattered anymore, and yet... His eyes met Julia's. Hers blinked. He swallowed and pushed himself up on both his elbows. With his head hanging between his shoulders and his hand in his hair, he said, "I was born in 1812. We—my mother and I—lived in Perthshire. Killin. In what you would call the Highlands."

He waited a moment—waiting for her, he guessed, and when Julia stayed quiet, images of glassy gray water and the great mound above it appeared behind his eyes. He'd spent the first years of his life on the shore of Loch Tay, catching trout with Stephen McIntyre, keeping watch over the house and his mother.

"It was a God-fearing place. The villagers thought my father was a traveler who...well, who forced himself on my mum. My mother told me different. She died when I was seven. On her death bead, she swore me to silence.

"Mum's sister was wed to a bonnet laird who took me in to tend sheep. They had no children of their own."

He'd done well in school, and despite the hardships of the time, his little loft room had held happy memories. Until...

"When I was eleven, I started going the way of my father. Mother had warned me about it, told me to run when it happened. I should've."

But Stephen and Danny had been practicing wood chopping. And when Cayne had woken up a foot taller and twice as wide as he'd been the day before, he'd wanted to challenge them.

"My relatives were horrified by my change. My aunt was superstitious; she'd always had suspicions about my conception. It was her who brought up the demon." He rubbed his eyes. "I should've run. I was young, though. Stupid."

He'd fled his aunt's enormous eyes and his uncle's weathered hand and run over the moor, to the little grove were there was a tree fort, the base for all their mischief.

Stephen and Danny had been awed by his amazing strength, hopelessly defeated in the wood-chopping contest.

"We were at each other with the hatchets, for sport, when Stephen got me in the leg."

Cayne leaned against the wall, feeling the metal slice his thigh. "They ran to fetch help. When I came to some men were carrying me home. But all the pain was leeched away."

By the time he reached his house, he could walk on his own. He had, in fact, run.

"The rest is...not clear." Cayne exhaled. And even now, foggy though it was, it made his mouth dry. "They were angry. Scared. They thought it was the devil in me, my father. I guess it was." He laughed hollowly. "The men of our Killin put it to vote. They brought me out for the exorcism."

Julia murmured her sorrow. Cayne wondered if she knew how the churchgoers of his village exorcised evil. Probably not.

"My uncle and the other men waited for night. They brought me to the grounds near the earl's home." For a few seconds, he just breathed. In and out, a rasp louder than the rumble of train on tracks. "They came at me. Knives, clubs. Kicking. Their fists. Trying to get the demon out."

Friends' fathers. Older boys. The church elders. His own uncle. Anyone with a blade and working limbs.

"At first I tried to fight." Adrenaline made him brave. It powered his fists. Bubbled up blasphemy in his throat. But they were too many.

"They were...crazed." He could do nothing but lie there. While their fists ruined his face. While their blades pierced his skin. While their clubs shattered his bones. The pain, mind-bending at first, made him scream. Then the fog. Sweet fog.

"I passed out. When I came back, one of them put his hands around my neck. I knew that I was...probably going to pass."

Cayne had felt his energy ebbing and instinctively sought more. Mr. McAlter was looking into his eyes, trying to call out the devil. He grabbed the man's head and got what he needed. Luck got him the hatchet.

The pain receded and a new strength filled his limbs. He could feel his wounds sealing shut. He drew enough breath to scream, and swung the hatchet with the devil's power.

"I leeched their energy. I managed to get the hatchet, the one...Stephen... I drained his father and killed the rest."

He glanced at Julia; she looked horrified enough to run, but it was too late now. He'd only told this story once before, and now that he'd started he couldn't stop.

"I killed them. Most of them. Bloody well enjoyed it, too. I remember the silence after the rest of them ran. But my uncle didn't run. He had a duty."

He beat Cayne nearly unconscious, using only his fists, an endless cacophony of bone on bone.

"He cut my throat." It was, for some reason, the only scar that had remained. "My will killed him."

Cayne had known it was the end for him, too. The evil had been drained, for he could feel his limbs no more. He floated above himself, watching the dark liquid pool in the grass, hypnotized by the gasps and gurgles that pierced the silent wood. He had been exorcised, chased into the thick summer air.

"They were all clansmen. Men who loved my mother. My uncle's blade killed me, yet in an hour I was well. Before dawn I climbed Ben Lawers. I spent weeks there, living as no human could. My mind was gone. I was gone."

He ceased to eat, to drink, to think.

"One day a man came."

His skin was darker than Cayne's, and he had wings. The man was very large and spoke strangely, but Cayne wasn't scared. He didn't get scared anymore.

"He said his name was Samyaza, and he and I were brothers. He had come to take me away. He told me to think about my own wings, and then I had them. Samyaza said we were the same.

"He taught me to fly. He even gave me my name. I should have kept it hidden, but I told him what I'd done." Cayne put a hand over his scar. "He said the men deserved what they got, and what I did to them was proof that I belonged with other Nephilim."

Cayne stopped, because Julia's cheeks were wet. He needed to tell her more—about what kind of killer he really was—but she had cuddled up to his back. Her fingers were playing in his hair.
Chapter Thirty-Three

Julia ran her fingers through his hair and feathered kisses across his face. He closed his eyes.

At last he seemed asleep, so she snuggled beside him. The room was quiet and still except the gentle rocking of the boxcar. She was almost out when, very softly, he whispered, "You shouldn't."

"Shouldn't what?" She buried her face between his chest and his arm, already guessing what he might say.

"Stay with me."

"I disagree."

He sighed. "You shouldn't."

"Well, I do." She traced a finger over his bicep. "I like being with you. I love it."

"Please don't say that." He moved one arm over his eyes, but she took his other hand in hers. "I told you about what happened because I need you to understand. That's my nature. It was with me when I was a child, and it's still there," he said, his voice rising. "That wasn't even the surface. I could tell you things to make you—"

"Cayne. C'mon."

"Listen."

"No."

"Please?" His voice was husky.

"No." She rose on one elbow to look him in the face. "You already told me about your past and I am telling you, it's not your fault. You were a kid, Cayne. A little kid. Now no more blaming yourself. Please. I want you to—"

"There's more than that. When I wasn't a kid."

"I don't care."

"There was a...um... There was a girl."

In the painful silence that followed, Julia made a desperate attempt to put her ego to sleep. She had wondered when this would come up. "What was her name?" she asked softly, not really wanting to know.

"Katherine." And wasn't that cliché? The name for lovers. "I called her Kat."

"How did you meet her?"

"It was after I left Samyaza. She...found me."

At a place called Aconcagua, in the Andes Mountains near Argentina. He'd been wandering alone for several years, he said, sticking to remote places to ensure Samyaza and other Hunters would have a difficult time finding him.

Kat had been there with a college group, hiking. For some reason, that was all the information Julia needed.

He'd gone with her to Canada, told her all of his secrets, and then Samyaza had found him—and her.

Cayne hadn't even gotten to bury her body, and in fighting Samyaza, he'd sustained a head wound that had mangled his memory.

He'd been near the site of the battle, and probably her grave, during the time he was recovering, and he'd never even known it. Now it was too late.

Julia ached to ask more questions, but everything got stuck in her throat. And for the best.

What she really felt wasn't curiosity, but sadness, and a manic craving to do something for him. But there was nothing. And nothing to say. So she wrapped him tightly in her arms.

*

When she awoke the next morning, Julia had no idea how to feel. Sad for Cayne? Happy something had finally happened between them? She woke up in his arms, and that was awesome. He was asleep, and that was also good.

The world through the windows was wide and wooded under a blue sky. Julia slipped out to the food cart, and she let herself smile as she filled a Styrofoam plate with bacon and cinnamon rolls for Cayne and one with pancakes and syrup for herself.

She put the food on the table by the door and ran her fingers through her hair. Then she stood by the bed and watched him. He was on his stomach, one knee jutting off the cot, one arm around the pillow they'd shared.

Julia wanted him awake, but she didn't want to wake him. Hoping to take the pillow's place, she slid between him and the wall. The moment her body indented the cot, Cayne turned and put a heavy arm around her. Julia snuggled into his chest.

She felt both giddy and duped. All her life, she'd enjoyed things like snicker doodle cookies and mystery novels and Seinfeld reruns and hot baths, and there was this. It kind of knocked everything else out of the water.

"Hey," she whispered, when Cayne lifted a lid to look at her. "I got breakfast."

He didn't move, and, thinking she would lie there until he got up, Julia closed her eyes.

Then his mouth found her ear and she shivered.

Immediately, she knew what page they were on, and it was the happy one. She tried to dip her feet in, telling herself all his troubles had been with him forever, but he'd only just found her. After the night they'd had, they should celebrate.

So yeah, they let the food get cold.

By the time Julia disentangled herself from his arms, her pancakes were gross and soggy, so they shared his cinnamon rolls.

She noticed little things as they faced each other on the cot, like how Cayne let his knee touch hers, how he looked at her non-stop while she talked. So many things were the same as they had been before... But there were so many new things.

She'd known what his face looked like when he was mad and glad and everything in between, what he sounded like moving around the room, what it felt like to sit by him, and the way his voice sounded at every octave—except the one he used to whisper in her ear. He was like a beautiful painting she'd seen from every angle, except on the wall in her house. And viewed that way, it was almost another work entirely.

After he finished his bacon, he squeezed her hands and ran his fingers through her hair. Then he was up and pacing the room, stretching his legs. He seemed a little awkward—no one's legs needed to be stretched that much—so she beckoned him back to the bed.

He sat and gave her a funny little smile.

She smiled back, and patted the tiny space beside her. "Come here."

Cayne stretched out, his head on her arm. His hair was soft, tickling.

