A DREAM OF

STONE & SHADOW

Marjorie M. Liu

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

About the Author

Also by Marjorie M. Liu

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

It began with a knife in the heart. As usual. A fine sharp blade needling deep into the beating muscle, stilling it with a stab and cut. Charlie did not cry out. There was no real use. He was accustomed to death, and the price was not too high, given the exchange. He simply closed his eyes and laid himself down, let darkness creep in until he died.

Only then was it safe to dream.

It was always dark where Mrs. Kreer put her. Damp, too. Emma did not like to imagine what made her backside and legs moist as she curled up against the wall to rest. Andrew said it was piss—that this place was a regular shit-hole, and that they put her here because she was shit, too.

She wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging them tight to her chest. She could feel the cold cement through her blue jeans and rocked in place, hoping to keep her backside from getting numb. She did not want to stand up; it might bring too much attention to her. In the darkness—this heavy, black, and suffocating darkness—things could hide that she would never see coming. Sometimes she thought she heard, over in the corner, scuffling. A tiny scrape and scrabble. Maybe the brush and flutter of wings or cloth. But she could not see enough to be sure of what moved beyond the circle of her tiny space. Not in this darkness. She couldn’t even see her hands. Andrew had put a towel at the foot of the basement door, taped up the edges to keep out the light, until all Emma had left was her mind, the visions and colors that were her thoughts. That was all she was in this place.

Emma liked to imagine herself in different places, clinging feverishly to visions taken from glimpses of the outside. Like trees. She loved the trees. Those were real. Sometimes, when Andrew was slow setting up the cameras, Sarah would lean backwards on the bed and peer out the crack in the blinds and see them, tall and green, cast in sunlight.

Everything else—pictures from the magazines, women who Mrs. Kreer wanted Emma to imitate—she thought they might be real, but she could not be sure. She was not sure of anything, not unless she could touch, smell or taste it. Darkness was real, tangible. It had fingers buried in her hair. It traveled into her lungs with every breath she took.

Mrs. Kreer was real, too. So was her son, Andrew.

Emma did not remember much else that was real, except for her mother. But it had been a long time since she had seen her, and Emma thought she might be dead. She did not remember blood, but she remembered hearing screams from a distance. A loud bang. Emma did not like to think about that. It was not real.

The scuffling sounds in the corner of the basement grew louder. Emma pressed her lips together. No crying for her. Andrew liked tears. He liked it when she was afraid.

But she still squeaked when a low voice said, “Emma.”

The voice was so soft that she could not tell if it was a man or woman, and she was not sure she cared. Only, that the darkness around her had finally begun to pay attention, and still she could not see, could not fight—could not fight this, not when fists and kicks and teeth meant nothing against the two adults upstairs, who had finally taught her to obey.

“Emma,” said the voice again, and this time she thought it was male. Which was worse. The voice was a thing, a cloud, disembodied words floating like spirits. A ghost. She was listening to a ghost.

She squeaked again, pushing up hard against the cold wall, unmindful of the damp. She wrapped her arms around her head and shut her eyes tight. She thought she heard a sigh, but her heart hammered so loud in her ears it was impossible to say.

“Please,” whispered the ghost, and the pain in his voice scared her almost as much as his presence. “Please, don’t be afraid. I’m here to help you.”

Emma said nothing. She felt something warm pass over the top of her head, and it felt like what she remembered of summer, fresh and green and lovely. The air around her mouth suddenly tasted so clear and clean, she thought for one minute she was outside, in the woods, in the grass and sunlight and sharp air. Emma opened her eyes. Nothing. Darkness.

The ghost said, “Emma. Emma, do you know where you are?”

“No,” Emma mumbled, finally finding the strength to speak. The ghost, the darkness, had not hurt her yet. That could change, but until then, she would try to be brave. She would try very hard.

“There are trees,” she added. “I see them sometimes.”

“Good,” said the ghost, and this time Emma did not have to try so hard not to be afraid. His voice was strong and soft—a voice like the heroes had in the cartoons she watched so long ago. She loved those heroes.

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“A friend,” he replied, and again Emma felt warmth upon her head, moving slowly down her face. Soothing, like sunlight. She closed her eyes and pretended it was the sun.

The basement door rattled. Emma heard tape rip away. Lines of light appeared above her at the top of the stairs. She turned and looked and saw the outline of a man beside her. She could not see his face, but he was very large. For a moment she was afraid again, but that was nothing to her fear of Andrew and Mrs. Kreer, and she whispered, “Help me.”

“I will,” the shape said, but Emma did not see his mouth move. She looked closer and thought he had no mouth, no eyes. Faceless. His entire body was nothing but a lighter shade of night. An imprint.

“Andrew’s coming,” Emma said.

“I won’t leave you,” he replied.

She begged. “Don’t let him touch me.”

The ghost said nothing. Emma felt warmth upon her face, and then, quiet: “I’ll be right here with you.”

“Please,” she said, “I want my mommy.”

“Emma—”

The door opened. Emma shielded her eyes. Andrew stood silhouetted in the light: narrow and lean, tall and strong. His hair stood up off his head in spikes.

“Time to get you cleaned up,” he said, and his voice was not soft, but hard instead; not strong, but thready, with a sharp edge. Emma looked into the darkness beside her, but the ghost was gone. She swallowed hard. Tried not to cry.

And then warmth collected at the back of her neck and she heard, “I’m here,” and when Andrew said her name in a bad way, she stood up, still with the sun at her back, and found the strength to hobble up the stairs into the light.

CHAPTER ONE

The hunt was on.

Aggie had a gun chafing her ribs and a very panicked man at her side as she drove ninety miles an hour down a residential backstreet, narrowly missing the jutting bumpers of badly parked vehicles, the slow moving bodies of several elderly men out for a stroll, and one very large garbage can that truly rolled out of nowhere and which required a quick jerk on the wheel, sending Aggie’s little red Miata spinning deliriously into an empty intersection. She pulled hard on the emergency brake—the tires squealed; the world spun. The car slammed to a stop. Her partner made a choking sound.

Perfect.

“Oh, God,” said Quinn, clutching his chest.

“They’re coming,” Aggie snapped, rolling down the window. She clicked off the safety on her .22, but kept the gun in its rig. She needed her hands free, and Quinn was the better shot. “Yo, did you hear me? They’re almost here, Quinn. Are you ready?”

He made gagging sounds. Aggie wondered if that greasy lunch at Tahoe Joe’s was going to make a repeat appearance. The Miata’s leather seats were not vomit friendly. But then her vision shifted and she glimpsed Quinn’s immediate future, and puke was not involved.

But death was.

Aggie undid Quinn’s seatbelt and reached across him to open his door. “Gotta move, gotta move,” she murmured, still with the future rolling quick inside her head. They had less than a minute; already she could hear the roar of a powerful engine gunning down a nearby road. So much for a quiet neighborhood. So much for a peaceful life.

“I’m going to kill you,” Quinn said, wiping spit from his mouth. “It’s the humane thing to do.”

“Keep talking, little man,” Aggie replied, and shoved him from the car. Quinn was not the most graceful person in the world, but he managed to keep his feet. He gave her a dirty look, which to anyone but Aggie would have felt menacing—those dark eyes, that wild bushy mountain man hair. He was not quite five feet tall—but his extremely short stature meant nothing when he had that expression on his face. Quinn was a law unto himself.

He leaned against the inside of the Miata’s open door and reached inside his leather jacket for his gun. He hesitated before drawing the weapon. “Why aren’t you getting out of the car?”

“Shut the door,” Aggie said, ignoring him. “Get some cover. We don’t have any spike strips, so you might need to shoot out some tires, maybe do more if I don’t have a clear way into the van.”

“Aggie.”

“Quinn.”

His jaw tightened. “No chicken.”

She forced a grin. “I’m but a leaf in the wind. A feather.”

“Aggie, no.”

The roar of the oncoming car got louder. It was still out of sight, but soon, any second now, it would turn onto this road and…

Aggie said, “You have to do this for me, Quinn. Shut the door.”

“Bullshit. I won’t leave you. I can work from inside the car.”

“You can’t.”

“Agatha,” he said, which made her wince. “You take too many risks.”

“Risks?” Images passed through Aggie’s head, destiny spinning, channels switching, the immediate future spread before her in all its infinite variations, blurring into something more than instinct, something less than conviction, but all of it creating one single knowing, one interpretation. Aggie looked at Quinn and saw him in the passenger seat with a bullet in his brain, looked and saw him dead and dying, looked and saw him paralyzed, looked and saw him in a coma, looked and saw and looked and saw and…

Aggie’s hands tightened around the steering wheel. “The probability of you dying or getting fucked over inside this car within the next thirty seconds is higher than eighty percent. On the street, ten. Make your call, Quinn.”

He stared, and she could feel his resistance, his hesitation—she could see it on his face, and God, only Quinn would try to argue fate with a pre-cog—but Aggie stared him down with an expression only her mother could have loved, and he finally—reproachful, angry, oh so stubborn—slammed the door shut. He raised his hands over his head so she could see them through the window and flipped her double birdies.

Yeah. It sure was nice to have friends who loved her.

Aggie counted to five. She revved the engine, savoring the roar, ignoring the shaking pit in her stomach and the bone-white of her knuckles around the steering wheel. Quinn moved into position up the street, a small figure huddled behind the bumper of a Cadillac. A good choice; her inner sight clicked and whirred the probabilities, and he came out fine there. No likely injuries.

Maybe. Anything was possible.

“Anything,” she murmured, and watched as the target—a green windowless van, sparkling clean—finally turned onto the street. It drove toward her, and Aggie smiled, grim.

She released the Miata’s emergency brake and hit the accelerator. No room for mistakes—no room at all to let the men in that Chevy go. Aggie knew what they were about; she and Quinn had been standing in that parking lot at Tahoe Joe’s for a reason, as part of their investigation, and there that van had passed them by, and with it blood and screams and all kinds of wrong, all kinds of horror, because those two men in the front seat had something in their possession that made all the probabilities go bad, bad, bad—worse than Aggie had ever realized entering this case. And she and Quinn had to stop them, cut them off, no matter what. Fight the future, and all that jazz.

The world dropped away. Distance died and scenarios played through her mind. If she blocked the road, the driver would put the car in reverse, find a way through one of the tree-lined back alleys connecting the yards of neighborhood homes. Too much risk of a getaway—the odds were in their favor. She had to pin them, disable them, make sure they could not move at all. She had to be a little crazy.

The street was narrow; the possibilities were not endless. She counted on Quinn to do his part and did not let up on the accelerator. The Miata growled. The van ahead of her slowed, but not enough—he thought she was teasing him, that he had enough room in the road and she would squeeze on by.

Aggie gritted her teeth and veered into his lane. Her sight narrowed—the future to a needle point, the eye in a sieve, squeezing—

There was a gunshot. The van’s front tire blew out and it swerved. Aggie pulled hard on the steering wheel, moving parallel, ramming the side of her little Miata into the van’s broad body. Metal screamed; the passenger door crumpled. Aggie felt her side of the car momentarily lift off the ground as the windshield cracked. She slammed on the brakes, jerking so hard against the seatbelt that all air was pushed from her lungs. She heard a crash—could barely turn her neck—but she managed to move enough to see the van had scraped past her and slammed head-on into a parked car. Lovely, lovely.

Another gunshot; Quinn, with his unnatural aim, making mush of the van’s back tire. She heard shouting—struggled to get out of her seatbelt—and glimpsed movement around the back of the van.

It was the driver, swaying on his feet. Tanned, wrinkled, fat nose, with a face screwed up in a snarl that was one part confused, one part afraid, and a whole lot of angry. Aggie recognized him. David Yarns. Notorious for living an unremarkably remarkable life off the radar. A hard man to find, because he never stayed in one place for long. Until now.

Blood trickled down his forehead. Aggie’s mind pushed hard for the probabilities, but her gift chose that moment to go dark. No more future. No more live feed to the Book of Coming Things. Bad timing. Real bad. Aggie thought, I just might be screwed, and then saw the gun in David’s hand, and knew that “might” had just turned into “definitely.” Future come, future go.

Quinn, she thought, but there was no way her partner could see Yarns around the back of the van, no way he could stop him as the bastard pointed his gun at her. She ducked just as the windshield shattered above her head; a bullet slammed low into the passenger seat. Terrible aim. Terrible for Quinn, if he had been sitting there.

“Aggie!” Quinn crouched across the street with his gun trained on the van. “Aggie, move!”

Aggie scrambled out of her new car, rolling instantly to the road and pushing her back against the Miata, catching sight of Quinn just as three bullets rocked into the side of her Cadillac, just inches from her face. Quinn narrowed his eyes and squeezed off one round. Aggie heard a scream.

“Aggie!” Quinn shouted. “Where’s Yarns?”

She peered over the hood of her car. Yarns was gone, but when she stood up she saw him—hauling ass down the sidewalk. Quinn shouted at her again, but Aggie ignored him, throwing herself into a sprint, racing down the road until she had eaten up enough distance to pull a Starsky and slide over the hood of a parked car onto the grassy shoulder and hard sidewalk. She saw a woman come out of her house with a child in tow; Aggie screamed and waved her gun. The woman fell back inside, eyes wide.

David was quick on his feet. Aggie was a good runner, but he was better. Perverts were always fast.

You can’t catch him, Aggie told herself. Not foresight, just common sense. Her gun felt warm and heavy in her hand.

“Stop!” Aggie shouted, but Yarns ignored her. No surprise. She took a deep breath, tried again to see the possibilities, and failed.

Heart in her throat—because she hated doing these things blind—Aggie shot at the sidewalk near his feet. Just a warning. He stumbled, glancing over his shoulder, but did not slow. Aggie could not risk another shot, even to wound. She would just as likely kill the man, and even though he deserved a bullet in the back, she had to play this one on the up and up. Her employer had a good reputation with local law enforcement, but that only took a girl so far. Witnesses were only good if you could talk to them.

Or catch them. Damn.

A gunshot cracked the air. David cried out and fell to the ground, hard. He began to get up—to turn with the gun in his hand—but Aggie heard another shot and the pistol flew from his grip, hitting the sidewalk, spinning away. David went after it, but no luck—another shot, another scream. Gripping his leg, he went down for the second time.

Aggie turned. Quinn stood on the sidewalk behind her, so far away she could barely make out his features. He waved. Job done. Three impossible shots. Aggie imagined there was not a man on earth who could do the same, even with a scope and long-range rifle. Quinn had a very talented brain. Talented enough to let him skim a man with bullets so there was no evidence of real abuse, but with all the force necessary to stun, surprise, make indecent amounts of pain.

David tried to stand, but fell and began crawling down the sidewalk toward his gun. Aggie caught up with him and pressed the muzzle of her .22 against his head.

“I don’t think so,” she murmured, glancing down at his legs. His jeans had been slit open at the knee; the skin beneath looked red, burned. Some distance away Aggie saw several bits of metal glinting from the base of a tree. Good. Quinn always took care with his bullets.

Aggie kept plastic cuffs in the deep pockets of her denim jacket. It did not take long to secure David’s hands behind his back. She did the same for his ankles, binding them to his wrists so that he arched backwards on the ground like a bow. He did not resist or say a word, simply lay with his rough cheek pressed to the concrete, staring. Aggie wished he would fight, give her some excuse. He deserved the worst.

Aggie left him sprawled on the ground and ran back to Quinn and the van. Police sirens curled through the air, closing in. Any minute the cops would roll up and there would be some tough explaining to do. She was not worried. All the evidence she needed was inside that van—everything that would make it easy to explain why she and Quinn had gone ape-shit on two strangers.

Of course, the how of that knowledge was another matter entirely, but the agents at Dirk & Steele were good at deflecting those kinds of questions. It came with the territory of keeping secrets, of being different from the rest of the world in profound ways. A life like that cultivated the ability to wheedle around the truth, to protect your own life while still doing good. A necessary evil, one that Aggie supposed lay at the core of her employer’s turn-of-the-century foundation. Hiding and helping. Dirk & Steele showed itself off to the public as an internationally respected detective agency, but that was just a mask. A ruse. Underneath ran deeper waters.

The van’s second passenger lay on the sidewalk at Quinn’s feet. Aggie did not know his name and she was utterly uninterested in learning it. His hands were tied and he bled from a shoulder wound. His gun lay on the driver’s seat inside the van.

“Have you checked the interior?” Aggie asked, dreading his answer.

“No,” Quinn said. “It took me a hell of a time just to get this guy out.”

Not surprising. Most big men did not take kindly to Quinn ordering them around, even with a gun in his hand. It was a height thing. Aggie thought that was funny. Being wicked short had its own superpower: it turned grown adults into dumbasses.

The back door was locked. The keys were still in the ignition. Aggie heard a shuffling sound when she reached into the van to grab them; the front seats were separated from the rest of the vehicle by a steel grill. On the other side hung a black curtain. Aggie’s stomach tightened.

She accidentally kicked the gunman in the balls and head on her way to the back of the van. Stomped once on the bullet wound in his shoulder. Smiled when he screamed. Quinn’s lips twitched. He was much better at hiding his mean streak than Aggie was.

The police arrived just as she opened the back door. She heard them begin the usual shouting, the typical demands of “hands up, stay still,” but she ignored that, staring inside the van at the equipment, the crude bed and props. A makeshift moving film studio.

And there on the carpeted floor, bound and gagged and squirming, was the very young star of the show.

His name was Rujul, and he was not from America. He spoke very little English, had no papers, and could only tell them—falteringly, mixed with Hindi—that he had been with these men for quite some time.

Rujul did not say the men had hurt him, but he did not need to. Everyone there saw the bruises, the hollowness of his face, the emptiness in his gaze. They saw the stacked and dated tapes inside the van. The boy was not much older than twelve.

“International child smuggling for the sex industry,” Quinn said. “Put a fork in my eyes right now.”

Aggie said nothing. That she felt sickened was not a strong enough word; neither was rage. Only, a deep abiding calm spread through her aching heart as she watched Rujul disappear into the ambulance, a certainty that someone was going to hurt for this, maybe die, maybe burn in Hell, and she would be there when it happened. Her gift was still dark, the future quiet, but Aggie did not need her inner sight to know the probable outcomes of this particular day.

Her cell phone rang. She glanced at the screen. “It’s Roland.”

“Perfect timing,” Quinn said, his voice quiet, distant. “I need to ask him how he does that.”

Aggie was too tired to smile. “He’s the boss. His powers are unnatural.”

She answered the phone. There was a distinct pause on the other end as Roland Dirk got his bearings—a hitch, a sucking in of breath as his clairvoyant vision kicked in—and then he said, in the succinct way only he was capable, “Fuck.”

“Yes,” Aggie said. “That’s about right.”

“I need to buy you a new car,” Roland said. “Maybe you can outfit it with a battering ram. Jesus Christ, Aggie.”

She did not feel particularly apologetic. “It had to be done. Didn’t matter how. We had to get Yarns off the street.”

“Yeah. The police called. They said you caught the fucker and his accomplice red-handed. Roughed them up a little.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to complain. There was a boy with them, Roland. I didn’t realize they had a captive until I saw the van with my own two eyes. They were going to get rid of him tonight, with a seventy percent probability of death.”

“Any reason why?”

Aggie shook her head. “David and his friend were on their way to a double meeting with a client and smuggler. Future was fuzzy, so I can’t give you any names or locations, but it looked to me like they were going to try and sell the kid. Exchange him. And if that didn’t work, dump his body in a river. Rujul is twelve, and that’s close to puberty. Odds are, they wanted someone younger to take his place.”

“I’m going to puke,” Quinn muttered.

“I’m with him,” Roland said, overhearing. “Holy shit. I hate this.”

Understatement of the century. Aggie said, “Today was just one piece of it. We know David has a boss. We still need to find him.”

“And then what?” Quinn asked. He could only hear Aggie’s side of the conversation, but it was clear from the look on his face that was enough. “We began investigating these child porn rings because of an increased flux in local kidnappings, but so what? Even if Dirk & Steele devotes all its resources to stopping this industry, it’ll be a losing battle. Too much ground to cover, too much money, too many opportunists.”

“Too many potential victims,” Aggie said. “There’s no rest for the wicked when they’ve got Third World countries and rich perverts playing buffet.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Roland said. “We do what we can. Maybe it’s not enough, maybe today won’t even make a dent, but a life is a life. You guys really want to quit after saving that kid and taking David Yarns and his porn mobile off the street? For Christ’s sake, give me a break.”

His voice was loud enough that Quinn could hear him. He winced. So did Aggie.

“I gotta go,” Roland said. “You two take a break. Go somewhere. Stay at home. Read a book. Find people to have sex with. Have sex with each other. I don’t care what, but do anything but think of this.”

“After everything we’ve just seen, Roland, that’s about as offensive an idea as any I can come up with.”

“What?” Quinn asked.

“He wants us to take a vacation,” Aggie told him. “And have sex with each other.”

“I’m not offended by that,” Quinn said. “Really.”

“There’s more work that needs to be done,” Aggie replied.

“And you’ll do it,” Roland said. “But I need you fresh. The two of you do this much longer and you’ll burn out. It’s happening already.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Sweetheart, you and the gunslinger are depressed because you saved a kid from a fate worse than death. You tell me how that sounds.”

Aggie looked at the phone and gave it the finger.

“Nice try,” Roland said. “But that ain’t no insult. Now, go. Chew on your ankles somewhere else. I’ll deflect the police and the feds if they come looking for you. I’ll also try to send Max or one of the other telepaths down to the station to see if they can get close enough to your perverts for a reading on who they might have been contacting. Yarns might have some names floating around his head right about now.”

