“Excuse me,” she said. But before entering the house she hesitated. “Thank you,” she said to the Gargoyle. “Your mistress is very lucky to have you in her corner. Very rarely have I seen anyone talk about their faith in another person with so much conviction. I suppose … people come to me with their troubles, talk about all the dark things in their lives. It’s so easy to listen to that day in and day out and begin to think … begin to think that there really is no such thing as a good relationship. And that’s unfair,” she amended quickly, to herself as much as to Diahmond, “because there is a very beautiful person in my life and my relationship with her, while trying at times, is one of the healthiest and most wonderful I know. I am very stupid for not realizing that as much as I should. Maybe … maybe I’m so stupid I haven’t realized you can’t have the good if you aren’t willing to go through the bad.”

Diahmond smiled at her softly. “Maybe there’s hope for you after all,” she said, clearly teasing her.

“Maybe,” she agreed with an answering smile.

She went in the house, and suddenly realized her heart was pounding and an exhilarating mix of fear and excitement was bleeding through her. She wasn’t looking for Jackson anymore, although she would find him next. No. There was someone else she needed to see first before she could even allow her mind to think the frightening exciting things it wanted to think. She ran out of the house and into the darkness, following the drive around toward the guesthouse. She stumbled on the steps, her anxious feet putting themselves all wrong as she neared her goal. She knew that once she crossed this threshold there was a chance she would be leaving a completely different person. Someone braver than she ever had been before. Someone who wasn’t acting at being strong, but really was strong on the inside and the out.

“Lina!” She slammed the door behind her and hit the lights. After all, she wasn’t a supernatural creature yet.

Yet …

The word was so terrifying.

“Crazy,” she muttered to herself. “You’re crazy. Even your crazy sister is going to tell you this is crazy,” she said as she burst into Angelina’s bedroom, waking her with a start.

Chapter Eighteen

“This is so cool!” Angelina cried after her sister dumped the entire story of what had been happening, what was happening, and what she was actually considering doing into her sister’s lap. After all, she couldn’t do any of this without her. She couldn’t give up her sister as well as daylight and her job and everything else.

“It’s not cool it’s insane!” Marissa argued breathlessly. “You need to tell me it’s insane!”

“Look,” Lina said dryly, “if you came here wanting me to be the voice of reason then clearly you don’t really want to be talked out of this.”

Well, she had a point there.

“I guess I didn’t,” she confessed aloud, as if it were a dirty little secret that shouldn’t be spoken of, because saying it made it real. “But what about the whole dying part? I mean, surely …”

“You’re looking at it all wrong,” Lina said, her eagerness almost infectious. “It’s not dying, it’s … it’s … metamorphosis. You’re a pretty, fuzzy warm little caterpillar … and when you take this step you’ll be this magnificent, powerful, beautiful butterfly that will be so deeply loved and … oh, I’m so jealous I could spit! The only thing that kind of sucks is the sunlight part. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t see the world in daylight every day.” Then she shrugged. “But from the sound of it you’ll be able to see in the dark almost as if it were daylight, so maybe it won’t really matter. Anyway …” She looked down at the bedspread and tugged at the fabric a little. “Anyway, it’ll be nice knowing that you’re safe, you’ll be happy and that I won’t lose you anytime soon. From the sound of it you’ll potentially outlive me.”

“Believe me, some of those things are the ones I question. But … I’m realizing something. These people here are in pieces right now. With Jackson only just now becoming fully Blended, coming here to take on the reins of his government, they’ve been without the leaders they depend on for a very long time. Especially her. She only lived a week, as I understand it, before the Templars got to her last time. That means it’s been almost two hundred years since they were truly together.” She sighed in tandem with her sister. It really was terribly romantic, the idea of two souls striving for centuries for the opportunity to simply be with each other. To be able to touch one another. It made it easy to understand why Menes’s grief had outweighed his sense of duty to his people when he had lost his bride after only a few days. “And provided I can keep out of reach of the Templars, I could maybe help.”

“Think about it,” Lina said eagerly. “You’re a psychiatrist! Who better to have an empathic ability? How are you going to do it? Bullet to the brain? Or poison, like Cleopatra, dying in beautiful repose.” She laid back in the bed, one arm thrown dramatically over her head.

“Okay it really creeps me out that you are excitedly talking about my suicide.” She frowned. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I mean the bullet thing …” She shuddered. “No. It might be fast but … no. I think I’ll stick with the poison idea. Write myself a script for some heavy-duty sleep meds. I guess I have to talk to Jackson about it. I don’t know what the rules are here. Oh my god, I’m really doing this.” Marissa felt her throat clench tight even as the rest of her squirmed with excitement. “Provided he still wants me.” She sighed. “I haven’t been very nice to him.”

“He’ll forgive ya. They always do.”

“What if …” she began.

“Oh stop thinking and for once in your life just do,” her sister said with sudden vehemence. “Do what you really want to do and stop analyzing it. Stop trying to control it. Just … stop.”

Marissa took a breath and nodded. Angelina smiled and, wrapping her arms around her sister’s neck, hugged her tight. “Now … drop dead.”

She sniggered and Marissa pushed her away with a laugh, getting up and smoothing her skirt. “All right,” she said. “Here goes nothing … and everything. This is me, just doing. Going with those instincts and emotions and …”

“Leave!”

“Oh fine,” Marissa said, sticking her tongue out at Lina, dissolving their maturity completely back to when they’d been kids, making fun and teasing each other. Then she took another breath and hurried out of Lina’s bedroom and out of the guesthouse.

