“There’s no way of changing it … the only way to get rid of Chatha is to kill the innocent kid,” Jackson said gravely. And he raised a quick hand to silence Marissa with a finger on her lips. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but there’s no way of destroying one without destroying the other. The most we could do is …” He hesitated, and she could see how distasteful this was for him. “We could catch him and force-feed him a modern psychotropic drug. It’s one of the only ways a Blending can be prevented and the only way it can be reversed. Modern mental health meds act like a trap, numbing the Bodywalker inside from being able to access the host’s mind and body. It like a paralysis. We can see and hear everything, but can’t so much as move a muscle. “

“That sounds horrible,” she said, disgust over the whole situation climbing up from her belly and into her throat. She swallowed when the urge to vomit swam over her. “But it also sounds like the perfect prison for Chatha. If we can retrieve Andy, keep him here under our control, he could return himself to normal.”

“Only, he’s been trapped all this time … seeing and hearing, a witness to heinous acts and crimes. It could be there’s nothing left of the original’s psyche after all of that.” Jackson said.

“Well it’s at least something to try,” she snapped at him, reaching a level of frustration that couldn’t be contained. “God! Why can’t you people just stay in that Ether of yours and just leave us alone!”

She watched Jackson’s entire demeanor change, his jaw clenching as he obviously bit back a sharp retort. Instead he took a breath in slowly to calm himself a little. “Some of us would,” he said tightly. “But that existence, that never ending numbness, can drive a soul mad. We may be incorporeal, but still have all our human urges. To live, to laugh, to love. What right do you have to say we don’t deserve that? We should stay in purgatory indefinitely? Do you know what that’s like? Do you know what it’s like to love someone with everything that you are and be this close to them and unable to f**king touch them? No. Clearly you don’t. You don’t know a damn thing about it because you’re so afraid of losing your precious damn self-control that it’s completely starved you of any goddamn empathy.” He turned to Leo while she stood there with her mouth open in shock. “Sorry Leo. I’ll come back later.”

He brushed past her and left the room, slamming the door in his wake and making her wince.

“Oh man, has he got it bad,” Leo drawled, moving to lean back against the headboard. She could tell he was wearing out. She knew she should let him rest, but that remark compelled her to stay.

“What do you mean?” she asked warily, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Seriously? How can you not see it? He’s more than a little crazy about you, doc. He has been for a while.”

“For … a-a while?” This was Jackson’s best friend. His confidante. If anyone would know anything personal about Jackson and his feelings on a subject it would most likely be this man. “You’re mistaken. He only just … it’s because he wants me to die or whatever and let his queen come and take me over,” she said with no small amount of bitterness entering her tone.

“Yeah? And what about the past year when he’s been mooning over you from afar? Doesn’t that count? I mean sure, he never crossed the line … You know,” he added thoughtfully, “maybe it was more like a year and a half. Yeah. That’s it. You’ve been here two years, right?”

“Well I—yes but I …” She nervously licked her lips. “Did he tell you that?”

“Did he ever say it to me straight out? Not on your life. He’d have died first before admitting he wanted something he couldn’t have. Oh. Hey. There ya go,” he said, smirking at her. “He did die first before admitting to it.”

Marissa blanched, the understanding making her heart race like she was on some kind of thrill ride. “Because,” she said a bit breathlessly, “we worked together.”

“Yeah. And this is a small town with a small precinct. People talk. So Jacks kept his mouth shut and respected you enough to keep his hands to himself. But I guess all that doesn’t matter anymore.” Leo paused as he eyed the shirt she was wearing. Jackson’s shirt. “So I’m assuming he’s making up for lost time. Dead queen or no dead queen, you’re very special to him Marissa. If you weren’t he would have gone after you with all his barrels blazing. He would have taken you to bed, scratched his itch as it were, and be on his way shortly after. It’s what he’s done all of his life. Has been ever since his parents died anyway. He doesn’t like to get too close to people. He doesn’t want to cope with any more loss if it can at all be avoided.”

Of course. Of course, her mind cried out, forcing her to resist the urge to smack her palm to her forehead. What the hell kind of a shrink are you, Marissa Anderson? It was one of the reasons why he had taken losing Chico so hard. And the reason why he’d gone ballistic when Docia had died. It must have just about killed him to walk into Leo’s place and see all that blood, thinking his best friend was most certainly dead. Christ, and all she’d been doing was worrying about protecting herself.

“You’re going to want to go after him now,” Leo prompted her.

“Yes. Yes I am,” she said absently. “You rest and I’ll …” She didn’t finish because she was already hurrying after Jackson.

In the bed, Leo chuckled. At least something good might come out of this, he thought. Leo wasn’t feeling so hot, but preferred not to get comfortable. The pain would keep him awake for a while. Maybe that would protect him from the nightmares he knew were going to come for him. It had happened in the war. It had happened three years back in Nicaragua. It most certainly would happen again.

Damn.

He would have killed for some cold hard Jack Daniels right about then.

