He stroked her cheek. “I’m listening.”

Her bright, blue gaze shadowed. “I am making a choice not to pick up a gun again. If I take that path, I feel like I would become someone else, someone that’s not me. I would have to grow callused in ways that I’m not right now. I think some parts of me would have to die and I wouldn’t be the healer I need to be, because I don’t have your spirit, Michael. I’m not a fighter. Maybe I’m making a selfish decision. I know it means I take certain risks in our fight, but if that’s the case, so be it—”

He shook his head and put his arms around her. “Hush. You’ll take no more risks than I do.”

“Well, that’s not exactly true.” Her voice was dry. She slipped her arms around his waist. “You’re freakishly fast.”

He started to laugh, and it felt good and healing. “I guess I am.”

He sank to his knees and rested his face against her flat abdomen, basking in her warm, vital energy. She bent over him and ran her hands down his wide shoulders and strong back, and stroked his short, dark hair. For a while they rested against each other in silence.

Then he stirred and lifted his head. “If fighting—my type of fighting, anyway—is a kind of healing,” he said, “then would you say that healing is a kind of fight?”

“Makes sense,” she said. “Yin and yang. Two sides of a coin.” She touched the tip of his nose with her finger.

He captured her hand and kissed her finger, then stood. “I’ve calmed down and I’m listening to what you said, but this isn’t a simple either/or kind of topic.”

She bit her lip. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not comfortable with guns, and I can respect that. But just as being afraid to do something doesn’t make you a coward, you can’t look at what I do and then say that you’re not a fighter. I don’t think that’s the right way to think of this issue. You may not be a fighter like I am, but you still have a lot of fight in you. Look at how hard you’ve fought over the last couple of days. Jerry should have died twice over, and he didn’t because of you, and of course there’s Nicholas.”

“Okay,” she said slowly. “I get what you’re saying.”

“I think you might enjoy some of the martial arts I know, especially the disciplines that are defensive in nature.”

She ducked her head and scowled. He cupped her face with both hands and tilted it back up. “Keep an open mind. You promised.”

Grimacing, she said again, “Okay.”

“You’re so sexy when you’re sullen,” he told her.

He bent his head, and his mouth covered hers. She closed her eyes, draped her arms around his neck and kissed him back, and he lost himself in the raw, animal physicality of the moment.

He pushed her back and lifted her so that she settled into a sitting position on the table. Then he nudged between her legs and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly.

She linked her legs around his hips, hugging him with her whole body.

When he pulled away, Mary rested her head on his shoulder. She fingered her swollen lips and said in a drugged voice, “Wait. That was all just inside our heads, right?”

He nuzzled her ear with a husky chuckle. “Yeah. Think of how good it will be again in the flesh.”

She stroked his hair, and it felt better than before. It felt better than ever, passion and completeness, yin and yang.

“I haven’t had a chance to say thank you,” she said. “Jerry and Nicholas are alive because of you too.”

“They are alive because of what we both did.” He took her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “About your image of the chapel that you showed me earlier. I have an image I want to show you too.”

She smiled up at him. Everything about her had lightened until she glowed, her spirit burnished bright. “Do you?”

“Yes.” He looked around at the great hall. “It’s here, deep inside the fortress.”

Chapter Twenty-two

SO THIS WAS supposed to be a new day.

He had read all of the most successful self-help books. He had been determined to turn his frown upside down and keep a positive attitude. Cultivating a positive attitude was supposed to create a positive outcome, wasn’t it?

What had that glass half full of bullshit got him?

Nothing. Nada.

He had scrambled so hard to get his traps in place along the coastline. For a brief time, at Jerry Crow’s pathetic little hovel, he had felt on top of the world, ahead of the curve and in control of the game. He just knew he was onto something good.

Until Michael and Mary intervened, he had been onto something good. Jerry Crow had almost come home . . . from somewhere. Then Michael and Mary swooped in . . . from somewhere . . . and his monkey suit still ached from when Michael shot out the front tire of his and Martin’s SUV and sent them crashing into a tree. Only his seat belt had saved him from hitting the windshield.

By the time he had been able to get people searching that specific area of the Lake, everybody had vanished again. The only thing his people had located was a drifting, rusty motorboat, full of blood and bullet holes.

He was spending a king’s ransom on manpower and equipment, and the expenditures no longer came just from state and federal resources. Now they poured out of his own bank accounts, along with those of his wealthier drones.

He was, by far, the richest man in the world, because not only did he have his own wealth, but he also had access to all the wealth that his drones had amassed.

(He adored Swiss banks and electronic access to numbered accounts. It made life so convenient as he moved from host to host.)

But many of those assets were dispersed through various individual, business and government accounts, and those funds took time to access. Because the situation was developing so fast, he was forced to fund the more esoteric aspects of the manhunt for Mary and Michael out of his own pocket.

He was spending his own money.

That offended him mightily, but even then, he spared no expense. He was willing to squander every cent he had acquired over centuries of plundering. He would be willing to bankrupt several small nations as well—if only he found out where Michael and Mary were hiding.

He was also willing to destroy major cities if he could just be assured of their destruction too, but what ultimate use was nuclear or bioweapons when they could return—and return—and return? They were a plague maddening him to the point where he could howl like a dog, a fugitive pestilence he would gouge out of his own flesh if he could only get his fingers on it.

WHY COULDN’T THEY LEAVE HIM THE FUCK ALONE? He only fought for the right that was every creature’s, to live his life on his own terms and do what was in his nature. He ground his teeth and growled in fury.

The worst of it was he didn’t dare call off any aspect of the manhunt—just in case.

