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  “Plenty,” Ian answered, holding his hand out.

  “Only hope you’ve got of taking her out of my hands is after you kill me,” Jason said. “Go sit down.”

  Tanner chortled, his face expressionless.

  “Oh, I’d be happy to,” Ian said. Samantha stood, her chair grating hard against the porch.

  “I’d back him,” Samantha said. “Sit. This is not the time or the place.”

  “I’d like to see that fight,” Carter said.

  “Any time,” Jason said.

  “Shut up, Jason,” Samantha answered, glaring Ian back into his seat, then looking at Carter. “You called the council, you do something about it. If you aren’t prepared, leave and come back when you are.”

  Kelly fidgeted.

  “We meet tomorrow when everyone is here. The issue is the hellsgate that someone opened and that Argo and Sam just finished closing this morning.”

  “Her fault,” Ian said.

  “Argo’s district,” Mitch commented.

  “I’ve got plenty of issues on my own in New Orleans,” Peter said.

  “We aren’t discussing,” Carter said. “I’m giving you the advance notice that that is the only topic we will cover.”

  There was sullen silence, and Sam wondered how many other topics there might be.

  “What’s a hellsgate?” Carson whispered.

  “Later,” Sam answered.

  “Don’t come here in the morning,” Samantha said. “I am not going to expose these people to this.”

  Tanner stiffened as he sat up to object, and Jason put a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

  “We’ll start at ten,” Carter said. “I expect everyone to be there.”

  “This is stupid,” Samantha said. “We don’t know what’s going on yet. We haven’t established jurisdiction.”

  “Argo’s jurisdiction,” Mitch said again. The back door opened and Doris came out with Abby. She put out mugs and set a pot of coffee on the table. Abby perched on the corner of Samantha’s chair and sipped tea.

  “You look like sullen children over here,” Doris said, turning to the five of them. “At least go get some chairs out of the kitchen.”

  “They expect you to hunt the demons,” Kelly said. There was a moment of silence as Kelly and Samantha looked at each other.

  “He’s not gray,” Peter said.

  “No, he isn’t,” Ian agreed. “What’s he here for?”

  “I’m here to ensure the safety of the package she carries,” Kelly said, standing. Sam had to admit, his confidence gave him an aura of power.

  “What did you do?” Ian asked, turning to Samantha. Samantha sighed and lifted her shirt to reveal the satchel and a length of gold chain. Sam had almost forgotten about it.

  “You’re carrying angeldust?” Peter asked, standing and leaning over the table.

  “You should have turned them down,” Ian said.

  “I did what I did, and you didn’t get a vote,” Samantha answered. “If you’re looking for a fight tonight, Ian, I will give you one.”

  Kelly bristled, starting forward.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Carter said. “We’re leaving.”

  There were protests as he stood, and Samantha stood and went into the kitchen. Sam and the rest of the Rangers followed. Her head was spinning. Managing too many details.

  “What do you need, Sweetheart?” Jason asked. She looked back out at the deck, where Mitch and Peter were pouring coffee and Carter and Ian were shouting at each other. Samantha rubbed her face, blinking fast. Too many details.

  “Hey,” Sam said, taking her face between his hands. “Easy.”

  He pushed a wave of calm at her, and then that was it. They were them again. She took his hands and held them, closing her eyes.

  “Jason, I need you to find a venue. One that’s big enough for everyone, and where people drawing weapons and fighting each other isn’t going to draw any attention.”

  “How many is everyone?” Jason asked.

  “Argo will bring an entourage, and so will Lindsay. Spake… Spake could bring a dragon for all I know.”

  “Dragon. Got it,” Jason said.

  “I’ll help you,” Tanner said.

  “Sam, I need you to get in touch with Kerk. Tell him about the thirsty man, and have him be on the lookout for any more dissolved victims. We need a new lead on him.”

  “Sam, we can manage that,” Carson said. “You look like you’ve got a lot going on.”

