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  “What?” Olivia looked at her in real alarm. “You’ve been drinking klava to calm down?”

  Kat frowned. “Why not? It tastes exactly like Sleepy Time tea.”

  Olivia frowned. “Well it’s not. In fact, it has more caffeine than Cuban coffee. And I don’t mean café con leche. I’m talking about those little espresso shots they serve in the teeny, tiny cups. The kind that’s so bitter you can barely stand to drink it.”

  “Really?” Kat raised her eyebrows. They were standing in front of one of the ubiquitous silver doors now and she stroked the door switch and waited for it to open. “I was given a guest suite since I seem to be stuck here—at least until the Earth is no longer under lock down,” she explained when Sophie looked at her in surprise. “Now come on, let’s go in and I’ll get you a drink and explain.”

  “Not klava,” Olivia said sternly.

  Kat sighed. “No, not klava. Damn, and here I was thinking I’d found the perfect energy boost with no side effects. Not that I need side effects with all the crap going on inside my head lately.”

  “Which you’re going to tell us about right now,” Olivia instructed firmly, bustling around the food prep area and locating cups. “Unless Sophie wants to go first?” She looked at Sophie with a raised eyebrow.

  “Who me?” Sophie felt like her stomach had just dropped down around her ankles. “Uh, there’s really nothing to tell,” she said weakly, but the other two weren’t buying it.

  “Sophie,” Liv said kindly. “You’re my sister and my best friend but there is no denying you are a terrible liar.”

  “Liv’s right. You can’t lie for shit,” Kat said candidly.

  “So we’ll give you until Kat spills the beans about tall, dark, and scary and tall, light, and polite to get your act together,” Liv said. “And then it’s show time whether you want to talk or not. Got it?”

  Sophie nodded miserably. “Okay.” It wasn’t so much that she minded talking, telling them what had happened between herself and Sylvan—although some of the details were super embarrassing. No, what bothered her was wondering what they would say in return. Would they think she was a coward for freaking out after dream sharing with Sylvan? For not trying harder to explain how she felt? But would good would that do? He didn’t want to have feelings for her. In fact, he had probably gone straight to the sacred grove in the center of the ship to have the cleansing done.

  She only hoped that for his sake it worked, even though the very thought of it made her feel sad and depressed. But I want him to be well again. Not to hurt inside. I want that more than I don’t want to hurt myself.

  “You can start with the whole ‘my lady’ thing,” Liv said, breaking her train of thought. “What’s the deal with that?”

  Kat’s face got almost as red as her hair. “It’s what they call plus-sized girls, all right? They, uh, have a thing for them. For us, I guess.”

  “Holy crap—Lock and Deep are curvy connoisseurs?” Liv raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Kat said gloomily. “As in, they’d rather peruse the Lane Bryant catalogue than the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.”

  “But that’s great!” Sophie exclaimed, forgetting her own problems for a moment. “You’re always saying that guys in Tampa don’t appreciate curves.”

  “Yeah, well, neither do they want to get inside your head and never ever leave,” Kat snapped. “Talk about the first date from hell that won’t end.”

  “Okay, all right.” Olivia made a cutting motion with one hand. “Start from the beginning and tell us everything.”

  “All right.” Kat sighed. “But I warn you, it’s going to sound pretty strange.”

  Not as strange as what I have to tell, I bet, Sophie thought but didn’t say. “Just talk,” she urged aloud. “And don’t leave anything out.”

  “Well first of all,” Kat said turning to her. “It’s all your fault. If you and Sylvan hadn’t gone missing…

  “…and now I can’t stop feeling their emotions,” she ended, about an hour later. “I mean, they’ve dimmed a little, but I still have this headache I just can’t get rid of. It’s not as bad as it was at first but it’s still there, you know? I know I’ve been snappish and out of sorts but this really has me running scared. I mean, what if it never stops?”

  “You should see Sylvan,” Sophie heard herself saying at the same time Liv said,

  “Sylvan’s the one you need to talk to.”

  Kat looked at them in surprise. “He’s that good?”

  “I’ve been working in the med lab awhile now and I believe he’s the best doctor, er, medic on this ship,” Liv said firmly. “If anyone can help you, he can.”

  “And he, uh, healed me. Several times,” Sophie added, though remembering how he’d done it made her cheeks get hot—a fact which was not missed by Kat and Olivia.

  “Uh-huh.” Kat nodded. “Well, if things don’t go back to normal or they get worse, I’ll take your advice. In the mean time, I want to hear more about how he healed you.”

  “Yeah, would this be sexual healing by any chance?” Liv grinned at her and Sophie felt her cheeks get even hotter.

  “Stop it, you guys. It wasn’t like that,” she protested, scratching her right knee. There was a little bump there, just beside the kneecap which seemed to be some kind of permanent scar. Other than that, no one would ever have known she’d been attacked so viciously by the urlich. Sylvan must have done a very thorough job while she was unconscious. All her wounds looked like they were days old.

  “Okay, so what was it like?” Kat said. “Come on, Sophie—I spilled my guts. Now it’s your turn. Tell us every little detail and don’t leave anything out.”

  Sophie took a deep breath. “Well the first thing you need to know is that the Scourge are hunting me. I don’t know why but they really want me badly—enough that Sylvan had to crash our shuttle into a mountain to get away from them.”

  The mood was immediately serious. Sophie didn’t know if she was glad about that or not but she did her best to tell them everything that had happened—well, almost everything. She didn’t say exactly how Sylvan had marked her—only that he had, twice. She could tell by the looks they exchanged that Liv and Kat knew there was more to the story but she refused to embarrass herself any further.

  She told them about the way she and Sylvan had talked, too. And that she’d told him about the attack on prom night—something she hadn’t discussed with anyone else besides the two of them.

  Kat’s eyes went wide when she heard. “Seriously? You told him that?”

  Sophie bit her lip. “He sort of…pried it out of me. And then he wanted to go after Burke. I made him promise to stay away—well, not to kill him, but Sylvan went after him anyway.”

  “Really?” Olivia stared at her. “You mean he tracked down Burke after all these years and beat him up? That doesn’t sound like Sylvan to me.”

  “It’s not like him. At least, not as far as I can tell.” Sophie sighed unhappily. “I saw everything he did—he didn’t just beat Burke up—he broke his arm. A bad break. I could see the…the bones coming out of his skin all jagged and bloody…” The memory made her sick to her stomach and she shook her head, unable to continue.

  “A compound fracture, huh?” Olivia nodded thoughtfully. “That is bad.”

  “But that’s not all,” Sophie went on. “He also, uh, castrated him.”

  “He what?” Liv and Kat said together.

  “He did.” Sophie nodded. “With this little silver thingy. It was really small—it fit in the palm of his hand. But it burned Burke’s, uh, equipment right off. There was nothing left but a…but a scar.” She swallowed hard, willing her stomach to be steady. Considering the fact that she hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, she felt remarkably un-hungry.

  “I think I know what you’re talking about,” Liv said. “It’s mostly used for dermatological cases—when somebody needs a wart burned off or something. I never thought of burning