“Are you coming, or what?” Dominic was waiting for me outside.

He couldn’t stand the thought of being pressed in with all those humans. They were vermin. Rats in a rat trap. He tapped on the glass again, then pointed to his pocket watch.

I was holding him up.

But she was there. It was her. The girl from my dreams.

Yes, and that will earn a lot of sympathy from him.

As if he would want to hear about a dream I kept having. Every night for a week, ever since that last morning on the road. It never changed. Always the same girl in the same place, and I always woke up just before I could ask her anything. Even her name, or who she was, or how she got there.

But it was her.

Even though she was clean and dressed up and wearing makeup, I knew it was her. I couldn’t have explained it if somebody put a gun to my head and demanded I do.

Still, I knew.

“What took you so long in there?” My brother was already striding down the sidewalk like he owned it by the time I stepped outside into the crisp air.

“You saw how crowded it was.”

“I don’t understand why you insist on adopting the habits of those people,” he spat.

“No. You never could understand.”

“Oh, as if your heart has bled for them all this time,” he sneered, sidestepping a woman as she hurried past. Like touching her, even briefly, would infect him.

“For someone who hates them as you do, why do you still live here?” I asked.

It seemed like a fair question. The city was fairly clogged with humanity, much more so than the last time I’d been there. Decades had passed since then, when I’d decided to move to Los Angeles at the advent of its explosion into the public eye. Manhattan wasn’t big enough for both Dominic and me back then. It was better to put a country between us.

“It’s the only city in the world, or it might as well be,” he announced with a grin.

“Not even Paris? Rome? London?”

“All have their benefits, but this is home. I’m still bewildered at the way you adapted to the West coast.”

“I’ve always been better at adapting than you.” And I would adapt to being human, too, as best I could.

If only to show him it was possible. The thought still made my skin crawl, and I had to convince myself at least twice a day not to jump out a window, but I had to at least try to make a go of it.

Especially after seeing her.

She was real.

“Are you even listening to me?” Dominic demanded, throwing an elbow my way. He hit my arm and made me spill my coffee, splashing my jeans.

“Wonderful. Thanks for that.” I stopped, bent and tried to brush some of it away.

Before I could get to them, the stains disappeared like they had never been there.

I shot him a look as I stood. “Careful, now. What if one of them saw you?”

“So what if they did? You mean to tell me you never performed even a simple little spell like that while in public?”

“That’s not the point.”

“No. The point is, you’ve lost your spine along with your powers.”

“And who do I have to thank for that?”

The traffic light was red, and we stopped at the corner to wait for it while others crossed with no regard for the signal.

He glared at me, and I at him.

We were near mirror images except for our clothing. His suit was nothing like my turtleneck and jeans.

I could imagine the conclusions a passing human would draw—then again, they didn’t pay attention to much of anything around them, especially when they were in a hurry. And they were always in a hurry.

“Is this what’s going to happen whenever we’re together?” I asked. “Will we always come back to this place? I would rather not, but you make it impossible for me to stay civil when you keep bringing up what happened. I’m willing to let it go, but I can’t if you refuse to stop bringing it up.”

Rage, shame, guilt, frustration played over his features, so much like my own face.

I would age faster than he would, even though we were born three minutes apart. There would come a time when strangers would assume I was his father.

Strip a witch or warlock of their powers, you also stripped them of their longevity.

And it was all his fault.

And he knew it.

“We’d better hurry,” he muttered, continuing across the street.

I walked beside him with my coffee and didn’t say another word until we reached the hospital doors.

“I don’t see why she has to be here,” he murmured, eyes scanning the lobby.

He looked like he smelled something rotten.

“Even the priestesses she sought out in India gave her the same advice she got from the doctors. She needs aggressive treatment. This is not the sort of thing that can be magically treated. And they want her to move to a hospice soon.”

“I know what they want.”

We were two grown men, more than three times as old as we looked. Yet there we were, standing in an elevator, bickering over our mother’s impending death because neither of us could process the thought of her no longer being with us.

“You won’t tell her?” I confirmed before entering her room.