Julia smiled, incredulous. "Are you being shy?"

He looked up at her from under long lashes, and she leaned down to kiss his head. Somehow that broke the ice.

"You know, meeting you was a pretty lucky thing," she said, grinning.

"The verdict's still out on you."

"Oh really?"

"Okay," he said, softly. "I guess I'll keep you around."

She put an arm around him. "I liked you the first time I saw you. You were kind of a dull and uptight," she teased, "but I liked you."

"Is that right?"

"Yeah. You were a little messy, too." She feigned wrinkling her nose at the memory of his wounds inside the pecan warehouse. "I had to fix you up."

"You shouldn't have done that."

Julia cradled his head in her palm. "Cause you could've healed yourself in like, a minute?"

"I remember looking at you. I thought you were hot, that maybe I was dreaming. Then I noticed the blood on your face."

"You feel bad because of that?" Julia asked. "You should feel bad. You tried to leave me. And after I healed you, too, meanie."

"You were loud."

"That's no excuse."

"What was I supposed to do?"

"Um...like me?"

He snorted. "Your temper was vicious."

"Yeah, I was pissed. But you weren't exactly Mr. Hospitable. Poor people skills."

"I'd spent too much time alone."

Julia brushed his cheek. "I'm glad you're with me now."

"Someone had to get you out of that warehouse." He looked up at her. "How long had it been since you bathed?"

"Cayne!"

He tugged her hair. "Unclean. I thought, someone should wash her."

"Someone. You pervert."

He shrugged. "Perverts like all lasses. I only like you."

"That's not true."

"It is." He arched an earnest brow.

"Well, I only like you, too," she said, blushing.

"Not too much I hope."

"There's no such thing as too much."

To that, he didn't reply.
Chapter Thirty-Four

When she was pretty sure the day couldn't get any better, Cayne started a tickle fight that Julia turned into a pillow fight, which, because Nephilim Hunters seldom used pillows, she won.

He went to heat up the bacon she'd gotten him with a big white feather on his head, and she let it stay there while he read their horoscopes from the newspaper that had appeared outside the door.

Cayne said he couldn't remember his birthday—"It's been two hundred years"—but he remembered his mother said his father had come in the winter, so Julia assigned him October third. The third, because she was born May third, and October because it was just a few weeks away and they could celebrate.

"With birthday hats and all kinds of good stuff," she promised.

Cayne arched a brow. "What's the good stuff?"

Julia hit him. "Shut up. Get to reading."

The stars promised that Cayne would find himself in an inescapable personal conundrum that would test his resolve. Julia was up for new friends and warned not to cry until she was sure the milk was spilled.

"Now that," she said, "is so us."

Cayne batted his lashes. "Can I be your new friend?"

She grabbed his hands. "Only if you tell me a story."

He shook his head. "I'm impaired."

"Okay... Well. I get to ask you some questions."

Again, a frown.

"I want to know about you."

"Tall, dark, and handsome."

"In your dreams, bird boy."

She loosened him up with an X or Y quiz, like the ones she and her friends played in study hall—X being something like Die in a fire and Y being something like Freeze to death in Antarctica.

Of course, death wasn't something Julia wanted to make Cayne think about, nor was it something she wanted to linger on herself, so she made it silly, like Pink hair or Pink skin (Cayne ran a hand through his hair and, hilariously, said "Skin. Of course."), Singing or Dancing (he did a jig, although she knew he had a nice singing voice).

She gradually built to things like Knowing who your dad is or Seeing your mom again for five minutes (Cayne picked his mom immediately), Hook up with the fifty most beautiful women who've ever lived or Hang out with someone special for a week. (She was impressed when he chose the latter, though maybe he was just humoring her).

There were more she wanted to ask, but she didn't have the nerve. The game stopped because it was hard to arrange the questions so they didn't hit on a sensitive subject. In study hall, "tough" questions were interesting. Not so much if you'd already lived most of them.

Plus, Cayne started asking her questions, and she found herself pouring out her life story, telling him obscure things no one had ever wanted to know and important things she'd never told anyone.

He listened while she talked about school and how much she'd disliked it, the twins and how much she missed them, her birth parents and all the questions she had about them, and Suzanne and Harry and what it was like for them to be gone.

When she finished a particularly nasty tale of Visitation Day at the Haven—the day when potential foster parents came shopping—Cayne pulled her into a tight hug. "There's no way for you to go back there, is there?" he murmured.

It took her a second to get what he meant. "No way. That's why I ran off when my house burned. I'll be eighteen this coming May."

Cayne brushed kisses along her cheek. "I want only good for you."

She grinned. "Then keep doing this."

He did, and she fell asleep.

When she woke it was afternoon, and Cayne was looking at her intensely. She smiled and asked, "Is there something on my face?" He shook his head. "Well, out with it."

"I'm going to keep you safe," he said. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"I know." She wrapped her arms around his neck. "I'll never let anything happen to you, either. Except...it seems like something already did."

Cayne's face scrunched.

"You smell..." Julia sniffed. "Kind of like...mmm...a Nephilim." She jumped on him, tickling. "Eww! Eww—ah! Gross!"

Cayne flipped her over, flung her over his shoulder, and whirled around in the little room. He turned, snapping at her with his teeth. "Nephilim like to devour little Julias." He dropped her on the cot and attacked her with kisses.

*

They switched trains in Chicago. It was sunset, and the station was chilly and airy, and Julia was snuggled in a beige coat, and Cayne looked hot in a gray Ralph Lauren sweater. (Guys who were two centuries old tended not to care how you dressed them, which was cool).

Julia was really digging all the couple stuff. Their fingers had been locked all day. She held his left hand. Sometimes she kissed it. Cayne seemed leery about PDA when she was the initiator, but not when he was. He enjoyed flipping the back of her hair or sneaking a chaste kiss onto her cheek. While they watched the train, he leaned down and planted a soft on one her lips. A girl across the tracks looked jealous, and it was the highlight of Julia's day.

This time, when they boarded, Cayne slipped on—no mojo or anything, just Regular Joe trickery. Julia enjoyed slipping through the doors with him. It felt like they were together now. Really together. Once in the room, she smiled and unzipped her bag. "I have a question."

"Lots of them. Poor thing."

"Shut up. Now, for real." With a flourish, she pulled out a feather. It was glossy charcoal, softer than gossamer, with a thin band of silver on the tip. "This is yours, isn't it? Not Samyaza's."

Cayne nodded, and she brought it to her lips.

"Where did you get that?"

She slid it behind her ear. "When you fell through the roof."

"You thieved it," he accused. "You stole my feather. And you didn't even know me."

"So." She giggled. "I wanted it."

"Did you? You wanted it?" He wrapped his arms around her, and as his lips touched hers, the feather vanished from her hair.

Julia gasped. "My feather!" Cayne held it out of reach. Julia whined, "It's a memento."

"Come and get it," he teased.

She climbed onto the top cot and prepared to jump. He held his hands out. "Don't do that. You don't have wings."

"I could still jump."

"You don't have to. All you have to do is kiss me."

Julia gladly obliged.

A few hours later, it was dark, and Cayne was in the leather chair and she was on the floor between his legs, getting a back rub. New couple talk was going swimmingly. Julia had told him all about the modern-day terminology of love. First there was a thing ("Annabelle and Joe Guy are having a thing. Wonder if it'll go anywhere."). Next came talking, a semi-formal testing of the waters. Then seeing each other, kind of dating. And after that, true coupledom. Facebook official. For when things were serious and people were committed.

After he melted her by saying that they were probably not even in the league of high school relationships—"I guess all the stuff we've been through gets us some points," she agreed—Julia turned the spotlight back on him.

"I want to know more about when you were by yourself."

"Before I met you?"

"Right. Like, did you ever travel with anyone else? Or fly by them for a little while?"

"Sometimes I stopped to see André."

"No one else?"

"Rosa, a few times."

"That must've gotten lonely."

"I was too busy for that."

"Driven..."

She focused on the feel of his fingers in her hair until he spoke again.

"I knew I was going to kill him. The fall-out made me forget why, but still, I knew."

Julia wound her arm around his ankle, stroking the top of his foot. He didn't say anything, but brought his head to rest on hers.

"I hate Samyaza," Julia said. "I wish I could kill him."

"You won't. I'll be me. He never gets near you. I can't believe I let him near you when I have." He squeezed her lightly with his knees. "He had his hands on you. That makes me want to kill him even more."

"Yeah. That pretty much sucked."

"You were brave."

"I trusted you," she said, remembering the ease with which he caught her.

"Best not do that."

A few minutes went by with him just kneading her back. "Well I do."

She turned and found Cayne's face studiously blank, and for a second she thought he might pull away. Instead put his face in her hair. "You smell good," he said.

"You are good," she said, turning to face him.

He stroked her mouth with his. "You taste good." His hands trailed down her arms, and Julia whispered, "No."

Making out was only fun if it wasn't a distraction from something weightier.

So Cayne continued messing with her hair, and Julia made him tell her about history. She was stunned at how much the English and the Scots hated each other, at least back in the day, and also by how much things had changed since then. (Cayne spent his childhood fishing. She'd spent hers on Xbox).

The really weird thing was, for an ancient, Cayne didn't seem to know all that much. He didn't remember why women started wearing bras, seemed clueless about the Titanic, had never hit up a Beatles concert, thought prohibition was merely "prohibiting something," and didn't seem to know that Pearl Harbor was significant.

"Do you know about World War II?" she asked, incredulous.

"America and Europe? The axis and the allies?"

"Yeah. So what's the inside story?"

He looked miffed. "I don't know."

Julia's mouth hung open.