“Good,” Aggie said. “But I still hate you.”

“I know.” Roland snorted. “But that doesn’t mean you’re fired. I haven’t used you up yet. When you’re a shriveled husk, then you can collect unemployment.”

“And here I thought you liked us all for more than our minds.”

“No,” Roland said. “I’m a bastard through and through.”

He hung up on her. Aggie considered destroying her phone, but the emphasis would be lost, Roland couldn’t see her anymore. His clairvoyance was dependent on particular connections.

Quinn shuffled his feet. “We’re off the case?”

“Temporarily,” Aggie said. “Until we become shiny happy people again.”

“Well,” Quinn said. “I’m toast.”

“Yeah.” Aggie sighed. She recalled Rujul’s terrified eyes staring at her face as she opened the van door. One boy—one kid rescued—and odds were high that somewhere in the world at least a hundred more had just been recruited to replace him. It was enough to make a person roll up in a ball and cry.

But at least David Yarns and his friend were off the street. Hello, jail. Aggie hoped they got it good. Child molesters did not last long within the prison system; incarceration of any kind was an eventual death sentence. The other prisoners saw to that.

She watched the police walk the scene, taking photographs of the van interior and crash site. She worried about Rujul; the FBI would probably send in its own social worker to evaluate him, and after that—with no papers and no family—he might be deported. Aggie could not imagine what would happen to him then.

“So, now what?” Quinn asked.

“Home,” Aggie replied, and for a moment felt something warm against her neck, a deep inexplicable flush that did not seem at all internal. She touched herself; her hand warmed, too. Like a caress, a breath of something heavier than air. Aggie shivered, but not because she was cold.

“What is it?” Quinn asked. “You see something?”

“No,” Aggie said, frowning. She rubbed her hands against her jeans. The warmth around her neck fled, but it left another in its wake, a heat that spread through her body, low into her gut. She did not dare call it erotic, because that would just be weird, but for a moment the sensation opened an ache in her heart, a deep abiding loneliness.

You have never been in love, she thought, and could not understand why now of all times she would think such a startling thing, and why it instilled within her such a deep sense of loss for something she had never had, something she should not miss.

“Aggie,” Quinn said, staring.

“Nothing,” she told him, forcing herself to focus. “Really, Quinn. I’m going through a blackout at the moment.”

“Ah.” He said nothing else, but she could tell he did not completely believe her. Which was fine. They were good enough friends to respect the space each of them needed. Working out the devils in the mind—and heart—were sometimes best done in a solitary fashion.

“Will your car drive?” he asked her. She gave him a look and he shrugged.

“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. The top of his head only came up to her waist, but his grip was sure and strong. “Let’s hit the big street and find a cab.”

“I can call one.”

“I need the walk,” he said, and after a moment, Aggie agreed. A little air, a little sunlight. It was a beautiful day. Best to remind herself of that.

She glanced over her shoulder as they left the crime scene. Looked at her car, the van, the lingering police. She did not see anyone watching them.

But her neck tingled, and she remembered the warmth, the pressure on her skin, and wondered.

CHAPTER TWO

Charlie’s brothers were made of stone, so the conversation was rather limited within the confines of his prison. Still, he tried, because he remembered the life of before, the life of midnight runs and wild scents, the life of a bright moon floating halo-like in the sky, full and pregnant in the heavens. A good life, even if much of it had been hidden.

Good, however, was not the word Charlie would use to describe his current circumstances, though in all honesty he thought it possible to feel a small amount of pride that he had done as well as he had. After all, he was not stone. The curse that had taken his siblings had not reached as far on his body—an accident of fate, as far as he was concerned—and though the witch had a taste for his flesh in all manner and form, he had managed to plead some favors with the hag as a matter of courtesy. The witch had some manners left to her. Not many, but enough.

For example, she cut out his heart whenever he asked her to. Which, in recent days, was quite often. He did not think she minded; hearts were her favorite organ to consume: roasted with peppers, diced and fried with ginger, stewed with carrots and onions. All manners of preparation. Charlie could smell himself now, filling the air with a rich scent that did nothing for his appetite, but which most certainly had the witch’s stomach keening high for a taste, perhaps with a dollop of rice.

There was nothing better than a gargoyle when hungering for flesh. Or that’s what the witch liked to tell him. Charlie could not, in principle, agree—though he did acknowledge that as far as an endless food supply went, his kind were good to go. Gargoyles were not so very easy to kill.

And destroying their natures? Even more difficult.

That was the reason Charlie’s brothers were still cast in stone. If they ever, in their hearts, agreed to the witch’s demands of obedience and degradation, the granite would flake away into flesh, crack and turn to dust upon their bodies. All it took was one word: Yes.

But, obviously, all three of them were too stubborn for that, and had been for quite some time. Charlie was glad of it. As lonely as he was for their company, he really could not recommend joining the living again, especially with the witch as a mistress. She had, to use the modern colloquial, issues.

Of course, so did Charlie. And one of those issues was a little girl named Emma.

“She’s alone,” he said to his brothers, who crouched around him in a semicircle, frozen in varying poses of shock and horror. “And they’re hurting her for money and pleasure.”

It was a hard thing to hear himself say. Charlie hated it. Hated Kreer and her son with a passion second only to his rage at the witch. Perhaps he had grown accustomed to the hag and her whims, but that did not mean he understood them, or that he felt any compassion for her motives. She had stolen his entire family from their lives—good, modern, integrated lives that had taken years to cultivate—and made his brothers nothing more than stone dolls, ornaments who could still think and feel, forced to mark the passing of time in a kind of stupefying torture, while he…he lived. Lived, and tried to make the best of it, because some day he would ferret out a way to break the curse, and then, freedom. Sweet and happy freedom.

You are living in a dream world.

Well, yes. Everyone needed goals.

Like helping children escape their prisons, those human captors who in their own ways gave the witch a run for her money. The witch was sick, but at least she never targeted children. Not to Charlie’s knowledge, anyway.

But there were others who did, and Emma—poor little Emma, with her dreams so full of heartfelt distress—was the last and final straw. Charlie, during one of his excursions, had felt her from the other end of the world—a small voice, crying out—and he, dead and dreaming, with his soul separated from his body while his heart and lungs and various other organs grew back from the witch’s cuts, had broken a cardinal rule of his kind and stepped from the shadows to help her.

He could not stop himself. Gargoyles aided, they protected, and though times had changed and forced his kind to adopt different lives—more human, less circumspect—he could not turn away from his nature, or the child.

And really, what was the danger? No one believed in magic anymore. No one, that is, except those already capable of it—and Charlie didn’t think any of them were going to rat him out, assuming of course that those particular elements even paid attention to the life of one insignificant gargoyle. And if they did, then shame on them for letting the witch go on as she had.

He said as much to his brothers, and he pretended they agreed. He also pretended they approved of him summoning in the witch with her long shining knife.

“I was just about to eat,” said the hag. Her blond hair bounced in a high ponytail, the ends of which skimmed her pale delicate shoulders. She wore an off the shoulder number, white and glittery. Charlie noted a flush to her cheeks. She looked very girlish.

“Are you also expecting company?” he asked, tracing the sand beneath him with one long silver finger.

“I am,” she admitted. “How do I look?”

“I prefer you as a brunette,” Charlie said. “You don’t look as dangerous.”

“Liar.” She smiled and her teeth were sharp and white. “Besides, I don’t need to worry about looking dangerous. My guest tonight knows exactly what I am.”

“A cannibal?”

“Silly. An asset.”

That was disturbing. “I thought you preferred working alone.”

“What I prefer is that you not ask so many questions. Don’t worry,” and here she smiled, once again, “I’ll take care of you, no matter what.”

“How very thoughtful,” he said. “Really.”

The witch stepped through the circle drawn in the sand: his prison, a mere line of light. She held up the knife and waited.

“My heart, please,” he said.

“It is always the quick deaths with you,” she said. “And I suppose you want me to remove everything else, after that?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You really are peculiar,” said the witch. “I can’t imagine why you think death is preferable to the company of your brothers.”

The witch was not quite as all-knowing as she imagined herself to be. Charlie imagined punching his thumbs through her bright glittering eyes and then eating them like sugarplums. He said, “It’s not the company of my brothers I’m trying to get away from.”

“Clever,” said the witch, and shoved the knife into his bone-plated chest. She missed his heart on purpose, which required hacking at him for some time before she got it right. Blood spattered her face and dress. Charlie’s brothers watched.

Charlie, dying, hoped the witch’s guest arrived before she had time to change.

The line between life and death was a thin one for a gargoyle, and Charlie, though he had never found much occasion before his captivity to walk it, found that he had some talent navigating the world beyond his body. He could see things about people—private, unconscious things. As a dream, a disembodied soul, almost nothing was hidden. He could peer into hearts and heads, and while he was not so nosy as to pry deep into places he did not belong, being able to explore the world as a ghost did alleviate the suffering he left behind. If only for a little while.

And the witch was totally clueless, which made the experience all the sweeter—and more—because death was also a good opportunity to explore possible avenues of escape for himself and his brothers. Charlie did not know what kind of spell the witch had put them under, only that someone, somewhere, must be familiar with it, or know what could be done to break it. Haunting the witch for that information was impossible, even dangerous. The shields around her thoughts were simply too tight, and Charlie feared pushing—that somehow she would sense him, recognize him, even, and the game would be up. Then there would be no more death. No more escape into the world.

Emma changed everything. Not, perhaps, Charlie’s approach to the witch, but his approach to everything else in his life, which suddenly seemed burdened down with unnecessary secrets, the hands of the past reaching out to hold him down. He was not human, and though he had masqueraded as one for years and years, helping this child, even as a ghost, demanded that he give up some of that hard-earned anonymity, the illusion of separation between himself and others, the world and his personal, singular I. Never mind that Charlie was a prisoner, that he had lost the right to solitude. Reaching out was far more intimate, because it was his choice, his connection to make, and the consequences would be greater than any the witch could impart upon him.

And it was worth it when Emma, trapped in darkness, turned to the sound of his voice, and though she was afraid she did not lose herself, and though she had been abused so horribly by men, thought hero when she listened to him speak.

Words were not enough to express what that did to him, and it was not pride that made him warm, but something deeper—genetic, maybe, a biological imperative that had been suppressed in his psyche until that moment, that bloom of recognition when he thought, My kind have given up our souls for safety. We murdered ourselves the moment we forgot what we could do for others. What we should do, no matter what. No matter the risk. It is not us or them, but all of us, together.

And he carried that with him the first time he followed Emma from her basement prison into the well-lit living room of an old farmhouse, and found a startling array of equipment: cameras, televisions, sound machines. Thousands and thousands of dollars worth, and farther beyond, in other rooms, he sensed more: offices, computers, editing equipment; an infrastructure dedicated to the subjugation of innocence.

And subjugate they had, Mrs. Kreer and her son, Andrew. Both their minds were tight, as were their hearts—as difficult to read as the witch—but Charlie did not need to push deep to know what they were about. All he had to do was watch, ghostly arms wrapped tight around Emma as Mrs. Kreer carefully applied glossy red lipstick to her small mouth.

Emma hated Andrew—feared him, too—but she thought, I am not alone and I am warm, when Charlie kept his word. And so he did not leave her. Not until the filming was over and he felt the tug, the inexorable rush, and he was forced, unwilling, back into his healed body. The living could not exist without the soul—to resist would be committing to a true death, and Charlie was not ready for that.

But he did ask for the knife again. And again. As many murders as he could squeeze into the witch’s schedule. He needed to die, and stay dead, for as long as possible. The pain was momentary, easily endured, nothing at all compared to what Emma suffered. What she would continue suffering, unless he helped her.

Charlie’s options, though, were rather limited. As a ghost, he had a form, but no real ability to affect his physical surroundings. The best he could do was scare Mrs. Kreer and her son—which he’d tried, on his second visit. The old woman did not give any indication of noticing him, and her son was much the same, except for one violent shiver which was just as likely due to a bad meal rather than Charlie’s presence. It was a piss-poor reaction and Charlie had no explanation for it. Emma most certainly could see him when he chose to materialize—though admittedly, he did so with a very toned down version of his face and body. The girl was traumatized enough without seeing what he really looked like.

So. If he could not help Emma himself, he needed to find someone who could. Tricky. The world was a big place. He had almost six billion candidates to choose from. Kind of, anyway. He liked to keep his options open.

He narrowed his search based on location; Emma was being kept in Washington state, in a little town in the mountains northeast of Seattle called Darrington. It took him far too long to discover her location—a weakness on his part, because every time he died he went straight to the child. A compulsion: he needed to know she was all right, still alive. And then, of course, he would say a word or two, and before long his time would run out and back under the knife he would go again.

But Emma was being held on the west coast of the United States, and that seemed as good a place as any to start his search, beginning first with her mother. He knew where she lived; the address was easy to take from Emma’s mind. She came from a house in the Cascade Mountains, only several hours away. Charlie went there. Just one thought and poof. Faster than light, a speeding bullet.

Charlie did not tell Emma he was going to her mother, and was glad for it. He did not want to tell her what he found: empty shell casings, the decaying body, the blasted face. He did not want to tell her that it appeared no one had found or disturbed the remains, and therefore, no one had reported her as missing. Emma and her mother had lived a very isolated life. Perfect targets, well chosen. It was the ruthlessness that shocked him, though he supposed that was naïve. He had seen enough horrors during his captivity to know better than to underestimate any capacity for cruelty. Especially when performed by those who could command perfect masks, spinning their lies into lives made of illusion. Like the Kreers, who had a perfect reputation in the community they lived in. People…liked them. Which was vomit-inducing, but unchangeable.

It made his burden heavier, and though the candidates he found were good men and women, professionals, even that was suddenly not enough. Mere honesty and integrity were not adequate standards; nor was a desire to do good.

Charlie wanted more out of the person who helped Emma. He wanted someone who would throw his or her life into the effort with as much intensity as a parent for a child, with all the dedication and commitment that such devotion required. He wanted someone who would not give up. He wanted someone who would fight to the bitter end to see Emma safe.

He wanted someone who would love the girl as much as he did.

So he drifted—pressured by time and patience, because every day was a day that Emma got hurt—listening to thoughts and hearts, looking and looking for that one bright song. He was relentless, could not remember a time in his life when he had felt such implacable drive, and he wondered at himself, at the way he had spent his life before now; drifting around the world, moving from city to city, immersing himself in books and learning, walking streets only to pretend to be something he was not, because it was easier and safer than wearing his true inhuman face. Casting illusion through shifting shape.

Gargoyles were not the only kind with such gifts of transformation, but Charlie knew those others only by their eyes. Golden and bright, like twin suns. Animals. Pure shape-shifters, in the truest sense of the word. A long time since Charlie had seen one of them. Almost twenty years, at least. He wondered how many were still left in the world, if they outnumbered the gargoyles and other creatures of the arcane and uncanny. In these modern days, what was considered normal vastly outweighed its opposite, though pockets remained, often hiding in plain sight. Clinging desperately to secrets, because the truth was unthinkable. Charlie could not imagine what the media would make of someone like him, what governments and scientists would do to a person so radically different from human. The heart might be the same—all the emotion and passion—but the body, the flesh…

Flesh meant nothing. Flesh was nothing but a vehicle for his soul, but a vehicle that Charlie desperately missed as he searched for help. In his body, he could have stormed the farmhouse, taken Emma away—but he was trapped across the ocean, in a city near the sea, and he had nothing to give the little girl but a promise.

I will help you.

Charlie gave up on Washington state and moved to Oregon. Passed over that state in a day. California was his last hope; after that, he would begin moving farther inland. Three days searching, and time was running out; he needed to find someone fast. All those high expectations, his convictions, just might have to fade to the side in order to get the job done.

And he was ready—he was ready to do it, come what may—when he felt a tug on the edge of his spirit. A call.

He followed. He had no choice; he felt like he was listening to Emma for the first time, only this was a boy, tied up in the back of a van that suddenly lurched, slamming the whimpering child against sharp equipment. A man swore. Charlie heard gunshots.

Gunshots, and something stronger. Another mind.

Charlie focused on that mind, binding himself to the imprint of it, and went, dropping his spirit into the middle of a storm, a tumult, spinning wild against thoughts of pain and anger, and there, at the center…

A woman. Strong—determined—carrying a resolve so stubborn and powerful, Charlie felt it strike his own heart in a perfect sympathetic echo.

She was very tall, with skin the color of deep bronze; a woman easy to hold on to, with shapely legs and a small waist; broad shoulders and strong arms. Nothing girlish about her; just solid strength, easy confidence. And her mind…

Charlie lost himself inside her head, rolling through her thoughts, which were impossible and unending and fast—so fast—quicksilver and mercury and lightning rolling into one flashing vision of cars and bullets and dying men and he heard: I have to stop this—I can’t let him go—and—Quinn, be careful—

He pressed for her name and found—Agatha—and there was another man beside her—Quinn—but his thoughts were quiet in the shadow of her mind, and Charlie watched, appalled and fascinated and terrified, as Agatha threw herself against death, fearless, all to stop—

A man who hurt children.

Charlie pressed himself deep inside Agatha, burying his soul against her own, sharing her life as she fought with all her strength to take down the man she hunted. When she breathed it was for him, and he breathed for her, curling around her lungs, beating with her heart until it was his heart, until he could not tell where he ended and she began, and it was wrong—wrong to be so close to someone without permission, but he could not help himself because to be in a mind so strong, so wild and chaotic and perfect, was a drug.

He had his champion. Right here. His huntress. The perfect woman for Emma.

The perfect woman for you, a voice whispered.

A bad thought. He had not come looking for himself. His heart did not matter. He had a mission, a little girl to save. She was the only one he had time for.

And besides, humans and gargoyles did not mix. Not ever, and not unless deception was involved. The physical differences were just too great.

Yet he wondered, as he finally untangled himself from her soul, what it would be like. He wondered, because it came to him in increments, bits of stunning truth, that the woman was even more extraordinary than he had first imagined, and he saw things inside her head—impossible things—that made him question once again the world around him, turn the paradigm upside down.

She’ll believe me, Charlie realized. I won’t need to hide myself from her. I won’t need to pretend I’m a ghost or an angel or a devil.

With this woman, all he needed was the truth.

Things happened: the child, the police, the waiting punctuated by a phone call. Charlie listened to it all, still judging, tasting Agatha’s reactions and thoughts. He wondered at his luck.

Finally, though, Charlie felt his spirit stretch—his body, coming back to life. He readied himself to leave, still floating close, eavesdropping, tasting Agatha’s thoughts and the quiet mind of the man beside her. Friends, partners. Dedicated fighters. Not lovers.

The pull got stronger. Charlie could not help himself; at the last moment, he reached out and touched Agatha. Placed the hand of his spirit against her neck, infusing that spot with warmth, with the focus of his heart. He pretended he could feel her skin. He pretended she could feel him.

And when she reached back to touch her neck—startling, unexpected—her hand passed through his and he felt a quiet caress move along the entirety of his soul, strong and lovely and undeniable.

Thousands of miles away, Charlie’s heart began beating again. Agatha disappeared.

He opened his eyes. Above him, stone. Beneath him, sand, cool and soft. His wings ached.

The witch was not there waiting for him. Charlie turned his head and looked at his brothers.

“Yes,” he said, to their unspoken question. “I found her.”

CHAPTER THREE

The future returned to Aggie later that evening.

She was alone, as usual. Mulder and Scully were on the television, squabbling while she sucked down a greasy hamburger and milkshake from the nearby Hardee’s. Comfort food—she needed it bad. She also needed to curl up and suck her thumb, but she was trying to be mature about her emotions.

What she really wanted—what she thought would cure the ache in her heart: was to return to the office. There was always someone there burning the midnight oil: Roland, usually, who practically had an apartment attached to his suite. Even if she got a lecture, at least there would be something to do. A distraction, maybe. Anything to take away the vision of Rujul’s haunted eyes staring at her from the floor of that van.

God. Roland did not know jack shit about how Aggie relaxed. The job was her vacation. Getting things done, being useful. Time off was for pansies. Even crap like today was no deterrent. It just made her want to work harder. She chased memories by making new ones, by doing something good to replace the bad.

Push, and push hard. That was Aggie’s motto. It was how she had managed to survive into her mid-twenties and get past the weirdo ignoramuses who could not see beyond her skin color or wild hair; the only way she had been able to grow up as the only multiracial kid within a hundred miles, in a town populated by cheerful white supremacists, well-meaning I-am-going-to-save-your-soul Baptists, and an odd fringe collection of artistic eccentrics, hippies, and poets (who were neither poor nor starving, because they managed to supplement the growing of their words with the growing of weed).

Idaho. A wonderful state.

At least her family life was normal. Good parents, cheerful household, no money problems worth speaking of. Aggie’s dad was a lawyer, and his office had perched on the back end of the house, right below her bedroom. Which meant some really great eavesdropping.

And later, games of fate.

Aggie did not move from the couch. Relax, relax, she told herself, chanting it until her muscles began to unwind. This episode of the X-Files was a good one—all about words and hearts and passion burning, with poor Scully so confused about lust and love. Aggie could not relate, but it made for good television. That, and she kept hoping Mulder and Scully would kiss each other well and good. Having a relationship vicariously through fantasy and excellent scripting was all Aggie had at the moment—and to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad. Her imagination was always better than reality, which was capped by her inability to find the right connection with a man she could trust enough to share her secrets.

