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  “Will you tell me what you told him yesterday?” he asked.

  “Hmm?” she asked. That was a lie. He could tell, across the bond, when she lied to him, even when she didn’t actively mean to.

  “What you told Jason, while I was talking to Simon.”

  She stood up and brought her feet back together, facing him. There it was, that wave of nostalgia, pain, and relief. She swallowed.

  “I told him that I stopped feeling like I belonged in heaven rather than here the day I met you two,” she said. He sat on the ground and put his elbows on his knees.

  “Why is that a good thing?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then why does it make you happy?”

  “Sam…”

  “Please.”

  She sat down facing him, the sadness and conflicting joy hitting him harder and harder. She was spiraling into something he didn’t remember her ever thinking about before.

  “I felt like I didn’t belong here. That the person who lived here before I died wasn’t me. And I was happy about it. I didn’t want to belong here. Carter is obnoxious and Abby is so stressed, and everything is completely messed up. I had to learn how to deal with New Yorkers again, you know? And I’d had this sense of levitation, even after Justin died, that I just didn’t go here. And it was awful because I didn’t go here, but…” She closed her eyes, the random scattering of her thoughts growing worse as she tried to put words to them. She took his hands, the touch giving her some measure of calm. “Standing at the entrance to the mine, something told me that there was something important going on. And, I mean, you were just taking out class fives with a baseball bat. It wasn’t that big a deal. A couple of squish hunters who had no idea how big the world really is. But…” She looked up at the ceiling. “That was the day I came down. That I knew I had something here that I had to do, and it was time to actually be here and do it.”

  She looked at him again, the grief swamping her hard, now.

  “You didn’t want to come down,” he said. She shook her head.

  “I gave up on Carter. I did everything I could think of to save him, and nothing worked. I just wanted to go back, and if I couldn’t go back, at least I could not belong here.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Don’t be. I needed to come down. I needed to be here. Please. Can we leave it there?”

  He nodded.

  “I left my book,” he said after a minute. She snorted. “There’s a television,” she said. “Or we can figure out what to do about Kerk.”

  Sam groaned.

  In the twenty-four hours since they had resurrected themselves, Kerk had sent Sam six text messages demanding he get online and figure out what their next job was going to be. Sam had ignored him until Simon had texted and told him to grow up and answer Kerk.

  They’d sat in front of three options, e-mailed separately, each with an attack plan that highlighted each of their strengths and how Kerk intended to use them.

  “He thinks this is a first-person shooter,” Sam had commented. “No wonder he doesn’t game with the rest of them.”

  “Most of the time I don’t mind being underestimated, but this is insulting,” Samantha had added. “It’s like he thinks I should hold your coats while you do the manly stuff, but he’s too afraid to say it.”

  “I would be,” Sam said. “At least he got that part right.”

  They’d shut down the computer without answering, prompting two more texts from Kerk. Apparently he had rigged receipt-of-delivery on his e-mails, and he knew they had looked at them.

  “It’s not like he’s even eager,” Sam said now, shifting to take his phone out of his pocket. “If he sounded eager, I’d say we could get past it and figure out how to work together, but…”

  Kerk had sounded plain, straightforward with his plans, maybe even sociopathic, Samantha thought. Go here, kill him, report back. No drama, no sense of risk, no personality at all.

  “What do you want me to do?” Samantha asked.

  “What can you do?”

  “I make a decent bad cop,” she answered, then grinned mischievously. Sam had to smile at that. She did.

  “I thought you gave that up.”

  “I gave up being the bad cop. Not playing one.”

  “Ah. There’s a big difference, there.”

  “Playing one is much more fun. Fewer ulcers.”

  “Do you get ulcers?”

  She frowned, confused.

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “Other than that, I really don’t have any ideas. I was hoping we could talk about it and come up with some.”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s how it works.”

  “Yeah…” She paused, chewing on her lower lip. “So…” She was nervous.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  “We don’t need them,” she said. “At all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She pinched her cheek sideways.

  “How committed are you to working with them?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Someone knocked on the door and Samantha stood. Sam stayed on the floor, thinking. He had walked away easily enough the first time. This time, everyone would know they were alive, just… rogue. There wasn’t much history of Rangers going rogue, but there was a little. Usually it was a Seeker/Ranger combination that didn’t want to play by the Seeker rules any more. The fact that they didn’t need a Seeker made for an unusual potential for them to just walk away.

  Jason would hate it.

  Samantha paid for the food and came to sit back on the floor in front of Sam, spreading out boxes. She gave him a sympathetic smile and leaned forward.