"Come here." He lifted her up and led her to the mirror. Julia was still gaping when she saw her hair, done kind of like pigtails, twisted up on top of her head.

Cayne's hand hovered over it. "This is how ladies' hair looked where I was from."

"Pigtails?"

He laughed. "Platelets. Your hair looks nice this way."

"Well thanks." Julia grinned, feeling a little like someone's Bratz doll. "Nineteenth Century Scotland Julia. Now," she pulled him back away from the mirror, "back to World War II. Do you really not remember anything?"

Cayne shook his head.

"Did you have amnesia more than once?"

"No."

"What about Vietnam?"

"I've been there." As an afterthought: "That was also a war."

"Cayne, why did the American Civil War start?"

"Freedom for African slaves."

"You're getting this from history books! You're not that old. Why did you say you were?"

"I was born in 1812."

"You were not."

He tilted his head.

"Why don't you know some this stuff if you were alive for it? I mean, I know you weren't in every country at once, but you didn't even know about D-Day. What did you spend your time doing?"

He turned to the window. "My memories still haven't settled."

"Oh. Yeah, I guess not."

"Even if when they do, I might not be able to tell you much. We were fighting our own battles then." He winked at her over his shoulder. "They probably weren't as interesting."

"Will you tell me about them?"

He looked back at the window and mumbled something.

"What?" she asked.

"I'm tired."

Julia let her curiosity fade away. "I'll sleep near you every night, and maybe your nightmares will go away."

"If anyone could make that happen, it's you."

He sat beside her on the cot. She traced a circle under his eye, and he caught her wrist. He placed her palm on his face.

"I'm tired, too," she said.

So they slept.
Chapter Thirty-Five

When they were close to D.C., Julia pulled Cayne onto the cot and kissed him. Where in the past forty-eight hours things had been pretty PG-13, they now broached R territory.

Cayne broke contact when things started getting really hot and disappeared into the hall. He returned with doughnuts, coffee, and The Washington Post.

He sat in the leather chair and skimmed the paper. Julia looked past him, out the window. The sky was blue-gray, with dirty looking clouds that hung low to the ground. She felt claustrophobic.

Cayne closed the paper—apparently there was no front-page story about a Stained retreat—and stood to look out the window. Julia joined him. "How will we know what we're looking for?"

"If Rosa said answers will find you, they'll find you." Cayne sounded as enthusiastic as she felt. "We wait."

Julia hugged herself. She didn't want to leave the train. She had a feeling that something bad would happen.

Already, she was seriously regretting their decision to follow Rosa's advice. An organized group of Stained—a group that had assassins and possibly zombie-like bikers and who knew what else, a group that was actively participating in some weird-people war—wasn't Julia's idea of a good time.

But she needed to know more about herself, more about her birth parents, more about her purpose. She was sick to death of being a pointless orphan, even a pointless orphan with a hot half-demon boyfriend.

Cayne knelt by the cot, where Julia sat triple-coating her toenails.

He scrunched his nose and put a hand on her knee. "Close your eyes."

Julia did, expecting a kiss. Instead, she felt his finger press on her forehead. Then she felt a sharp sting.

"Ow."

"Sorry," he said hastily. "I created a link between us. That way if we somehow get separated, we'll be able to find each other."

"Seriously?" He nodded. "Why didn't you do this weeks ago?"

He shrugged.

"Oh." She pouted, rubbing her stinging skin. "Well you could have told me it would burn."

Cayne ran a finger over the spot. "But then you wouldn't have let me do it."

Julia gave him her evilest evil eye, and that's when she noticed something in her head; a warm glow that, strangely, felt like his lips.

"Do you care?"

She shook her head, suddenly shy. "I think I maybe like it."

"I like it too." He smiled, and she was dazzled. "Even if you are cluttering things up."

"I am not! My mind is in perfect working order."

"Whatever you say, runaway."

"You're a poet."

"And I didn't realize it."

Julia rolled her eyes as the intercom crackled to life, and an over-eager voice announced that the Union Station, D.C. stop was ten miles away.

"Cayne?" she said, lacing up her All-Stars and getting up to pace. "Do you think we should be worried? Not worried, I guess, but you know, extra vigilant or something? I know you said whatever it is will find us, but what if it's—"

Her worries were muffled by Cayne's hand on her mouth. He pulled her back against his front, wrapped his arm around her hips, and let his head drop to her shoulder. His cheek, rough with stubble, brushed her own.

"Nothing will hurt you."

He turned her to him and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I need you to promise me something." She nodded. "If somehow we should get separated, or even if we don't, I want you to promise to consider your safety above anything."

Julia started to protest—it sounded an awful lot like he was saying, "Ditch me if you have to"—but he looked into her eyes and said, "Please."

She nodded. "I'll be careful."

"Thank you."

Washington was springing up around them, a confusing maze of cement and glass and asphalt and traffic. "I think maybe we should just keep riding this thing," she said.

"You need to know."

"How will that change anything? Sam will want to kill me regardless, and he'll always want you, right? Cayne," she whispered, "what if this goes wrong?"

His expression softened; he pulled her to him. "It won't," he said. "You'll be all right."

He kept an arm around her as they got off the Amtrak. This Union Station looked like a mall—a wide-open space with brick floors, a fancy ceiling, fat columns, and stores—and, like its cousin, it was jam-packed with people: men and women with brisk strides wearing suits and clutching briefcases, college students with iPads and team sweatshirts, tourists in windbreakers and jeans with cameras and shopping bags.

It was, for a split second, shocking. After the relative quiet and isolation of the train, Julia found the writhing mass of people overwhelming. But Cayne squeezed her shoulder and whispered in an exotic language into her ear.

He stopped at a locker, fed it one of their last five-dollar bills, and deposited their bags, and then they found the Metro line. The hub was all shadows and wind and creaking steel, and in those shadows, between plastic chairs and big windows, Julia imagined all sorts of frightening beings.

By the time they made it out of Union Station, Cayne looked ready to kill—her, a Nephilim, anyone really—and Julia was giddy in an Oh-My-God-What's-Going-To-Happen way. It was reckless, but she'd take it. She'd take any relief she could find.

Her fear-sharpened senses made everything vivid: the watercolor orange and purple streaks across the sky, the feel of Cayne's body brushing hers, the smell of asphalt and trees.

"Oh my God, the Capitol!" Julia gawked.

Cayne didn't seem interested in the sights. He was back on his game, tracking everyone as he moved with Julia beneath his arm, sticking to the shadows, keeping a distance from the crowd.

He was obviously thinking about the danger of their situation. Julia realized she should be, too, but the city had turned her into a stupid sightseer. She oohed and aahed over the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument and the reflecting pool.

She told herself this wasn't so bad. They were together, strolling alongside the Potomac, leaving their footprints in famous places.

After Cayne rolled his eyes at the White House (and Julia's enthusiasm at seeing it), she realized that he was one hundred percent detached from the excitement she was feeling. That knowledge finally killed her mood.

The sky had become an angry purple, and she started to wonder what night held for them, penniless and unable to use Cayne's powers of persuasion. She saw a gaggle of tourists about her age and let out a long breath. Cayne had revealed that he could pick pockets, so there was always that.

He rubbed her shoulder, and they walked on, first to more historical sites—the Jefferson Memorial, the Vietnam Wall—before moving into the city, eyes peeled for lodges or dull buildings where "stained" people could meet in anonymity. They even went to Georgetown. When Julia told Cayne it was one of the schools she'd been considering, he whistled.

"You must be a real dork."

He grinned, and she punched him.

Six hours after they started, the moon was beginning to rise. Julia yawned; Cayne looked tired, too, but maybe he was just tired of her whining.

At last, he said, "Let's go back to the Mall."

"Fine." Julia sighed. "Are you sure about Rosa's track record?"

Cayne gave her a long look.

"What if we're just wasting time?" She felt a spark of peace—she half-hoped they wouldn't find anything—and then a spark of panic. So many unknowns. "Are we, like, expecting some old person with a cane and a powdered wig to pull me into the bushes and tell me this big secret?" Julia scowled. "I wish we could just use your mojo. Get a hotel. Forget it."

Cayne ignored her suggestion and instead told her about Scotland—plaids were made to blend in with a clan's environment, not everyone wore tartans, etc.—as they found a bench on the west side of the National Mall. They sat back-to-back, one set of eyes for each direction, and Julia listened to his stories.

Cayne was explaining school life when he reached for her hand. "Trouble."

His grip was painfully tight as he jerked her off the bench and into the crowd. He was all but carrying her as they dashed past trees and tour guides and students with band instruments.

Julia was weak with relief when he slowed in front of a big building with columns—one of the Smithsonians—and pushed her ahead.

"Go on," he ordered.

"Cayne." She struggled to drag in a breath.

"It's okay." But of course it wasn't; they were moving again and she couldn't find the air to ask what was wrong.

Cayne walked smoothly past the ticket booth, obviously using his mojo again, which meant they must have really been caught. When they got inside, he steered her toward a dinosaur exhibit.

"We're being followed by a Nephilim," he said quickly. "He caught my eye in the Mall. We may have lost him—" Cayne slowed by a man-sized femur and flicked a quick gaze behind. "—but, damnit, we didn't."

Julia snuck a peak at a Hispanic man with a buzzed head and a short beard. He was slightly shorter than Cayne, and a lot thicker. He wore a black leather trench coat and thick, dark shades.

Cayne pulled her under the red velvet rope and into a family of Triceratops.

"I don't think he saw us." He ushered her between two of the larger models. "That's right." And as Julia tried to drop behind: "No, you're in front." She picked up the pace, and he directed her to the fake jungle in the middle of the exhibit. "There are two more," Cayne said.