  “Carson, I love you, but this guy would kill you and drink you,” she said, looking at Sam again. “Tell Kerk that he is not to assign this to anyone else. I don’t care how unresponsive we are or how annoyed he gets. If he sends someone else after him, they will die. Tell him that.”

  Sam squeezed her hands, trying to hide his loathing.

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed.

  “I know. It’s too far down on the list to do anything about right now, but I haven’t forgotten.”

  “You let her get used to being in charge,” Jason called from the counter. “This is what you get.”

  Samantha sent a glare at him and closed her eyes, focusing. Doris came back inside.

  “That’s an interesting group of gentlemen, Sam,” she said.

  “You don’t pick your family,” Samantha answered.

  “Are you related to any of them?” Carson asked.

  “No.”

  Jason snorted, and he and Tanner went into the next room to start making calls.

  “Carson, your sister will be here in the morning. Would you go see if her room is ready?” Doris asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Carson answered. Sam dropped Samantha’s hands.

  “I guess I’ll go talk to Kerk,” he said. She nodded.

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Sam said. “The gate.”

  “It may or may not have been,” Samantha answered. “We’ll see. I do have to do something about it, though.” She shook her head. “That’s for tomorrow, though. Go talk to Kerk.”

  He nodded and left, glad Doris was still there to stand with Samantha as she went through all of the things she was thinking about. He didn’t like her to be alone.

  <><><>

  Samantha leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. They’d taken Jason. Whoever ‘they’ was, they needed to pay for it. That was not negotiable. Carson and the rest of them would be looking for larger reasons for having opened the gate, organized ploys, and large numbers of demons that would need to be hunted down en masse. She would have to be involved in that, because it was simply too big, and then there was the question of how the gate had gotten opened in the first place. She was wearing a target on her back, with the angeldust she carried - word wouldn’t have gotten out yet, but it was inevitable that it would - and then there was the whole ‘save Carter’ mandate, that didn’t make any more sense than it had six years ago. She was overwhelmed, trying to make progress on everything.

  “Sweetie, would you get me a rag out of the laundry room?” Doris asked. Samantha pushed her hips off the counter and went into the next room, pulling open cabinets and drawers looking for rags. The back door opened.

  “Mr. Carter, I need to have a word with you,” Doris said.

  “What can I do for you?” Carter answered.

  “That girl is an orphan. How dare you call yourself her father?”

  “Because it bugs her,” Carter said, unconcerned. “And I’m the closest she’s got.” That was his ironic voice, where he recognized the terrible reality of what he’d said, and didn’t care.

  “You treat that girl right, or I will take her away from you,” Doris said. “She says you call yourselves ‘us’. She’s got a new ‘us’ and her loyalty to you is pretty fragile. You don’t deserve her.”

  Carter laughed.

  “I’m glad she met you. She needs people like you in her life; I just didn’t know any.”

  “Little question why,” Doris
said. “I mean it.”

  “You know, I’m used to people threatening me, but you’re really good at it.”

  “It’s because I mean it.”

  There was a pause.

  “I do what I do, because making her angry makes her effective. It’s like launching a beehive at someone.” There was a smile in his voice, but that was his Aspen voice, when he was telling the truth. “Sure, she’s mad at me, but she hits someone else.” There was another long pause. “I’m sincerely glad she’s ended up with people like you and your family. She’s stronger than I’ve ever known her to be. Stronger than I could have ever made her.”

  “If that’s all you’re looking for out of her, she will eventually leave you.”

  Carter laughed.

  “She’s already left. She came back because of what she is.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Important.”

  “You need to treat her better.”

  “How about I keep her sharp, and you treat her well.”

  “You’re a bad person.”

  “Part of why I’m good at what I do,” Carter said. “Good night, Doris.”

  There were footsteps, and Samantha stuck her head back out of the laundry room. Doris looked at her and winked.

  “Thought you needed to hear that. He really does care about you.”

  “I know.”

  Doris smiled to herself and turned back to the dishes.

  “Thank you, though,” Samantha said. “You’re right.”

  Doris nodded without turning.

  “Go get some sleep. You can’t do everything.”

