Moving into the living room she spotted Duppy. The wet, white dog crouched forward, his butt in the air, staring at her. The moment she stomped near him he bolted, running top speed around the sofa, slipping twice onto his hip only to bounce back up as if he were made of rubber.
“What is wrong with him?” asked Michael.
“He does it every time he gets a bath. Being wet makes him freak out.”
Michael took a seat in an upholstered chair as Anne perched on her sofa.
“I knew this couldn’t last,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Life without Perfidia.”
“Well, it is the only reason you exist.”
Anne scowled. “That’s like telling someone they only exist for leprosy.”
“I mean literally, you’d be dead. Remember that little bit where you woke up after being stabbed on your pirate ship? You never would have awoken if we hadn’t extended your life to help us defeat Perfidia.”
“Ah. Fair point. Still. I thought maybe you and I could be like a normal couple for a while.” She heard a tinge of whine in her tone.
“That depends on your definition of normal.”
“Hm. I’m not sure either one of us is the person to ask.”
Michael smiled. “Perhaps not.”
Anne settled back into the sofa cushion. “So tell me more about the Kairos. How many of them are there? Where are they?”
“They’re all over. But it’s a group in Los Angeles that’s caught our attention.”
“They’re the sick ones?”
“One we suspect, maybe more. We don’t always know.”
“Can’t you just ask all the other Kairos to check in? Whoever doesn’t show up is suspect. Like you did when the Angels started falling ill?”
Michael shook his head. “It’s not that easy. They don’t know they’re Kairos.”
“The Kairos don’t know they’re Kairos? How is that possible?”
“They start slow. They have no special powers beyond their sphere of influence, which grows over time. We move them around from time to time to keep them from realizing—”
“Move them where?”
“From time to time.”
“No, where. Like from New York to L.A.?”
“No, from time to time. Like from the seventeen hundreds to the twentieth century.”
Anne gaped. “And they don’t notice this? They go to sleep on hay and wake up in a spaceship and don’t think, boy, that was weird?”
“They don’t notice at first. The jump muddles their mind. Over time they start to remember their past lives—it takes longer for them to find their purpose. It’s all part of the process. Some pick it up more quickly than others.”
Anne scratched behind her ear, musing how confused the Kairos must feel the first time they remember they used to be in another time period. She herself suffered moments of feeling out of place. Living eon after eon could do that to you.
“I thought Sentinels were the only minds you people messed with,” she said. “I think I might like these Kairos. We have a lot in common. We could start a support group.”
Michael scowled. “Stop calling us you people. The Angeli are single-handedly responsible for keeping you people from destroying yourselves.”
“Don’t get your wings in a tangle.” Anne turned her head and smiled to herself, pleased she still knew how to get Michael ruffled. As arguably the most powerful Angelus, he had a tendency to get a big head.
It’s a good thing he keeps me around to keep him grounded.
“So how did you hear about the sick one?” she asked.
“An Angel in the area let us know. An actress went missing and there’s some evidence she may have been syphoned.”
“Kairos can syphon?”
“There’s never been any evidence of it, but they identified some dust. Human remains.”
“Dust? Not the husk of a body?”
“Dust.”
“That’s different.”
He nodded.
“But they don’t syphon, so…what does that mean?”
Michael shrugged. “Things change.”
“Could they be turning into Angeli?” Anne’s ex-boyfriend and fellow Sentinel, Con Carey, had developed Angeli powers. It seemed a reasonable thing to ask if the same might happen to Kairos, even though the second the sentence left her lips, Michael’s expression had twisted.
Michael opened his mouth and then shut it.
Ah. He just remembered Con, too.
The Angelus sighed. “I guess anything is possible. The Kairos we think is responsible isn’t tapped into our collective consciousness, though. I can tell that much.”
“He doesn’t have the Angeli master plan. Hasn’t shown up on your radar.”
“So to speak.”
“If he was morphing, couldn’t you stop him from becoming an Angelus?”
“It’s never come up before. If it’s some sort of evolutionary leap, I can’t stop his evolution any more than you could stop a child from becoming a teenager.”
Anne nodded. “Good analogy. Probably a similar evil.”
“A teenager and a Perfidia-infected Kairos?”
“It was a joke.”
“Ah. I see. I get it. Teenagers are troublesome.”
Anne tapped her front tooth with her fingernail, thinking. “Can I kill infected Kairos?”
“I don’t know. You were created specifically to syphon infected Angeli. Kairos run at a different frequency.”
“Do you need to create some kind of new Sentinel? Like me, only set to a different frequency? Or adjust me.”
“No. You’re perfect the way you are.”
“Good answer. You’re learning.”
Michael smiled and then clucked his tongue. “But seriously, developing a new Sentinel could take years. If it could even be done.”
“So, any ideas?”
“One. The L.A. Kairos have a man and a woman in their group who seem unique.”
“How so?”
“Well, he’s a sort of warrior class we’ve never seen before. He came into contact with the infected Kairos as a child and I think it
