“Yes I … can you tell?”

“You pupils are dilating. Come now, rest your head, and close your eyes. You’ll just go to sleep.”

She hoped so. She had seen some drug overdoses in the past. They didn’t always go quietly and peacefully. She didn’t want him to suffer while she went away from him. She just wanted to go to sleep and then wake up in his arms exactly the way she was.

“I feel like Juliet,” she whispered. “But I hope we won’t end up as tragic as that.”

“No. I’m going to wait for you.”

“You did this, didn’t you?” She asked him suddenly. “You said something before … you killed yourself when you lost her last time, didn’t you?”

He was silent a long moment, his breath warm in her hair and against her scalp. “I couldn’t bear living without her after waiting so long to touch her again. And then she was with me … and we had a week. Just one week in two hundred years. A hundred before and a hundred after. I don’t know why it takes us so long to come back, but it does. And then suddenly it’s like our eyes are opened, and we can sense souls that are leaving the living world as they brush against the Ether. Then we reach out and grab hold of them and we come back if they agree to live with us.”

“It’s almost unfair, to ask someone if they want to die or live with you. Does anyone ever choose against you?”

“All the time. Or we realize we aren’t going to be compatible souls. There are no absolutes. I think you’ve learned that lately.”

She yawned and nodded. She felt herself drifting. Almost floating and spinning.

“Jackson?” she said softly.

“Mmm?”

“I’m going now.”

“Yes, love, I know. I’ll be here waiting for you.”

“Okay,” she said.

And then she fell asleep.

Blue. The misty fog of the Ether was the most beautiful cerulean blue. Like a vast fluffy ocean, mist scudding too and fro. She felt as though she were in her own body, living breathing touching and feeling, but she knew she had no substance. It was just her. No frills. No clothes. No words to define herself as a woman or a professional. All of that didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was finding Hatshepsut and going back to Jackson.

“I am here,” a soft, dulcet voice said, the accent so beautiful and rich with a culture completely alien to her. “I am here. Has Menes sent you to me then?” An apparition appeared in the form of a tall, dark-skinned and dark-haired woman. Her hair was dressed up in braids, coarse beads woven within. “Have you come to give yourself over to me? Will you let me show you a new life and a new world?”

It was odd how off-puttingly dramatic it sounded. Was this the woman, the soul Menes loved? Now that she was incorporeal, all she had was the senses of her soul, and something told her the woman before her was not complementary to her. It felt wrong. So when the woman reached out for her she pulled back and moved away.

“What’s wrong with you, mortal female? If you do not accept me and bring me to my king you will die. You will not come back to the man your heart broadcasts love for.”

“I …” It was weird speaking without a mouth, lips, and tongue to do so. It was more an emanation of thought, like telepathy. “I don’t believe you!” she burst out. “You cannot be the woman that man professes to love!”

She smiled then, softening her approach. “I am sorry. I have been here so long and my last lifetime was not a good one. I didn’t wish to be born again. But Menes has talked me into it. Now come. Touch your soul to mine and we will fulfill this love story you so aspire to. I will let you know how a queen should be revered and how a king should beg for her love.”

She reached for her again and Marissa wavered with indecision. If she refused this woman she would lose her life. She would lose Angelina and Jackson and everything that meant anything to her. She will have let go of all of it for nothing. She didn’t see what choice she had. Perhaps, with time, Hatshepsut wouldn’t seem so harsh. So … cold and autocratic. But Jackson had told her that the Ether made things feel strange. Perhaps she was making harsh judgments because she was still scared of what was about to happen to her.

Enough, she told herself. You committed to this course, now finish it.

Slowly she reached out to touch the other woman’s soul.

“No!” The scream raced in on the mists, screeching from the left all the way to the right. “Do not touch her!”

Marissa jerked back, barely in time, all acceptance leaving her and blocking her soul from this other one. Permission, she remembered. They couldn’t join without the host soul’s permission.

“Do not touch this false beast,” A powerful feminine voice said, a second woman, stunningly beautiful and bald. Gold and tourmaline earrings flashed in her ears, a golden collar sat at her throat. She was strong without being autocratic in her bearing. She was confident as she swept between Marissa and the other soul. “She lies. She is not Hatshepsut. She is one of Odjit’s breed. A Templar.” She spat the word like a curse. “Be gone from here Kemisi! Be glad I was here to stop you, because my love would know you false the moment you awoke within this innocent woman.”

“A fine act,” the first soul said. “Do not believe her. She is not Hatshepsut. I am. You must beware. So many Templars are here and crowding me out in order to get to you!”

“She lies,” said the bald beauty. “Listen to your heart, Marissa. It loves the same man that I do. Feel of both our souls and know which of us is true.”

Marissa knew if she had a heart it would be pounding in terror. What had she almost done? Oh god, how was she to know who was true and who was false? Could she trust herself to know something like that while in a state she had so little control of? And Jackson had said this would happen quickly, that the cusp between life and permanent death was fleeting. She only had a matter of moments to decide.

“Let me help you,” the second soul said softly. “When last I was alive, Menes and I loved in a week what others spend lifetimes missing. When he took his own life in order to be by my side, he made a promise to me. He said that next time he would find a woman of great strength and sure spirit. And,” she said with a smile, “that he wanted me to choose someone with most delicious curves. Of course, he knew we had no control over that. Here we are just spirits and we only have impressions of what we once looked like.”