  Samantha wanted to stay up to make sure everything got set up right, but at the mention of sleep, her head got heavy. Sam pulled at her from upstairs, and that was all it took. She went up and went to bed. What didn’t get done wasn’t going to get done.

  <><><>

  The next day was fine and clear, and Jason spent the morning on the porch with Doris and Krista. Krista had gotten in before dawn and cried when she saw him. They’d drunk coffee in the quiet as Krista asked him a few indirect questions, digging for the same pieces of his story that Carson and Tanner had wanted. Kelly had stayed up all night, from what Jason gathered, though Jason had made the angel promise to leave Sam and Samantha alone. He hoped he’d done the right thing, pushing them at each other like he had, but it was unnerving, seeing the two of them skate around each other and put him in the middle of all of the important conversations. The Seekers called them Sam-and-Sam, almost a unit. He selfishly wanted it back. He’d done more than his fair share of neglecting Sam over the years, and it had been nice to know that someone was looking out for his brother like that.

  Kelly stood on the wide back lawn, at the crest of a small hill that led down to a stream, looking out at the distant horizon.

  “He’s pretty, isn’t he?” Krista asked after a while.

  “He is at that,” Doris answered.

  “Wish we could talk him into wearing a shirt,” Jason said. “He’s a skinny little twerp, and he looks proud of it.”

  “He’s really an angel?” Krista asked.

  “Sam says he is.”

  Jason knew he was. There was a vibration that came off of him, like the one Jason had felt off of Mahkial, that just didn’t feel like a demon, or a human. He didn’t know how to explain it, so he didn’t mention it, but it was unnerving, knowing things he didn’t understand.

  “Does he have wings?” Krista asked. “Or is that just a thing?”

  “The Angel of Death has wings,” Jason said. “Sometimes.”

  “Huh.”

  Wings and an annoying habit of wearing a skirt and no shirt. At least the kid had the decency to wear linen pants, rather than a sarong. Jason snorted to himself.

  The demons hated angels. The bad blood there went back far enough that it sounded like neither side needed a reason for fighting any more. It was a deep-rooted, angry hatred, like a mad drunk. They were afraid of O’na Anu’dd. Something about a culture of creatures that enough of them had been taken from humanity by the angel that made them remember. The warrior angels, the demons would go at, without hesitation. O’na Anu’dd, the angel Samantha had named my friend, they ran screaming from. And he wandered around in a skirt.

  Kelly glitched across the yard and appeared sitting at the table next to Jason.

  “Dawn is good,” Kelly said. “Symbolic of rebirth and new life.”

  “Dawn should only be experienced from the other side,” Jason said. “At the end of a good night.”

  Kelly looked at him with open amazement.

  “Many of the great ceremonies are conducted at dawn.” He looked out at the horizon again. “This was my first sunrise.”

  “There were a couple others back there,” Jason said, pointing over his shoulder.

  “I was busy,” Kelly said. “I’m glad to stand in the light of the new morning, but responsibilities must come first.”

  “Sure,” Jason said. Krista snickered.

  “You’re a sweetie,” she said.

  “He is,” Doris said. “Maybe teach these boys some manners.”

  Kelly looked confused, but he didn’t say anything. Jason settled back in his chair again.

  “Did you get a place booked okay?” Doris asked later.

  “Yeah.”

  They’d found a community center with one room - no manager on duty - that, in exchange for a credit card over the phone, would leave the key under the mat for him. Away from the coasts, people were trusting. It was neat.

  “Do you want food?” Doris asked.

  “Food?”

  “Do you want to get a caterer?” she asked, as though it should have already occurred to him. “People behave better when they’ve been fed.”

  “Doris, you’re a genius,” he said.

  “There’s a place we use for some of our big socials,” Doris said, standing. “I’ll go put in an order. How many are you expecting?”

  Jason shrugged.

  “Dunno. If food calms ‘em down, pick a big number.”

  She patted his shoulder and left.

  “I still haven’t really met this mysterious Sam person,” Krista said.