I can see the future, she wanted to say, one day. Say it, and have the other person believe her. No judgment, no fear, no greed. Just loving acceptance.

Right. Big dreamer. Stupid romantic.

Aggie continued watching television, sinking deeper into a drowsy funk. She kept herself awake only to see the end of the episode, and right at the climax, right when the bad guy jumped Scully with his hands outstretched for blood, something else began to happen inside Aggie’s head. Her mind danced with color, flickering brighter than any television screen, and she caught a glimpse of things to come.

It was odd. Aggie almost never saw her own future: a mystery—one she had learned to live with, albeit with some lingering frustration. There were ways around the disability; all she needed was to look at the people around her and she could extrapolate from their readings the things she needed to take care of for herself.

But sitting on the couch she began to see things, and it took her a moment to realize that what she was viewing was for her alone and no other. It certainly had nothing to do with the television—though she did wonder about the actors on the screen. She could receive readings from seeing pictures, moving or otherwise. But no, after a moment of careful scrutiny she decided David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson were not in her head.

But Aggie was. And there was a little girl in front of her. A photograph of a blond child, no older than eight or nine, with pale cheeks and hollow eyes. She was naked. She sat with her legs spread apart.

Aggie squeezed her eyes shut. She fought the visions, but they continued bright, clear, and—God, please…

She ran to the kitchen, braced herself against the sink, swallowed hard. She did not vomit. She held on, but when her stomach was settled and her mind quiet, she slid to the checkered linoleum and buried her head beneath her arms. The image of the little girl lingered, a ghost in the shell, frozen and staring. There was nothing provocative about that gaze, despite her posture. When Aggie closed her eyes, all she could see were eyes that begged, eyes that whispered, Help me, with all the quiet sweet pleading of someone still innocent deep in the core of her heart.

It was a terrible thing to see, and it did not feel like fate. There were no probabilities dancing. All the images inside her head were the same—exactly, precisely the same. Which was impossible. Variation was the game of the universe, the future built upon chaos, shifting constantly, affected by as little as one wrong turn, or a thought gone bad. It was true what they said, that something like the flap of a butterfly wing could set off a storm in Texas—except, here it was not the weather being meddled with, but lives.

This isn’t the future, Aggie told herself. This is a summons.

But a summons to what? To help the child? And who in the world would be able to summon her?

Roland could, she thought. And there were several other telepaths employed by Dirk & Steele who might have a similar ability. But she trusted her friends. They were family. And no one at the agency would risk betraying those bonds by something so silly and wasteful.

So. This was from someone else. Maybe. Could be she was finally going crazy—the lock-her-up kind—and that her brain was giving out under the stress of having to keep straight the infinite possibilities engaged by every living creature Aggie encountered. It was a hard task for one mushy piece of gray matter, and today had been very stressful. Sometimes she could turn it off—sometimes her brain did it for her—but always, always, the gift waited, lingered.

No, stop it. Don’t think like that.

It was too frightening. Insanity was a distinct possibility; there was precedent amongst some members of the agency’s recent past. The human body was capable of handling only so much, and the horror for those born different—wired with a few more bells and whistles than the rest of the world—was that psychological help was nonexistent. If you got sick in the head, you took care of it yourself—or relied on a friend to talk you through. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps; that was the only way to survive.

And even amongst the agents at Dirk & Steele, some were more different than others. Aggie wondered what it was like for the shape-shifters when they got sick. There was no science to account for men who turned into animals, who could sprout wings and fur. None at all; only magic, true miracles, through and through. And to see it, to know and believe it…

Nothing was sacred. Anything was possible. Aggie could no longer take her world for granted. Which was far more disturbing than it should have been, considering all that she could do.

Aggie forced herself to stand. There was a reason she never had visions of her future self—she realized that now. It placed her in a peculiar kind of paradox she had no explanation for—a trap of being bound by a future she had not contemplated, might never have considered, had she not been witness to such a forceful invasion of her mind. She felt like a serpent eating its own tail.

She returned to the living room. There was another X-Files episode on—a marathon of them. This time, baseball players. Aliens in love. The weird was different from her reality, but equal in terms of off-the-wall intensity.

And you wouldn’t trade it for a thing. Weird is what keeps you going, what lets you help people in ways others can only dream of. Like today. You saved a life. No matter how you feel, you rescued a little boy.

One boy out of thousands, maybe millions. Bad numbers, worse odds.

But if she tried hard enough, if she wished long enough, perhaps she could pretend that it was not the number of rescues that mattered, but only that a child was safe, that in a world where there was so much suffering, one act of goodness could mean everything. That she was making a difference.

And now another child needed her help.

I need to find that photograph. A hard copy of it, or a scan on the Internet. It was not enough to view the girl inside her head. There had to be a physical connection. It was the same for many of the other agents at Dirk & Steele; like Roland, who could only see across great distances if there was a telephone involved. E-mail did not cut it. Strange, yes, but those were the breaks. You simply had to take what was offered, no matter the form or shape, and run with it. Make do.

So Aggie went to her computer, swallowed hard before typing in her search parameters, and did just that.

Aggie found the girl in the wee hours of morning, after an exhaustive search that left her sick and tired, hand aching from clutching a pen as she made notes on the children she did find, and who gave her terrible visions of futures to come. At least three of them would be easy to locate by the authorities, and Aggie sent Roland a note with the information, flagging the e-mail red for priority. She knew him; by morning all of her research would be passed on to a paid-to-be-anonymous tipster—a man who had a good reputation with the police, and who could not be traced back to the agency. It had to be that way. No one wanted questions asked. The public jobs Dirk & Steele did were public only because there was no alternative. Most of the agency’s work was much more subtle.

But the little girl in question—a new memory, to replace Rujul—finally appeared on a Web site that advertised itself as a forum dedicated to the “visual exploration of the human form.” Innocent enough, but when she dug deeper—as the blogs of certain self-assured “child lovers” suggested—she found something far darker than a simple exploration of the human body.

She found children. Lots of children. Hidden beneath layers of links and code, nestled deep inside the core of a site that on the surface was hideously innocuous.

The girl was located on one of the last pages Aggie looked at. It was the same photograph, the same ghostly gaze. Aggie stared, pouring herself into those eyes, hunting for the truth, the future, some shining light she could follow. She wanted to know why this one life was so important that the probabilities fell away, why for once she was the victim of her own unpredictable mind.

Her vision split, curling around the present and future. She saw darkness, utter and complete, a future of darkness that was not the grave, but worse, a living tomb, damp and cold and filled with something more than rodents and insects and other creepy-crawlies of the imagination. She heard movement, saw a flash of light—

And the outline of a man, or the semblance of a man, because at first Aggie thought he was wrapped in a black stocking that covered him from head to foot, but then she realized that no such thing existed, and that what she gazed upon was a shadow. A man. A force, maybe. A presence that in all probable futures whispered Emma, don’t be afraid, and, Emma, I came back with help. And Aggie could see that the girl crouched inside the darkness was not afraid of the shadow, the man. Aggie was not afraid, either. She sensed no premonition of terrible things, just a warmth that sank into her bones…

Aggie blinked hard, pulling out. She remembered the heat that had fallen upon the back of her neck at the crime scene, and touched herself again. Her skin felt ordinary. No caresses, this time.

She swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the girl’s photo again. Emma, she thought, and bright lights dragged across her eyes as she stared into the face of a narrow man whose hair gelled into dagger spikes, and whose gaze held a hunger that made Aggie think drugs, but worse, because all the probabilities pointed to another kind of taste. Variations of this man appeared to her—in a room with long blinds, and behind him an old woman rubbing her hands down the back of his neck.

Aggie looked hard across the veil of possibilities, but found no clues as to where the little girl was hidden away. Nothing at all, not a vision of the outside, not a bill on a table, no words. No one talked inside her head except to say, Look at this, do this, hold yourself just so, you little shit. And then, quieter, gentler, Emma.

Even softer, Agatha.

Aggie sucked in her breath, hearing her name reverberate across the future probabilities of the child in the picture. Her name, spoken not by the girl, but by the presence, the faceless shadow-man.

Future set, future promised. Aggie had no idea what it all meant, but it made her nervous. She rubbed her arms and gazed around her bedroom. Nothing bounced back at her as out of the ordinary. She looked at the computer screen and touched the little girl’s face.

I’ll find you. You’re alive and I’ll find you.

One child out of so many that needed to be saved. But Aggie, looking at Emma’s picture, thought she could live with that. Slow but steady. One was not such a lonely number. One was everything when it came to saving lives. Roland was right. Despite the odds, that was nothing to get depressed about.

Aggie printed out Emma’s picture. She laid it down on her desk, tasting the future. There was a ninety percent chance the girl would not be physically abused tonight, and there was no danger at all of her dying. Which did not ease the pressure, but it did mean Aggie could rest for an hour or two before continuing her research.

She stripped off her clothes and slipped into bed. Shut her eyes.

Sleep did not come easy, and when it did, a deeper darkness mirrored her thoughts and dreams, a basement, a cave, a place of damp wet things and fear, so much fear.

Until, again, that warmth, that sunlight in shadow that reached down into her bones and blood, right through her heart into her soul—and with it a comfort that stripped away fear, the horror of loneliness. A presence that was solid in that most profound sense that had nothing to do with physicality, but home—heart home, soul home, all those homes that were not walls, but thoughts, feelings, passion.

I am home, Aggie thought, curled up within that darkness. Wherever I am, I am home.

Warmth. She became aware of it slowly. Like a charm in her head, seeping through her body as a slow-moving river; sunlight, blinding. It was delicious.

But not right. Part of her, even unconscious, knew that. Recognized the heat.

Aggie opened her eyes.

Her bedroom was dark; through the window blinds, the streetlight outside cast a serrated glow on her ceiling. Nothing moved. She was alone.

“No,” said a strange voice. “You’re not.”

A gasp escaped her—almost a scream—but Aggie clamped her mouth shut and reached for the gun on her nightstand. No one stopped her, but that was no consolation. Nor did she feel better with a weapon in her hand.

She recognized that strong low voice. Remembered it from the future. The heat lingered, oozing through her, and that, too, was familiar: a ghost from her afternoon, standing on that street with Quinn.

“I know you,” she said, searching the shadows of her bedroom, trying to keep her voice steady as she found only walls and furniture and piles of laundry on the floor. “I know you.”

“No.” One word, so close she could almost feel the air tremble in front of her face. Aggie leaned backwards, sweeping her hand through the spot. Heat collided with her skin.

“No, my ass,” Aggie said, trying not to shake. “You have something to do with a little girl I’m investigating. I heard you inside my head. I saw you with her.” Never mind revealing her gift. This was already weird. The thing inside her room could not possibly be shocked by anything she could do.

“You might be surprised,” he said, and then, quieter, “I need your help. I need you to help her.”

“And I need you to show yourself. Right now.”

For a moment she thought he would not do it—had to wonder, even, if the very male presence in her room was even capable of it—but just as she began to give it up as a lost cause, a shadow materialized; a figure darker than the air around her, gathering together to form the shape of a large man. He looked solid enough, but Aggie did not take that for granted. He did not have a face.

She tried to see his future, but her gift stalled. He said, “I don’t think I have a future.”

Aggie gritted her teeth. “You’re a mind reader.”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” she repeated. “My theory on mind readers is that you are or you aren’t. It’s like being pregnant.”

“Then at the moment, I guess you could say I’m having triplets.”

“Funny,” she muttered, and really it was, though she was damned if she was going to crack a smile and encourage the source of that fine heady sound of irritation and sarcasm floating through her room.

You’re forgetting that thing is a mind reader. Pretense is a waste of time.

The shadow grunted. “You can call me Charlie, Agatha. And yes, that really is my name, and no, I’m not a thing, which you should be ashamed of thinking.”

“Anything else?” she asked, unnerved.

“Just that you’re right. It is a waste of time to pretend with me. I do, however, completely understand your desire to try. Really.”

“Gee, that’s nice,” Aggie said. “You’re freaking the hell out of me, but still, I appreciate the honesty. Maybe you can answer another question.”

“I did not manipulate you,” Charlie said, with a speed that Aggie found truly annoying. “Sorry. But that was what you were going to ask. I did not put that…that initial vision of Emma in your head. I’ve never seen that photograph.”

“But you’ve been with her.”

“I was called to her. She was afraid. Desperately afraid. I would have rescued her myself, but…” He held up his shadowy hands. “I’m not good with the physical at the moment.”

“You’re physical enough,” she thought, recalling the heat, the warmth spreading through her body. “Maybe a little too touchy-feely.”

Body language was all she had to read Charlie. It could have been difficult, but he made it easy. His shoulders slumped, straightened, twitched—an odd little dance of discomfort. This time Aggie did smile, though she doubted it was a particularly pleasant expression.

“It’s not,” he affirmed.

“Cry me a river,” she said, but her annoyance began to fade. It was strange, having a conversation that required no artifice or bumbling, but it was—if she could admit it—almost as fun as it was unnerving. She had a thought; Charlie answered. It was very efficient. She liked that. Except for the strong possibility he could hear and see all her most personal secrets. Yikes.

Don’t think about that. Focus. Focus on the why and how. And remember Emma.

Remember Emma. Yes. She could do that with absolutely no effort at all. The girl was part of her now—lodged like a knife in her brain.

“So you need my help,” Aggie said, “You, who are so obviously gifted in your own remarkable way. Forgive me if I call you a big fat stinkin’ liar.”

Charlie made a sound of disgust. “What you can do and what I can do are two very different things. But does it even matter? You know the girl is in trouble.”

No denying that, but Aggie was not satisfied with easy answers—or attempts to deflect her from the truth. “Why me?” she asked, still trying to wrap her head around the situation, to decide whether or not this was some dangerous elaborate hallucinogenic hoax. “Of all the people in the world, why the hell show up in my bedroom?”

“Because you’re perfect,” he said. “In your mind, your heart. I was there today when you went after that child molester. You were unstoppable, willing to do anything. Emma needs that.”

Aggie remembered heat on her neck, heat spiraling into her body. “Emma needs the police, Charlie. Emma needs more than me.”

“If the police were enough, I wouldn’t be here. And if you…if you weren’t enough, I wouldn’t be here, either.”

“Picky, aren’t you?”

Aggie saw no eyes, but he tilted his head, and she had the distinct impression that he was giving her a Look.

“Emma’s mother is dead,” he said, and the change in his voice from soft to hard was chilling, dangerous. “Her kidnappers shot the woman in the face. They’re ruthless people. I needed someone who wouldn’t care about the danger.”

“And you think that’s me.” Anger curled through her gut—not at Charlie, but at Emma’s captors. Aggie did not doubt the truth of what he told her; somewhere deep, she knew how bad those people were. She had looked into their eyes, and she knew.

“Yes,” whispered Charlie. “It’s as bad as you think.”

Aggie thought of Rujul, the film studio, the bed, those men with their hard eyes and hard hands. Twelve years old and already he had lived through a nightmare.

“Emma is only ten,” Charlie said. “And her nightmare is just beginning.”

Aggie blew out her breath. “And you? What do you get out of this?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just my soul. And no, I don’t mean that literally.”

“I had to wonder,” she said. “Seeing as how I can’t take anything for granted, anymore.”

“I’m sorry for that.” His response was cryptic, but also, in a strange way, kind. He stepped toward her, graceful and weightless; he did not walk, but floated.

“What are you?” asked Aggie.

He stopped moving. “I’m me. Just…a man.”

Bullshit, she thought.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“But this isn’t your real body.”

“No. My physical self is…some distance away. This is just a projection.”

A projection with a touch that made me hot.

Oh, bad wording, bad thought. Aggie’s cheeks felt red. Charlie twitched, but instead of commenting, he said, “Will you help me? Will you help Emma?”

Aggie put down her gun. There no longer seemed to be any reason to hold it on him. “You already know the answer to that.”

“I was trying to be polite.”

Aggie briefly closed her eyes. “This is bizarre. I can’t believe I’m not screaming yet.”

“Neither can I,” he agreed, and Aggie cracked another smile. Her smile disappeared when he said, “But you’re already used to strange things, so maybe that helps. All your friends, the people you work with…” He stopped, looking at her, and Aggie wondered what her face must look like, what he was feeling from her heart, because he said, very softly, like a fireman trying to talk down a kitten, “I won’t tell anyone.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but it’s not the kind of secret just anyone should know. A lot of lives depend on it.”

“I understand,” he said, and there was something in his voice that made Aggie believe him. She could not help herself. So much confusion, so much happening too fast—but she did know that a little girl named Emma needed help, and this apparition before her had gone to great lengths to find someone who could do the job. That in itself seemed genuine. No ruse. No trap.

Can you be sure of that? You’re no mind reader. You don’t know his motives for certain.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Charlie said, and then, in a more distant voice, “One of your own was kidnapped. Several months ago, by a…a rival organization. And you wonder if this isn’t too convenient. Just another lure. All of you have been warned to be careful.”

“You really need to stop that,” Aggie said.

“But you agree it is faster. And no, I’m not from any group. Though the world is such a large and varied place, I think it was a mistake for any of you to assume you were alone.”

Aggie did not want to argue with that. She threw back her bedcovers and stood up. Charlie made a low noise; strangled, choked. She stared at him for a moment, and then realized the problem: she was naked.

“Don’t look at me,” she said, reaching for a blanket.

“I don’t have a choice. In this form, I see everything. I don’t have eyes to close.”

“That’s convenient.”

“Well, yes,” he said, and his tone was so sheepish, so unabashedly…boyish, that for a moment Aggie almost laughed out loud. She choked it down, though. Laughter would not do. Now was all business. Aggie had a little girl to save.

She wrapped the blanket tight around her body. “If the people who have Emma are as bad as you say, I want to have additional backup with me. No offense, but as you’ve pointed out, your mind is willing, but the body is weak. I want to call my partner. My boss, even.”

“If you like,” the shadow said, though there was something in his tone that made her think he was not terribly excited about the idea. She did not like that; it made her trust him less, and she had no reason to trust him at all.

Aggie held the blanket against her breasts and picked up her phone. She speed-dialed Quinn, who answered on the third ring. Aggie heard a woman’s voice in the background and winced.

“I’m sorry,” Aggie said. “I didn’t know you had company.”

Quinn sighed. “What is it?”

Aggie opened her mouth to tell him, but something overcame her and she stopped. Take a break before you burn out, Roland had said, and Quinn was doing just that. Forgetting the pain, burying it. To drag him into another case where the best possible outcome would be just as horrific…

“It’s nothing that can’t wait,” she said. “You…you have a nice night, Quinn. Just rest.”

“Rest wasn’t what I had in mind, Aggie.”

She heard a giggle on the other end of the line, followed by a sucking sound.

“Right,” she said quickly. “G’night.”

She hung up the phone and stared at it. Thought about Roland. He might insist that she hand the case over to someone else. She was supposed to be resting, too.

“No backup?” Charlie asked.

“Try not to sound so happy.”

“You don’t trust me. I understand that. You don’t have a reason to.”

“All I have is faith and visions of a probable future in my head. In them, you aren’t doing anything wrong.”

“But all you see are glimpses.”

Aggie looked at him, pouring strength into her desire to see, and much to her shock, the barrier between herself and the future wavered, broke. Images flashed, probabilities dancing. She saw Charlie’s dark body, and it was wrapped tight around something—someone—but that person he held, who he embraced…

Oh. My. God.

It was her. Aggie was looking at herself. Her eyes were closed, mouth parted, body writhing like an eel, and—holy shit—when she moaned, the sound was electric, pure unadulterated pleasure. Aggie pushed for an alternative future, variations, but almost everything she saw was the same. The probabilities were high.

She closed her eyes, whirling away from Charlie to stare at the wall. Her heart pounded so loud, she barely heard him when he said, “Maybe you should get dressed.”

“Right,” she said, and then, louder: “I’m not sleeping with you.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“Glad to hear it. Now please, get some clothes on.”

“I just want us to be clear.”

“Fine,” he spat. “I get it. Besides, it’s not like I have any usable appendages anyway.” He stopped. “Pretend you didn’t hear that.”

“My hand to God,” Aggie said. “I’ll never tell a soul that you’re impotent.”

A strangled sound choked up through his body. Aggie smiled. “Still glad you picked me?”

“I—” Charlie began, then touched his chest. He had no features, so it was impossible to read his expression, but Aggie knew instantly something was wrong. The way he moved was different. Jerky.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I have to go,” he said, and his voice was tight, strained. “Emma’s in Washington state, in a town called Darrington. Don’t wait for me. I’ll find you.”

“Charlie,” Aggie said, but he never said another word. His body split into fragments, like shattered glass, and she pushed her arms into those remains of his shadow and felt a brief comforting warmth before everything that was left of him snapped upward and disappeared.

Gone. She was alone.

Aggie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Counted to five.

She walked to the nightstand and picked up her gun. She brought the weapon to her desk and set it down on Emma’s picture, covering her naked body with the stock and muzzle.

“Okay,” she whispered to the girl. “Hold on.”

She was going to get a little bit crazy.

CHAPTER FOUR

Aggie caught an early morning flight to Seattle—so early, none of the airport coffee shops were yet open when she boarded the plane. Bad, evil, the work of the devil. She felt very cranky. Thank goodness for first-class seating, purchased in its entirety with her agency credit card. Roland could yak at her later. Which he most undoubtedly would, especially after he read his e-mail, which contained a very short and inexcusably cryptic note:

I had a vision. I’ll try not to get shot.

Yeah, he was going to love that.