He stopped Julia in the space between two huge palm trees and angled himself between her and the front of the museum. They both froze as the intercom crackled, and a very proper voice said the museum would close in ten minutes.

Cayne squeezed her wrist. "It'll be okay."

Julia nodded, for a second fully aware that they were being surrounded but were just standing there with all the dinosaurs. Cayne pressed something into her hand, and she stared stupidly at his dagger. On the train he'd given her some basic lessons on how to use it, but she wasn't ready.

Julia didn't have time to say so. She glimpsed their friend, very close, and then Cayne shoved her through plastic leaves. They ducked the red rope and came out in a wide open space, and then Cayne was hurling her forward.

As he jerked her into a run, a loud voice boomed: "Stop right there!"
Chapter Thirty-Six

"Move!" Cayne hissed, but the other voice, thick with authority, overruled his: "Stop or I'll shoot!"

They stopped. Cayne pulled Julia to his chest and she turned her head. Two men—security guards in khaki uniforms—were pointing guns at her. Their auras were fringed with bright, nervous hues.

"Raise your hands slowly," the older one ordered while the second spit a backup call into his radio.

Julia started raising her arms, but Cayne pushed them back down. And that's when she noticed: the guards weren't aiming at her. They were aiming at the Hispanic Nephilim.

His face was serene, and nothing on it or in his body language suggested he was going to comply.

Everyone else watching the conflict seemed to reach the same conclusion. Gawking tourists began to edge away. Museum employees glanced at each other nervously and followed. The guards' voices roughened as the half-demon refused to follow their orders.

"Sir, if you don't show me your hands, I'll have to fire."

Their target smiled grimly. The guards aimed at his heart. Several others approached, guns drawn.

Cayne began to pull Julia away. Then, slowly, the Nephilim raised his hands.

"That's good," the first guard said. "Now—"

In a flash, his trench coat was sailing above him, and a long wicked sword was glinting under fluorescent light. Nobody moved or even breathed as the Nephilim reached the first guard and decapitated him.

The guard's body tumbled, spurting blood. Someone shrieked, and the crowd scattered like hunted geese. The guards opened fire. Julia saw a shower of bullets punch the Nephilim as Cayne jerked her away. She saw his skin erupt in fire and blood. He killed two more guards and she knew then that he would kill them all.

They raced down a hall, flying past glass cases filled with plants and taxidermied animals. They burst out an emergency exit and into a parking lot dotted with short, white tour buses.

Cayne shoved her down almost immediately, and an arrow whooshed over their heads. Two Nephilim charged out the museum door—one with a blood-red bow, the other with a crimson sword. The archer let another arrow fly, and Cayne tossed Julia out of the way. "I'm dropping the link."

Even before he finished his sentence, Julia felt a vacancy in her head, the absence of something hot and solid and distinctly Cayne.

An arrow sliced Cayne's left side as he and the archer collided on the asphalt. Cayne jerked the bow away and pushed the Nephilim into the arch of the second's swinging sword. The archer lost an arm. His blood, the brightest red Julia had ever seen, spewed from the nub at his shoulder like a fountain.

The other Nephilim swung again. His blade caught Cayne on the head, and a string of blood followed it through its arch.

One moment, Julia's body felt leaden. Frozen. The next, she leapt at the Nephilim, charged with an almost supernatural force. Then he swung his elbow into her stomach and she collapsed, dropping Cayne's dagger as she gasped. Cayne tackled the sword-wielding Nephilim—his ear had been severed, Julia saw; it was oozing dark, thick blood—and Julia scrambled for his blade. She nicked her finger on it as she tossed it to Cayne.

He snatched it from the air and plunged it into his opponent's chest, then beheaded him. The Nephilim's body fell jerkily as a geyser of blood erupted from his neck.

It was over.

Moving under the glow of streetlamps, Julia lunged for Cayne and buried her face in his warm chest. He wrapped his arms around and ran his fingers through her hair. "Good job."

"Your ear." She ran her hand up his neck, but Cayne caught it.

"Just stop the bleeding. Save your energy."

"But—"

"It will grow back."

She did as he'd asked, but she added a little something extra to help it along. Cayne hugged her. "I meant what I said." He grinned. "You're an asset."

Julia rolled her misty eyes. "You're such a dork."

He laughed. "I don't think that's—"

The exit door banged open, and Julia snapped her head toward it. The broad, Hispanic Nephilim from the museum emerged like a living nightmare. Every inch of him was covered in blood. Holes pocked his torso and chest, his arms and legs, and even his head; one above his eye was still smoking.

Julia gagged and clung to Cayne. He pushed her behind him and summoned his dagger.

The Nephilim opened his mouth, and his pink tongue rolled out. "Is it true you have forgotten us, Cayuzul?"

Julia shuddered. Cayne was stiff as a statue, staring at the half-demon with narrowed eyes. "You should run," he said softly.

It took Julia a second to realize he was talking to her. "What?"

"This is a Bound." His lips pursed as if the word left a bad taste in his mouth. "He can possess human bodies."

"And devour souls," the Bound added, sounding amused.

Julia blanched. Things like that existed?

With a gruesome smile, the Bound lunged. Cayne blocked the thing's sword with his shoulder. He grunted and drove his dagger into the Bound's arm. "Get outta here," he yelled, his voice thick. "I can't kill it if you're near!"

Julia nodded, stricken with the realization that she'd have to leave—or risk possession.

Cayne flipped the Bound over his shoulder, and she ran as fast as she could, past a row of busses and out of the parking lot, onto the sliver of grass between it and the street. How far did she need to run before Cayne was safe? How far before she was?

The aftermath of the Bound's museum massacre sprang up around her. People were still screaming. Emergency sirens were wailing. In her mind, Julia tasted smoke.

She aimed for the crowd that was filling the Mall, hoping to disappear in numbers, but several of the people she was running toward pointed at something behind her and shrieked.

Julia felt a body's heat a second before something grabbed her leg. She fell face first into the scratchy grass, narrowly avoiding a Nephilim's blade. He flew toward the crowd and the people scattered, screaming. He landed in the grass facing Julia and charged. She rolled to the right to avoid his second swing.

His third was too fast. She felt her skin tear, and her hands fumbled for her stomach, where warm blood dripped onto her jeans. By the time she realized the wound wasn't deep, the Nephilim had his sword over his head. Julia whispered an apology to Cayne and closed her eyes.

Gunfire erupted behind her, and Julia's eyes popped open. Dozens of bullets ripped into the Nephilim's chest. His white shirt became red and his pretty face went slack and his stark white feathers began to fall in bundles.

Julia spun around. Five armed people in gray uniforms stood beside a van. A sixth clutched a sword and wore a red patch on his arm. He was familiar, though she couldn't quite place him. His mahogany hair was close-cropped, his eyes were dark, and he seemed about her age. Maybe a couple of years older. Kind of cute, said a laughing voice from her memory. He rushed past her, moving faster than a human should, and drove his sword through the half-demon's heart.

The Nephilim jerked once and then stilled. Julia wobbled to her feet, and her savoir extended his hand. "I'm Nathan. Are you okay?" His smile was pleasant, and Julia got the sense that he wanted her to smile back.

She didn't. "I'm okay, but I need to find my friend." She hurried back past the busses, and Nathan ran to catch up.

"Slow down." Julia felt a burst of compulsion at the sound of his voice; she ignored it.

"Cayne!" she called. She circled the back side of the museum, glancing frantically from bushes to bike racks to newspaper stands, but he was nowhere to be seen. She rounded on Nathan, who was still following her. Something about his face made her feel sick.

"Where is he?" she whispered.

"Where is who?"

"Where's Cayne? What happened to him? Please! I need to know!" In the garish glow of lamp light, everything seemed to swim.

Nathan's arched a brow. "You mean the Nephilim?"

"Cayne."

"It has been contained."

"Contained?"

"The Bound was exorcised," Nathan said, "and the Nephilim has been taken into custody."

"Custody?" Julia grabbed a tree's branch as her stomach clenched. "Custody for what?"

The one named Nathan smirked. "You don't know anything, do you?"

Terror filled her. She didn't care what she knew or didn't know. "I need my friend! Please. Who are you?"

He folded his arms. "A better question: Who is he?"

She stepped closer to the smug ass, raising her fist, like that would do something. Her heart was beating so hard that her head spun.

"Where is Cayne?" she tried again. Her voice sounded weak and far away.

Then everything unraveled very slowly, like a horrible scene from a horrible movie. Nathan's smile disappeared. The light above them flickered as the city's noise pulsed—loud, then awfully quiet.

"Cayne," she whispered.

Nathan's eyes bored into hers. He sneered. "Your 'friend' is to stand trial for crimes against our Brotherhood."

Julia made a futile effort to comprehend.

Nathan smiled and unbuttoned his left sleeve. He raised it, revealing a crimson stain on his wrist. "He is to be put to death for crimes against us."
Read on for a sample of Ella James' new novel,

Here

HERE - Chapter One

The day it happened, things were regular enough.

Halah, Sara Kate, and Bree had spent the night—a chilly October Friday we'd talked through until the sun rose, pink and soft across the Rockies. I awoke to Sara Kate's knee in my back, sharp enough to poke a hole through my favorite Cream t-shirt. Halah and Bree were curled up on the floor, Halah's pink subzero "hotsack" tossed over the Miley Cyrus bag Bree's grandmother had given her the previous Christmas—the year we'd turned 15. Halah called the bag Miss Miley, and at sleepovers at Sara Kate or Halah's house, I usually fought Bree for her.