“This is preposterous,” the first Hatshepsut … or Kemisi … said. “I could wax eloquent just as she does, but I will not. I am the queen and pharaoh of the Bodywalkers and true mate to your lover. Choose me and be done with it, or choose her and awaken the host of a Templar witch who has deceived you.”

“Listen,” the second spirit said softly. “Not to me. Not to her. Listen to yourself. Do not be afraid to trust yourself. You have struggled all your life trying to find your own strength and trying to make others believe in it even when you couldn’t. Yes,” she breathed, closing her eyes for a moment, her brow furrowing slightly. “I feel it all now. But you are strong. And with me guiding you, you will learn to trust that strength. Trust it now. Choose.”

“She pretends to be an empath,” the other spirit scoffed. “It’s like watching a play. You are a bad actress, Templar witch.”

Choose. Trust herself and choose. She was afraid. Deathly afraid. But she was strong, she realized. At some point the acting had become the truth and she had become stronger than she realized. She was confident. She made choices and affected people’s lives for the better. She was looked to for her strength and it was not just an illusion.

And that was why she reached for the second spirit.

“You have lost, Kemisi,” the second spirit said simply as she reached and touched herself to Marissa. And in a blinding flash of impression and sensation, she knew she had chosen right. This was Hatshepsut. The love she felt for Menes shone into every corner of her soul. It was so bright and brilliant it almost hurt to know it. “You should thank me for keeping you from my lover’s wrath.”

“That’s was rather the point now wasn’t it,” the other soul sneered. “It would be worth my immediate death to see Menes kill this creature his other soul loves so dearly. It would rend them apart and he would be back by your side in an instant. Just like last time. And we always grow stronger when you are here with him, wallowing in your incorporeal love.” The spirit hissed in their direction, then scudded away on the next breeze, clouds of blue curling in her wake.

“Come now,” Hatshepsut soothed her. “You are safe now. It’s over. Let us concentrate on what we are to become together.”

Marissa nodded, painful relief echoing through her.

“I’m sorry I was not here for you immediately. Other souls were crowding me out. Templars, no doubt, trying to see Menes fall. But, I think you and I know that the Templars are now the least of our problems. Our lover will need us now more than ever.” She smiled then, a warm sensation Marissa felt spinning through her. “Let us return to him. And let us endeavor to stay alive more than a week this time, shall we?”

Marissa laughed, reaching again for the stunning spirit and her warm humor. Yes, she thought. This is who I want to be.

And so they reached into each other and began the process of letting their souls Blend.

Chapter Twenty

Nothing had devastated Jackson as much as watching her last breath escape from her body. Even knowing what was happening, even with Menes’s complete faith in what was taking place, he found himself painfully bereft and a weight of grief settled on his heart.

God. Please God. Bring her back safe.

And now, Menes thought within him, you know exactly how I felt when Hatshepsut last left me.

And he did. He felt it so keenly it just about killed him. And now he understood why Menes’s previous host had willingly allowed Menes to follow her into death. When first he’d come to understand what Menes had done for the sake of a woman, he had been appalled and had warned him there was no way in hell he was agreeing to suicide if something like that should happen again.

He had been so wrong. He knew … he knew he would be very easy to convince if something were to happen to Marissa. He hadn’t fully realized it before, but he knew now.

“Goddamn it, I didn’t tell her I love her,” he whispered to the empty room as he remained bent over her, touching her face, waiting for her to draw breath again.

She knew. Do you think she would have done this for you if she had thought otherwise? You know. In your heart you know that she loves you and she never spoke the words. Words are not necessary when it comes to love of this depth.

And Jackson knew he was right. He knew it in his soul that his other half was far more of an expert in these matters than he was, and that Menes was right. At this point love was implied. Words meant nothing, and actions meant everything.

She sucked in a breath, startling him. The emotion that raced through him had no name. It was too powerful, too encompassing to be given a mere word to describe it. Painful tears burned into his eyes as his hands framed her face … her beautiful, brave face. And it floored him that she thought her strength was an act. Well, she wouldn’t think that any longer. Not after what she had just done on faith. It left him speechless that she had trusted him so much, when he knew she was so cautious with her trust along with everything else. He wasn’t sure he deserved it, but he was infinitely delighted to have it.

“Am I alive?” she asked tentatively. Then she opened her eyes, looked into his and saw his emotion-filled eyes.

“My god, can I tell you how much that sucked?” he said, laughing unsteadily and scrubbing a hand across his wet eyes.

“Yeah for me too!” she shot back. “I’m the one who died here. Oh, and thanks for not telling me what she looked like or anything so I didn’t almost come back with the right damn Bodywalker.”

That made him go still. It hadn’t even occurred to him that someone would try to deceive her. It was a tactic he had never heard of before. He hadn’t thought any of the Templars would be so profane as to interrupt the joining of two destined souls. God, how low they had sunk.

“Well, Menes says you can rest assured you have the right damn Bodywalker. Jesus, it’s like he’s singing in here.” He tapped his forehead. And then his heart. “And in here. All this talk of love but I never thought he would be emotional. He’s utterly beside himself with joy. As am I.”

“Well …” She hesitated. “I don’t feel her.”

“The Blend takes time. You will feel her soon. Menes feels her, and that is enough for now. That and the fact that you said we would have sex after you came back.” He grinned at her, lecherously wriggling his brows. It made her laugh out loud.