Barrons suspected we had a week left, at most. Then one of the two black holes would touch the Earth, and when it did, we would find out the hard way what was going to happen.

When you only have one week to live, the pressing question becomes: how do you want to live it?

JADA

I slow-mo-Joed into Chester’s after parking my bike out front. The place was dark, the chairs were up on the tables, and it was so silent I could hear the faint hum of the geothermal power that fueled Ryodan’s demesne.

“Closing Time” started playing in my head. I’d always loved that song. I watched a couple of Semisonic concerts on TV when I was a kid and by then the families on the different series I’d binged on started to feel like my family. You took it where you could find it. So I’d watched them growing up, going to clubs, and having dates, and thinking about how it was going to be when I finally got let out into the world. School, dates, prom, those ideas had all seemed so exotic and out of the ordinary, mysterious, and thrilling to me. I’d wondered if I would ever be like normal people. Sometimes it seemed I felt so much more, yet in other places had voids where feelings should be.

I glanced at the dance floor and smiled faintly, remembering dancing with Lor, wearing a red dress. How Ryodan had looked at me. People on many of the worlds had found me attractive but his eyes said: Beautiful by any standards, in any century, on any world, woman.

He’d seemed so much larger than life when I was a kid, and even now I still felt young around him. But I also often felt he might be the only person who ever really understood me.

Dancer—who I’d been spending the last few weeks with, working on the song, going for insanely fast motorcycle rides, freeze-framing him around town—saw me through a filter. He polished me up where I had no shine. I loved that about him.

Ryodan’s cool, clear eyes had no filters where I was concerned. I didn’t need any with him.

I’d had no intention of stopping at Chester’s today, but each time I’d blown past the club in the past few weeks, on my way back from the abbey, I felt such an irresistible urge to park my bike and walk inside, I’d finally realized he’d put some kind of spell on me again.

He could do that. So, today when I felt it, I decided to call him on it. Tell him to quit using his black arts on me and leave me alone. No more Dani-come-hither spells. I was surprised he hadn’t hunted me down like he used to, except I’d been sleeping at Dancer’s every night.

Not that kind of sleeping. Each night, when we buttoned up the day and returned to his penthouse, I’d gone cautiously further with him, absorbing each new sensation. Dancer gave me no pressure, easing off whenever I wanted to, happy for the intimacy we shared. These past few weeks had been exotic for me, filled with deep, easy friendship, more hugs, kisses, and physical affection than I’d ever known, and a sense of belonging. All that affection was messing with my head. Changing me.

The nights had been incredible, stretched out next to my best friend who turned me on with his quiet genius and long, lean body. We did everything, made out like the world was ending (which it was) and ground against each other with red-hot desire and young, hungry bodies. But each time his hand slid down to unbutton my jeans, I caught and held it, started a conversation, talked to him about anything and everything until he finally fell asleep. As long as my jeans stayed on I felt safe.

Then I’d lie awake next to him, listening to him breathing, staring at the ceiling, wondering what was holding me back.

I wanted Dancer to be my first. And I wanted to get rid of whatever was stopping me.

I trusted him. He made no demands. Never asked where I was going or when I’d be back. He had his own life and interests and they wholly engrossed him, and we went our separate ways and had separate adventures but came back together and shared our new parts, then had more adventures together. Being with him was as easy and natural as breathing. And we were learning so much from each other!

From the day I found him, I’d considered Dancer mine. That was why I’d been so shocked to discover he’d had his own world all along that hadn’t included me, with friends and girls who crushed on him hard.

I loved him. I hadn’t wanted to, but I did, and it was too late to change because once my heart went somewhere, I couldn’t pull it back. It’s a glitch in my wiring.

I’d decided Ryodan was somehow keeping me from going all the way with Dancer. Didn’t want me losing my virginity to somebody that might die. Not that Ryodan knew I was a virgin. But it would be a totally Machiavellian thing to do: a kind of “Don’t let Dani care too much about Dancer because when he dies, it might screw her head up, and she won’t be nearly as productive.”

I was so irritated by the time I got to his office, thinking about how he was messing up my life—again—that I blasted inside in full freeze-frame, and my vibrations at twenty-something are far more impressive than they were at fourteen. I no longer merely ruffle papers and hair; at high velocity I can shake the glass in walls.

His entire office rattled and shuddered as I stood there, peering at him from the slipstream. Then he was up in it with me, standing close.

“What?” he demanded.

“What do you mean, ‘What?’ ” I growled.

“You only blast in here like this when you’ve gotten yourself worked into a tizzy about something. Get it out and over with. I have things to do.”

“Like paperwork? As if you were ever actually doing that. Is your tattoo screwing me up, or is it something else you’ve done?” I got right to the point.

“Screwing you up how?”

“Every blasted time I pass your club, your little compulsion spell tries to suck me inside. Get it off me.” He dropped down instantly and I followed him into slow-mo then stabbed him in the chest with a finger. “If you want to talk to me about something, text me. Don’t use magic on me. I’ve had enough of that kind of manipulation in my life.”

His silver eyes bored into mine. “Each time you pass my club you want to come inside?”

“You put the spell on me. You know how it works.”

He smiled faintly. “I didn’t put a spell on you.”

The instant he said it, I knew he was telling the truth. I can tell when he’s being deceptive and when he’s not. Ryodan’s modus operandi isn’t outright lying, it’s shaping words into twisty little pretzels of obfuscation. His reply was too straightforward to contain any twists.