So his drones drove along the coastal roads of Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin, just in case. Armed federal agents worked in coordination with the Coast Guard to comb the waters of the Lake. Just in case.

Authorities from all three states were canvassing every bed-and-breakfast establishment and every last squalid roadside motel. His creatures from the psychic realm had orders to fly over every inch of the landscape.

Early that evening, he took to the air in a private helicopter in order to travel quickly between Michigan’s Lower and Upper Peninsulas. Every minute that trickled by was uselessly weighted in gold.

Because Mary and Michael had vanished, and they did it not once, but twice.

People didn’t just vanish, not even his people. If they were alive they were corporeal. Like all physical creatures they could be measured and weighed, captured, imprisoned, dissected, tortured and killed. Their spirits were damned slippery and infuriating, but while they were embodied, they were bound by certain physical properties and limitations.

Last night, he had actually wondered if Michael and Mary might have been killed by the storm that had roared along the Michigan coast.

But they weren’t at the bottom of the Lake. They were hiding really f**king well, which led him back to the need to squander his fortune.

They were either waiting for the search to die down before they moved again or—and this was the kicker, this was what had him suffering from indigestion and would have given him nightmares if he could have afforded the luxury of sleep—they had met up with Astra.

If they had united with Astra, they would have no need to travel anywhere, because they had already arrived at their destination. And if that happened, all of his frantically complicated efforts to tighten a search noose around Michael and Mary had failed.

Each puzzle piece had a name. He whispered them over and over again. Nicholas Crow. Jerry Crow. Michael and Mary. Astra.

How could Michael and Mary have known to come to Jerry Crow’s aid, except through Astra?

He had a bad feeling, and it wasn’t based on any conclusive evidence. It was purely based on the need to assume the worst-case scenario, because making that assumption was what had kept him alive for so long.

So he prowled through the air in his private helicopter, tracing and retracing the same pathways in gigantic loops, as he sniffed for the slightest sign of any of the three. The day passed into evening, and still, he gained nothing.

No scent of Astra.

No sign of Michael.

No hint of Mary.

That last clinched his bad feeling into a graveyard’s certainty. He should have picked up something from Mary by now, some kind of indication of what the little shit was up to. She didn’t have the skill to hide with complete efficacy from him. She hadn’t had the time to remember how, and Michael couldn’t have had time to teach her.

For the last several days, Mary had been trumpeting through the realms with all the finesse of a brain-damaged elephant, but ever since yesterday, she had grown very quiet, almost as if a powerful, dexterous hand had come down over her to muffle her noise.

The only time he had really sensed Mary was earlier in the afternoon, just after she and Michael had rescued the old Crow and the boy. Then her presence blazed powerful and bright, escalating in intensity until it reached some unknown conclusion. He wondered if that had something to do with all the blood they found in the old motorboat.

After that, again there was nothing.

Time drained away and silence told a tale. If the three of them had joined together, then Astra’s hiding place had to be accessible from the Petoskey and the Charlevoix marinas in Little Traverse Bay.

The old bitch was close, very close. He couldn’t smell her on the airwaves, but he could feel it in the bones of his current body. He knew she was there, like a spider, lurking right across the next hilltop, around the bend, down the road.

One day he was going to look over his shoulder, and she would be standing there, smiling, as she plunged a dagger into his back. Her very presence on this planet had turned it from a playground into a prison. So many of the people he had slaughtered over the millennia had died as poor substitutes because he couldn’t manage to get his hands around her goddamn neck.

Millennia ago, back on his home world, he had researched the properties of spirit until he had thrown open the cage of his existence in one of the greatest alchemical acts his people had ever seen.

He had transformed himself and left the universe of his birthplace forever. He had expired in a transcendent blaze of power, and rose reborn from the ashes, all so that he could free himself from the perpetual nightmarish connection with his soul mate.

He had hoped his transformation would destroy her. No such luck.

He had broken free, but mutating his spirit had changed hers too. His greatest triumph had carried the seed of potential failure, for by studying his accomplishment, she and the rest of the group had learned how to follow him.

One fact remained that provided both comfort and warning. He cuddled that fact close throughout the long years. At least now they lived independent of each other’s existence. At least he had achieved that much. Congratulations, ladies and gentlemen, the operation was a complete success. The conjoined twins survived the separation.

That meant he could destroy her and survive. She also had the potential of surviving his destruction, but that didn’t mean anything to him. When she followed him to Earth, he knew she was prepared to destroy herself if that was what it took to bring him down.

If he could find her, if he could only just find her.

She was the opposing queen on the chessboard, the most powerful piece in the shadow game. Mary and Michael weren’t strong enough to defeat him on their own. If he took the old bitch out, he would achieve checkmate. Destroy her, and he would have conquered this world. Then it would only be a matter of time before the inhabitants of the Earth realized it as well.

The endgame was so close.

The helicopter completed another massive circuit.

“Do it again,” he said to his pilot.

They hovered over the rugged south coast of Michigan’s central Upper Peninsula. The area spanned four million acres of protected state and federal forestland.

One could wax poetic about the panoramic beauty of the sky on that late afternoon. The storm had left nature lovers a present in its wake, for they were going to have a spectacular sunset.

One was not in the mood. He curled a contemptuous nostril.

“Sir?” the pilot said, glancing at him sideways.

For this trip, he hadn’t brought one of his drones. He thought he might need a pilot who would be able think with more creative independence. Now he wanted to pull his hair out, only his monkey suit, with the hairy knuckles and hairy ass, didn’t have enough hair on his head, just a receding hairline and that wretched, army-style buzz cut.

He said icily, “What part of ‘do it again’ did you not understand? Oh forget it, just put us on the f**king ground.”