But not telling Leo about it … that was a whole different can of worms. Funny, though, since Docia had been all over the news, lauded as some kind of miracle right there in their own hometown. How could Leo have missed that?

“What. Happened.” Leo dropped each word individually, his tone cold and brooking no other options other than to tell him exactly what he wanted to know.

Jackson gave him a quick rundown of events. He was succinct but detailed … at least, as detailed as he could be. Docia had not had very much to offer by way of information, and their investigations thus far had turned up next to nothing. All they really had was one very discombobulated witness, the make and model and color of one of the most popular purchases in the area, and scrapings of metal and paint on a patch of stone that had seen its share of scrapings and paint.

Jackson pushed on with his shopping, the urgency to get back to Docia still ticking hard in the back of his head. Leo fell into step, every so often grabbing something off a shelf and sticking it in Jackson’s cart. It shouldn’t have been funny, but Jackson had to suppress a smile. Even when his mind was busy digesting other disturbing details of life, there was a part of Leo that couldn’t stop being a wiseass, and loading up the cart with things he liked or that were so completely disgusting they ought not to be on a shelf for human consumption was as wise as it got. Jackson took a jar of pickled pig’s feet out of the cart and put it back on the shelf.

“I was out of town,” Leo said gruffly after a few minutes.

Ah. That explained it. Jackson also realized it was Leo’s version of an apology. He had nothing to apologize for. If anything, Jackson should be apologizing to him for leaving him out of the loop. Leo cared a great deal for Docia. “I should have called you,” Jackson said, letting his friend off the hook.

“Yes. You should have,” he barked at him suddenly. He turned a dark-eyed glare at him. “What the fuck, Jacks?”

“Sorry,” Jackson muttered, instantly contrite. “I was a little …” He shrugged and concentrated on pushing the cart a little faster. “They told me she was dead.”

Leo’s right brow lifted, such a familiar expression of surprise and sudden comprehension dawning that it soothed Jackson a little for having to say it out loud. It was the first time he’d spoken of it in nearly a week, of how they’d taken her away from him … and erroneously so. Though, to be fair, everyone said Docia had died. If not for the freezing cold temperature of the water … What was it the doctor had said? “You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.”

And when he had seen Docia in the trauma bay, even he had believed there was no way she could survive what he was looking at. He too had lost faith in his sister and had thankfully been proven wrong. He would never make that mistake again. He would never give up on her again.

Leo gripped the rear of the cart, his knuckles turning white with the strength of it, a reflection of the icy hardness entering what should have been very warm, very dark eyes. In fact, Jackson had seen him shut off this hardness quite easily when he was doing the second thing he liked best … charming women.

The thing he did best was hurting humans that he felt, according to his personal code and morals, deserved it. Oil and vinegar. The cop and the mercenary. Well, Leo called himself “private security,” a problem solver. But if it walked like a badass and quacked like a badass, it was Leo.

“You want me to talk to some people?” Leo asked him.

The statement was fraught with danger. Leo’s version of talking to people was very different from Jackson’s acceptable ideas of talking to people. He liked Leo, and as long as they didn’t cross paths professionally, he was willing to live and let live and not ask too many questions. Not that he ever shut off being a cop. If Leo confessed to an inexcusable crime, they both knew Jackson would be on him like white on rice. So … they enjoyed a strange friendship that always walked the line of knowing each other better than anyone else did and yet … not.

“Information is always welcome,” Jackson said carefully. “But—”

“Relax, boy scout,” Leo scoffed, reaching out to cuff him hard on the side of the head. “I’ll try not to kill anyone in the process.”

“Leo,” Jackson said warningly.

Leo simply grinned at him, giving him a bright “What?” expression as he dropped a can of sardines in the cart.

“Sounds to me like the SPD hasn’t got shit,” Leo pointed out. “I know people who know people who are going to know more than that and they are going to want to talk to me far more than they will the rest of you boy scouts.”

“Probably because you scare the piss out of them,” Jackson muttered.

“Hey, you don’t wear a gun on one hip and a Taser on the other because you want people to think you’re not serious,” he pointed out.

Of course, Jackson had seen Leo use both a Taser and a gun on various occasions. The difference between them was that Leo was less apt to remember there were rules governing his behavior with either of those weapons. Still, Leo had a point. He always did. If he’d been a mindless thug, Jackson would have found it easy to section him off in his mind as a criminal and be done with him, but damn him, Leo was too clever for his own good. But when it came down to it, they both had jobs that threatened them with reasonably short expiration dates if they weren’t careful.

And when faced with Docia’s safety both imminently and in the past, he felt his usually staunch principles start to waver.

“Not one word,” Jackson warned after a minute, pointing a finger at him like some kind of kindergarten teacher. “Not so much as a peep about you breaking any laws in this information gathering of yours, Leo. I mean it.”

Leo smiled, his eyes gleaming with mischief and that warm, charming thing that won over so many of his female conquests.

“I promise,” he said, “you won’t hear a single peep.”

He turned and walked away, whistling brightly as he tossed a bag of candy over his shoulder, hitting the cart dead center, next to the cereal and the granola bars.

Ram didn’t know what to make of this fragile little bird that held his queen captive inside her. Her wounds and injuries were to be expected. It happened to all of them in one way or another, this weakening unto death. It was the only way they could come out of the Ether. It was the only way the Blending could be initiated. The only way each new life could begin.