This morning, Halah's curly head stuck up, and her hazel eyes met mine. We grinned, then pounced on Bree, chanting "Miss Miley, Miss Miley, Miss Miley!" till Bree lurched up, her curvy body raining fragments of the popcorn we'd all munched and, later, crunched into my rug.

"Shhhhhh!" That was Sara Kate, lumbering up and glaring at us. She was never a morning person, and she'd been even less one since she'd started hanging out with Ami McVea of the multi-colored dreadlocks and Turn Off Your Radio (KILL THE MACHINE) bumper sticker. S.K. hadn't actually told me this—I was only her best friend, after all—but I'd overheard her talking to Ami after orchestra practice, saying something about midnight rides, and I happened to know from my college cousin West that Ami and S.K. had been sneaking out on weeknights, riding into Denver to go to (what else?) indie music shows.

"You're riding with the big dawgs. This ain't no rusty banged up Beetle," Halah drawled. She had the most ridiculous faux Old West accent ever, and she was referencing Ami McVea's VW bug. We—the quad—had called ourselves the big dogs in years past, although I couldn't quite remember why.

Bree ambled over and barked in Sara Kate's ear. S.K. batted her off, then slid out of my bed and pulled a Pop Tart out of her overnight bag. Halah braided Bree's hair, and S.K. painted her toenails with my electric lilac polish, and I straightened my room and made us waffles, which we ate on the downstairs couch, watching Jeopardy re-runs that Halah killed, 'cause that girl made awesomesauce out of random facts, despite what she wanted our school to think. (Re: brainless, badass, and beautiful).

Half an hour later, the four of us stood in the pebbly indention of my driveway, a time-shorn path through the rough grass that dusted the foothills of the mountains.

I looked at Bree and Halah, a unit within our unit, best friends just like S.K. and I. "You guys be careful." I smiled tightly. "Halah, spare Bobby the crotch shot."

Bobby Malone was this senior who'd cheated on one of Halah's cheer teammates—Annabelle Monroe, the blonde cheerleader archetype. Which is why he was also the bull's eye in the day's paintball meet-up.

Halah grinned wickedly. "I'm not going for his crotch, Milo. I'm going for his little tiny balls."

"That's disgusting." Bree's nose scrunched.

"Keep her out of trouble, mkay?"

Bree shrugged. She had a piece of popcorn smashed under her breasts.

"I want pictures," S.K. called, as Hal and Bree set off.

"Only if they can't be used against us in a court of law," Halah called back.

They drove away, aiming for the far-off fence at the front edge of Mitchell property. Hang a left, and they'd be on a gravel road that ran below the massive Front Range, just a tiny ribbon if viewed from the top of the peaks, up by turbines.

Mitchell Turbines.

Mitchell Windfarm.

Home.

S.K. was never much for goodbyes, and after all, we didn't know that's what this was. That bright gray morning was just an ordinary Saturday, on an ordinary weekend in our junior year at Golden Prep, the only private arts high school on our side of Denver.

"Have fun with Bambi," she said, and tossed her black hair, like the glossy, perfect mane annoyed the heck out of her. (For the record, it really did).

"Have fun with Jackie Chan."

That would be her Tae Kwon Do instructor, a big, smiling hottie whose actual name was David.

S.K. arched one brow. It jutted up over the frames of her black, square-ish glasses.

"Sayonara," she said.

And that was that.

My plan for the afternoon involved a dart gun, a tracking bracelet, and my beat-up copy of The Great Gatsby.

I had a seasonal reading plan I'd stuck with each year since fifth grade: Walden in the spring, Pride & Prejudice in the summer, The Great Gatsby each fall, and Wuthering Heights every winter (my dad's dad, Gus Mitchell, had been a tenth-grade English teacher). I liked to imagine the rock-strewn, fir-dotted fields that rolled out toward the mountain range as my moors. In the privacy of my favorite woodsy spot, I savored my cold-weather reading with a gusto that made me feel like a walking liberal arts student cliché.

With Gatsby in my pack and the dart gun in my gloved fist, I drifted through the fields, watching fir needles tremble, tracking birds as they rose and fell, formed flocks and scattered. They'd be leaving in the next month, before it got too cold for anything sans fur.

I wondered if my herd of mule deer would already be there: by the creek that threaded through the northeast edge of our land. I hoped not. If they were waiting, I couldn't sneak up on them. Encroaching winter made it especially important that I tag the last of the year's fawns—now. When the snow came, their grazing patterns changed. The creek would ice over and the herd would scatter, seeking out the Bancrofts' hot springs or one of the freeze-proof waterfalls just north of our property, on the land owned by Mr. Suxley.

As I walked, arms stuck in the pockets of my dad's giant hunting coat, I thought back over the night. I was a cataloguer of events, but like too many other times lately, I felt like I didn't have enough to file. I seemed to be moving at a different pace from all my friends. Halah—Halah with her unabashed love of Martin Lawrence movies and her closet full of oversized softball t-shirts—had shot off, three light years ahead of me. She had a senior boyfriend on the wrestling team, and she didn't have a curfew.

Bree was just... Bree. I didn't even have a scale for how she and I compared. While I thought about everything ad nauseum, Bree never seemed to think about anything that wasn't practical. The week before, she'd spent half of lunch on her phone trying to find the area's best dry-cleaner.

And then there was S.K. Sara Kate, my best friend. My other half. My favorite person on the planet—other than my Dad, who wasn't on the planet anymore. S.K. who'd gone with (guess who?) Ami to ComicCon the weekend of my birthday. Who'd recently decided she needed more time to herself. "I'm getting too stressed out by all this stuff." Stuff being me. The quad. Our fun.

Lately, the thing I liked best about this deer gig was how somewhere else it made me feel. With the sky over my head and the grass crunching under my boots, I could be anywhere. Add a book to the equation, and I wasn't Milo Mitchell, girl pianist, airheaded over-thinker, tenth-grade chemistry straggler, secret wallflower, lover of anime. I was Catherine. Well... maybe someone slightly less insane. Daisy Buchanan? Okay, someone moderately less shallow. Haruhi Suzumiya.

Made-up (and insane!) though they were, those people knew what they were about. Knew what they wanted. Whereas me... I got my kicks sedating mule deer.

I pointed myself left, toward the mountains, and picked up my pace for the last half-mile to the pine grove. There was a bluff oak right at the front of the grove, beside a big pancake-looking boulder; next to the skinny evergreens, it resembled a pom-pom in mid-cheer.

When I was growing up, this had been my dad's favorite spot. He and mom had come to Colorado to build the turbines—Mitchell Wind Turbines, his own patented design—but his real passion was outdoors stuff. As a little girl, I'd gone tromping through the fields and scaling cliffs with him. He'd taken me to Yellowstone and Grand Teton, Death Valley and Yosemite, but he'd really loved to take me to the bluff oak.

"It's an anomaly," I could hear him say. "Supposed to be down South. Not out here with all the firs."

And yet, it was.

I walked under its limbs and stared down at the etched stone marker:

Faulkner Dursey Mitchell

1964-2010

And then, under that, in tiny, sharp-edged caps:

IN WILDERNESS, THE PRESERVATION

OF THE WORLD

I didn't like the marker, though I knew my dad had chosen it. In his absence, I'd grown irritated with the message. Preservation. What a stupid concept. My father wasn't preserved under the headstone. He was gone, and he was becoming more and more gone all the time.

Still, that didn't stop me from my pilgrimage. Since that awful day almost two years ago, I'd visited the marker and the bluff oak often. Actually, I'd treated this place like Mecca until two months ago.

It had been the first Saturday after school had started. S.K. spent the night but left early the next morning for her first date with Ami. Halah was at a cheer retreat, and Bree was... somewhere. I don't remember.

I'd left at the same time as S.K., and by the time I got to the pancake boulder I was falling asleep on my feet. I took a nap—the boulder was that flat—but maybe an hour later, I was jerked awake.

I felt like someone was over me—I felt the hairs raise on the back of my neck. I rolled off the rock and jumped to my feet, ready to bolt. But no one was there. I ducked a second later, because I felt it again, and then I yelped. A needle pricked where my head met my neck, and the pain was inside my brain.

The terrifying thing was, it felt invasive. Like someone was reading my diary—while I stood naked in front of my class.

I left immediately, and spent the walk home freaking out. But I found my way back the next day. And felt the same thing. It wasn't as sudden, or as potent, but the feeling, like I was being measured, was still there.

And it was there Wednesday, when I went back after half a week: that stripped-down-to-the-cells, stuck-under-a microscope, known-inside-and-out, freaky deaky looked-through feeling. Was I hallucinating? The last thing I needed was another mental health issue to deal with. Obviously, I needed to find another way to feel close to Dad.

After a lot of working myself up to it, I called the Department of Conservation and Wildlife, posed as my mother, and got permission to continue Dad's mule deer tracking project.

I had all his old folders, stuffed with diagrams and data, so it hadn't been hard to figure out who was who among the herd. After that, it was just a matter of coming out on Saturdays and tagging them.

It was easy to shoot the sedative gun, bring the deer down, and snap a bracelet over their hard, dark hooves. I spent my weeknights, after studying, watching the gob of blinking lights move across my laptop screen. I knew where they slept and where they roamed. I knew where they went mid-afternoon: the creek.

I made my way over to it now, crunching over fallen leaves from the seasonal trees that blazed orange, yellow, and red between the firs.

I heard the creek before I saw it, a gentle tinkling like a bowl of glass marbles pouring out. The smell of dirt and pine filled my nose and throat. The cold air whipped my cheeks. The sunlight swirled in spirals over the leaf-strewn bank. I thought about Gatsby and felt a dorky burst of excitement. I was right at the start of Chapter 9—the last chapter. I'd gone through the book too fast.