  “We’ll figure it out,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  <><><>

  He found himself in a bathroom. It was a nice bathroom, with a separate tub and shower, and a wide mirror and tiled walls and floors. Someone was showering, the glass door to the shower fogged over with heavy steam. He felt self-conscious, peeping on the woman - he could tell from her pink silhouette - but he needed to be able to figure out where he was and what was wrong if he was going to help. He eased forward slowly, alert for details.

  “That’s close enough, Sam,” she said. He hurtled away, catching a blur of the room outside before he fell out of the vision.

  He blinked hard, then looked at Samantha wide-eyed.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  <><><>

  Jason and Kara lay in bed, quiet.

  “It’s some place you’ve got here,” she said after a while. He closed his eyes and held her against his chest. He didn’t normally cuddle her after they had sex, but he didn’t want to stop touching her. Her skin was hot against his, just past slick to sticky against him, and he shifted his arm lower on her stomach.

  “Have you been here the whole time?” she asked.

  “No,” he said, his voice cracking in his dry throat. He swallowed and tried again. “No.”

  She rolled over to face him.

  “I’ve given you the benefit of all of the trust I have in you. You have to tell me now.”

  “I know. I’m going to. It’s kind of complicated, though.”

  “Has it got to do with that ridiculous sword you were wearing?” she asked. “Seriously, you couldn’t have gotten anything more self-secure?”

  Jason rolled slightly, looking over his shoulder at where Anadidd’na was propped against the bed.

  “Some,” he said.

  “It looks like the kind of piece the guy who made it is missing,” she said. “You hiding from him?”

  “No.”

  He’d never tried to tell the story to himself, and he was having a hard time getting the pieces into an order that made sense. Kara rolled over.

  “Talk to me.”

  “Samantha isn’t a stray,” he started.

  “Okay.”
<
br />   “She’s one of the best demon hunters I’ve ever met. Including me, including you, including my dad.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Okay. At least it explains why you’ve kept her around.”

  “Why wouldn’t we?”

  “Not you and Sam. Just you. I couldn’t ever understand why you didn’t cut her loose. You aren’t the entanglement type.”

  He squirmed under the implications of that. She kissed him, sweet at first, frightening, and then harder, biting his lips. He put his hand behind her head and kissed her harder, and she pulled away.

  “Where have you been?”

  “It’s a really long story, but I want to tell you. All of it.”

  She sat up onto her elbow and looked over at the stove.

  “Did you get any of Sammycat’s cooking instructions?”

  He shook his head, letting the corner of his mouth drift up.

  “No. I was kind of busy.”

  “Yeah, well, it smells great. I’m going to go make a bowl of everything mixed up together. Want some?”

  “Definitely.”

  She groped around on the floor behind her, then stood and pulled on Jason’s shirt. She went to the kitchen as Jason sat up in bed, shifting back against the headboard, then lifting the sheets for her to get back into the bed with him. She handed him a bowl.

  “Spill it.”

  He still didn’t know if he could tell the story and not look like a lunatic, but at least he had the seething pool of crazy that was Sam and Samantha to back him up. Kara knew the two of them; she had to be willing to believe a certain amount of unbelievable.

  “Sam’s psychic,” he started.

  “Which one?”

  “My brother.”

  “That’s a real thing?”

  “It is.”

  “And he’s not just conning you?”

  “Nope. It’s why Sam came with us in the first place, I think. I don’t actually know when she knew, but apparently becoming psychic sucks. She got him through it.”

  “That was what the weirdness was about in Reno?” she asked.

  “No. That…” He stuck again. At least most people had some idea what a psychic was. “They’re bonded to each other. Back in Reno, he wanted to do it, and she didn’t want to…”

  “And you pressured her because you think everyone should be getting some.”

  “Not like that,” Jason said. “It’s like they can see into each other’s heads. They always know where the other one is.”

  “Yeah, I knew that.”

  “No, like a compass in their heads. It’s not just that they’re really close. It didn’t used to be like that, but any more it feels like Samabella can read Sam’s mind.”

  “Samabella?”

  “Samderina.”

  “Sammm…erine?” Kara tried. Jason grinned and shoveled a fork full of oiled noodles into his mouth.

  “Samabeth,” he said.

  “She approves of you doing this to her name?” she asked.

  “Hell no. Anyway, the two of them have a bond that’s weird and complicated and means that they can’t get together because… reasons.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “I swear I’m doing a good job explaining it.”

  She raised her eyebrows with a hint of a smile.

  “I’m just listening to see how screwy you can make this before you admit you got wasted in Atlantic City and forgot your name.”

  He held up his right hand, palm forward.

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “That’s the thing you do to swear in in court,” she said. “You were never a boy scout.”

  “Busted.”

  “You’re getting to the part where you’ve been missing for most of a year.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting there. No, seriously, this is the simple part. So… There are demons, right?”

  “I’ve killed a few,” she said.

  “And they possess people.”