  “Really?” Jason asked. He faked surprise. Krista took more jobs than anyone he knew, trying to be one of the boys. She was always in the far-flung corners of the country, hunting something no one wanted to go out of their way to dig out.

  “Ha ha,” she said. “Just after Daddy died.”

  Jason nodded, remembering. Sam had been falling apart. Sam was always falling apart. Samantha had been keeping him together. She was always doing that, too. He wondered again if they might need some space away from each other.

  When he’d gone up to bed the night before, they’d been curled up in Sam’s bed, sound asleep. They’d looked happy.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Kelly said suddenly. Krista startled.

  “Thank you.”

  Kelly dipped his head.

  “I don’t understand death.”

  “No one does,” Krista said. “It just is.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Krista looked out over the backyard.

  “Not supposed to.”

  “Oh.”

  Kelly looked at Jason for help, and Jason shrugged. It just was.

  Doris came back and sat back down, picking her coffee up.

  “All set,” she said. “Assuming the address Tanner left by the phone is where you want the food to go.”

  “No, that’s his secret girlfriend,” Jason said.

  “Oh, how my old heart wishes,” she answered.

  “Mom,” Krista said. Doris shrugged.

  “You guys forget that I wasn’t born into this.” She turned to face Jason. “That reminds me… Sam and Sam?”

  Jason’s jaw dropped.

  “What are you asking?”

  “Are they going to retire and raise a brood?”

  Jason shook his head, dumbfou
nded.

  “Not those two, sorry.”

  Doris sighed and sipped her coffee.

  “Oh, well.”

  “Are they serious?” Krista asked.

  “Last time all of you were here, Sam was seeing that girl who died,” Doris said. “And Sam… There was something going on with her.”

  “Was that the last time we were here?” Jason asked. It was a hundred lifetimes ago.

  “I think so.”

  “Huh.” He glanced at Krista, trying to figure out what the truth was to her question before he even started formulating the lie.

  “I think so,” he finally said. She nodded.

  “Sam deserves to be happy. This was never supposed to be his life.”

  Jason contrasted that against his brother’s profound new skill with a hatchet of all things and shook his head. Life was weird.

  “Are you talking about sex?” Kelly asked. Krista snorted again.

  “Were a minute ago,” Jason said.

  “Sex is weirder than sleeping,” Kelly said. Jason nodded.

  “Sex is definitely weirder than sleeping.”

  <><><>

  Samantha made Kelly ride in the back. She tried to get him to glitch ahead, but he wouldn’t leave, so she made him sit on the floor of the Cruiser next to the cabinet that had been newly repopulated with her most critical fifteen hundred magic ingredients.

  “Okay, so here’s the field,” she said, stretching across the back seat and yawning. Jason estimated they had maybe fifteen minutes to the meeting room. “Carter you know. They all respect him, believe it or not. If he gets mad, everyone will get in line. You’ve never seen Carter mad. Don’t mess with him if he blows a gasket. Jason.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jason said.

  “Bane is quiet. He’s pretty safe. He won’t pick a side, though, so don’t look for him to tip a vote or back you up. I use him to hide behind so people don’t drag me into stuff. Argo is angry. And he’ll have lots of high-strung, angry people with him, trying to keep him from killing anyone. He does, sometimes. Usually demons, but… things happen, when Argo is there. Don’t get in a fight with him, and stay away from him if he gets in a yelling match. He isn’t careful when he draws.”

  “Like the world’s most dysfunctional family reunion,” Jason commented.

  “You’re not wrong,” she said. “Ian is a handful, but he’s all ego. If he thinks he’s going to lose, he’ll switch sides. He likes baiting people to try to see if he can break down alliances that might go against him. Don’t rise to the bait, please. If he thinks he’s stronger than you, he will try to get you to fight him, and he’s curious about you two. He’s going to try to get you involved in all of this. Just… avoid him if you can. Mitch is decent. He’s kind of a weird, crazy mountain man who lives with his parents. He’ll try to worm out of anything. He isn’t going to help you if things go sideways, but he isn’t going to try to get you in trouble, either.”