Reading the end made me feel either bursting full or empty. I walked faster, hoping this would be a day that I could enjoy the story without letting it gnaw at me. Otherwise it was going to be a long afternoon.

The tree house hung above a bend in the creek. Dad and I selected the strongest tree for its base: a horse-chestnut on the opposite bank. To get to it—if I didn't want to wade through chilly, waist-deep water—I had to climb a spiral staircase around a buckeye tree and sway across the rope-and-board bridge we made the summer after second grade.

The wooden stair rails were cold, even through my gloves. I slid my palms over the ropes and crossed the sanded cedar planks. Waiting for me on the other side, the tree house was a thatch-roofed dome attached to the chestnut's trunk by beams that angled peaceably through its branches.

I pushed through the small door, surprised, as always, by how pretty it was here. The walls were warm cedar, and my Dad had built a bench that wrapped around the circular room. We used to get new cushions every year, but the green and red plaid we'd put out two Christmases ago would probably stay until the years ate through them. I had no plans to replace them.

I found my binoculars in the box where I'd left them, along with a blanket, a tin tub of almonds, and a little pile of air-activated hand-warmers.

I sat my pack down, grabbed the binoculars, and shed my gloves. Much as I wanted to stay warm, I couldn't fire the darts with padded fingers.

I gave myself a few minutes inside the house, designed with small gaps in the floor for circulation, but no windows (to hold heat in). Then I stepped back onto the bridge and sat with my back against the door. My gaze roved the forest, stopping at stray branches, odd-shaped stumps—anything that remotely resembled deer. Too early. I'd spotted them this morning near Mr. Suxley's woods, where they sometimes bedded down. It would take a little while for them to reach the creek.

I read. Nick Carraway, meeting up with Tom downtown. Leaving the West Egg. I sipped warm water from a metal thermos and tried not to think about my hunger, which couldn't be satiated in nose-range of the deer. The sun climbed higher, raining a kaleidoscope of golden light over Dad's bulky suede jacket and my camo pants. As I read, my hair sparkled in my periphery, a blanket of glossy brown, with red highlights glinting in the sun. I blew into my balled-up hands. Applied a scentless beeswax Chapstick.

I couldn't warm up. I cursed, Klingon swear words S.K. and I had looked up in sixth grade. Tracking deer was a terrible idea. I could be playing paintball.

I flipped to my favorite scene.

"Gatsby believed in that green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the—"

I heard a loud crunch, and my eyes leapt from the page. Blitzen! The herd's largest male had a star-shaped scar across his shoulder and a weathered coat. He stood by a holly bush ten or fifteen yards away, sniffing the air, his nostrils snorting out puffs of steam. Right behind him was Madonna, the alpha female, and then Brutus, a younger male who sometimes challenged Blitzen. Soon they were all there, including little Ashlyn, one of the youngest fawns, and my target.

Crap!

I should've been crouching, but I hadn't expected them until closer to four. Since there was no way I could sight Ashlyn—or any of them—from my spot flat on my butt, I stood slowly and ducked through the bridge's two rail-ropes, rising into a sort of squirrel-eating-nut position, with my arms up near my face and my feet balancing on the edge of the cedar planks. A lesser woodswoman might have fallen, or scared the deer, but I'd been doing this for years.

My fingers folded, steady, around the handle of the gun. I leaned my head down, peering through the sight. A breeze rocked the bridge; the rope above my head brushed against the top of my hair. My body felt pinched. Stiff. And then, finally, I had her. Ashlyn side-stepped, her small flank bumping into teenage Aiden's long, strong throat. Aiden strode forward, and there!

In the moment that the dart shot out, I felt a rush of pure elation. As it sailed toward little Ashlyn, I watched the frozen herd, processing the milliseconds till the dart would hit, Ashlyn would fall, the rest would bolt.

But that's not how it happened.

As my breath puffed out, creating a pale cloud that lent the scene a gauzy haze, I felt a bite of what could only be described as shock. My limbs and torso locked; my lungs went still. There was a flash of golden light, like a solar flare, except for one protracted second it was all there was. All there ever would be.

Then it receded, twisting the trees' shadows, mangling the forest floor. The creek spilled forth on fast forward. My blood boomed like a gunshot in my ears.

I searched for Ashlyn's body, but she wasn't there. A boy was.

HERE - Chapter Two

He lay just beside the water, curled over on his side with his arms around himself and his knees drawn to his chest. From my perch up on the bridge, I could see he had hair the color of burnt rust and looked about my age.

When I thought about it a little later, I figured I must have been seriously freaking out, because as I stared down at him, the world seemed to stretch and rip—a kaleidoscope twisting in furious fingers. The air crackled like a huge branch snapping, and the pressure squeezed my eardrums, announcing the End of both our lives and the Beginning of something unimaginably new.

The really awful thing is: all I could think about was Twilight.

I'd become book critic enough to know the story's flaws, but when I'd gotten the series for Christmas in the seventh grade, I'd liked the vampire-werewolf fantasy better than I had ever admitted to my friends (even S.K., who was herself a fanatic). Which meant animals that occasionally turned human seemed real enough to me.

Staring down at the felled boy, my mind spun like a Ferris wheel. Had I accidentally hit Aiden instead of Ashlyn? Were my mule deer really mule guys and mule girls?

A violent breeze swept through the woods, shaking the bridge, and reality returned in a burst of sickening fright.

"Holy freaking baktag! Holy shit!"

I'd shot a person!

My legs jolted into motion before I was ready; I bumped into the bridge's rope handrails and shrieked, then shot off toward the stairs, practically fell down them.

"Hey!" I sprinted to him, dropping to the damp sand. "HEY! Are you okay?!"

I shook his shoulder. His head lolled back, bright copper curls pressed into the sand. His eyes were shut, his chiseled lips parted.

"Oh, God. Can you hear me? Please talk to me!"

I rocked back, cradling my head. Could a dart calibrated for a small fawn kill a guy my age? I didn't know. I didn't know much about the dart gun. I wasn't even supposed to be using it!

My breath came in frantic tugs, like I was breathing for him and me. I looked down at him again and felt the ground below me tilt.

The boy's curls looked afire against the dull wool of his tux. I followed the crisp lines of fabric down to his abs, where—oh, God—the dart's tail stuck out of a swatch of inky fabric.

My hand hovered over it.

"Oh, God. Oh God."

What if he never woke up? Should I be calling 9-1-1? I fumbled in my pants pocket for my phone— But wait! I didn't have service here!

Jerky like a wind-up doll, I leaned over his body and splayed my palm across his cheek. It was creamy—not pale or flushed—and to me it looked unnaturally perfect. He didn't have a single blemish. Not even a freckle. I wiggled my fingers, tap-tapping on his cheek below his eye. "Hey... c'mon. Talk to me!"

My hands were shaking too much to check his pulse at the wrist, but I was able to press my fingers against his jugular, digging in to find the heartbeat at his throat.

Slow but steady.

"Okay." I huffed. "Okay." I sucked air through my nose, let it out slowly through my mouth. A shrink had taught me this. Dr. Sam, the guy my mom sent me to after Dad died and I had my— well, my issues. "Okay."

I needed to practice what Dr. Sam had called positive projection.

This guy will wake up soon. This guy will wake up soon. And when he does he will be fine. When he does he will be fine.

His neck was warm and firm, with a muscular quality that reminded me a little of an animal. The dart was only supposed to put a mule deer out for a few minutes, so it couldn't take much longer for a human. Could it?

No, Milo. Of course it can't.

The mental tricks did their job. I was able to calm down enough to think, and the first thing I thought was that I needed to examine him more closely. I stared down at him, noticing minute things, like the poet-or-surfer curliness of his brilliant, bronzy hair. How thick and soft it looked, like a thousand loosely curving ocean waves. His shoulders seemed unusually wide, but maybe that was the tux.

Wait—

Why the heck was he wearing a tuxedo? I glanced around, half expecting Bond-like reinforcements, but all I saw were leaves and branches. Our land was isolated. Fenced. So where on Earth had he come from?

I looked back at his face: his parted lips, the sharp line of his jaw, the gentle plane of his nose, the way his lashes fanned against his cheek.

A pristine white hanky poked out of his breast pocket, folded so harshly it looked fake. My gaze swept down his long legs before I realized I was—oh, no—gawking, and forced my attention back up to his face.

Coloring: good. Eyelids: unmoving. Mouth: not frothing or bleeding or bruised. In the last three years, I'd become an expert on vital signs, and my throat flattened a sob as I realized how familiar this routine felt.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed my eyes shut. He's not dead, Milo. I'd felt his pulse. Now I simply had to wake him up.

Pressing his warm hand between both of mine, I leaned down and spoke loudly near his ear. "Okay, now. It's time to GET UP."

I held my breath, gritted my teeth, and willed his eyes to open.

And they did. No fluttering lashes or painful squints or groans. He simply opened his eyes and blinked, just like an owl.

His eyes were deep brown. Wide and slightly glazed, they held mine like a magnet. Then he rolled onto his back, kicked out one long leg, and grimaced as he pulled the dart from his chest. He held it up into the sunlight.

Words gushed out of my mouth. "I'm sorry! Are you okay? I'm sooo sorry. I was trying to shoot a deer and you just—" what? He'd just appeared.

Except—okay—that clearly wasn't what actually happened.

The boy's rust-smudge brows clenched.

"I shot you!" I blurted. "That's a dart!"

He turned the tiny pink dart over in his hand. His mouth tightened, and I felt sure he was going to say something along the lines of, My father the Congressman will be sure you're prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Instead, the corners of his mouth curved slowly. He sat up fully, leaning back on one arm, and in a rich, black-coffee kind of voice, he said, "You shot me?"