She found him rather unexpectedly as she was approaching the house around the southwest corner of the building. Actually she heard his voice first and the sentence that hit her ears made her freeze in her tracks.

“I know you need to get to bed, Max, but I need you to do me a favor and bring Sargent back to the SPD. Tell them … just tell them he’s going to need a new trainer,” he said, his tone low and his words tight with the emotion he was refusing to show. “Tell them that I had to move away due to an unexpected family crisis that won’t resolve itself anytime soon. I’ll write a resignation letter to make it official and have one of the Gargoyles send it from another state. Just in case they are looking for me. In a few weeks Leo can go home and make them understand that he’s not dead and I had nothing to do with it.”

“Jackson, no!” she burst out, unable to control herself due to her outright shock.

Jackson turned slowly, his eyes sweeping to hers, the anger in them hard and very evident. He didn’t say a word, just pointedly turned his back to her to speak to Max once more. “He’s to travel in the cabin of the jet, Max. Don’t crate him and put him in the hold.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Max said, clearly protesting the idea that Jackson thought he might.

“I know. It just … needed to be said. I had to make sure.”

“Jackson!” She barked his name out as she marched up to his side. When he didn’t acknowledge her she shoved herself between the two men and grabbed him by his shirt, wishing she could shake him. “You cannot give up that dog! What are you thinking? You know how much he means to—”

“What I know,” he bit off into her face, “is that someone just reminded me that anyone and anything near me risks themselves just by knowing me. Someone reminded me that what I am turns an innocent soul into a target, brings stress and heartache and horrible things into the life of that innocent. So excuse me, but I’ll be damned if Sargent is going to get himself killed while trying to protect me from a supernatural creature he has no defense for! And he’s been trained for a job that he loves. That he’s eager for. This is me being unselfish, Marissa. But I can see why you wouldn’t recognize it.”

All right, Marissa thought with irritation, just when had she become the designated as**ole in the house? Everyone was taking these mean little pot shots at her and she’d had just about enough of it.

“Don’t you dare fault me for taking the time to understand and evaluate something before jumping in with both feet! And you!” She whirled to face Max who was trying to discreetly leave the argument. She pointed to the ground and let out an imperious, “Stay!” Max went still, lifting a brow in curiosity and Sargent’s butt hit the ground in a very obedient staying position. “If I’m going to be queen around here, I’m going to expect to be fully … and I mean fully … informed of any important decisions! I’m not going to be a figurehead or something pretty sitting on a throne while all the big strong men take care of all the business.” She whipped back around to face Jackson. “I don’t know what Hatshepsut’s feelings are on the subject, but I suspect all this high-handed bullying bullshit doesn’t fly with her, and it doesn’t fly with me either. So with the both of us together you’re in for a major attitude adjustment. We aren’t going to put up with it!”

She stopped talking, breathing hard and glaring at Jackson as her temper started to cool. She hadn’t noticed his eyes going wide, hadn’t noticed the slight slack in his jaw.

“Did …” He cleared his throat of an unidentifiable emotion. “Did you just say we?”

She could have knocked him on his ass with a feather, that was how numb with shock Jackson was. Surely she didn’t mean …? Yes, he thought quickly before he got his hopes up, she was just speaking hypothetically.

“Yes I said we, provided you can quit being an ass long enough to kill me. And what’s the deal with that anyway? The rules I mean. Can I just overdose or lick mustard off a spoon or … what are the rules to this dying thing because I know there has to be rules and you can damn well bet I’m going to get it right.”

“Oh my god.” It was all he could think of to say. He knew he was staring at her, knew he was looking like an ass because he couldn’t form a single coherent thought in his head about what to do next. He couldn’t because his heart was racing with fear and excitement. Fear that he was dreaming, excitement that he wasn’t.

“Jackson,” she said dryly, “when a woman offers to kill herself for you she kind of expects a little more than ‘Oh my god.’”

“Oh my f**king god,” he shouted at her right before letting every single impulse flowing through him loose. He grabbed for her with both hands, dragged her up against his chest, wrapping her in a suffocating hug while crushing her mouth under his. He kissed her as hard and as deep as he dared, overjoyed to feel her whole body softening and relaxing, her lips parting to allow him to do ravishing things to her mouth. He kissed her so long and so intensely that he thought he was getting lightheaded from lack of oxygen. When he finally pulled back from her it was to her smiling eyes, watching her lick her lips clean of their mutual flavors.

“Max, you can go now,” she said, dismissing the man with a wave but never once looking away from Jackson.

“Yup.” Max chuckled and headed off with Sargent in tow.

“I can’t believe,” he stammered, still not knowing what to say. “Are you one hundred percent …?

“Are you ever going to finish your sentences?” she teased him.

“My god I’m going to kill you,” he said fiercely, wanting to shake her for taking delight in his flabbergasted state.

“Well, that’s kind of the idea, right?”

In lieu of shaking the hell out of her he yanked her back up against himself. This time it was she who leapt for the kiss, meshing her mouth to his as if they were a single being, then breaking again and again as each successive contact grew hotter and hotter and faster. Before he knew it she was climbing up his body, arms wrapping around his head and neck and legs wrapping around his waist. It took four blind, heated steps before he found the side of the house and slammed her up against it, following hard with the press of his body. God. Oh god what was it about her that made him want to forget every nicety he’d ever learned as a lover and just … f**k her crazy. And then take her slower, sweeter afterward. But it was always this first. This hunger. This rapacious need to just be inside her however he could manage it and as soon as was humanly possible.