The Touch of Twilight

stared at those fragile white blooms, as any good gardener knew, you don’t pull out the whole garden just because there were a few weeds. You uproot the dead stuff, prune everything back, and start again.

I looked back up at Ben, considered everything I’d given up to so convincingly become Olivia…my home and work and body and self. I thought of the parts of my new life I’d so completely embraced…my strength and powers and responsibilities and troop. I thought too of the extraordinary man I’d continued to reject, Hunter, and I suddenly knew what I needed to do.

I would tell Ben everything. It would be no different than the mortals we used to help hide our supernatural activities, no different than the mortal/agent love matches of the past, even if Warren did believe my kairotic state made it too risky. Because didn’t kairos really mean “the right or opportune time”? And the time to save Ben-along with the rest of the world-was now. I had to do it immediately, before Regan’s influence burrowed in so deep he’d end up in a jail cell with slashes over his wrists and fingertips.

And after I told him, I’d kiss him as me, I’d infuse him with my scent, my touch, my taste. And it would make all my past and present sacrifices worth it. I could embrace my new life while holding on to what made me care about humankind at all. My first love.

“Listen,” I started, whirling back to face him. “I’m chairing a pre-Halloween party for the North Las Vegas Children’s Fund tonight at the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel. Know where it is?”

“The Boulevard.”

I nodded, but had to pause to swallow hard. “If you want, if you show up, I can make sure… she shows up as well.”

Graveyard silence spread over the yard, and Ben fell so still for so long that I grew afraid he wouldn’t speak at all. “You know?” he finally asked, vocal cords tight in his throat.

“Of course.” I looked away, and closed my eyes until my breathing normalized. Then I looked back, my own voice stronger. “Um…it’s a costume party. So, naturally, she’ll be wearing a mask-”

“Naturally,” he said wryly.

I jerked, but then took a step toward him. “Look, Jo has good reasons for what she’s done. You know her-”

“I thought I did.” Folding his arms, he took a step back.

“Just give her a chance to explain,” I said, advancing on him again, forcing him to meet my gaze, not begging, but damned close. He only shifted feet. “Just give her a chance.”

Again that deathly stillness…and then, unexpectedly, he softened. “She left me.”

I shook my head quickly. “She hasn’t gone anywhere.”

Just then, a voice cleared harshly behind me.

I whirled, automatically feeling at my side for a weapon that wasn’t there, and squinted up at a bulky, badly dressed figure posed on the stone patio. I sighed, relief mingled with resignation. Chandra. Talk about bad timing.

“Who is it?” Ben asked, squinting also.

“My…Realtor,” I said, turning back around.

“Oh.” Surprise lit his face. “You weren’t kidding about buying the place?”

“Ben,” I said, putting my palm to his cheek, letting the warmth spread through me again. I waited until his gaze met mine. “Archers only lie about the important things.”

That almost brought a smile to his face, but it died half formed. Bitterness was bright on the air, I could almost taste it standing this close, and I knew I was right to tell him. He was deteriorating, like a sandy cliff relentlessly pounded by the cold sea. Soon all that would be left were crags and crevices where his softer spots had once been.

“Please,” I said, my hand moving to his shoulder. “It was a mistake, she knows that, but extreme circumstances require extreme measures…and eventually, forgiveness.”

He looked down, and stepped back again so that my hand fell away. “Just make sure she’s there. I want it to end tonight.”

One way or the other. He left that part unspoken, but it was alive on the scented air.

Throat tight, I nodded shortly. “I’ll look for you.”

My “Realtor” cleared her throat behind us. I shot him one last uncertain smile, before I headed back into the house and out the front door with Chandra. Once there, I took a deep breath of the crisp morning air. Despite the world threatening to crash in around me, it almost felt like a fresh start.

23

It occurred to me as Chandra and I strode to my car that whatever corner we’d been about to turn in our acrimonious relationship was about to experience a monumental roadblock. I don’t know how long she’d been standing on that patio, but the strained silence told me she’d seen and heard more than enough, and Warren would undoubtedly make up for her astounded silence once he heard of it.

“How’d you find me?” I asked, as my engine ignited in a sweet, low purr. There was no other car on the street, and I knew she hadn’t walked to Paradise Palms from the sanctuary, so I wasn’t surprised when she answered darkly, “Gregor dropped me off. He knew where you were, and Warren has decided he wants us paired up again. The doppelganger created another portal this morning.”

“I know.” The vibrational percussions had had my Porsche shaking on its wheels as I drove to Brynn’s. It wasn’t as long and percussive as her last entry into this reality, though, which meant it had only been a nongentle reminder-and warning-for me. One day to go.

“You know I have to-” Chandra broke off, then took a deep breath before continuing. “We have to tell Warren about this. What you’ve done. What you’ve shared with that… mortal.”

Ignoring that I was driving down I-15 at ninety miles an hour, I squared in my seat on Chandra. “That mortal is my life. He’s everything to me. He’s all I want, all I care about, all I need. And if any of you ask me to give him up, you can shove the third sign of the Zodiac up your collective asses.”

“If Warren wants you to give him up, he won’t ask.”

I knew that. Warren would kill the President himself if he thought it best for the troop.

“Turn off on Blue Diamond,” she said, a few minutes later. “We have to scout a location for Kimber’s metamorphosis tomorrow.”

I did so silently, whipping onto a road so straight and long and narrow it eventually disappeared into the desert. We’d already scouted at least a half-dozen locations, but the senior troop members weren’t going to settle for a spot that might be compromised. Riddick and Jewell were older than the quarter-century mark when they’d taken up their star signs, so not counting my flawed transition into the troop, it’d been almost two years since an initiate had metamorphosed, and nobody had forgotten the carnage that’d ensued when the Shadows had learned of that location. Tekla’s heir, caught in the paralyzing moments of receiving his powers, had lost his life. I didn’t think that night would ever stop fucking with her.

“We can’t leave the city limits,” I reminded Chandra as I watched the buildings fall behind us, the streets dropping away until there was only the one.

“We can’t enter another city,” she corrected, which was what I meant, “and we’ll be turning off well before we reach Pahrump…not that it counts as a city.”

She wasn’t simply being rude…this time. There had to be a large enough population to warrant a proper troop, and Pahrump wasn’t there yet. Soon, though. People had been pouring into Vegas for almost two decades now, annually making it the fastest growing city in the nation, and Pahrump was getting a lot of the spillover.

We drove forty miles into what looked like nowhere, flat expanses of desert flanking both sides of the two-lane road with stubbled brush and crippled cacti jutting from the earth like a marine’s botched crew cut. I was surprised when Chandra had me slow for no apparent reason, and totally astonished to find a badly paved road veering ninety degrees south, even farther out into a very literal no-man’s-land. However, I wasn’t surprised to hear the telltale bluster of Soulfly’s “Corrosion Creeps” emanating from my phone, though I only gave it a cursory glance before