Aggie had Emma’s photo in her wallet. Just a head shot. She did not want to get arrested for carrying child porn. She also had her guns, but those were disassembled and stored in her checked luggage. As were her knives, handcuffs, and other sundry items necessary to being an effective wayward detective.

Her cell phone rang just as she took her seat on the plane. Shit, shit, shit. She had forgotten to turn it off. She glanced at the screen and Roland’s name blinked at her.

“Yo,” she answered, dreading the man on the other end.

“Jesus Christ,” Roland said. “You’re on a plane.”

“Your powers of observation are only improving with age.”

“I want you off, Aggie. Right now.”

“Is it going to crash?”

“You tell me.”

Aggie glanced at the flight attendant, who continued to smile like a plastic doll throughout all the variations of her immediate future. “That would be a resounding no. Which also means there’s no good reason for me to lose my nice warm seat.”

Roland swore. Aggie said, “This is important. Another kid’s life is at stake.”

“That’s what tip-offs and local authorities are for, sweetheart. We only get involved when all other avenues have been exhausted.”

“And that’s this one,” Aggie told him. “I’m not being frivolous, Roland, and I haven’t become some righteous martyr. The circumstances of this case are…unique.”

“And you had to be the one to take it?”

“Yes.” I had no choice, she wanted to tell him, but that would be a lie. She could have said no to Charlie, turned her back. Only, he had chosen too well. Aggie was not a quitter, not when someone needed her. Push, and push hard, no matter what.

Roland said nothing. She heard cracking sounds and knew it was pencils snapping in half. He kept boxes of them around, just for that purpose.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Tell me where you’re going and I’ll send Quinn after you.”

“No,” Aggie said. “Not Quinn.”

“Got no choice. Most of the guys are overseas, and the newbie shifters are too green for this shit. Eddie’s in the fucking hospital for his appendix. We’re stretched thin enough as it is, and the New York office has their hands full.”

“No,” Aggie said again, insistent. “Quinn needs to rest. You were right, what you said yesterday. It’s been too much, and he’s felt it even worse than me. Leave him alone, Roland.”

“I think you’ve forgotten just who the boss in this outfit is, Aggie.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” she replied, quiet. “But you’re a friend before a boss, and that just can’t be helped. You raised us that way.”

“My mistake,” he muttered. “I’m a lousy sap.”

“Just a teddy bear. A big overstuffed one.”

“Whatever.” He sighed, long and mighty. “Fine, have it your way. Do your thing. Go Solo like Han. If you don’t get killed, I’m firing you.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t. And wipe that fucking smile off your face.”

Aggie heard a phone ring in the background; Roland answered it and said a few muffled words. She heard a loud slam, a crash, and then, “Aw, hell.”

“Trouble?”

“Dean. He’s tearing a hole through Taiwan. You may have to wait in line while I kill him first.”

“Be gentle,” Aggie said. “He screams like a girl.”

“He will be a girl when I’m done with him.”

Aggie began to mouth off a pithy reply, but the flight attendant tapped the arm of her seat and said, “Time to turn that off, dear.”

“I got that,” Roland said, as the woman moved up the aisle. “She’s hot. What’s her future?”

“She’s all smiles,” Aggie said, and then hesitated. “There’s a thirty percent chance she’ll stick her heel in a grid as she disembarks the plane. She’ll break it off and hit the ground with a twisted ankle and a hitched up skirt.”

“Bad, but sexy.”

“Uh-huh. Everyone will see her penis.”

“Right,” Roland said. “Take care.”

He hung up the phone.

Almost an hour into the flight, Aggie felt something warm touch her hand. Someone whispered in her ear, “We need to talk.”

No one sat in the seat beside Aggie, but she did not want anyone to see her talking to the air about child molesters. She got up and went into the bathroom. Maybe the drone of the engines would be enough to drown out her voice if she whispered.

Charlie materialized the moment she locked the lavatory doors. It was a small space; he towered over her and she pressed back against the door and counter, banging her head on the paper towel dispenser. Under normal lights he looked different; his body still solid, but the surface textured, almost as though he was made up of an infinite amount of vibrating particles. She wanted to touch him.

“Go ahead,” he said. “It’s not like we’re going to jump each other if you do.”

“You just had to bring that up.”

Charlie shrugged, and his body moved just like any other, except for his size and grace. He was the perfect rendition of a human. Aggie could not help but think it was all a lie. It also bothered her that he didn’t have a face. It made listening to him a strange experience.

“Think Spider-Man,” Charlie said. “You don’t see his mouth move.”

“A telepathic apparition who reads comic books,” Aggie replied. “Nice. That must be where you get your hero complex.”

“Right back at you, sweetheart. Or isn’t that Wonder Woman underwear you’ve got on?”

“Fuck you.” Aggie patted her hips, frowning. “I thought you couldn’t see through clothing.”

“I can’t.” He sounded smug. “I read your mind.”

Aggie narrowed her eyes. “I never did like Spider-Man, you know. The mask always pissed me off. That, and his stupid sense of humor.”

“So cranky,” he said. “That line in your forehead is going to become permanent if you’re not careful.”

Aggie sucked in her breath; Charlie raised a shadowy hand before she could launch a rant. “Sorry. Really. But I look this way for a reason, and believe me, it’s better that I do.”

“Really? You must be the vainest person I know.”

“I’m a person now? How nice.”

“Don’t distract me. I want to know what you are. Underneath.”

Charlie paused. “Does it really matter?”

No, she thought, but said, “I don’t know you yet.”

“Then maybe this is better,” he replied, and there was no amusement in his voice. “You might not like the way I look for real. It might scare you.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Show me.”

He shook his head. “It would only be a distraction. And besides, we’ve got bigger problems than my appearance. For starters, this toilet is filthy.”

Aggie gave up. “Just why are you here?”

“Because Emma is asleep,” he said, with a matter-of-fact honesty that took her off-guard. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“I’m fine,” Aggie said.

“You don’t look fine.” Charlie’s hand traced a line across her forehead. Gently, he said, “You’re tired. You didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“I had no time.” Aggie tried to ignore the warmth of his hand, the warmth of his spirit, bathing her like some dark sun. Visions split her mind; she saw herself held tight within shadowy arms, head thrown back….

Aggie leaned away, heart thudding in her throat. She tried to speak, but her voice would not work. Charlie said, “You want to know why you keep seeing that.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“I don’t have an answer,” he whispered.

“Are you sure?” She could not believe those words came from her mouth.

Charlie went very still. Aggie did not wait for his response. The unheard possibilities scared her. She said, “What happened last night? Why did you leave so quickly?”

He did not immediately answer, but when he did, he said, “I left because I had to. I didn’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“No. Not when it’s biological.”

Aggie frowned. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean by that. Are you…dreaming somewhere? And then your body woke up?”

Charlie twitched, which under the bathroom light looked more like a ripple surging through his body. “Something like that. It’s a bit more complicated.”

Aggie waited for him to continue. When he did not, she leaned even harder against the lavatory door and folded her arms over her chest.

“You know all my dirt,” Aggie said. “Everything. I’ve got no secrets from you.”

“Agatha—”

She held up her hand. “You’ve managed to deflect every personal question I’ve thrown at you, and frankly, I find your lack of trust deeply offensive. You’re asking me to risk my life for Emma, and that’s fine, something I would do anyway. But I expect some reciprocity on your part. Show me a little respect, Charlie.”

“You want a reason to trust me.”

“Maybe,” Aggie said. “Or maybe I just want to figure you out. I don’t know who you are.”

“I’m a guy who has too much time on his hands.”

“You’re a guy who helps kids.”

“I’m a guy who never helped anyone before this kid.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Don’t. I had secrets to keep. It made me selfish. Isolated.”

“Secrets. The kind of secrets that let you float around like a ghost and read minds?”

“It’s related. Part of a larger picture.”

“And last night? Is that picture all biology?”

“Extreme genetics.”

“The kind not found in nature?”

“No. I’m all natural. That’s the problem.”

“I don’t see how there’s a problem in being yourself,” Aggie said.

“Then why do you hide what you can do?”

“Because I want to keep being myself without any scrutiny or interference.”

“Good answer.”

“My momma didn’t raise no fool,” she said.

“But you still want to know about…this.”

“Your dream self, yes. I really do.”

“It’s not easy. The explanation, I mean.”

“Just spit it out, Charlie! Mr. All-American Charlie.”

For a moment she thought he would not answer, and the frustration that welled up inside her chest mixed unpleasantly with a strong ache of disappointment. She did not know why; it seemed ridiculous to expect any honesty from the…individual in front of her.

But she did. And if she did not receive a straight answer, if all she continued to hear was nothing at all…

“You play hardball,” Charlie said.

“I’m just a hard person,” Aggie replied.

“Now who’s lying?” He shook his head. “Fine. Okay, then. Okay. You want the truth? I’m…I’m not human.”

He sounded as though he was declaring his own death. Aggie chewed the inside of her cheek. “You’re not human? Really?”

“Not at all.”

“Well…what are you, then?”

“You work with shape-shifters. I’ve seen it in your head. Golden eyes. Animals. Occasionally bad-tempered.”

“I didn’t know their tempers were a racial classification, but yes, I do. Is that what you are?”

“No. My kind are related, though. Distantly.”

Aggie covered her eyes. Someone knocked on the door behind her.

“Miss?” asked the flight attendant in a loud voice. “Are you okay in there?”

“Fine!” Aggie shouted back. “My stomach! It’s bad! Bad!”

If there was a response, she did not hear one. No one else knocked on the door.

“Okay,” she whispered. “You’re not human, and you’re not a shape-shifter. What else is there?”

“Um, a lot, actually.”

“Charlie.”

“The technical term is gargoyle. That’s what I am. A gargoyle.”

Aggie blinked hard. She was going insane. Forget acting crazy; she was already there. “What the hell does that mean? Aren’t gargoyles little stone…watchdogs, or something?”

“Arf,” Charlie said.

“Hey.”

“I guess that explains why my mother always kept me on a leash.”

Aggie buried her face in her hands. “I hate you.”

“You don’t even know me. I thought that was the whole point of this.”

“I changed my mind.”

Charlie laughed, and the sound curled warm in Aggie’s stomach. He had a nice laugh. It was deep, soft. Sexy.

He stopped laughing. Aggie’s face burned.

“Agatha,” he said quietly. “Look at me.”

She did, but it was painful. She stared up into his dark featureless mask and said, “So you’re a gargoyle. Tell me what that is.”

He touched her face—a hand made of darkness, resting soft against her cheek. He was warm; radiance poured through her skin. It felt good. Aggie began to relax.

“Charlie,” she said.

“Originally we were demon hunters,” he said. “You don’t know about any of that. It’s early history, not quite prehuman, but close. Things were different in the world. Different in a bad way. My kind kept the balance.”

“But things changed.”

“Humans came into power. Demons lost their hold on the earth. When that happened, gargoyles had to find a new reason for being. It wasn’t very difficult. There were still things to fight.”

“And then things changed some more.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “We became monsters, the hunted. To survive, we were forced to subvert out natures. Gargoyles can shift their shapes in temporary ways. We made ourselves look human, and took up roles in human societies. Quiet professions, mostly. Anything to keep us off the radar.”

“You did a good job. You’re not much in the legend books.”

“That’s probably because we wrote them. Many of us become writers and scholars.”

He still touched her. Aggie did not pull away. It was dangerous to keep this up—she had a future to subvert—but his hand was warm and large, and she said, “You don’t feel like a dream.”

“Neither do you,” he said. The plane shook—turbulence. The seatbelt light dinged above her head and she glanced left at the mirror. She did not see Charlie’s reflection, which was remarkable, considering just how much room he took up. She felt surrounded by a thundercloud, a shot of night.

Charlie turned his head to follow her gaze. “Oh. That’s interesting. And no, I’m not even remotely related to a vampire.”

The plane shook again, more violently this time. Aggie braced herself against the door, the counter. Charlie remained effortlessly still.

“Maybe you should go back to your seat.”

“Yeah,” Aggie said, but she did not move. Someone banged on the door.

“Hey!” shouted a man. “I gotta piss, lady.”

“He has to piss,” Charlie said. “Best to let him have at it.”

She wanted to tell him that the man could tinkle in his pants for all she cared, but she kept her mouth shut. Charlie laughed, low in his throat, and when she turned to unlock the lavatory door she felt a pressure at her waist; warmth, sinking through her clothing. Her breath caught.

“Remember,” he whispered playfully in her ear. “You’ve been ill.”

Aggie glanced over her shoulder. Charlie’s body had disappeared, but the warmth did not fade. She felt his hands move up her spine—a trail of warmth—and she swallowed hard. She unlocked the door.

A man stood there, and behind him, the flight attendant, who stared at Aggie with concern. Aggie tried to look sick, and hoped it did not come off as turned-on. Warmth burst around the front of her stomach and sides; Charlie, embracing her from behind. Her entire body felt hot.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I need to sit down.”

She pushed down the aisle, ignoring the curious gazes of the other first-class passengers. Charlie never let up the pressure; she felt like she was wearing her own ghost—and God, it felt good.

You need to stop this right now, she thought at him. A moment later, the pressure eased off. Aggie bit back her disappointment. Really, she needed to grow up. This was not any way to conduct an investigation. She was going to rescue an abused child, for Christ’s sake.

She also realized the trip to the lavatory was a complete waste. She could have just thought that entire conversation from her seat.

Aggie threw herself down and buckled in, pulled her blanket up to her chin, knocked her seat back, and twisted so she faced the window. She did not want to look at anyone. Sleep. She was going to close her eyes and get some fucking Charlie-free rest.

“I’m hurt,” he murmured in her ear.

Go away.

“We still have to talk about how we’re going to take care of Emma.”

We need to get the local authorities involved. We have to do this on the up and up.

“We don’t have time for that. They’ll need probable cause. A warrant. We need to get Emma out first. You corner these two, and they’ll use her as a hostage.”

And then what? Something needs to be done about the old woman and her son. They’ll just hurt some other kid. If the police help—

“I could have found some way of going to the local police, but I didn’t. That was a last resort.”

Are they corrupt?

“Worse. They think Mrs. Kreer and her son are pillars of society. Churchgoers, fund-raisers, volunteers. Those two do it all. Their reputation is perfect.”

But they shoot women point-blank in the face so they can make daughters into child porn stars? That doesn’t make sense, Charlie. That’s high-level crime. Psycho, too.

“True psychopaths are the best pretenders.” He sighed, and warmth crept up Aggie’s shoulder. “Please. At least consider getting her out first. Then call the cops. There won’t be any lack of evidence, Agatha. Their house is one big…perversion.”

Do you know why they do it? What drives them? Even why they chose Emma?

“No. I can’t read their thoughts. Their minds are…blocked.”

“Blocked?” Aggie said out loud, and then settled deeper beneath her blanket. What the hell does that mean?

“It means that some humans have stronger natural shields than others. It’s unusual, but not unheard of.”

Yeah, but why them? They’re, uh, not special, are they?

“You mean, gifted? Nonhuman? It’s an interesting thought, but I don’t think that’s the case in this situation.”

It would be easier if it was. Emotionally, that is.

“Because you don’t like to think of human nature being so inherently cruel?” Warmth spread around Aggie’s body, rolling down her arms, lacing through her fingers.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Oh, Agatha,” he whispered. “There is nothing in this world that is born truly evil, and maybe it’s easier to pretend otherwise, to cast some blame and make it easy on ourselves, but that would be wrong. Evil is everywhere, just the same as goodness, and every living creature has the potential for both.”

And choice is the catalyst?

“You tell me. You live your life by probabilities, which are not definitive outcomes.”

The future is a tricky thing, Charlie. You can predict probable outcomes based on the current nature and leanings of an individual, but if that individual changes in any substantive, or even minor, way, the future is irrevocably altered and the probabilities shift once again.

“In other words, choice defines us. Every choice, little or big.”

Good or evil.

“Or the slippery slopes in-between.” Aggie felt the warm pressure around her body tighten. Her heart beat a little faster. Her ear suddenly felt hot and she sighed. Charlie whispered, “I didn’t see many variations of the two of us.”

Probable futures are defined by choice, remember?

“Then I suppose we’ll be saying yes to each other quite often.”

Aggie said nothing. Despite the bizarre circumstances, being held like this was not at all frightening. It felt good. Which was also strange, unreal, because it had been years since she had felt arms around her, and she had forgotten how nice it was—even if the person doing the holding was invisible and not quite human. Whatever that meant.

“Are you going to push me away again?” he breathed into her ear.

Maybe later.

“Okay,” he said; and Aggie bit back a gasp as his warmth spread through her stomach, pushing up and up. She felt his hands—those invisible ghostly hands that were nothing but heat—ride high on her ribs, tracing her body, skimming the undersides of her breasts. Apparently clothes meant nothing; he could pass right through them.

“If you want me to, I’ll stop.”

She almost said yes, her maybe later turning into get away from me now. Asking Charlie to stop touching her was the logical, smart thing to do. She did not know him, she knew she should not want him, and even if she did, Jesus Christ, they were on a plane. Instead, Aggie found herself sinking deeper beneath the blanket. She wondered if anyone was watching, what they thought.

Charlie said, “They think you’ve got the stomach flu.” And then the heat covered her breasts, and she bit down on her lip to keep from crying out.

“Yes or no, Agatha?” His voice was so close it was as though she could hear him inside her head. She wondered briefly if that were not the case, if they weren’t speaking mind to mind.

I’m sure you know that I haven’t done this for a while, she told him.

“Hell,” Charlie said. “I can’t even get a date.”

Aggie smothered a laugh, and just like that, heat began rippling over her skin, pressure easing and deepening, warmth kneading into her body, and she forgot how to speak because one hand moved lower, passing over her stomach, pressing between her legs, burrowing like a thread of fire.

She tried not to squirm, to cry out, but some sound escaped and her body shifted, and she said, Charlie, and she imagined he said her name but the blood roared loud in her ears and the pressure tightened, spinning her up, throwing her wide, and she remembered her future with eyes closed and mouth open, groaning like every nerve was being tugged and stroked and sucked, and she thought, Yes, I understand now.

She came hard—the hardest and longest of her life, and her body jerked so violently she thought for sure the people around her must realize, but Charlie said, “No, they don’t. Just relax and enjoy.” And she did.

Again, and again, and again.

Making love to a beautiful woman while in a non-corporeal form had its benefits. Namely, the exotic and very public locations one could perform such acts; such as airplanes, bathrooms, the edge of baggage carousels, the lines at rental car stations—and in rental cars themselves. While parked, of course. Charlie had never been much of a ladies’ man—for obvious reasons—but he found himself having an indecent amount of fun giving Agatha surprise orgasms everywhere she went.

His enjoyment was short-lived, though. Guilt weighed him down. Emma was still locked in darkness.

And yet, to see the woman beside him, hear the glow of her thoughts, the warmth she reciprocated inside her heart…it was a beautiful thing. And yes, fun.

“You’re killing me,” Aggie said, gasping as she sat in the driver’s seat of her rented Taurus. “I barely made it out of that airport alive. I thought the security guards were going to arrest me. Or call an ambulance. I almost needed a wheelchair to make it this far.”

“You did very well hiding your reactions,” Charlie said. “After the fifth or sixth, you just looked…constipated. Maybe a little faint.”

Aggie shook her head and he felt her embarrassment, her disbelief and wonder. “I can’t believe this. I just had a public orgy with a disembodied gargoyle.”

“It is one for the books,” Charlie said, feeling rather satisfied with himself. Aggie’s eyes narrowed.

“You don’t mean that literally, do you?’

“Of course not. I’m a gentleman.”

“Right. That explains the complete lack of inhibitions.”

“And I suppose I was doing it all by myself, completely uninvited?”

“No,” she said, after a moment that stretched too long for comfort, during which he listened to her mind replay the events of the last several hours. “I suppose not.”

Her agreement did not make him feel better; he could sense her embarrassment turning into shame, confusion, and he wished very much that she would not feel that way about what had just passed between them.

“The rules change when you’re invisible,” he told her. And when you’re next to the most beautiful intelligent woman you’ve ever met in your entire life.

Charlie wanted to tell her that, too, but was afraid of what she would say. He had been taking liberties with her mind; curling deep inside it, trying to better understand her heart and soul. Understand, too, why he was becoming so enamored with her. Everything he saw only made his feelings intensify until all he could feel was an ache in his heart, a burn, like the insides of his chest were swimming through fire.

Not that there was anything he could do about it. Just take what he could, appreciate what time he had, and hold it dear. Because even if things were different and he truly had a chance of happiness with the woman beside him, one wrong move could end it all. Charlie already knew that he should tread lightly; Aggie had a heart of deep passion, but it scared her, what she felt. When Aggie loved, she loved with all her being, every fiber. But to let go like that, no matter what had just occurred between them—to throw herself on the mercy of a stranger—a strange creature, at that—would require time and patience and the continued example of his good devoted heart.

Because she had it, his heart. He could not imagine another person he would rather give it to, and this, after a long life spent alone, judging and finding want, always holding himself back from others. Love at first sight; he had thought it a fairy tale.

Not anymore.

Stupid. This will never work. You’re locked in a cage half a world away. Your body will never be hers to hold. She will never see you in the flesh, and one day, when the witch grows tired of your dying, she will find some other use for you, and you won’t ever see Agatha again. How dare you fall in love—now, of all times? How dare you want her to love you, knowing what you do? And even if by some miracle you could be together, you are both so different. You aren’t even human. You have no idea if she would love your true face.