“I wouldn’t do that to her. It would…”

Kill her.

He wanted to say it would kill her. And he was probably right.

She couldn’t know about my disgrace. The only good thing about the timing was that she was too sick when the disaster struck to be aware.

The first thing that hit my subconscious was the smell of death lingering in the air.

Not even her death, per se, but the deaths of others who had spent their last days in a bed, covered in tubes. And the smell took me back to my dream.

Crossing a large, death-filled room.

Reaching the girl on the other side, bound to a wooden X. Only this woman was my mother, and she wasn’t bound to anything wooden—rather, she was tethered to countless machines which monitored her fading life.

And I couldn’t save her. There would be no freeing her from this. Only death could release her.

“My sons are here.” Her voice was barely a whisper. Not the loud, throaty, smoke-laced growl everyone who knew her had come to expect. A voice that could fill up a room, and a personality to go with it. She barely filled her bed anymore. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this. In this place.”

Her smile was strong, even if she wasn’t, and I reminded myself to stay positive for her sake though she looked like a living, speaking skeleton.

I had seen many terrible things—some of which I’d caused—but nothing like the ruined figure in this bed.

Wrapped in an ermine-trimmed silk robe, as always. When the light streaming in through the windows touched her face, I could nearly see through her skin.

I gritted my teeth against a sound of dismay.

“Don’t you have clan business to attend to?” she asked, slowing turning her head to look in my direction.

Her eyes were sunken, a pale version of their old vibrant blue, but as sharp as ever. She was a mother first, and could smell bullshit a mile away.

Dominic glanced at me and cleared his throat. “I managed to convince him to take a little time away from palm trees and tanned blondes.”

“You have to be convinced to visit your mother when she’s feeling under the weather?” she asked.

I could deal with that. As long as she wasn’t aware she was visiting with a sorcerer and a human, instead of two sorcerers.

“I’ve been busy lately, Mother. I’m sorry.” Yes. Busy.

I took her hand—so tiny, the skin like paper, the bones clearly evident underneath—and offered a sheepish smile. She was always a sucker for my smile. At least I could tell her I’d been busy without it feeling like a lie. I had been very busy. Extremely so.

Dominic sat on the other side of the bed, and we passed an uncomfortable hour making small talk before she was too tired to go on and needed rest.

I knew how she felt. I was suddenly exhausted myself.

We parted ways in silence, Dominic, and I.

There was nothing more to be said right now.

I walked back to the apartment on my own, which was a much more pleasant experience. No grumbling and bitching about humans, no putting on airs of superiority the way he’d been doing since the say we were born.

Three minutes older than me and one would think it was years for all his smug assuredness. Didn’t he stop to think that when he insulted humans, he insulted me?

Because I was human, practically. Instead of this helping him see that humans weren’t the scumbags we were raised believing they were, he silently lumped me in with them.

It was probably easier for him that way, I guessed as I turned down Fifth Avenue. The less he thought about the implications of what he’d done, the better for him.

Self-preservation was always Dominic’s highest priority.

A group of young women left Lord & Taylor together, carrying shopping bags and cell phones, wearing what looked to me like pajamas but to them, evidently, like the sort of clothing people wore in public.

I remembered when women dressed up to go shopping, especially in a store like that one; a lady had standards.

Then again, I remembered when Times Square was called Longacre Square. New York certainly had changed. As a human, I would have to change with it. I couldn’t hold myself up to a lofty standard anymore.

I waited at the crosswalk beside a young, dark-haired woman who looked at me with obvious interest.

I smiled, but it was the sort of smile one offers when they’re trying to be polite. I had no desire to strike up a conversation with her or any other woman except the one from the coffee shop. From my dreams.

This one reminded me of her, the hair was the same. Still, it was enough to get me thinking of her again, and maybe my overwrought brain needed something else to latch onto.

I wanted to see her.

I wanted to know she was real.

If it meant going to that coffee shop every day for a month and sitting there from open to close, I would do it just for the chance to see her again.

And it wasn’t like I had anything else to do.