He was grinning and, a second later, laughing. His shoulders shook, his head lolled back. The sound of it was uproarious. Wonderful. As was his dark gaze, affixed to mine. "You shot me?" The words puffed out on hoots of laughter. "And you were aiming for a deer?"

He laughed so long I felt my cheeks color.

"You might consider wearing orange in the woods," I advised, wiping my hair back. "Anything with some color. Your hair's not that red, and black and white don't really say 'I'm human.'"

"What do they say?" His grinning face was lit up like a Christmas tree.

"I don't know..." Against my will, I felt my own lips twitch. I glanced over his tux. "Nick Carraway?"

He considered that for a second. "The Great Gatsby?"

"Yeah."

"He's human. Or would be if he was real." Still smiling that brilliant smile, he raked a hand back through his hair, trailing down over his face and over his jacket. Slowly, the smile faded. He looked down at himself for so long I forgot to breathe.

"Um... Hey," I said. "Are you okay?"

He looked at me like he'd forgotten I was there. His mouth was pinched tight now, his brown eyes flat.

"Do you feel bad?" I asked; my voice quivered.

My victim shook his head. "No." His mouth moved slowly, as if testing out the word. "I don't feel...bad."

"Are you sure?" I was leaning forward now, hands clenched in my lap.

"I don't know." The words were mumbled, like he'd just woken up...which he kind of had.

The guy stared blankly at his legs, and I felt the chilly air condense. "Do you feel confused?" I tried. "Like, dizzy?"

His eyes lifted. They were darker and more guarded than before.

"It's okay," I told him. "Tell me what's wrong. I'm pretty good at medical stuff and—"

He shook his head. Like I was a fly buzzing in his ear. Then, without warning, he lumbered up.

He'd seemed tall all sprawled out, but at his full height, he looked even taller: easily above six feet. There was something about him that brought to mind James Dean—all swarthy and mussed, like he'd just rolled out of bed and was spoiling for a fight.

I jumped up, too. One minute, I was racking my brain for what to do. The next, he was walking—well, weaving—along the creek.

"Hey, wait! Hold on a second!"

But he wasn't holding on for anybody. He jabbed his hands into his pants pockets and shouldered through the firs, moving with surprising coordination for someone who'd just been sedated.

It felt like forever that I chased him, his big, dark form the center of my world. If I couldn't catch him, what would I do? What had I done?

A few strides later it didn't matter. He sighted the pancake rock and froze mid-step. Then he turned a slow circle, his face a mask of baffled disbelief. He raised his arms, turning his palms out, toward me.

"Where am I," he asked flatly, "and what the hell am I doing here?"

HERE - Chapter Three

I wanted to believe his question was rhetorical. Philosophical. Where am I metaphorically and what am I doing with my life.

But his brown eyes flashed with barely restrained panic.

"What are you doing here," I repeated, to his frozen face. "You mean... like... how did you get here?"

I prayed he'd beam me one of those thousand-watt smiles. Then he would turn another circle in the field, fix his eyes on the Simpsons' house, a small white dot in the distance, and say, "Okay! I remember now. I was leaving my aunt and uncle's house—you know them, right? The Simpsons— And I'm on my way to the Saturday Morning Prom. I had to walk to that road out there—" which would be Mitchell Road— "to meet my friend Paul. He's picking me up, and then we're going to get our dates for brunch."

Instead he whirled around, his back to me, and I watched his shoulders rise and fall; I could hear his fast and shallow breaths.

Oh, no.

I had stun-gunned some impeccably dressed guy and now his brain was scrambled. What was I going to tell my mom? What would I tell the Golden Police?

The thought of the cops made me cold with fear. I'd been in fourth period last November when our school had been the target of a drug bust, and I could still remember the police whistles, the snarling German Shepherds that looked like they wanted to chew off my fingers.

If the police found out what I had done...

If the people at my school found out...

Oh, no. No one was finding out. I could handle this. I'd handled lots of other things, hadn't I? Many of them were things I didn't want to think about, but still, I'd handled them. You're too old for your age, my dear. Isn't that what my Grandma Lisa had said just a few months ago?

My brain switched to fast-forward mode. I stared at my victim, feeling an awful swell of regret that I quashed with my resolve. I could fix this. I could fix him.

My arm swung up, my hand closed over his thick, woolen shoulder.

There was a moment of quiet where he looked pale and unsteady, and my fingers itched to brush those half-curls off his forehead.

Despite my pounding heart, I forced my voice to come out strong. "We're outside Golden, Colorado. This is my family's land. See those?" I turned and pointed to the turbines: enormous things like malevolent pin-wheels with three knife arms, perched on the edge of the Front Range. Strangely, they didn't seem to be spinning and I couldn't hear their usual faint hum.

"Those are our turbines," I told him calmly. "This—well, that is Mitchell Windfarms."

I watched his stark face. His eyes slid to the turbines, back to me.

"I'm sorry. So sorry. I didn't mean to hit you. I don't know how I did." The state of things was fairly clear, but in my shock I needed clarification. "You're saying you don't remember...anything?"

His gaze cut left, then right. I waited half a breath, and when he didn't move I shifted forward, standing close enough to see the throbbing of his heart beat at his throat. "So... Come with me to my house. We'll figure it out. I can get you something to eat. I can look at the gun's manual, and we can figure out what to do to help you—" Help him what? "To help you remember what's the what," I finished lamely.

We had friendship cake at home. Friendship cake and hot chocolate. My mom's friendship cake could bring anyone to their senses. It had to.

"Come on." I held my hand out and nodded down the flat field that stood between us and my house.

He nodded, slow and small, and stuffed his hands back into his pockets. He hunched his shoulders and blew out a thick, cloudy breath.

"Are you cold? You want my coat?"

He shook his head. His throat worked silently, and I wondered if he was going to be sick.

"Are you okay?" Stupid Milo. My eyes flew up and down his body; his curved shoulders, tucked chin, pinched lips made him look lost. Which he was. "I'm so sorry. I've never done anything like that before. I took a hunting class—you know, the one you need to get a license—and I'm usually so careful." I realized how self-centered I was being and my cheeks flushed, warm in the cool air. "You'll remember everything soon, I'm sure you will. The stuff in the gun was a sedative, for deer. It was only enough for a small fawn, but still... I'm sure that's what's making you feel weird."

I started walking, eager to be home, where I could do something. He followed half a step behind.

"You'll probably like what you remember," I continued. "That's a nice suit you've got on and— Hey, your suit. Take off your jacket!" I flung my arm around, like that would help him understand. "Check your pocket! There might be a wallet in there."

He blinked once—he still looked a little dazed—and shrugged out of his coat, revealing a starched white dress shirt and a soft-looking cummerbund, which he removed and tossed over one of those lineman's shoulders. He fished into both side pockets, frowned, then checked the breast pocket, and came up with... a whistle?

Yep. My victim held up a small, red whistle. It looked almost like a child's party favor, except metal. I rubbed my head. "Maybe the coat tag will have a name..."

He was still staring at the whistle.

Staring, like... staring.

"Do you remember something?"

He shook his head, but this time he tucked the thing into the coat's interior pocket. I watched in silence as he checked the tag of his coat. Brioni. That was all.

"Maybe you're the next James Bond. He wears Brioni suits, you know."

A second passed, a second where his face was deadpan flat and I felt like an idiot for being so flippant. Then he gave me a small, crooked smile; it was almost smug. "You think I'm a secret agent."

I laughed, an awkward giggle. "Umm. It's always possible. I hope not, though. 'Cause if you are, that would probably get me in big trouble."

As soon as the words were out, I realized my faux pas. "I guess I'm already in big trouble..."

He looked down at his shoes—leather dress shoes that must have been shined that morning—and shifted his shoulders so he could massage one of them. I tried desperately to lengthen my strides. He followed, moving at a pace that seemed leisurely for him.

"How did it happen?" He sounded clinical, like he was asking me how turbines worked.

How did it happen?

"Well, I was up there—" I was going to point, but realized we weren't anywhere near where we'd started. "I was in the tree house with a dart gun because I'm trying to tag deer. It's for a project." I skipped the part about how I'd lied to state officials. "The herd showed up, and I saw Ashlyn..." I shook my head. "I saw the little deer that I was aiming for, and I shot at her. I've never had a problem before, but this time I—" I swallowed. "I have no idea. I shot Ashlyn. I know I did! But there was this light..." And what had that light been? I wanted to think it over, but he was looking at me expectantly. "Anyway, uh, when I looked down...you were there."

His lips twisted. "Maybe I'm Deer Boy."

"I know. I totally already thought about that, but here's the problem: I had my gun aimed at Ashlyn—a girl deer."

He cocked a brow, which could have meant anything, but likely meant he thought I was insane for having already thought through the Deer Boy angle. For a few minutes there was only the wind stinging my ears and the whoosh of our footsteps in the grass. When his began to lag, my stomach clenched.

"You getting tired?"

"I'm fine."

"Not tired?"

His brown eyes slid my way—unreadable under drawn brows. "Yeah, I'm kind of tired. It doesn't matter."

"I'm so sorry," I murmured. "You must really hate me."

"I can't," he said dryly. "You're the only person I know."

I opened my mouth to blurt something, but he held up a hand. "I don't. Hate you."

I looked down at my boots. "That's generous."

Lame-o. Man, I was super lame. How could I have made it to eleventh grade and still be this lame?

"You might change your mind." If you don't remember anything soon... "But you probably won't— won't change your mind, and decide to, you know, hate me— because I'm sure any minute now you'll remember... everything."