The odds were insurmountable, the risks unimaginable; but looking at Agatha as she started the car, listening to the hum of her thoughts as she settled down to the business of Emma—We are going to save you, kid, just hold on, hold on, hold on—made him want to leap headfirst and challenge it all.

What a sap, said a little voice. Your brothers would laugh if they could see you now.

Well, fine. He could live with that.

“Emma’s in Darrington?” Aggie said, checking the map. “That’s about a couple hours away.”

“Do you have a plan for getting her out?”

“Nope,” she said. “Though whatever I do will depend a lot on your ability to do some recon for me. Otherwise, I’ll just have to walk up blind and get myself invited inside. Not impossible, but I prefer knowing what’s waiting for me.”

“Equipment, mostly. Cameras, lights. All in the living room.”

Aggie frowned, backing out of the parking spot. “And no one questions that when they come over? If they’re that respected in the area, they must socialize. Word of any weird goings-on gets around in small communities. Trust me.”

“Firsthand experience?”

“Yup. When I was growing up, I couldn’t get away with anything in my neighborhood. I kind of stood out.”

“In a beautiful way, I suppose,” he said, deciding to be bold.

Aggie glanced at him, following the direction of his voice. A smile tugged on the corner of her mouth. She liked that. He could hear it in her head. “Only my parents said that while I was growing up. Said it and meant it, that is.”

“Why did they raise you in that town if it was so prejudiced?”

“My dad had a niche, and he thought we needed the money. Tough skins, that’s us. He was the only lawyer in that area, and people didn’t have much choice but to come to him for help. And he looked like what people in that area expected, so he didn’t have much trouble with locals. One bit Navajo, and a whole lot of Scottish and French. My mother, on the other hand, was the dark one. Jamaican, Mexican and Irish.” She smiled. “I need to marry someone Asian, and then my children can make the Census Bureau insane.”

Charlie said nothing. He wondered if humans and gargoyles could make babies together. He wondered, too, if that would be right or fair to the child.

She wanted to know where he was from. Inside her head, she asked. She asked for much more, but there was only so much he could tell with the time they had. And words, ultimately, were meaningless.

“I spent my childhood in the country,” he said quietly. “I was born in Maine, close to the border. It was very quiet back then, but—”

“Back then?” Aggie interrupted. “How old are you?”

He could see her imagining him as some ancient lumbering creature—replete with all the necessary accessories like white hair, wrinkles, and incontinence—and said, “Stop that. My kind age slower than humans, that’s all. I’m only sixty.”

“Only sixty?”

“Closer to thirty of your years, if that makes you feel better.” And he knew immediately that it did.

Aggie chewed her bottom lip, which was very kissable, and oh so impossible to touch in the way that Charlie wanted. Trying to ignore her mouth, he said, “When I was a still child—or at least, a child as my people define it—I was sent into the city. Gargoyles need to learn integration at a young age. We’re naturally solitary, but forcing ourselves into areas of high population enables us to suppress the urge to hide. It’s better that way. In the city, people don’t notice if you’re a little…strange. It’s free anonymity.”

“Free loneliness, too.”

“You know what it’s like to have secrets, Agatha. Sometimes what you try to hide takes over your life. It becomes your life. Or in my case, it was my life, from the day I was born.”

“Was?”

“Finding Emma shook things up. Changed my priorities. Or maybe just reawakened my true nature.”

“Which was what?”

He wanted to smile. “Protecting others.”

“You say that like it’s something funny.”

“Because it is, in a way. I never used to think about what I could do for others. Not really. I was too caught up in staying anonymous.”

“Helping people is dangerous,” Aggie agreed. “For anyone, it’s dangerous. You open yourself up, physically and mentally.”

“I suppose. I don’t regret it, though. Not at all.”

“You can’t be faulted for nobility.”

“Just as long as it doesn’t expose us. Something I think you understand.”

Aggie smiled. “It’s the Dirk & Steele creed: Help others, no matter what, and keep the secret safe. All because it’s a big bad world, and we’re just too different to be left alone if anyone should find out the truth.”

“How did they find you?”

“Don’t you already know?”

Money, he thought, but said, “I like to hear you talk.”

“Awfully friendly all of a sudden, aren’t you?” Aggie had a sly glint in her eye.

“Something has come over me,” he admitted. “I’ve turned into a wild beast.”

A low laugh escaped her. “It was money. I was stupid and needed to pay for college. I thought I could play the lottery and get away with it. Problem is, I see multiple futures. The more time between the present and the future I’m trying to predict, the more variations there are, which meant I had to play the specific numbers almost minutes before they were announced. I won, too. Cashed in a cool million.”

“But some questioned it.”

“Yes. The investigating officials never could prove anything, but it got my name in the papers. About a week after that, I received a call from Roland.” She shook her head. “I thought the man was on crack, but he knew things…things about me he couldn’t, and then once he introduced me to the others and showed what they were all about…”

He saw her memories, shared her doubts and awe, and then, later, her love for all those people in her life who were friends, close as family.

“You’re happy with them,” he said, feeling wistful. He was close to his brothers, but not like this. Never like this.

“Happier than I ever imagined I could be. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t gotten hired. If I hadn’t been pointed in a direction that helps people.”

“You would still have done good,” Charlie guessed.

“I don’t know,” Aggie said. “Really, I don’t. Choices, Charlie. I would have made choices I’m not sure I would have been proud of down the line. The future allows for second chances, alternate paths, but once you fall into the present and the past, that’s it. No going back.”

It was not safe for Charlie to materialize, not with so many cars around, but he wished for at least the semblance of a physical form so that he could pretend to sit with her in this car, in the flesh. “My father once said that it’s our inability to change the past that helps us make better futures.”

“He’s an optimist.”

“Yeah, he was.”

Aggie frowned. Charles heard the question coming, but there was no time to listen to it, no time because his heart tugged and he had run out of death. He said, “Agatha, I have to go,” and for the first time he felt her own heart scatter toward him—her thoughts, her emotions, a trickle of something deep and powerful that Charlie was too afraid to call love but thought could be the beginning, the baby root, of some terrible wonderful affection. He held on to that feeling, to her heart, and he said, “I’ll be back.”

She said his name, but the car and her face and the world faded and he snapped back to the sandy floor in the middle of his prison. The witch stood above him. Her hair was a different color: burnished copper, framing milky skin. Green eyes this time, but still glittering, hard and cold. She did not have her knife.

“You’ve been playing me for a fool,” she said. “You sly creature. You’ve been running high while I cut you dead.”

Charlie tried to sit up, but the witch placed one small foot on his chest. Her strength was immense, impossible. He could not move her.

“No,” she whispered, as her white robes billowed in the windless room. “You will not be leaving here again for quite some time.”

“How did you find out?” he asked, because the game was up, and there did not seem to be much point in pretending otherwise. His brothers watched.

“It occurred to me that no one would want to die as much as you, simply for the peace of endless darkness. So I searched for your soul, and did not find it where I thought it should be. Instead, I discovered a very long and winding trail.” The witch traced his chest with her toe, curling her foot around his bone plates, the wiry silver lines of his corded muscles. “Very long, very windy. And I must say, you are peculiar. Saving a child from the darkness? Pleasuring strange women from beyond the grave?”

“You have to let me go back,” he said. “Please. Just let me help save the child. That’s all I ask.”

The witch shook her head. “The child is beyond saving. You don’t realize, do you? Her captors are not entirely human.”

Charlie grabbed her ankle and twisted. The witch danced backwards, smiling, hair glinting bright and hot. He scrabbled to his feet, stretching to his full height, wings arcing up and up, pulling on his tired, misused muscles. His claws dug into his palms and he said, “What do you mean, they’re not human?”

“Poor gargoyle,” she whispered, still smiling. “The blood of your kind must be growing thin to not recognize the scent of a demon.”

His breath caught. “Impossible. They’re gone.”

For a moment he sensed a shiver of fear inside the witch’s gaze. “Not all of them were shut behind the gate, my sweet. And those who remained…changed. They never left. They did as your kind did. Lived as human. Thinned their ranks. There are not many left, and they are weak now. So very weak. But a weak demon is still a demon, and you know how much they enjoy pain.” She shook her head. “That mother and her son don’t even realize what they are. All they have are urges, a desire for suffering. Depravity in its very worst form.”

“And they choose to listen to that desire,” Charlie said, feeling the echo of his conversation with Agatha ring dull inside his heart and head.

“They choose,” agreed the witch. “We all choose, one way or another.”

She passed backwards out of the circle drawn in the sand. Light flared around her feet and she said, “Be good, sweet Charlie. Dream of your little girl and your woman and your days in the sun. Dream of death.”

“No, please,” he cried, throwing himself after her. The line flared white hot, and he cried out, blind, clutching his burning face.

The witch said nothing, but he heard the tinkle of her laughter as she left the cavern and shut the thick door behind her.

Charlie slumped to the ground. After a time, the burning in his cheeks subsided. His eyesight returned. He stared at himself, at his immense body, all his wasted strength—all while Agatha journeyed alone to save the life of a child who was being held captive by the descendents of real evil. The old enemy still walked.

You lied when you told Agatha there was no such thing as a creature born wrong.

Maybe, though at the time he did not believe excluding demons was such a stretch of the truth.

If Mrs. Kreer and Andrew are part demon, they’re also part human. Don’t let the witch wrap you up with words. And don’t forget, too, that she could be lying.

Could be, might be. It didn’t matter. He was stuck here, with no way to help Agatha or Emma.

He thought of the little girl, waiting for him in the darkness; the comfort she had taken from not being alone. And his rage—his unadulterated rage at not being able to protect her from abuse and degradation.

He thought of Agatha, too, going there without his help. She would make do without him—he knew that. She would find some way in.

Charlie stood and looked at his brothers. “I have to help them.”

But the only way to leave was to die, and he had no weapons. Nothing but his own hands.

And his brothers’ bodies. The edges of their wings were sharp.

It took Charlie some time to muster up his resolve. It was not easy.

And when he began killing himself, it only got worse.

CHAPTER FIVE

The winding drive from Seattle to Darrington went much faster than Aggie anticipated, but she blamed Charlie for that, because all she could think of—between preparing for her pseudo Rambo-like rescue of Emma—was his voice, his warmth, his touch.

Funny, but it was his voice that lingered heaviest in her heart. The sex he had given her—if that was what it could be called—had been past good, more than extraordinary, utterly beyond Aggie’s scope of limited experience, given that she usually shut herself off before things could get too tight. Not enough trust, too much fear that her secrets would be discovered. But here, now? Her lack of inhibition was a total shock.

And yet, his voice. She missed his voice. She wanted desperately to talk with him, and not just because she needed to know more about the house Emma was being kept in, or the Kreers and their habits. She simply wished to hear him speak. To say anything.

You are so ridiculous, she chided herself. Big tough strong woman, taken down by a ghost with a magic touch and a hot, hot, voice.

Well, maybe she was being silly, but that didn’t matter. Aggie missed him. The son of a bitch was growing on her. She just hadn’t realized how much until his last disappearance. It bothered her, the way he left. It felt like it was against his will.

You don’t know anything about him. Not really. All you’re running on now is faith. Everything he’s told you this far could be lies.

Maybe, but she did not believe that. Call it gut instinct, call it whatever you liked, but she trusted him. God help her, she even liked him. Maybe liked him a little more than she should. Maybe, even, that “like” was something stronger. Stronger than lust, stronger than anything she had ever felt before.

Oh, how she wanted to hear his voice.

Seattle had grown up and spread out during the years since Aggie had last been there; the suburban sprawl along I-5 as she traveled north was unrelenting, and even visions of the Cascade range on her right did little to alleviate the gray and steel and glitter of encroachment. But then she left the freeway, left behind malls and cookie cutter developments, and wended her way high and higher into a world of rock and forests. Darrington sat at the base of Whitehorse Mountain, surrounded by enough hiking trails and parks to make an outdoors-type weep for joy. Aggie thought it was all very pretty, but she kept recalling Emma locked in darkness, Emma before the camera, Emma being touched, and she had to roll down her window for some air, which was crisp, full with the clean tangy scent of wild things. Sparkling and pure.

Maybe there are gargoyles hiding up here.

Maybe shape-shifters, too. Maybe a whole host of creatures out of legend. The world fairly teemed with mystery.

But still, she wondered. Would it be possible for a gargoyle—whatever that was, since Charlie still had given her no description at all, save for I’m not human—to live as himself in a place like this? Few people, lots of places to hide. At most, an urban legend, able to come and go. It sounded ideal to Aggie.

Then again, given what little Charlie had said to her, being away from people would probably miss the point. If a gargoyle’s true nature were one of protection, then the urge to be in areas where such a gift would be most necessary might be great indeed. Even if it was unconscious. Suppressed.

Her cell phone rang. It was Quinn.

“Roland got hold of me,” he said without preamble. “I guess this is what you were going to talk about last night when you called.”

“I told him not to get you involved,” Aggie said, exasperated. “You need a break.”

“So do you, Aggie. But you should have just come and told me. Better that than running off alone on some mission of mercy.”

“You were occupied,” she reminded him, “and besides, the circumstances are complicated. This isn’t just some whim I’m acting on.”

“It never is,” Quinn said, and Aggie wondered how much she should say. She knew for certain that Quinn could be trusted with Charlie’s secret, but that was not her call to make—not her secret, not her life. And frankly, she did not want the responsibility of being the one person to reveal the existence of a whole other race of supernatural beings—in addition to the ones currently sharing their office space at work. Though, really, if Charlie were fully aware of the existence of those golden-eyed shape-shifters, she wondered if the reverse were true—if Koni and Amiri and Rik knew all about gargoyles, and had simply never said a word.

That bothered her. It made her wonder if there wasn’t some kind of supernatural union or club, whose members all swore secrecy. No one talked about each other unless forced to, everyone pretended he was the only weird creature in the world, and that way the whole crowd stayed nice and anonymous and faceless.

“There’s a little girl in trouble,” she said to Quinn. “Her name is Emma, and her kidnappers killed her mother. More child porn. Could be they’re even part of the same ring. Their names are Kreer.”

“Sickos of the world unite,” Quinn said. “So, what’s your plan? Have you alerted the police yet?”

“There’s…been some indication that the police would be unwilling to go after these two, especially without hard evidence in hand. Apparently, the mother and son responsible for the abuse are…well-liked within the community.”

She heard his brief snort of laughter. “So basically, you’re going in there guns blazing to get the kid, and to hell with the Man.”

“Kind of.”

“You are so nuts, Aggie. If you don’t keep the evidence intact, if they get a chance to destroy anything—”

“I know,” she interrupted him. “I’ll be writing you letters from prison.”

“Oh, my heart. But don’t worry, Aggie. I’ll wait for you.”

“Thanks a lot.” Aggie saw a sign up ahead, DARRINGTON: 13 MILES.

“I’m almost there,” she told him. “Any words of advice?”

“There’s a small airport on the edge of town. It’s called Gold Hill. You should go there first.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll be waiting for you.”

And he hung up the phone.

Quinn cut a very sleek and tiny figure at the edge of Darrington’s municipal airport. Leather jacket, jeans, big silver belt buckle. He was not alone, which surprised Aggie. Amiri was with him, standing tall and lean and graceful, dark skin glowing with rich undertones. His short black hair was streaked blond. He wore a simple buttoned shirt and narrow fitting slacks. His eyes were golden. Like a cat.

Both men stood in the sun, just outside a very old and dusty café that had no sign or name, but which clearly served some kind of food. The tables outside were filled with men, as were the tables inside, pressed against the windows. Coffee and sandwiches, Aggie saw when she pulled up. Futures fanned before her; a chaotic dance of warm homes and arguments and television. She did not single anyone out. She did not want to know. All the men who had been staring at Quinn and Amiri suddenly turned their attention to her.

Ah, scrutiny. The blessing of being different. And a stranger.

“Maybe if we pretend we’re circus performers they’ll crack a smile,” Aggie said, as both men climbed into her car. Quinn took the passenger seat; Amiri slid easily into the back. Both their immediate futures were simple, stable: no bullets or blood.

“I don’t know,” Quinn said, glancing back at the unblinking stony faces still watching them. “I don’t think the circus would do all that well up here. I think the clowns might be too much of a shock.”

“Speaking of shocks,” Aggie said, and Quinn shrugged.

“Why fly commercial when Roland is willing to spring for a private jet? The plane is still here, by the way. I hope you didn’t get a round-trip ticket.”

“How the hell did he know I was going to Darrington?”

“You bought the ticket with the agency credit card, and the rental car company wrote down your destination for their mileage calculation. You figure it out.”

“I was begging for an intervention, wasn’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. Big time.”

Aggie looked over her shoulder at Amiri, who was, as usual, quiet. “Hey,” she said. “How did you get roped into this?”

A small smile touched his mouth. “You mean, how did someone as new as myself become assigned to a task of such importance? I am, as Roland has said, green. But practice makes perfect.” His accent was buttery, pure Kenyan.

“I asked for him,” Quinn said. “Having a shape-shifter around might come in handy.”

“Oh, right. Because cheetahs are native to the forests of Washington.”

“Who is to say they are not?” Amiri asked. Golden light momentarily spilled from his eyes, curling down his cheeks, which fuzzed with spotted fur before quickly receding into smooth skin. His smile widened. His teeth were sharp.

“Nice,” Aggie said.

Quinn shook his head and pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. It looked like something torn out of a telephone book. “After what you said to me about the Kreers, Amiri and I did a little poking around at the airport. Here’s their address. We tried talking to the guys you saw—didn’t mention the targets, so don’t worry—but they weren’t much for sharing. Old loggers minding their own business. Or acting like it, anyway.”

“Those kind usually make the worst busibodies.” Aggie parked at the side of the road and checked the address against the map. It was impossible to tell just how isolated the Kreers were. She wished Charlie was here; she needed to run a little reconnaissance. Maybe Amiri would be good for that. She had not worked much with the shape-shifter, but she had heard stories. He was fast and silent. Deadly. The reputation did not jibe with his schoolteacher personality, but hey—all of them had their masks.

Either way, you’ll just have to make do. Charlie will be here when he can.

Right. Only, she still couldn’t shake her worry that he was in trouble. If only he had been in some kind of pseudo-physical form that she could have seen; a reading of his future would have been easy. She would have known, maybe, what was going to happen to him. Of course, her ability to gauge Charlie’s future had been spotty from the beginning. Every time she looked at him, all she saw was sex. Which was great, but kind of pathetic.

She poked the map with her finger. “Based on this, the Kreers live fairly close to town, right across the Sauk River.”

“Let’s do a drive-by, then,” Quinn said.

The town itself was small and plain; Aggie did not guess there were many jobs around. It reminded her of growing up in Idaho, surrounded by enough natural beauty to shake a stick at, but not much in the way of money to decorate that stick. Tourism and construction seemed to be the main sources of income; that, and logging. Aggie also saw a lot of churches. The parking lots were full. Services. Sunday.

She wondered which one Mrs. Kreer and her son attended.

“What time is it?” Aggie asked.

“Not quite eleven,” Amiri said.

Aggie gave the car a little more gas. “The Kreers go to church. It’s Sunday. They just might be out of the house.”

Quinn made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Won’t be for long. Not unless they take a lunch out.”

Aggie glanced at the men. “So, you guys feeling lucky? Or how about just crazy?”

“I believe crazy is part of the job,” Amiri said dryly. “Or so I was warned.”

“Speak for yourself,” Quinn told him. “This work is the only sane thing I’ve ever done.”

Which might be true for Aggie, as well, but she did not want to think too hard on it. She’d had a normal upbringing, a stable family, but none of that had ever been enough—until she found Dirk & Steele. A job she loved. An insane job, with insane risks. She would not trade it for the world.

They crossed the Sauk River and drove up a road that curled higher into the mountain, looming white and sharp above their heads—immense, cold, its stark beauty intensified by blue sky and glittering sun. Warmth; Aggie tried to feel it through the window on her face, but sunlight did not compare to Charlie.

Where are you?

Ten minutes of driving, and they passed the Kreers’ long driveway, a gravel track that curved out of sight inside the trees. Their name was painted on the mailbox. Aggie drove another minute, then pulled over on the narrow shoulder. Amiri began unbuttoning his shirt.

Aggie and Quinn stepped out of the car, listening hard.

“I think we’re clear,” she said. “Amiri?”

The shape-shifter pushed open the back door on the side near the woods. He was completely naked. Golden light streamed down the long lines of his body, and Aggie watched, breathless, as fur rippled from his torso, his hard thighs. Claws burst from his fingernails.

And then Amiri was gone, and a cheetah stood in his place. The cat twitched its tail, gave them a look that was pure man, and then slipped silently into the forest. Aggie watched him leave, her vision shifting, and saw his future: the edge of a clearing, a small two-story white house. Different angles of the house, different variations. She did not see a car, but that meant nothing. One of the Kreers could still be at home.

“I never get tired of that,” Quinn said.

“Ditto,” Aggie said absently, as the vision cut off. She thought of Charlie. Wondered what he looked like. He said he was ugly. She doubted that. Different was never ugly. She sighed, and felt Quinn look at her.

“Aggie,” he said quietly. “Is there anything wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

He just waited, and Aggie shook her head. “Everything’s fine.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re not telling me everything about this case.”

Well, at least he had waited until Amiri was gone to pin her down—for what good that did him. “I can’t talk about it, Quinn. There are…elements involved.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. It’s not my story to tell.”

Quinn leaned back against the car. “It’s a man.”

“What?”

“There’s a man involved.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

Aggie gritted her teeth. “Just leave it alone, okay? I haven’t held anything back from you that could endanger us.”