  “Uh huh, I know the ceremony, same as you.”

  “If they possess a psychic, they get a major power boost.”

  “Why?”

  Jason scrunched his eyes shut.

  “I wish Sam were explaining this. She does a better job.”

  “Hard not to. Spit it out.”

  “It’s something about how he gets his visions. It makes him closer to the hell plane.”

  “Hell plane.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been there. A couple of times.”

  She ate for a moment, and he watched.

  “Okay. Let’s go with it. You’ve been to Hell.”

  “Anyway, so they want to get him away from Sam, so they can possess him.”

  “Who?”

  “The demons.”

  “We’re talking about the same demons? Little scritchy guys that scream a lot?”

  “No. There are classes of demons. We normally only hunt the little ones.”

  “Atlantic City…” she said.

  “They want to possess him. All of them do. They would come onto our plane with more power than… Than basically any of them here have, by a lot. Because he’s powerful.”

  “How does Sam help?”

  “The bond,” Jason said. “That and a cross he wears.”

  “The cross protects him from demon possession? Why didn’t we think of that before?” she mocked, not unkindly.

  “The fact that Sam mixed her blood with a bunch of other stuff and dipped it in there does,” Jason said.

  “She did what?” Kara asked, sitting up. “What have you gotten into?”

  “You know her,” Jason said. “Would she do anything like what you’re thinking?”

  Kara opened her mouth and closed it.

  “No. But, really, you never know.”

  “You do. She wouldn’t. He took it off once and actually did get himself possessed. Sam and I chased him around the country for weeks.”

  “Because she knew where he was.”

  “Well, yeah, but she was scrying for him, that time.”

  Real skepticism crept onto her face.

  “Jason, what’s really going on?”

  “How many things have you seen that you could never explain to someone who’s never done what we do?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Yeah. Sam’s something else. She’s not like us. She’s more powerful, she knows stuff we never even thought to ask. She died years ago, and God sent her back.”

  “Jason… You know that’s not true, don’t you?”

  “I’ve been to that side, too. It’s real. I’ve actually seen it.”

  “That. Side.”

  “Paradise.”

  “Heaven?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that where you’ve been?”

  He tried to collect his thoughts. Everything was slipping away.

  “They want to take Sam away from Sam so they can possess him, right? Then he died.”

  “Sam died.”

  “Shot in the chest by a recently dispossessed psychic woman up in Detroit.”

  “I remember something about Detroit.”

  “Yeah. He died there.”

  “You guys went MIA for a long time after that.”

  “Sam kinda went nuts after that.”

  “I would say so.”

  “No, she did. She brought him back, but it meant getting a demon to help. The same one who used Carly as bait the first time…” He’d forgotten about Carly.

  “I told you that woman was bad news,” Kara said, then put her hand in front of her mouth. “You’re serious.”

  “I am. Sam died, Sam the girl brought him back. I was there. I helped. When he left, the demon who helped us said that he was going to use me as leverage to get Sam to give himself up for possession. So I started training, to get strong enough that they couldn’t do it. Went to Hell and got Anadidd’na. The sword.” He pointed. “Only I wasn’t strong enough, and Sam couldn’t watch my back full time, and…”

 
“And… they… got you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look, if you suddenly decided that spending six months screwing everything that moves constituted cheating, I forgive you. Don’t lie to me.”

  “Sam’s a psychic, Sam the girl is the most powerful woman I know and a mage to boot, and I spent the last six months tied to a chair in the middle of a hellsgate while a stream of demons tried to possess me.”

  He didn’t use any guile, or any tone at all to sell it. The facts made him tired to think about them.

  “That’s what you’re going with?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Why were they trying to possess you, if they really wanted Sam?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Why did Sam and Sam disappear?”

  “Because they thought I was dead.”

  He left out the part about him actually dying. Multiple times. She put her bowl on the floor and pulled the sheets up to her shoulders, sitting with her knees up.

  “The only reason I could even begin to believe you is that I know I mean more to you than for you to just make it all up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t actually part of it, until the end. It was theirs. Sam was a psychic, Sam the girl was… is…” He rolled his eyes. “I don’t actually know most of the relevant details about her world before she found us. She’s big. You know she can’t get drunk?”

  Kara laid her head on her knees.

  “That does explain some things.”

  “Right?”

  Someone knocked on the door and Jason cursed under his breath, then got up and found his boxers, pulling them on to open the door.

  “We gave you as long as we could, but Sam had a vision. We need to leave tonight,” Samantha said. She glanced around Jason at Kara and twisted her mouth to the side. “Sorry.”

  “Wait,” Kara called. Jason turned so that the two women could see each other around him. “Come sit.”

  Samantha looked at Jason awkwardly, then walked past him to sit at the foot of the bed.