“I’ll see how bad the damage is.” He shouldered open his door and hauled himself up and out. Winter air rushed in to fill the void as he headed around to the back of the Compass, where the darkness swallowed him up.
She knew she should go with him, but instead sagged back against the seat, head spinning with the realization that she was in big trouble. She had told herself she was taking the job partly to prove how far she had come. Instead it was clear that she hadn’t changed at all, not deep down inside: She was still the same adrenaline junkie who had damn near self-destructed.
Shaking her head in an effort to rattle some sense back into her brain succeeded only in waking a dull throb of a headache and making her neck twinge in protest. The pain got her up and moving, though.
The Compass was an accordioned mess of spider-webbed glass and skewed wheels, lit by a glowing foxfire spell that followed Dez like a ghost, floating near his shoulder as he tried a crumpled door, muttering under his breath.
She touched the high-tech armband that connected her to Skywatch. “I’ll call in, get us a ’port back to the compound,” she said, sticking with the practicalities. They had lost Keban and killed the car. It was time to fall back and regroup.
“Don’t,” Dez said sharply, turning to face her. The foxfire trailed behind his shoulder, throwing his face into shadow.
The word carried the punch of a command, but she lifted her chin and met the darkness that hid his eyes. “Newsflash: I don’t work for you.”
His face went unreadable. “Don’t turn me in this time. Please.”
The jab lumped a hard pressure in her chest, as did him ducking her question. “I’ve got a job to do.”
“Keban is my responsibility.” He paused, the shadows deepening. “Go home, Reese. This isn’t your fight.”
She shouldn’t have been disappointed . . . but, damn it, she was. She had told herself not to make excuses for why he had let her believe he was dead, not to think that the Triad spell was what had stopped him from reaching out to her because she wasn’t a mage like him. Strike and the others believed that her long-ago brush with the magic had marked her, putting her under the gods’ notice and making her part of the fight. More, they thought that she and Dez might have been destined mates, and that the gods were trying to make things right now by sparking the coincidences that had brought them together once more.
She had told herself not to buy into it, not to expect anything. But the prickle of tears and a sudden jones for tiramisu said she hadn’t done as good of a job with that one as she had thought.
Suck it up, she told herself. You don’t need his permission to drag his ass back to Skywatch. She didn’t have her Taser anymore, but Strike was waiting for her signal, and the magi could take care of the rest. You’re just a locator these days, remember?
But there was an edge of desperation in his eyes. A silent plea. And her instincts were suddenly telling her not to make the call, that this was one of those targets who might be better off staying lost, at least for a while.
When it came to Dez, though, history suggested that her instincts sucked. And the Nightkeepers’ writs said it best: What has happened before will happen again.
She met his eyes. “You don’t get to decide whether or not this is my fight, especially not when your king, my contract, an unlimited expense account, and the end of the freaking world all say it is.”
“I could drop you with a sleep spell, call them to pick you up, and be gone before they got here.” He suddenly seemed bigger and more menacing than before, though he hadn’t moved. The foxfire drifted ahead of him, illuminating his face but revealing nothing.
“I’d just hunt you down again,” she countered. “And the next time you wouldn’t even know I was there—I’d just dart you like a rabid dog.” He didn’t say anything, but for a second she saw something in his eyes. In another man, it would have been desperation. She softened her voice. “Come back to Skywatch. They need you.”
“They’re fine without me,” he said flatly.
Which was a total crock. The Nightkeepers were bracing for massive attacks as the end-time countdown passed the one-year threshold. The prophecies hinted at disasters but were frustratingly low on details, leaving the magi scrambling for answers and needing all hands on deck . . . but Dez knew that. Yet here he was, out here on his own, tracking Keban. And he didn’t want the others involved. Either his transformation wasn’t nearly as complete as the others thought . . . or there was something else going on.
“What are you hiding?” The slight narrowing of those pale eyes said it was a direct hit. Taking a deep breath to settle the sudden churn in her stomach, the one that reminded her of other arguments, other secrets, she pressed, “What don’t you want them to know?”
For a moment she thought he was going to ignore the question, or outright lie. But then he met her eyes. “I don’t have any right to ask you to trust me.”
The churn got worse. “Damn right you don’t.”
“I’m asking anyway. Let me go. I have to find Keban and the artifacts on my own. It’s important.”
For a second, she saw a flash of the boy who had saved her, the young man she had loved. Problem was, she wasn’t sure if that was real or calculated. “You want me to tell Strike I couldn’t find you?”
“I want you to go back to your life.” His expression darkened almost imperceptibly. “And I want you to live this next year like it’s your last, just in case it is.”
Somehow, that hit her harder than any of the strategy sessions she’d sat in on at Skywatch. During those meetings, the magi and winikin had talked about the barrier and their enemies—both earthly and demonic—and the first real stirrings of war, but now she realized that part of her had held itself apart, treating the threats as another set of stories. Fiction. Maybe a big, flashy movie.
Dez’s words, though, made her picture Denver a year from now, full of harried shoppers ramping up to do the holiday thing while bitching about the cold, and then—
Gone.
A shudder crawled down her spine at the thought, another as she tried to put herself into the picture. The offer was still open for Rabbit to tweak things so she could go back to that life, blissfully unaware that the tinfoil hatters had it right when it came to the countdown. Or she could return with her memories intact and, like Dez said, live the next year like it was her last. But those pictures refused to form. How could they, now that she knew about the Nightkeepers, knew what they were trying to do?
“I’m not playing you,” Dez said when she was silent too long. “And I’m not going to hurt the Nightkeepers. I swear it on my sister?s soul.”
It was the same oath he had used to convince her to go with him on that very first night in the warehouse tunnels. Back then she had sensed his honor and loyalty, had believed he would keep her safe. Now, when she looked at the older, tougher version standing opposite her with magic burning bright in the air around him, she saw an achingly familiar stranger. He had an earnest intensity that made her want to believe. But history repeated itself, and theirs wasn’t good. She shouldn’t—couldn’t—trust him. Yet her instincts said that she should let him go, that it wasn’t time yet for him to be found. More, they said he needed help.
“Time to choose.” Dez looked past her, up toward the road. “The cavalry is here.” Sure enough, sirens throbbed just at the level of her hearing, then grew louder. He glanced back at her. “You going to let me go this time?”
She blew out a breath and went with her gut. “Not exactly. I’m coming with you.”
His face blanked for a second, then clouded. “No fucking way,” he said flatly. “That is not an option.”
“Newsflash number two: You’re not calling the shots here.” Which was new, she realized. “So it’s time for you to choose: You want to stay out in the field chasing your winikin, we do it together. Otherwise, I’m bringing you in.” When he stayed stubbornly silent, she tipped up her chin. “Unless your Spidey senses are seriously long- range, you’re going to need help finding Keban.”
The first responders had arrived: The aah-woo, aah-woo of a police car was followed closely by the bwip- bwip of an ambulance, and colored lights strobed Keban’s crumpled car.
“Damn it . . .” Dez glanced up at the road, then back at her, and his voice dropped. “This is some serious shit, Reese. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Losing you hurt. Every. Single. Time. She didn’t say that, though, because this wasn’t about them. And if that meant she was thinking a little like a Nightkeeper, she was okay with that. So all she said was: “Pick a door,