“That’s because you don’t know jack shit. I can tell. All you’ve got is a situation, maybe a vision, and now an address. Someone put you up to this.”

Aggie said nothing. It was the truth, and she could not lie to Quinn. She could, however, divert—and she was prepared to do just that when warmth spread down her neck and back, a fire that flowed right down into her lower stomach. Aggie shuddered. Quinn said, “Are you okay?”

She was more than okay. Charlie was back, and the joy and relief she felt in that made her woozy. She was becoming a total basket case, and all because of a man…gargoyle…whatever.

“I’m fine,” she said, and then, inside her head, Welcome back.

Deep inside her ear, a whisper, as Charlie said, “I won’t be for long.”

Why? Are you in trouble?

He did not answer. Aggie threw her frustration at him, all her fear and worry, and he said, “It means a lot to me that you care.”

Then give me the truth.

“I can’t.”

“Aggie,” Quinn said, more insistent this time.

“Wait,” she said, and to Charlie: I need to tell Quinn about you. This won’t work if I don’t.

A lot of things would not work if she could never tell her friends about him. She had enough secrets in her life.

The warmth around her body disappeared, and in its place ran a sense of longing, homesickness, a memory of heat and light and goodness wrapped tight around her soul. She missed him. She did not understand why she felt that loss so strongly, but she did not question it. The feeling was too elemental, as natural as breathing, the beat of her heart. She could not distrust something that felt as innate and instinctive as the desire to live.

And then, right in front of her, Charlie materialized: a large man-shaped body of moving shadows. No face, no defining features of any kind. Just darkness. Quinn jumped, gasping.

Thank you, Aggie thought, and touched her partner’s shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she said. Quinn did not relax. His fingers twitched—a futile attempt at telekinesis, maybe. She did not think anything like that could work on Charlie. Her vision shifted; she saw a probable immediate future of calm acceptance, even a smile or two. She breathed easier. “Quinn, really. This is Charlie. He’s the person I couldn’t tell you about. He’s not dangerous.”

“Depends on who you talk to,” Charlie said, and held out his shadowed hand. Quinn stared at it, and then, with a wild look at Aggie, reached out slowly to shake. He flinched when he touched Charlie, who said, “Sorry about the grip. I don’t have much of one.”

Quinn’s fingers passed through Charlie. “But you’re warm.”

“Um, yes,” he said.

“Okay.” Quinn took back his hand. “This is weird.”

Aggie raised her brow. “We’re psychic detectives. We work with shape-shifters.”

“It’s still weird. And hey, did you tell him about us?”

“I’m a mind reader in this form,” Charlie said. “She didn’t have to tell me.”

“So, what are you?” Quinn asked Charlie, and Aggie could see his fear drowning in rabid curiosity. “Are you a ghost? Something else? Are you…I don’t know, astral-projecting?”

“Not quite,” Charlie said. “Close, though. But, um, we should go. Now. The house is empty. Or it was. I went there first to check on Emma.”

Aggie did not hesitate. She jumped into the car and Quinn crawled into the backseat, forgoing the passenger side for expedience. Aggie gunned the engine and peeled back onto the road, roaring at high speed until she hit the Kreer driveway and pulled hard on the wheel. Quinn yelped, sliding. The back tires churned gravel.

“Amiri?” Quinn said, trying to get his balance.

“He’ll have to catch up. Shouldn’t be difficult.”

And it wasn’t. Aggie caught glimpses of a golden body inside the trees as they neared the end of the driveway. Running, running, and…

—she saw Amiri, naked, standing beside their overturned vehicle, struggling to pull her bleeding body through the window. Quinn lay very still on the ground nearby—

The probabilities were high, but she saw another variation: Amiri running beside their vehicle as it sped across the grass.

The trees ended on the edge of the clearing. Beyond, a green meadow cut by the driveway, and beyond that, the house from her earlier vision. Memories of the future, colliding in her head. Danger, danger. She glanced down at the speedometer. Sixty miles an hour. She slammed on the brakes.

“Shit!” Quinn hit the back of her seat. “What happened?”

“Something bad if I didn’t stop. Look at the driveway ahead of us. Do you see anything out of the ordinary?”

Quinn kneeled on the seat and peered over her shoulder out the windshield. “No.”

“Neither do I. That’s the problem.”

She turned her attention on Quinn. Less than a minute from now he was still fine. In all the variations, fine. Though in thirty percent of them he stood outside the car, looking down at the ground. Gazing at—

“The driveway is booby-trapped,” Aggie said. “Spike sticks. Would have blown out our tires, and at the speed I was going…”

“Are you kidding?”

“I wish.”

“What the fuck is this? I thought these people were well-respected. Don’t they get company?”

“Maybe they leave them only when they’re out of the house. In this area, I doubt they’re alone in doing that. People take security into their own hands. Hell, when I was growing up, our next door neighbor rigged a tripwire in front of his door and kept bear traps on the lawn. He didn’t want the kids kicking soccer balls on his grass.”

“I need to talk to you about your childhood.” Quinn looked around. “Where’s Charlie?”

“He’s probably at the house with Emma. At least, I hope he is.”

Quinn grunted. “You like him.”

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh. You see those spike sticks?”

“No.” Aggie drove off the driveway into the meadow and cut a wide swathe through the thick grass. “And I’m not going to take the time looking for them.”

“They’ll know someone’s been here when they get back. You’re leaving tracks.”

“What are they going to do? Call the police?”

“No, but I hope that’s what we’re planning on doing.”

“As soon as we’ve got Emma out of that house, we’ll park our asses and dial nine-one-one.”

“This is a terrible plan.”

“Yes,” Aggie agreed.

Amiri burst out of the woods, racing ahead of them to the house—a golden spotted arrow, lean and precise; surreal, magical. Aggie soaked it in, refusing to take the moment for granted. She was practicing for Charlie.

The Kreer home looked very clean and simple. A farmhouse. Very little decoration. Red geraniums poked up out of the ground, along with some ferns. Aggie parked the car. Quinn got out first. Aggie sat and watched him and Amiri, tasting the future.

Nothing bad, nothing dangerous. She let out her breath, slow.

Amiri did not change shape. He slipped up the front steps and sniffed the door. Aggie followed him. She did not go for her gun. No need, yet. She did, however, pull some latex gloves from her pocket and snap them on. She handed a pair to Quinn. If she had her way, this house was going to be crawling with cops in less than an hour, and she didn’t want any of their prints getting confused with the Kreers’.

The front door was locked. Quinn pulled a pick set from his pocket and got to work. It was an old mechanism; he tripped it within seconds and the door swung open. Aggie made the men wait before going in. She watched their bodies and in all the variations saw them moving free and alive through the darkened home.

They entered a long hall lined with framed photographs. A staircase was on their right, and to their left, a few steps away, a sliding door. Aggie pushed it open and saw cameras.

Warmth surrounded her body. Charlie materialized. Amiri laid back his ears and growled.

“He’s a friend,” she said to him. Then to Charlie, “Where’s Emma?”

“Follow me,” he said.

“Quinn,” Aggie prompted, and watched him pull a tiny digital camera from his pocket.

“On it,” he said, and began snapping pictures. Amiri stayed with him. His eyes glowed as he watched Aggie leave with Charlie.

“I missed you,” Charlie said when they were away from the others.

Unexpected. Her breath caught. “I missed you, too.”

“This might be the last time we get to see each other.”

Aggie stumbled. “What?”

Charlie said nothing. They reached a door that had duct tape around its edges and a rolled towel pushed up against it on the floor.

“Emma is expecting us,” he said. “I told her you were coming.”

“Charlie.”

He moved, wrapping his shadowy arms around her body. Warmth sank deep into her skin, flooding her mouth—like a kiss. And then it was gone and Charlie said, “No time. Go to her.”

Aggie choked back her questions; her eyes felt hot, wet. She didn’t know why she wanted to cry, but her heart was aching, throbbing. She unlocked the basement door and jerked it open, tape ripping away from the walls. Light flooded the basement, and in front of her, waiting on the steps, was a little girl, blonde and pale and delicate. Her eyes, though—her eyes were old. Piercing.

“Emma,” Charlie said. “This is Agatha. She’s going to help you.”

Aggie reached out her hand and waited for the girl to come to her. She knew Emma would; the variations of all probable futures were quite certain on that, but Aggie did not want to push. The girl had been pushed enough by adults and strangers.

Emma studied her face with grave intent, and took Aggie’s hand. Her skin was cool and damp, but Aggie drew her from the darkness and tried not to show her surprise when the child wrapped her arms around her hips and hugged her tight.

“Thank you,” the child murmured, and Aggie bent down and picked her up.

She was lighter than she looked; frail, almost. Her breath whistled in Aggie’s ear. She smelled like cement, mold, decay.

Charlie stood unmoving, watching. Featureless and smooth, like a warrior wrapped in black cloth, head to foot. Aggie pushed her mind and saw a room with sand and blood, sand and statues, bloody stone, with bits of flesh hanging in threads and chunks, draped on wings.

She swayed and Charlie said, “No, don’t. I don’t want you to see.”

“Charlie?” Emma asked, and he reached out to touch her face. The little girl closed her eyes and buried her face against Aggie’s neck.

Later, she said to him, and then remembered his words, his kiss. There would be no later.

Where’s your body? Aggie asked him as she carried Emma away from the basement.

“Agatha.” His voice was quiet, right in her ear. Maybe they were talking mind to mind.

You tell me, Charlie.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

You let me be the judge of that.

“No. I won’t risk you getting hurt.” She wanted to kill him for saying that, and he said, “I’m already dead.”

Again, not what she wanted to hear.

Quinn was still in the living room. He had pulled some tapes from the shelves, and had a folder full of photographs spread on the table. Aggie glimpsed flesh in those, and looked away—she did not want Emma to see any of that. Amiri prowled around the room, tail lashing the air. The little girl stiffened when she saw him, and Aggie whispered, “It’s okay. He’s a good cat.”

“Are you guys ready?” Aggie asked, and Quinn nodded. His face was hard, eyes too bright—

—and then a shift—Quinn screaming at her to run, run, get out—

“They’re coming,” Aggie said.

“They’re already here,” Charlie corrected. Aggie went to the window and peered outside. She saw Mrs. Kreer and her son opening the trunk of their car. Caught sight of a rifle.

“Armed?” Quinn asked, and Aggie thought of those tire tracks she had left in the tall grass.

“Oh, yeah.”

Quinn shook his head. “These people are too hardcore. Most in this business are cowards. They run. They lay low. They don’t fight. Not like this, anyway. So they see a car out there. Maybe we’re not in it, but that’s no call for violence. They can’t know for certain we’re inside their home or that we’re here to bust them.”

“Logic doesn’t matter, Quinn. They have something big to lose, not to mention they’re a lot crazier than your average insane person. Shooting someone isn’t going to mean much.” Not when they had already killed Emma’s mother, and maybe others over the years.

“It’s worse than that,” Charlie added, in a hard voice that sent chills up her spine. “They’re not entirely human.”

Everyone turned to look at him. Emma scrunched tighter against Aggie.

“You want to run that past me again?” she asked, slow.

“They’ve got demon in them,” he said, and it was suddenly hard to hear him because he got quiet, like the air was too heavy for words.

Emma shrank in Aggie’s arms; Aggie wanted to shrivel up alongside her. “Charlie. What, exactly, does that mean for us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s bad. It also explains why I haven’t been able to read their thoughts.”

“Aw, hell.” Quinn clicked the safety off his gun. “Aggie, go to the back of the house and call the police. Charlie and Amiri, go with her. I’ll take care of this.”

“Quinn—” she said, and went blind as she saw blood run from his heart, his throat—and in another future—and in another—another—

“They’ll kill you,” she hissed. “I see it. Come with us, right now.”

“No,” he said, and gave her a hard look. “Fate is just probabilities. I’ll take my chances.”

The porch steps creaked. Emma whimpered. Aggie hugged her tight and turned down the hall to the kitchen. She felt Amiri at her back. Charlie appeared in front of her, a shadow running. She reached into her pocket for her cell phone, but before she could begin dialing, a gunshot rang out behind her. Charlie blinked out of sight.

Amiri growled, using his body to push Aggie against the wall. She listened hard; ahead of her, she heard a creak. Mouth dry, she set Emma gently on the floor and held her finger up to the girl’s mouth. Emma nodded gravely. Aggie looked at Amiri, gesturing with her chin. The shape-shifter blinked once and leaned protectively against the little girl. Safe. The probabilities were safe. Aggie put away her phone and reached for her gun.

Charlie reappeared beside her. Bone and blood loomed around him, golden sand, a woman with red hair and red lips and a red dress…

There’s someone in the kitchen, she told him. Can you distract him?

“I’ve tried that before,” he whispered in her ear. “They don’t see me.”

Quinn?

“Alive. Tracking.”

Taking his chance with fate. Something Aggie needed to do for herself.

She held up her gun and slinked down the hall toward the kitchen. Charlie disappeared, but she knew he was close. Warmth pushed against her ear and he said, “It’s the mother. She has an ax. She’s waiting by the entrance to the kitchen.”

Perfect. Just great.

“You have bullets,” Charlie said. “Shoot her and be done with it.”

We can’t kill them, Aggie said. We do that and we’ll just make trouble for ourselves with the law. Not to mention the Kreers might have useful information about other victims, maybe people in their network, if they have one. We have to—

But whatever she was going to say died as a high screech cut the air and a body flung itself from the kitchen. Aggie cried out, squeezing off a round into the wall that did nothing to slow the old woman, who swung her whistling ax hard and fast. Details died; all Aggie could register was a blur made of pure fury, a mouth that flashed white and sharp, and she felt Amiri behind her, pushing Emma away as the child cried out a word that was high and sweet and not quite a scream. For a moment the air shimmered—Mrs. Kreer faltered—and Aggie took the chance offered and dove toward the old woman, rushing and rolling past her. She smelled mold, mustiness…and then the air cleared as she entered the kitchen, spinning on her feet.

“Come on,” Aggie snarled, goading the old woman. “Come and get me.”

Get me, get me. Only me and not the kid. Don’t follow Emma.

Mrs. Kreer hesitated, glancing over her shoulder as the tip of Amiri’s tail disappeared around the corner in the hall. She began to follow them and Aggie thought, Fuck it all. She aimed her gun at the old woman’s leg and pulled the trigger, feeling a grim satisfaction as the bullet slammed through the meat of Mrs. Kreer’s thigh, making her stagger, lean against the wall.

But the woman did not fall. She did not drop the ax.

“Oh, shit,” Aggie muttered, as the old woman turned to face her. For the first time she was able to get a good look at her face. Mrs. Kreer appeared the same as Aggie remembered from her visions; clean and coiffed, with high pale cheeks and a small wrinkled mouth. She wore a black sweater over a white turtleneck. Long embroidered pants ended neatly above her ankles. Mrs. Kreer: ordinary woman, pillar and post and proud mother. Only her eyes gave her away. Aggie had never seen anything quite that cold or black.

“Don’t move,” Aggie said. “I will shoot you again.”

But Mrs. Kreer moved and Aggie was not surprised, because that was what the future held in all its variations—fighting, the old woman fighting like her life depended on the kill—and when Mrs. Kreer brought down the ax, Aggie was ready. She leapt backwards, probabilities spinning, calculating the future even as she danced across the kitchen floor, dodging the whirling steel of Mrs. Kreer’s weapon. Her palm was sweaty around the gun, but she stayed patient, moving and moving and—

The future shifted; Aggie’s foot hit the trail of blood dripping from the old woman’s leg and the floor disappeared as she went up and up—

—and slammed into the ground so hard she stopped breathing.

Mrs. Kreer darted forward, but not before Aggie mustered enough strength to kick out with her feet, catching her in the gut. The old woman made a woofing sound, but collected herself faster than Aggie. Struggling to stand, Aggie saw—wild eyes, swinging blades, screaming and yelling and blood everywhere, blood and meat—but then a gunshot split the air outside the house, she heard a shout—Charlie—and the future changed as she felt his warmth surround her.

He materialized in front of Mrs. Kreer—shadows gathering, swarming like bats to make a body—but the woman showed no indication she saw him. Yet, when she lunged forward to attack Aggie, she passed through him and a curious thing happened. Mrs. Kreer swayed. She lost her balance. Her grip around the ax handle loosened. Aggie darted forward. Distracted or ill, the old woman could not defend herself quickly enough and Aggie slammed the butt of her gun against that graying head, dropping her to her knees and stunning her long enough to wrench the ax out of her hand. The old woman began to fight back, snarling, but Aggie hit her again in the head, knocking her flat on the ground and immediately stomping on that wounded leg, grinding her heel into the bullet hole, savoring the anger in her heart as she made Mrs. Kreer writhe.

“Agatha.” Charlie appeared beside her. “Agatha, stop.”

She did not want to, but she understood why she should. She eased up on the old woman, but only for a moment. Aggie reached into her pocket for plastic cuffs and tied the monstrous woman’s hands behind her back. Did the same to her feet, arching her like David Yarns, hogtied, ready to be put on the spit and cooked and turned, cook and turned. No running for this one. No more hurting children.

Mrs. Kreer’s future was done.

CHAPTER SIX

Quinn was alive. Despite all the variable futures that had him bleeding or hurt or screaming, he was alive. Lucky man. When he entered through the back door off the kitchen, Aggie had her back turned. All she heard was a creak, a step. Scary. She spun and almost shot him.

“Bang, bang,” she said. She put down her gun, clicking the safety back on. “That scared me. You okay?’

“Better than I was three minutes ago. Kid is down. I got him tied up in the backyard.”

“Tough?”

“Not really, though there was a moment or two.” Quinn tapped his head. “Luckily for me, I have magic bullets.”

Telekinetic bullets. Aggie smiled.

Beside her, Charlie drifted down to the ground and crouched over Mrs. Kreer. The woman’s eyes were open, staring. Aggie did not like to look at that cold gaze; there was something alien about it, distant. It gave her the creeps, made her stomach turn. What could compel a person do such things to a child? It was inexplicable, and she thought about what Charlie had said. That Mrs. Kreer was part demon.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I can see it in her now. I was not looking before. It’s very weak, though. Just a trace. That would be enough, though, to influence her behavior.”

“I thought you said those things were gone from the earth.”

“I thought they were. Some…must have remained. Evolved, perhaps. I only recognize this much out of instinct.”

Quinn stirred. “Are you talking about the ‘D’ word?”

“Yeah,” Aggie said. “Though it’s bullshit, giving them an excuse for all the things they did.”

“No,” Charlie said. “I’m not saying that.”

“No?” Aggie wished he had a face. She wasn’t even sure why he floated around in a human body. Be a cloud, she thought. A bird.

And then, Don’t leave me.

“Aggie,” he began, but she shook her head.

“You say Kreer and her boy have some demon in them? I’ll buy it. But who’s to say I don’t have some demon in me, too? I might even have more than them. Maybe seeing the future isn’t just some freak of nature, but a freak of some ancestor. But you don’t see me out murdering and molesting.”

Charlie stirred. “I believe we already had this conversation, and I’ll admit I was wrong. Some choices are products of nothing but pure nature, Agatha. Maybe some people are born wrong.”

Aggie wanted to disagree—wanted to so badly because it was principle, the building block of her life that fate was built upon variations, variables, all playing each other to mix new futures and ways of being. Choice, choosing well, creating a good life that was a product of small moments…

But to be faced with the possibility that destiny might be inescapable—that the future was already written in only one way, with one outcome—and to have that outcome be so dark and destructive…

It scared her. Because if people could be born whose only purpose was to hurt others, then what did that say for the future?

“That there are also those who are born to do good,” Charlie said quietly.

A nice thought, but Aggie was not convinced. She did not want to be convinced of the alternative to choice, to free will. Aggie looked down upon the old woman, who stared at her, mouth pursed, a fine shudder racing through her body. Maybe she realized the shit she was in; maybe she was angry or scared or just plain cold. Aggie steeled herself and kneeled. Bent close.

“You look so ordinary,” she whispered. “But you’re rotten on the inside, and you chose to be that way. Maybe you do have some bad mojo in your blood, maybe you got a bigger darkness in your heart than some, but I won’t let you rest your laurels on that. You dug your own grave, Mrs. Kreer. You buried your own heart.”

“My son,” said the old woman. “What have you done with him?”

“Not nearly enough,” Quinn spoke up. “But I can change that, if you like.”

Mrs. Kreer sucked in her breath, making a hissing sound that sent chills up Aggie’s back.

“Right,” she said, standing. “I need some air.”

There was a scuffling sound from the hall; Amiri emerged from the shadows. Emma had her hand on his back, buried in his fur. Charlie appeared before them in an instant, blocking her view of Mrs. Kreer. Aggie joined him and swept the girl up in her arms. Carrying her down the hall and out the front door into the sunlight. Emma covered her eyes.

Aggie felt warmth on her back, another kind of sun, and Charlie said, “I need to go soon.”

“You said that a while ago.”

“And I’ve had far more time here than I should have. It won’t last.”

Aggie carried Emma down to the rental car and placed her in the backseat. Quinn joined them and said, “Amiri is standing guard on the big bad momma. I’m going to head out back and check on her spawn.”

Aggie dug into her pocket and pulled out her phone. Tossed it to him. “Police still haven’t been called. Be sure to warn them about the spike sticks.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said, and walked away, dialing as he went.

Charlie kneeled in front of Emma. He touched her small hands.

“You were very brave,” he said to the girl. “I am so proud of you.”