Why is this house so damn big? she thought with frustration as she searched for Jackson. She didn’t find him in his room or the kitchen or the main living areas, and she wasn’t about to poke into rooms she didn’t belong in. It had been wrong of her to do so the first time. She had known that but she had let her temper get the best of her … just like she had done now.

He was right. She did try to keep her emotions in check. She had thought it made her a better psychiatrist, more professional, able to see a bigger picture rather than getting mired down in the emotions of her patients. What it had done was completely desensitize her to anyone and everything save her sister. Maybe she would have noticed …

“Jackson?” she called, venturing out onto the deck and the moonlit night. She didn’t know where the switch was, so she was hoping the moon would provide enough light to find him if he was there.

“Nope. Too busty to be Jackson.”

“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said to the woman sitting in the shadows.

“Don’t be. You don’t have the same ability to see in the dark as we do,” Diahmond said. “There’s not much in the way of privacy in a house with this many people in it.”

“I don’t know how everyone does it. I think I’d go mad if I didn’t have some sense of privacy.”

The Gargoyle regarded her a moment, her eyes—a cool grey that could be seen in the moonlight almost as if they were aglow—moving over her briefly. “It’s the life of a royal,” she told her, almost pointedly. “It’s a price you pay for the good of your people. You bear with all the fuss and limitations it puts on your freedom because the people and their well-being means more to you than yours does. It takes a very special sort of person to be able to make that kind of sacrifice.”

Call her crazy, but Marissa got the feeling Diahmond didn’t think she fit that bill. She shrugged internally. What did she care what the Gargoyle thought of her?

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked her, moving further out into the night, turning her face up to the moon. She had to admit, the night wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to wake up to. It was cool and crisp and full of curious sounds.

“I am merely at a loss to understand you. That is all.”

“What is so perplexing? That I won’t throw my life away so I can share it with someone else whom I hardly know anything about?”

“What would you like to know about her that could possibly change your mind?”

Ouch. Two points to the Gargoyle. She had a point. That implied there were circumstances she might approve of. Had she really meant it to sound that way?

“What is she like, your queen? I’m assuming you know her … you sound like you do.”

“I don’t know her half as well as her husband does. If he cannot convince you of her worth, than what can I say to convince you? I will not argue with you or wheedle with you, mortal girl. You do not understand this world, and I see that you fear what you don’t understand.”

Zing. Four points total. Wow. She hadn’t lost a battle of wits like this in ages. And never so resoundingly.

“What’s to understand,” she said petulantly. “I die. She lives. Period.”

She saw her smile. “So simple. Yet so complex. Each Bodywalker comes equipped with a special ability. My lord pharaoh is telekinetic. Ramses can control the weather. Do you know what hers is?”

“I don’t …” she said a bit lamely.

“Empathy. Emotions, mortal girl. She feels what others feel so keenly, that sometimes all that keeps her balanced is the man you are looking for now. Menes. Jackson. Call him what you will. Now, do you know what I fail to understand?”

“Do tell,” Marissa invited dryly.

“Here you have this proposition laid before you … a man who loves you and wants you to do something that will increase his passion for you a thousandfold. He has chosen you—I can only assume he sees something of worth in you—over every other woman in the world. And if you think he makes this choice lightly you would be terribly mistaken, so know that now. The last time he was sent to choose for her it took him eleven years before he found someone he deemed worthy enough. Do you know what that must have done to him? To wait so long? This man has offered you something that will make you stronger, make your senses keener, and will add untold amount of time to your life. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its pitfalls. It does. And to say otherwise would insult your intelligence. I don’t know you but I’m assuming you have some.”

All right now that one was just low, Marissa thought with a sigh.

“Here he offers you this, and then on top of all of that …” she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, “a love for all time. A love of the ages. Something no mortal woman on earth can lay claim to. A relationship with no doubt. No questioning. No insecurity. I know this because I have seen it. I have seen it through two incarnations. It mattered not how long it was … they live lifetimes with every single day. They live more in a week than you or I can know how to do in years. I would give my right arm to know even an hour of what they have, and yet you cast it off as though something better will come along. That is the trouble with you humans. You never thrill in the now, always you grasp for the future.”

“But I …” Marissa trailed off, not knowing what she could really say to argue with her except the one clear truth. “I’m afraid of dying,” she said softly.

“Ah.” Diahmond seemed to think on that for a moment. “I die every single day,” she said. “The sun touches me and claws the breath from my body, turning my lungs to stone before the rest of me follows suit. Oh, I logically know I will awaken with the night … but I also know that I am helpless until then … that a bulldozer or sledgehammer can be applied to me and there is nothing I will be able to do to defend myself. I die every single day. I suffocate, and I fear. So yes, I do understand. But at least you are guaranteed to come back this time. How many others on the earth can say the same … including me? And of those few … those chosen few … how many of them know about it in advance?”

Marissa stood quietly, not knowing what to say. She had never considered any of these things. All she had been focused on was whether Jackson cared for her because of what she was … or because of what she could become. And if she’d been unsure of that, she certainly wasn’t anymore. After all, how many hoops did he have to jump through to convince her? When would it be enough? Maybe the problem wasn’t with her doubting him … but just with her not being able to believe someone could really feel that way about her.