I fumbled with my gloves, head down. "When you're back to normal and you know why you're wearing a tailored suit, you can probably do anything you want to me. With me, I mean." My cheeks flamed. "What I'm saying is... Maybe I can compensate you somehow." My face got so hot, my eyes actually watered. "By compensate you, I mean I don't have much—" my eyes flew, against my will, down to my chest— "but I can give you food and... rocks. I collect rare rocks. Mountain rocks!"

I squeezed my eyes shut, mortified.

Again, there was a stretch of silence, during which I really thought I might die. During which Deer Boy actually smiled. He looked almost silly with abandon, like it was the first time he'd ever smiled. His brown eyes crinkled, and his wide grin flashed like a commercial for Crest Whitestrips. "Mountain rocks, huh?"

"Yes." I hung my head, willing to acknowledge what a total ninny I was. Because only a ninny used the word ninny, right?

I clenched my jaw, searching for something redeeming to say.

He beat me to it. "So I know you pick on deer—" he rubbed his starched shirt where the dart had struck— "and you collect mountain rocks." He smirked a little, not unkindly. "I'm also going to guess your last name is Mitchell. What's your first name?"

"Milo."

"What do you think mine is?" He dropped back, staring thoughtfully at the ground, and I slowed to match his pace.

I looked over his suit, over his face—so honest and clean. "Nick," I said. "Your name is definitely Nick."

"Nick Carraway."

"Yeah. But not for long. Soon we'll be at my house, and I'll be calling everyone who lives near here and we'll be finding out who you really are. Or, hey— you'll be remembering."

"Maybe." It sounded like he was talking through a cloud.

"I'll help you. I'll do everything I can."

He looked at me, a strange expression on his face. "Thanks, Milo."

We walked to the rest of the way to the house in slightly less uncomfortable silence. I kept thinking about the way he said my name. Mi-lo. It seemed to roll out of his mouth. I glanced at him a few times, desperate to know what he could possibly be thinking.

When we reached the row of firs that lined the driveway, I slid through first, and he followed me across the tire-sized indentions in the grass. Mom wouldn't be home, but that was probably a good thing.

"No one's here," I said as I climbed the stone steps and fished the keys out of my coat pocket. "It'll just be us. I can get you something to eat and then we can decide what you want to do."

"What I want to do?" He stared at me skeptically, like I'd suggested we go fly a kite.

I shrugged. "You know... I can go through a list of all our neighbors, see if anything seems familiar. You could be a cousin or something, visiting from the East Egg. If that doesn't work, maybe we should call someone."

"Someone."

"You know, like the police." He didn't say anything, but his brow furrowed, and I could tell he didn't like the idea. "Or the hospital? I don't know..."

As I pulled the screen door open, Nick lagged. I turned to face him, leaning my back against the heavy cedar door.

"We don't have to do anything," I said. "It's your choice. You call all the shots."

He cocked a brow and rubbed his abs. I blushed. "Almost all of them..."

HERE - Chapter Four

As "Nick" followed me into the house, I wondered how the kitchen looked to a stranger's eyes.

He'd see dark hardwood—unidentifiable because our floors were made of enviro-friendly scraps—lots of indwelling shelves crowded with books, wall-mounted miners' lamps converted to use LED bulbs, my dad's old Persistence of Memory print, and our dining room table. The table was totally schizophrenic, incorporating so many colors it almost made you dizzy. The slab where you'd sit dishes or rest your elbows was made of road signs, welded together with strips of stained glass; its legs were a bed post, an old Native American walking stick, and two oversized wooden baseball bats. The chairs: four big eggs in primary colors.

"It's kind of...cluttery in here," I said—as if he'd lost his eyesight as well as his memory.

I loved our house, but with someone new seeing it—and maybe judging it—I felt embarrassed. Like Halah had said once: "For well-off people, your family lives like rednecks, Milo."

Anybody wearing a Brioni suit would surely see it as junky.

Nick just shrugged and, after a second, slouched down in the blue chair.

I walked behind the island and spread my hands out on its rough stone counter. "Okay. So I've got milk, cider, lemonade, carbonated stuff—oh, and hot chocolate. It's my mom's recipe. Pretty good."

Nick pulled off his jacket, tossing it roughly over the back of his chair. "Yeah, that works. Your mom's stuff."

As he said it, something flickered over his face. Wonder about his own mom, maybe? I wanted so badly to ask.

I turned to the refrigerator, then glanced over my shoulder for a look into the den. It was unusually dark in there. Dark and...quiet.

"No power," I realized, stepping to the microwave. I rubbed my hand over the blank gray rectangle where the digital clock was supposed to be. "So weird," I mumbled. There hadn't been any weather, nor was any in our forecast. I recalled the flash of light, and I tried to remember: Was that real, or had it happened in my head when I'd shot Nick?

I walked behind his chair, close enough so that I could have indulged my insane impulse to touch his hair, and peeked through the wooden blinds of a front-facing window. "Uh-oh..."

"What?"

"The turbines really aren't moving."

"That's bad." It was a statement, but I sensed his question.

I turned toward Nick. Slits of murky light made broad lines across his face and chest. "We sell the power that the turbines make to a power company. One of the good things about them is that they don't 'go out' ever. They're considered energy independent, but they need some electricity. Some models work with gasoline, but... gah. I'm sure this is boring you to tears. Basically if the turbines are down, that means something big happened. With the power. Not that that matters compared to..."

He leaned forward, looking even more striking in his white dress shirt than he had in his coat.

"Compared to what's going on with you," I finished.

I had a vision of Nick in his tuxedo, sitting at a worn desk at a social services office with his gorgeous coppery head in his hands, alone in the world, unable to go to school, be with friends, live his life. And all my fault.

STOP MAKING NEGATIVE PREDICTIONS.

Moving purposefully, I strode over to the kitchen counter and pulled open the drawer with our emergency numbers list. My mom had typed them for my babysitters years ago, and none of our neighbors had changed.

As soon as I got the laminated paper in my hand, I realized I still hadn't offered Nick anything to eat or drink. I sneaked a glance at him, found him sitting with his eyes shut, his head in one hand with the tips of his fingers pushed into his hair. I swallowed hard.

"Do you want something cold? Lemonade? Maybe with some cake?"

He straightened, shrugged without turning around; I could sense his distress building. "Can I have some water? Food, too."

"Friendship cake?"

"Sure."

"Good." I forced myself to smile. "I can maybe even find an interesting rock to go with it."

Nick smiled back, but I could see the strain.

I lobbed a huge piece of cinnamon-vanilla cake onto a pottery plate, filled an old jam glass with ice cold well water, and set both on the table in front of him. Then I eased into the red chair across from his, armed with our neighbors' numbers and my cell.

It felt wrong to interrupt when he was eating, so I scrolled through my contacts, stealing glances as he cut his cake into neat squares with large, hard-looking hands.

I looked over the list of phone numbers, letting him have a few more bites before I started throwing questions at him. Maybe I was putting it off because I was nervous we wouldn't learn anything. But we had to, right? Other than Mitchell Road, which was a long way from the tree house, there wasn't another road in any direction for at least ten miles. So he must have come from one of the neighbors' houses.

"Who should I start with?" I asked. "Our neighbors are the Simpsons, the Roanokes, the Patels, the Coles, and Mr. Suxley."

I held my breath, praying he didn't say Suxley. The man had to be near seventy by now, but he still ran his enormous organic vegetable farm on the land directly north of ours. When my family had moved here, he'd protested the turbines at Golden's city council, and when they'd ignored him—the council was as thrilled about "green" energy as they'd been about his green veggies—Suxley had petitioned the city of Denver. When no one minded the "abomination," old Suxley's only revenge was honking the horn of his dingy Landrover any time he passed me on Mitchell Road. For years I'd regarded him as a sort of community terrorist, and the idea of phoning him now was irrationally daunting.

"I think the Simpsons would be our best bet," I said, when Nick didn't speak up. "Unless one of the other names rings a bell."

He shrugged as he took a swig of water.

I was punching the first digit when I heard a low hum. In the silence of the house, the sound was loud. It drew my eyes to the window, where I couldn't decide which was weirder: the sky full of inky black clouds that had suddenly appeared in the last five minutes, cloaking the cliff tops (on a day the forecast had called for clear skies) or my mother's truck, an ancient F-250 that I usually never saw before 9 o'clock.

"Wow. My mom is home." I looked at my cell phone—4:48—and moved toward the door. "Something really bad must be going on with the turbines. Or the weather. Maybe both."

If I heard Mom coming—or, more often, saw the truck's lights from my bedroom window—I tried to open it for her. After a day up at the turbines, her hands were often covered with grease, and the door knob was a fancy stained glass creation she'd made several years ago, back when she was still just an artist.

I opened the door, and she said, "Milo!"

It was the same way she always said my name when she got home: happy but exasperated, like she had some story to tell me about her day. She went in for a light hug, but I stepped back.

"Um, Mom—" I started. I glanced over my shoulder. Blinked once. Twice.

The table was empty, all signs of Nick gone.

About the Author

Ella James writes young adult fantasy and adult romantic suspense. She lives in Alabama with her amazing husband, energetic baby, and mopey dog. Her young adult novels Stained and Here were nominated best debut novel and best sci-fi/fantasy, respectively, at utopYA Convention 2012. Her books have been featured on numerous Amazon bestseller lists.
Books by Ella James:

Stained (Stained Series Book 1)

Stolen (Stained Series Book 2)

Chosen (Stained Series Book 3)

Exalted (Stained Series Book 4) – Coming Fall 2012

Here (Here Trilogy Book 1)

Trapped (Here Trilogy Book 2) – Coming Fall 2012

Before You Go

Learn more about Ella and her books at www.ellajamesbooks.blogspot.com and friend her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ellajamesbooks