But each of them chose that new life with increasing discrimination. Each to his or her own parameters, of course, but still … this would have been the last place he would have thought to look for the grand and sophisticated queen of them all and the mate of his king. But it wasn’t as though he had randomly found her out of the billions of humans in the world. It had been Cleo, their most powerful prophetess, who had guided him to Docia’s hometown and the general location of Menes’s future and past queen. His skills had led him the rest of the way. That and the local news media. He knew all he had to do was look for a sensational tale of survival against the odds.…

Ram looked down at his hand, his fingers absently rubbing together at the tips, the ghosting sensation of having been burned still lingering near his nails. It had happened when he had touched her, reminding him of the long-ago sensation of touching hot desert sands or the feel of heavy brick that had been baked beneath the sun. Each time he had come in contact with her, it had seemed to grow stronger. It convinced him that she was indeed the vessel his queen had chosen. Though he’d never felt the sensation before, he could easily imagine that containing a presence as powerful as his queen was bound to throw off strange, residual energies.

It would simply take time for his queen to find her way to the surface, and in that time she would be vulnerable and swimming in a state of confusion. It would be his and Asikri’s duty to see to it that she remained safe during that process. Because as Cleo had pointed out before she had sent them to Saugerties, the only way they would be able to find their king would be to stick very close to their queen. If their king crossed from the Ether and into this world only to find that they, his loyal soldiers, had allowed his queen to slip back into the Ether for another century, there would be no consoling him.

And frankly, as loyal as he was, Ram had no desire to spend a hundred years bearing up under the wrath and pain of their king. Not after what had happened the last time they had failed him.

Ram grabbed at the steering wheel of the large SUV, trying to focus on the road. However, his attention once again drifted toward the delicate skull road-mapped with skillful stitchery and a few butterfly bandages to help reinforce the worst torn areas. They had thought little of her hair as they’d shorn it away, or the crowning glory it must have been before this tragic brush with what should have been her final death. But there were many deaths in the world to be had. The afterworld had not been ready for her, as it never was when it came to the shocking death of one too young to have a place at the table of Set. There had been a new purpose brought to her, one she was only beginning to discover.

If she survived that long.

Her cheeks were yellow with the full glory of aging bruises. Black, purple, and myriad other sickly colors also came to play across the bridge of her small nose and the flare of her forehead and jawbone. She must have hit nearly every exposed piece of her head that was possible. It was amazing, really, that she had been at all reclaimable. It was no wonder the hospital had been abuzz with tales about her.

But he and Asikri had not been able to get close to her at the hospital. Between her brother’s watchful attendance and the guards outside the door and at the end of each hall, no one was going to get close to her. Ram was actually quite surprised Jackson Waverly had left her for an extended period once he’d brought her home. How could he be so careful for so long and then suddenly turn his back on her? Then again, the actions of the young originals were always a bit careless. He remembered what it had been like when he’d had only one life to live, before he’d touched the Ether the first time, before he’d learned what it meant to be an enduring copy. He too had squandered the gift of his life, had taken very little care of it.

It was the curse of mortality, he supposed. Or perhaps it was the blessing of it. If you knew you were going to live forever, would you take life much more slowly? Would you savor it? Or would you ignore the preciousness of each moment all the more?

He knew the answer to more speculations on the matter than he cared to. And even this lost little bird, would she one day come to know the true potential of one of the greatest queens ever to have lived, or would she devolve into the corruption and moral abyss that was equally available to her free will? That was the trouble with a copy, was it not? Each carbon layer became a little fuzzier than the original before it. A little bit more off center, a little bit harder to see and read. And sometimes, sometimes it was completely unreadable. Completely lost.

“Why do you keep staring at me?”

She asked him the question in a meek little voice as she sat hunched forward toward the blasting heat of the car vents. He had stripped her of all protection from the cold, but something inside him had balked at seeing her one moment longer in that ridiculous too-small thing she was using as an excuse for a jacket. Down had been leaking out of it in two places, bloodstains streaked it, and he suspected those had been coffee stains spattered across the chest of it. She was torn and tattered enough in her own skin; the jacket had only made her look twice as pathetic.

And there was nothing pathetic about her. Even that meek-voiced little question had the backbone of a tiger behind it. She could have sat there shivering, accepting her fate, but instead she challenged him. The question he had was … was that his queen he saw leaking outside of her edges, or was that something she had always been?

“I am concerned. You are taking a long time to regain your warmth.”

“Of course I am! You took my coat off in twenty-degree weather, stole me out of the warmth and safety of my home, away from the protection of my brother … oh, and let’s not forget the part where I just got out of the hospital after a seriously violent brush with death!”

There was a snort from the backseat. Presumably Asikri’s amusement at the idea of Ram having his turn at an upbraiding by their queen.

No. This was definitely not a leak. This had already been there. The way she had taken Asikri in hand earlier, that had been a leak. A definitive one. And a good lesson for the other man. He had far too much contempt for the originals of the world. Although, to be fair, he had a great deal of contempt for Bodywalkers as well. It was a wonder Asikri tolerated his company at all. But antisocial tendencies aside, Asikri was a devoted warrior. He knew his place in the order of things, and he would rather die than fail. The Politic had been in a dark time these past decades, the ravages of civil war taking their toll. The struggle against the Templars was going badly. But there was light ready to shine on this dark night of theirs, and it was hopeful that it was going to start with her.