“My mommy,” Emma said.

Charlie hesitated. Emma looked away. Aggie’s eyes felt all hot again, but she swallowed down the ache and said, “I need to talk to Charlie for a minute, okay? We’ll be right over there where you can see us.”

Emma raised her gaze; old eyes, haunted eyes. She glanced at Charlie’s shadow and said, “You’re leaving.”

“I don’t have a choice,” he said, and Aggie heard the pain in his voice, the hoarse hush.

“Okay,” Emma said, and reached out to hug him. Her arms passed through his body, but Charlie wrapped her up in himself and she whispered, “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you, too,” he said. “You changed my life.”

Emma began to cry. So did Aggie. Charlie pulled away, gliding fast over the meadow away from the car. Aggie stumbled after him, wiping her eyes.

“Charlie,” she called after him. “Charlie, stop!”

He did, waiting for her to catch up, and though he was not solid, Aggie still pressed against his apparition, soaking in his heat, his presence, the comfort of knowing he was there. In all her life, she had never felt such a need to simply be with a person; but here she was, and her heart was breaking because—I need to breathe, I need to eat, I need to love.

“You’ll find someone new,” Charlie said, rough. “You’ll forget me. You didn’t know me long enough for anything else. We were barely friends.”

“We could have been best friends,” Aggie said, shaking. “I think, maybe, we already are.”

His body seemed to contract in on itself—at first she thought he was going to disappear, but it was nothing; a shudder maybe. One to mirror her own. She wished she could see his real face…and then thought perhaps it did not matter. This was Charlie. The real him.

“Agatha,” he whispered. “I wish things could be different.”

“Tell me,” she breathed. “Tell me why they aren’t.”

“I don’t own myself,” he said, and if there had been pain in his voice earlier, it was nothing compared to now: broken and hollow, dull and dead as stone. “I’m…locked up. My brothers, too. All of us kept, like animals.”

Aggie thought of her future memory, the sand and the woman, and Charlie said, “Yes, her.”

“Why? How?” How, in this modern world, with so many eyes, so many ears?

“How was Emma taken? And that boy you saved? The most terrible abuses happen in plain sight, and no one sees. Hearts go blind. Do you know why, Agatha? Because it takes courage to help others. More courage than anything, because it means opening yourself, dedicating yourself to something that is beyond your life. Easier to just…walk on by. Ignore and pretend. It’s safer that way.”

“You didn’t do that.”

“But I have. Maybe I will again. I hope not. I don’t want to be that man anymore.” He stopped, pressing her tight within himself. “That’s not something you need to worry about. You, Agatha, are a champion. True blue. My huntress.”

And you are my dark knight, she thought, my mysterious companion. She could not say the words out loud. They felt intimate, somehow. As though to say them in the air would be exposing a part of her that was raw. Thoughts, though…thoughts were still reality. And she meant them. She really did.

“Mysterious companion,” Charlie echoed. “Dark knight. Maybe I’m not quite Batman material, but I like that. I like being that for you.”

Her mouth curved. “And the woman who keeps you? You haven’t told me why. Or how.”

“Because she can. Because she wants something from my brothers. Their obedience, their pride, their strength to draw on in order to make herself more powerful.”

“But you’re here. You’re able to dream your way out.”

“No,” Charlie said. “This—me, what you’re looking at—is not a dream. It’s my soul, Aggie. My spirit, my consciousness, whatever you want to name it. And the only way…the only way for me to separate my soul from my body is through death.”

Understanding was slow. Her mind tasted the words, rolling them around, horror growing as she sounded out the concept in her mind. Death. His death. It was impossible.

“No,” Charlie said. “Every time I came to see you or Emma, I had to die first.”

“But when you left…”

“It was because my body came back to life, calling back my soul. My kind are hard to kill, Agatha. We…regenerate our vital organs. Call it a…a consequence of our early purpose, which was to battle creatures more powerful than ourselves. It gave us an edge.”

“But if you have to die in order to be here, then how? Who does it?”

“The witch—the woman keeping me. She would…cut out my heart. All my vital organs. Doing it that way takes longer, so I could stay with you and Emma. But she found out. Got angry. To be here this time, I…had to do it myself.”

Aggie choked. “Why? Why would you put yourself through that?”

“How could I not?” His hands passed over hers and warmth rolled up her arms into her chest, her heart. “Death really wasn’t a high price to pay.”

She couldn’t talk. It was too much—Charlie dying, Charlie murdered.

Charlie killing himself.

Aggie shook her head, helpless, and Charlie said, “You don’t have to find the words. I hear you.”

He heard her. He heard everything. She wanted to say, Don’t go, please, we only just got started, but it was no good begging him to stay. Instead, because she had to say something, anything to fill the silence inside her breaking heart, she whispered, “You’re warm.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “I can be warm, even as a dream.”

“You’re no dream. Don’t keep calling yourself that. You’re real. You’re more than idle fantasy.”

She wondered if he smiled; the warmth around her body intensified. “My body is quite some distance away. I’m also dead. I think to call me anything but a dream—”

“Ghost. A big hulking scary ghost.”

“Scary.”

“Terrifying. My knees knock when you’re around.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Yeah? You like that?”

“I do,” he said, and then, softer, “Take care of yourself, Agatha. I wish I could be here to watch over you. Maybe…maybe I’ll get another chance one day. Just to say hello.”

It was the wistfulness in his voice that got her; the sense that he had already given up. Anger threaded through her gut; pure stubbornness. “I don’t live on maybes and hellos, Charlie. Not this time, anyway. I’m making my own future.”

“Agatha.”

“No. Where’s your body?”

“She’ll kill you.”

“She can try. And if you won’t tell me, then I’ll do it the hard way. You forget who I work for. I’ll figure it out.”

“Agatha.”

“Charlie.” Her voice broke on his name, and inside her heart she begged, she screamed, she threw her thoughts at him and raged. She refused to let him suffer; she refused it with all the power of her heart. Because it was wrong, because he deserved better, because she deserved better than to be given just a taste of some perfect dream, some possible mysterious future, and then have it snatched away like so much candy in the fist of a bully. No, absolutely not. She would not allow it. Short time together, maybe—but that was enough to know she wanted more, that she would do anything to get it, to see him safe. Killing himself, murder—that was torture, plain and simple. And he had endured it for her and Emma. The least she could do was return the favor.

Charlie touched her face, drawing near, wrapping his spirit so tight around her own that she thought she must be a caterpillar and he was the cocoon, and together they would merge and transform into something beautiful.

“Somewhere in Glasgow,” he whispered. “But that’s a fool talking. I’m crazy. Don’t try.”

“Then don’t leave me.”

“Agatha,” he said again, and she felt his soul press upon her mouth, infusing her with radiance and fire.

And then he pulled away, far away, and she cried out, hands scrabbling the air.

She could not hold him.

When he opened his eyes the witch was there. She sat in the sand beside Charlie, cross-legged, covered in blood. His blood. The knife lay across her thighs.

“I should cut off your head now and be done with it,” she said. “You are such a pain.”

“You extended my death,” he realized.

“I did,” she said. “I was overcome by a moment of weakness. I saw the lengths you went to secure your own exit, and could not help but admire your dedication. Death by repeated gouging and impalement? And on your brothers, too. That is rather sick.”

“Just a bit,” Charlie admitted. “You didn’t give me much choice.”

“I suppose not. I also underestimated you. Which is why your brothers will be sleeping outside your prison from now on.”

Charlie looked. She had already moved them. They crouched just beyond the circle in the sand. Their bodies were still stained from his blood.

The witch smiled. “Love makes such fools of men, human or not.”

Charlie said nothing. Love had not made a fool of him. Love had given him everything. He had never imagined it could be that way, that he could be sustained and strengthened by his love for another, his compassion. But yes, truth. He loved. And if he never was able to see Agatha or Emma again, he had that much, the knowledge and the memory.

Agatha is coming for you.

She would never find him. Glasgow was a big city, and he had been deliberately vague. He could not lie to her—not when he wanted so badly to tell her the absolute truth—but he also could not risk her life for his. It wasn’t worth it.

“You’re thinking of that woman,” said the witch. “I can see it on your face.”

Charlie sighed. “What do you want?”

“So much,” said the witch. “I’m having another guest tonight.”

“Is this also someone who sees you as an asset?”

“Yes,” she said. “And I want to impress her. I was thinking steak. Fresh meat.” She raised her knife and turned it this way and that, so the light rolled off parts of the dirty blade.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” said the witch, raising her knife. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“If only,” Charlie said, and then braced himself. He wished he could fight. He hated being so helpless.

She cut him, deep.

If it had not been for Emma, Aggie might have remained sitting in that meadow until the cows came home; the sky went dark, and birds forgot to sing. As it was, she remembered that there was someone who needed her, someone whose pain was greater than hers, and she put her heart aside to return to the rental car and the little girl within.

“I saw him go,” Emma said. Her eyes were red. Aggie wished she had a doll to give her. Something to hold on to. She ended up giving herself, sitting down on the seat beside her, wrapping a gentle arm around the child’s narrow shoulders.

“I’m all alone,” Emma said. “My mommy is gone.”

And she began crying again, this time in earnest. Aggie wanted to march inside the house and put a bullet in Mrs. Kreer’s head. Her son, too. Maybe more than bullets for him. She had not seem him in the flesh yet, but she remembered the hunger in his eyes and knew. Just…knew. It made her sick.

“Don’t worry,” Aggie promised. “I’ll take care of you.”

And she would, somehow. She did not know what that meant, only that saving one life was not enough, not if that life got dumped by the wayside and handed over to the system. Emma might be crying now, but that was good, healthy. The kid still had strength, still had…something more inside her that was not yet broken. Despite everything, despite all the hardship, Emma was still strong. Aggie could see that in her eyes.

And another reason to fight: Charlie loved the child. Aggie had to do right by him, too.

In the distance, she heard sirens. As Aggie and Emma waited for the police, the little girl continued to weep. The big girl wept, too, but she tried to keep it on the inside, where her heart was howling.

Amiri slunk out of the house. Aggie saw him and pushed his clothes out the back door, distracted Emma while he silently changed shape some distance away, and put them on. The little girl twitched when she saw his human face and body, but Amiri shocked Agatha by rolling up his sleeve and showing off his arm, which suddenly rippled golden with fur.

“I am a fairy tale,” he said gently, and Emma nodded with grave understanding.

She got another surprise when the police arrived—the FBI was with them. In fact, there was more of a federal presence than a local one, and Aggie thought, Roland, you are a devil.

The cars stopped, surrounding them. Men and women piled out. Emma leaned against Aggie. An agent approached; a tall, spare man. Blond hair, nice face. She recognized him; he had been at the crash scene only yesterday—a lifetime distant. He was going to see a lot of very bad things in the next five minutes; the probabilities were quite high.

He glanced at Emma and Amiri, and then to Aggie said, “Ms. Durand? I’m Agent Warwick, with the FBI. Maybe you remember me. We got a tip that, uh, you had a tip. Related to the David Yarns case you assisted on yesterday afternoon.”

“Assisted” was generous; Dirk & Steele’s help on high profile cases like Yarns’s was usually billed as a tip-off or private-citizen intervention—which didn’t bother anyone at the agency, just as long as the job got done. The feds and local PD could have all the ego bolstering they wanted.

“Yes,” she said to Warwick. “That’s correct. We came out here on an investigation and discovered evidence of an abuse in progress. We…took the child out of the situation and, given what we saw, secured the perpetrators—a woman named Mrs. Kreer and her son, Andrew.”

“And this is the child?” Warwick asked carefully. Emma gave him a long, level look that was far too old for her years.

“They kept me in the basement,” she said. “They made me do things.”

Which was really all the testimony anyone should need. Warwick swallowed hard, nodding. Aggie told him where to find Emma’s kidnappers—as well as Quinn—and after a swift, “Stay here. We’ll need to take your statements,” Warwick jogged off and began coordinating their approach into the house.

“Efficient,” Amiri commented. He sat in the grass, arms braced on his knees.

“Yeah,” Aggie said. “Although I know who to blame for that.”

Her phone rang. She answered it with a sigh and Roland said, “Perfect timing.”

“You called the FBI?”

“The FBI called me. I only happened to mention you were out of the state, investigating another potential connection to David Yarns. And gee fucking whiz, they were more than happy to assist.”

“Convenient. How did you even know where to send them? The exact address, I mean. You must have given them something more than just Darrington.”

“Do you remember that I was going to send Max down to the precinct to attempt a surface scan of David’s mind? Turns out there was a connection between your pervert of yesterday and your pervert of today. A big one.”

“She’s the boss,” Aggie said softly, making the intuitive leap.

“Maybe, possibly. You’ll need to tell me one day how you knew.”

“Ghosts and angels,” she murmured. “More mystery than you can shake a stick at.”

Aggie disentangled herself from Emma, and with a quick, “I’ll be right back,” walked a very short distance away. Amiri inched closer to the girl. Aggie saw Emma place a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“Good kitty,” she said.

“Roland,” Aggie said. “We have to do something about Emma, the victim in this. She deserves better than an FBI social worker and foster care.”

“Doesn’t she have family?”

“Her mother’s dead. I never talked to—I never talked about whether she had other people to take care of her. I’ve got a feeling, though, that she’s pretty much alone.”

“Shit. Aggie—”

“No,” she said. “Find a way.”

“For what? Do you want her?”

Aggie swallowed hard, thinking about the possibilities, what that would mean. She looked at the girl and saw the future fan out, and for a moment it was like seeing her own fate, her own probabilities; like last night in her home, being slammed with an image of this girl in need. Only now, the girl in her head still had need, but different. Just as important.

“I don’t know,” Aggie said, quiet. “But she needs something more than what the system can give her. I know it.”

There was silence on the other end, and then, “Okay. I’ll figure it out, make some calls. That’s why we have those expensive lawyers, right? We’ll make it happen. In some variation. But Emma will have to leave with the FBI today. That can’t be helped.”

“I know,” Aggie said. “Thank you, Roland.”

“Whatever. You and the boys, though…good work. Really fucking good work.”

“Good boss.”

“That’s right,” he said, and hung up.

Aggie went back to the car and snuggled up next to Emma. She thought about both their futures. Amiri sat still. Quinn trudged over from around the house and joined them.

He took one look at Aggie’s face and said, “You okay?”

“No,” she said. “But I will be. I need to go away after this.”

Emma stirred. “Charlie.”

“Yes.”

“He’s my ghost,” Emma said. “My friend.”

“He’s mine, too,” Aggie said. “But he’s lost now, and I need to go find him. I need to do for him what he did for you. Take him away from the dark place.”

“Can I come with you?” Emma asked.

Aggie shook her head. “You’ll need to go with the police today, but that won’t be for long. You’ll have a better place to live. Safe, with good people.”

“I’m scared,” Emma said.

“I know.” Aggie put a hand on the child, soothing, calming. “You have a right to be, but we’ll take care of you. I promise.” She gestured to her colleague, who had just appeared. “This, Emma, is my friend Quinn Dougal. He gets kind of cranky, but he’s a good person.”

“You’re little,” Emma said to him, with the simple honesty of the very young. “But you don’t look like a kid.”

“No,” Quinn said kindly. “I’m a bit older than that. Humans just come in all sizes, that’s all.”

Emma still clutched Amiri’s shoulder.

“What’s your name?” she asked him, and he told her, and she liked that.

Time passed. The FBI and police took their statements, and then they took Mrs. Kreer and her son. And sometime after that, as the afternoon stretched into evening, they took Emma.

Before the child left, she reached out with her skinny arms and pulled Aggie in for a hug. Emma smelled better after being away from the basement—like sunlight and sweet grass—and when Aggie pulled back to look into her eyes she saw a hint of green that she had not noticed before. A flickering light that was pure and shot full of spring and leaf. Otherworldly, almost.

“You’ll find him,” Emma whispered, with a conviction that was quiet, more confident than her years. “You’ll find Charlie.”

“And when I do?” Aggie found herself asking, compelled by strength of the child’s voice, the heartbreaking sincerity of her old, old gaze.

Emma brushed her fingers against the corners of Aggie’s eyes, and for a moment the air seemed to shimmer, and the child said, “You’ll see.”

And that was the end of it. Aggie watched her go and felt like another piece of her heart was breaking. She had never realized she could feel so much for others in such a short amount of time. Charlie, Emma. There was something wrong with her. She needed to turn something off.

No, she told herself. Don’t you dare. Your isolation is over. All you need now is courage.

“What are you going to do?” Quinn asked, coming up to stand beside her. He took her hand and held it.

“I’m going to find him,” Aggie said, glancing down at her partner, wondering if she would ever be able to tell him the whole unbending truth. “One way or another.”

Quinn and Amiri returned to California that evening on the private jet, but Aggie did not go with them. She drove back down to Seattle. She did a lot of thinking. She did a lot of listening to herself.

When she got to the airport, she bought a ticket to Scotland.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It took her a month to find him, and even then it was by accident.

Or not. Aggie was never quite certain.

From Seattle to Chicago, and from Chicago to Glasgow, a hop, skip, and a jump. She entered that city and saw that Charlie had been right: it was big. But if a gargoyle could die and leave his body to save a girl and fall in love, and if shape-shifters could walk the earth, changing from animal to man while psychics banded together under the auspices of a detective agency with a really cheesy name, then anything was possible. Anything at all.

She parked herself in a nice hotel on the edge of George Square, the heart of the city. People massed, the crowds ebbed and flowed, and from a bench she could watch faces and futures, seeking always blood and sand, and a man who was not a man but something more than human.

She listened to the futures as she walked, too, which was how she spent most of her days. Up at the crack of dawn, and then down to the street where she would stay out until all hours—much to the chagrin of the hotel staff, who always said when she came back through the lobby, “Please, dear, it’s not safe, this city isn’t safe for young women at night.” And Aggie knew this, but no place in the world was safe for anyone, and she kept on prowling, looking, searching.

There were endless paths in Glasgow; the buildings were old and the streets older, the architecture rich and fascinating. She went to Glasgow Cathedral and the Necropolis, hunting for witches amongst the holy and the dead; at the University of Glasgow she talked to historians, delved deep into libraries for clues on haunts and gargoyles, found legend, lore, wondered sometimes, too, if the men she spoke to were not gargoyles themselves, hiding in plain sight. She scanned the local newspapers for anything out of the ordinary—strange deaths, odd sightings, lights in the sky—and she sat in cafés and pubs and watched and watched and watched.

And even then, she got lucky. Or not.

A month after Aggie arrived in Glasgow, she found the witch sitting at an outdoor café behind the Gallery of Modern Art, sipping tea. She knew it was the witch because she recognized the face. Aggie, standing on the sidewalk, temporarily lost her mind. Froze up. She saw in her head a pleasant modern kitchen, something cooking in a pot. She did not see anyone who could be Charlie, but perhaps that was yet too far ahead in the future.

But there it was: her. Aggie did not know what to make of the witch. She was, by any definition, a lovely woman: thick brown hair, a delicate thin face punctuated by luscious red lips and two black eyes. A little doll. Given what Aggie knew of her, she was not that impressed.

Aggie waded past waiters and diners and sat down at the witch’s table. The woman did not look at her right away; she read a book of poetry by Carl Sandburg. Aggie waited. She was patient. She watched the woman’s shifting future.

The witch finished her tea. “‘Broken-face Gargoyles.’ It’s a very good poem. Have you ever read it?”

“No,” Aggie said.

“Oh, you should. It’s quite beautiful.” The witch put down her book and looked Aggie in the eye. She had a powerful gaze, but Aggie remembered Mrs. Kreer, and this was not as bad.

“You smell like him,” said the witch.

“That’s some nose you’ve got,” Aggie replied.

The witch’s lips thinned. “I was referring to energies, darling. Although you do have an odor. Not bathing much lately, are you.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Yes, I know. You’re in love with an associate of mine.”

“How interesting you know that. I’ve been looking for him.”

“I know that, too. Would you like me to take you to him?”

“If I say yes, will I be writing my own death?”

“Oh,” said the woman, and her red lips curled, just so, like petals. “I can think of something far more interesting than mere death.”

“That’s good,” Aggie said. “Let’s go.”

The witch lived in the Merchant City, a place where Aggie had spent quite some time. Apparently the wrong time, because she certainly had not seen anything that would indicate a witch keeping house with a captive gargoyle.

But there, at a warehouse Aggie remembered passing on at least three separate occasions, the witch pulled out a set of keys and said, “Mi casa es su casa.”

“That’s quite all right,” Aggie said. “I think you have enough people in your home.”

The witch smiled—and her teeth are white and sharp, and the pot bubbles as she says, “Have a bite, you’ll like this, since gargoyles are to your taste”—and a shift, a—knife that she holds—and—blood—and pushed open the door. Aggie, blinking, reading violence and sickness and death, followed her up the stairs.

The home was surprisingly mundane. The kitchen was dressed in steel and black and gray, with splashes of red tile; fruits and vegetables covered a long wood table. Something boiled on the stove. Aggie remembered gargoyle, and her stomach hurt.

“So,” said the witch, as she put away her book and purse. “Let’s get down to business. I assume you’ve come to fetch Charlie.”

“Yes,” Aggie said, and the future spun yet more blood, more viscera; the knife in the witch’s hand was long and sharp. The probabilities were high. Aggie was going to die very soon.

The witch made a humming sound. Aggie wondered just what the limits of her powers were, but she decided the woman was not a mind reader when she said, “I can’t imagine what you plan to offer me—or even if Charlie would go with you. He has his brothers to think of, and I simply won’t allow them to leave. It’s a matter of pride.”

“I don’t know anything about his brothers,” Aggie said, “but I do understand Charlie’s loyalty.”

“Yes, I suppose you do.” The witch wandered to the stove. “Are you hungry? I think you might like this. Charlie…made it.”

Aggie thought, I am going to fucking rip you apart. But instead she said, “No, thank you.”

The witch smiled. She opened a drawer and picked up a knife, pressed the tip of it against her palm until she bled. She spoke a sharp word. Aggie felt the hairs on her body lift. Aggie saw in her head—bullets hitting the witch’s chest and falling harmlessly to the ground—the knife darting quick at her neck, blood spurting—her heart in the pot, cooked with gargoyle in a soup—and variations of the same: Aggie fighting, Aggie screaming, Aggie being killed. The witch always deflecting her blows with a smile.

Except for one time. One precious variation.

“You’re scared,” said the witch. “I can see it on your face.”

“Yes,” Aggie said. “You scare me. Does that make you happy?”

“I suppose so, though it also disappoints me. I…studied you, when I discovered Charlie’s fascination. Very tough woman. Macho, even. Take no prisoners. And you are different”—she tapped her head—“up here. All of your friends are different.”

Aggie said nothing. The witch tilted her head. “I have been entertaining guests lately, people who are like you. They also work for an organization. For a time, I thought perhaps yours was one and the same.”

Aggie buried her emotions, the conflict those words stirred in her. Only recently had the agents at Dirk & Steele discovered they were not alone. The other side—and there appeared to be several groups, all rivals—was dangerous. And if one of them was trying to recruit this woman, who was so patently cruel and powerful…

We’re in deep shit. They’re one step ahead of us, and we don’t even know we’re in a race.

“Where’s Charlie?” Aggie asked. “I want to see him.”

“A kiss before dying?”

Aggie did not answer. The future had suddenly gone dark inside her head. Book closed, probabilities lost. Her gift had copped out on her, and again, at the worst time.

Remember what you said? You’re making your own future now.

Faith, then. Faith, and the memory of what she did have.

“Charlie,” Aggie said again, and did not look at the knife.

The witch smiled. She pointed to a door set in the stone wall off the kitchen. Aggie waited for a moment, then walked to door. Glanced one more time at the witch, who stood watching like a perfect deadly little doll. The future lay quiet.

Aggie opened the door. She was not sure what to expect, she had caught only glimpses before, but what lay before her stole her breath.

The entire floor of the room was covered in sand. Inside the sand, a circle. Beyond the circle, three stone statues of winged creatures, and inside, at the center, curled in a ball was another body, this one made of flesh. Aggie saw wings and silver arms, long silver legs, and part of a hard stomach. The face was hidden, but she saw wild hair, silver and blue and black.

She stepped into the room, walked to the circle and stopped. Instinct. She did not think she would survive crossing that line in the sand.

“Charlie,” she said, and her voice was loud. It echoed, though the room was not large.

The body stirred, uncurled. Red eyes peered at her from a face that was strong and bony and utterly inhuman.

But not ugly. Charlie had been so wrong.

“Agatha,” he whispered, and it was odd, so odd, to hear his voice—that lovely gentle voice—come from a real face, a moving mouth. She wanted to touch that mouth; she wanted to press herself close and feel his warmth, his breath, his voice in her ear. No more illusion. Just flesh and blood.

Relief poured through her muscles; her knees trembled, but she did not fall down. She did not cry. She wanted to do both those things, but she felt the witch behind her and she could not afford weakness. She looked into Charlie’s eyes and she tried to tell him, tried to make him understand what she felt, and he nodded, slowly. She saw the same message in his eyes—and God, it was good to see his eyes, no matter their color. It was good to see his face and not some shadow, some replica. The truth was so much more beautiful. A perfect accompaniment to a brave and lovely soul.

“So there is your gargoyle,” said the witch. “Are you disappointed? Were you expecting a prince?”

Aggie smiled at Charlie. She did not bother answering. It was a waste of breath. Charlie’s silver lips curved upward. He stood, slow, and his height was immense. He folded his wings around his body; they covered him like an iridescent cape made of silver skin and pink veins and light bone.

But there was terrible fear in his eyes. As much fear as love, and Aggie looked down, away, because she could not bear to see it. She turned to face the witch.

“What do I have to do?” she asked.

“No,” said Charlie in a hard voice. “No bargains.”

“He’s right,” said the witch. “I don’t bargain. And I am going to kill you. I just wanted Charlie to see it with his own eyes. He’s such a hopeful creature. I think he really did believe you would find him.”

“He was right to believe,” Aggie said, and she felt him stand directly behind her. She imagined his warmth spreading out through the circle against her back, embracing her body down to her soul.

The witch played with her knife. “If I was a better person, this would be the moment when I let you both go. I would change my ways and become good, and this would be my first act of redemption.”

“It’s not too late for that,” Charlie said.

“I think it is,” the witch said. And then, to Aggie: “I made a spell. You might have seen me do it. You cannot hurt me.”

“I know,” Aggie said. “I wasn’t going to try.”

The witch swayed close. “You have a gun in your pocket. You won’t use it? Not a bullet, then? Not a fist in my face? No scratching and clawing to save yourself or the gargoyle you love?” She studied Aggie’s face. “I didn’t expect you to be a quitter. You’re committing suicide.”

Aggie thought about fighting, using her gun. Violence would be easy.

But it would also be the wrong choice. She had seen the bullets fall and her throat cut and her body eaten. No amount of fighting would save her from that. Nothing at all could do that.

You’ll see, Emma had said, and it was true. The future had passed before her in all its infinite variations, spilling probability, and Aggie remembered. One time. One chance at life, and while she did not know why or how, it was still her only choice, an inexplicable leap of faith. And though it was terrible, terrifying, she made it.

Aggie looked at the witch and waited.

“Agatha,” Charlie growled, desperate. “Don’t, Agatha. Do something. Fight. Run.”

The witch hesitated.

“What?” Agatha asked. “Are you changing your mind?”

“It’s unnatural,” came the reply. “What you’re doing.”

“No,” Aggie said, and she glanced over her shoulder at Charlie. “Death really isn’t a high price to pay.”

“All right, then,” said the witch—and plunged the knife into Aggie’s chest.

She did it fast; there was no time to react. Aggie heard Charlie scream as she fell to her knees, and thought, Oh, shit, that was the wrong choice.

But as Aggie began to slump sideways, she gazed up to find the witch staring down in horror at her own pale chest—at the blood seeping between her own breasts, a mirror to Aggie’s injury.

“Impossible,” breathed the witch. “You cast nothing. There was nothing in you…”

Her voice trailed away and the woman staggered, falling clumsily to the ground beside Aggie, who watched with a numb sense of victory as her foe slumped on her elbows and then her side, gulping for air, fingers fluttering against the wound beside her heart. The witch’s hair lost its luster, receding like coiled snakes to her scalp. Aggie saw gray. She saw a lot of other things, too—spinning lights, sparkling, as the pain hit and her body became one open nerve. The knife still jutted from her chest. Bad aim, though. It had missed her heart. Not that it mattered in the long run.

“How?” whispered the witch, her eyes rolling around and around in their sockets, unable to focus.

“Don’t know,” Aggie breathed, weakness flooding her limbs, trailing darkness through her mind. “But I think you’re dying…and I just can’t bring myself to feel sorry about that. You’ll be gone and he’ll be free. I’ve seen it. And that’s all that matters to me.”

Charlie still screamed. Aggie heard a beating sound, rough, like wings, like stone scraping, cracking, hammers slamming on rock, and it was terrible—those terrible sounds, violent and fierce like a tempest, like death—and Aggie, darkness fluttering in her eyes, thought, Yes, even demons would be scared of that.

Blood, everywhere. Hers and the witch’s, mixing and soaking into the sand. Aggie stared at the witch, the dying woman, watching that blood pour from her body, and saw her make that final breath, the slow exhale.

Then Aggie closed her eyes and died.

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was a dream of light and warmth, a sickle-shaped sun inside her chest, glowing bright and brighter, burning her skin, and she heard a voice say her name gently, and then loud, louder and louder until she opened her eyes.

For a moment Aggie forgot herself and she almost became a fool. A screaming fool. But memory swept through her mind, stealing away the scream in her throat, and as her vision cleared and she focused on the four monstrous faces looming over her, relief and victory took the place of fear, and she wanted to weep for the joy it gave her.

She recognized only one of the gargoyles. Red eyes blinked inside a silver face ravaged by grief.

“Charlie,” she whispered, but he did not say anything except to make a low noise, a gasping choke, and he buried his face against her shoulder and neck. Wings dragged over her body. She smelled of blood and sweat. Stone. Fire. Her chest hurt like hell.

“You’re free,” she breathed. “I guess it worked, then. Wow. That’s good.”

“Lady,” said one of the gargoyles standing above her. “You got some brass knockers down there.”

He was a darker shade of silver than Charlie, but his size was the same, as were his wings. His chest was shaped differently. More ridges. Same with his face, his jutting brow. The other two beside him were a little broader through the chest, somewhat shorter, but their faces were less bony. She wondered absently, shape-shifting powers aside, how any of them ever passed as human. That was some trick.

“Charlie,” Aggie said again. She tried to move her arm to pat him on the back, but was too weak. “Charlie, are you okay?”

He shuddered and pulled himself just far enough away to stare into her eyes. “Do I look okay?”

“You’re alive,” she said, feeling stronger. “So yeah. You look pretty damn good.”

Charlie groaned and squeezed shut his eyes. He rolled off her body, sprawling on his back in the sand. Aggie felt very small next to him. She looked down at her chest. The knife was gone. There was a hole in her shirt, lots of dried blood, and beneath all that, a scar.

“How?” she asked them.

“My brothers,” Charlie said, unmoving. “It’s why the witch wanted them.”

“We’re mages,” said the one who had spoken to her first. “It’s rare amongst our kind. The witch knew it. She wanted to control us, siphon off our powers for her use alone.”

“What about Charlie?”

“I was away from home,” he said. “And I’m no mage.”

“But the rest of you can bring people back to life? Is that what you did for me?”

The three looked at each other; Aggie was not sure she liked their expressions. Human or not, their faces were still an open book. A symptom of bad liars, she thought.

“Under the right circumstances,” one of them said, “we can resurrect the recently dead.”

“Uh-huh,” she said. “But…”

“But everything has a price,” said the other. He had green hair, Aggie noted.

“That doesn’t sound good,” she said. Charlie stirred beside her and propped himself up on his elbow. Gazed down at her with eyes that were exasperated, a mouth that curved with affection and a body that leaned so protectively over hers that Aggie felt like she was stretched beneath a great stone wall.

“I told you that gargoyles live longer than humans,” he said. “I gave you part of that life. My life. So Aggie, the next time you croak, so will I. So please, don’t go throwing yourself on any more knives. Or bullets. No more car chases, either.”

“You’ll be asking me to check into a nunnery next.”

His brothers laughed out loud. Charlie gave them dirty looks. He climbed slowly to his feet and then said to her, “I’m going to move you now. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, and he very carefully scooped her up into his arms. She looked down. The knife lay on the ground nearby. So did the witch.

“She aged,” Aggie remarked. White hair, deep wrinkles, shriveled breasts and bony hips. Blood covered her.

“Everything before was an illusion.”

Aggie did not feel much when she looked at her. Empty, maybe.

“How did you know?” Charlie asked. “How did you know that giving yourself up like that was the right thing to do?”

“Even we have no idea how you did it,” said one of his brothers. “We have never seen a spell backfire in such away.”

“I saw the future,” Aggie said. “There was only one variation where she died and Charlie was free, and that was the one I chose. I didn’t think of the how or the why.”

“But you knew you would have to die.”

“I was going to die anyway, Charlie. I just didn’t want it to go to waste.”

Charlie sucked in a great deep breath. His brothers stood around, solemn. Aggie soaked in their bodies: wings and eyes and strong bony faces. Odd and beautiful.

She felt tired. Charlie said, “Sleep, Agatha. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

“Good,” she murmured. “I missed you.” And then, lulled by his movements, she fell into a sweet darkness.

Charlie did not lie. He was there when she opened her eyes. He stood at a window, wings draped over his shoulders. He looked like a gothic angel. The room was dark. Aggie lay on a wide bed and the sheets were cool and soft on her body. She was not wearing any clothes.

She did not say anything for some time. Just watched him.

Finally, though, she said, “You lied.”

Charlie jumped, and it was nice knowing she could surprise someone like him. That he was twitchy, no matter how medieval he looked. He walked to the bed and sat gingerly beside her. The mattress groaned, as did the bed frame.

“I would never lie to you,” he said.

“You said you were ugly.”

A smile tugged on his lips. “I still think I’m ugly. By human standards, anyway.”

“And by gargoyle?”

He shrugged, but his smile grew. Aggie laughed. Her chest did not hurt, but she winced anyway. Reflex. Charlie’s smile died.

“You scared me to death,” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I told you. I was going to die, anyway.”

“Then you shouldn’t have come to me. I was stupid to tell you where I was. You could have been killed. You were killed. Agatha…I had no future beyond death until I met you and Emma. And then…then you go and….” He stopped.

“I’d do it again,” she said softly. “Or do you regret killing yourself every time you came to me and Emma?”

“That’s different, Agatha. I was able to come back to life.”

Aggie sighed. “I’m sorry, Charlie.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. I wouldn’t want to live without you, anyway.”

Her heart hurt hearing those words. Charlie looked quickly away, eyes downcast. He began to stand, but Aggie grabbed his hand. His skin was warm and leathery. He went very still when she touched him. She tried to see his future—their future—but her mind remained dark and quiet.

“Don’t leave me,” she said to him. Charlie sat down, though he still did not look at her. He turned her hand over in his large palm, tracing it gently with the tip of his finger. Aggie shivered.

“I am touching you,” Charlie whispered. “I am touching your hand. Do you know what a miracle that is?”

“I think I do,” Aggie said, smiling. “Would you like to touch more?”

Charlie froze. “Don’t Aggie. Not unless you mean it.”

“And why wouldn’t I?”

He finally looked at her, red eyes blazing, but before he could say a word Aggie sat up fast and kissed him, pushing her mouth hard against his, burying herself into his body. Charlie shuddered, groaning, and she thought, Maybe gargoyles don’t kiss. But then his tongue touched her tongue and he was so damn good at it that all those thoughts fell down dead and it was all she could do not to shout with joy as that kiss surged through her body, right down to her soul.

She broke off with a gasp, a burst of laughter, and Charlie’s arm snaked hard and strong around her body as she clung to him.

“Are you real?” he murmured, burying his face in her neck. “Aggie, please.”

“Please,” she echoed, uncaring that his eyes were red or that his face was silver and his body was inhuman. She did not care, she did not care…because all she could think of was that voice, that spirit named Charlie that was here with her now, warm and strong and alive. “Please, Charlie. I love you.”

“Aggie,” he breathed, and it was enough to see the emotion in his eyes, to remember his sacrifices. It was more than enough to know that he felt the same.

Charlie lay them down on the bed and curled around her body. His wings draped and Aggie ran her fingers along the fine delicate skin, which was soft as silk, with a sheen to match. He shuddered.

“You hide these?” she asked him. “I want to see you fly.”

“Later,” he said. “And yes, I hide them. I make them smaller and fold them around my body. I look like a very large man in human clothes.”

Aggie tried to imagine, but could not. Time, she told herself. You have time for all of that.

“Emma’s safe,” Aggie said to him. She pushed up so close their noses rubbed. “If she doesn’t have any other family, my boss, Roland, is going to try and intervene with foster care.”

“That would be good,” Charlie said. His large hands moved in slow circles around her back. His strength felt new and different; inhuman, but with enough similarities that Aggie thought she would be able to find her way around his body. The idea—and his touch—made her breathless.

“I was thinking of taking her,” Aggie managed, trying to remain coherent. “If she wants me.”

“That’s a hard job,” he said. “Raising a child.”

“I could use some help,” she admitted, and then bit her bottom lip. Her heart, which had just been so full of joy, shriveled a little as she waited for him to say something.

Charlie wrapped his hands in her hair, kneading her scalp, hugging her tight against his body. She kicked off her sheet and draped a leg over his hip, drawing him near. Charlie did not have much in the way of pants on. She felt him, hard and hot and long, against her body.

“I would be honored,” he breathed. “I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather do with my life.”

“Good,” Aggie said, and kissed him.

He broke off after a minute and said, “Maybe we’re moving too fast.”

“Like hell,” she said. “I want this.”

“I’m not human. I don’t even look human. You might change your mind.”

“I might change my mind?” Aggie sat up. The sheet fell away; she did not miss the hungry way he stared at her breasts and it made her so hot she felt woozy. “Charlie, I died for you today. And now you think I’m going to run—change my mind—because of the way you look? Who the hell do you think I am?”

“Well,” he stopped. “Never mind.”

“Damn straight.”

“I mean, I could make myself look more human.”

“No.” She grabbed his face, pressing her palms against the rough bones pushing up through his skin. She savored the differences, the beauty of them. “I want you just the way you are. You don’t scare me, Charlie. You won’t ever scare me. And,” Aggie added, trailing her hands low across his stomach, “I won’t change my mind.”

His breath caught. She watched his face—and he watched hers—as she reached down and touched him. There were some differences. Charlie had…ridges. Nothing that she thought would hurt her. On the contrary, her curiosity was piqued. She was also quite mesmerized by his size.

“When was the last time you had sex?” she asked.

He did not immediately answer; Aggie realized she still held him and that her thumbs were doing all kinds of interesting things. She did not stop. Simply, increased the pressure and got the rest of her fingers moving, too. Charlie sucked in his breath; his eyelids fluttered closed.

“Charlie,” she said quietly. “When was the last time?”

“I don’t remember,” he muttered, and gasped as she used her nails. He grabbed her arms and said, “If you keep this up—”

“Just you keep it up,” she said, laughing, and scooted down the bed.

Charlie’s legs began trembling before she even put her mouth around him, and she raked her nails down the sides of his thighs at the same time she wrapped her lips around his hard jutting head. He cried out, grabbing her shoulders, and she stroked her tongue over the curious ridges, tasting them, feeling them in her mouth as she sucked and licked. The tips of his wings draped against her hands. She reached higher and fluttered her fingertips against the thin membrane. Charlie growled.

“You like that?” she asked, breathing against his shaft, rubbing her cheek against its immense swollen length.

“I like it too much,” he whispered. “I won’t last for you.”

“You’ll last,” she said.

His hands relaxed around her arms. “Come back to me, Agatha.”

She was not done with him, but she moved back up the bed because there was something in his voice she could not disobey—hunger, desire, all those words for pleasure—and this time it was her legs that quivered and she was sure if he kissed her she would explode. Sure enough, when he pressed his mouth upon her she did feel sparks fly, but Charlie caught her in his arms and held her tight against his body, one hand behind her head, the other cupping her tight against his hard hot length. His mouth tasted so damn good she wanted to curl up inside his body and purr.

“Oh,” she breathed, when his mouth left her and traveled up her cheek, to her ear. “Oh, wow.”

And then she was on her back and his hands were on her breasts, lower—his tongue, lower—and it was even better than she had imagined, better than the last spectacular time when all he had been was an apparition of pure warmth.

She felt the tip of him at the edge of her body, and she did not wait for him to hesitate, just moved her hips, swallowing him in one quick thrust, and she said, “Wow. Just…hold on a minute.”

He went very still. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, no…I just need to get used to you. You’re…big.”

Charlie buried his face against her neck, but it was no use. She felt his grin as he kissed her cheek. And then he began laughing. Which made him move in different ways, and that was good, too.

All of it, deliciously, wonderfully, good.

And at the end of the night, when the sky began to lighten beyond the window, Aggie curled up inside his massive arms, draped in his wings, and listened as he said, “I love you very much, Aggie. And it’s not the sex talking.”

“I know,” she said. “Same to you.”

He laughed, and then, quieter, said, “We don’t know a thing about each other. Or at least, you don’t know anything about me. My family, my kind. Doesn’t that scare you?”

“No,” she said, and it was true. Always, she had feared for her heart, for the unknown. All her life, she had seen what the future held for others, but never herself. And that had made her cautious. Too cautious, too afraid of choices, of taking the wrong step and falling down into an unwanted future.

Until now. She was not afraid now. Not with Charlie. And that in itself was miracle enough to take a chance on.

“The two of us together,” Charlie whispered. “We are impossible, Agatha.”

“It won’t be easy,” she admitted. “But we’ve come this far.”

“And if we don’t last?”

“I think we will. The probabilities are high.”

“Is that what the future says?”

“That’s what I say,” she told him.

“Well,” he said, “that’s good enough for me.”

And he kissed her.

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Marjorie M. Liu is an attorney who has lived and worked throughout Asia. She hails from both coasts but currently resides in the Midwest, where she writes full-time.

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Also by Marjorie M. Liu

Within the Flames

In the Dark of Dreams

The Fire King

The Wild Road

The Last Twilight

Soul Song

Eye of Heaven

Dark Dreamers (anthology)

The Red Heart of Jade

Shadow Touch

A Taste of Crimson (Crimson City Series)

Tiger Eye

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Dream of Stone & Shadow originally appeared in the print anthology Dark Dreamers, published in paperback in 2006 by Dorchester Publishing Company.

A DREAM OF STONE & SHADOW. Copyright © 2006 by Marjorie M. Liu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition MARCH 2012 ISBN: 9780062193919

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