Outside my home, Austin directed me towards an illegally parked Dodge Challenger and slid gracefully into the driver’s seat.

“Nice car,” I murmured as I buckled my safety belt and looked around. Like I would have expected from a secret agent's car, it was pristine. Not a single personal effect to be seen or linked back to the owner, in case he needed to dump it anywhere in a job gone wrong. It was the same reason my own car was so pristine.

“Hey, what happened to my car back in Cascade Falls? And all my stuff? Is it still at the house there?” I knew the house was being rented under Omega for the duration of the guys’ investigation but had no idea what the situation was now.

“It's fine; Director Pierre said he would take care of it all. We ended our job there after taking Sergei in. It kind of blew our covers.” He sort of snarled the words, and I got my back up.

“Sorry my kidnapping was such a fucking inconvenience for you,” I muttered and turned to look out the window as we drove.

“That's not…” He gave an irritated sigh, but I kept my gaze on the passing scenery. “That's not what I meant, and you know it. I just meant that we don't have the house in Cascade Falls anymore, so I imagine your shit will all be sent here.” Austin backing down from an argument was not at all what I was used to from him.

“So where are you taking me, anyway? I am pretty hungry. Couldn’t this have waited until after we ate?” I sounded like a whining child, but I was really hungry. All I had eaten since the drugged plane food had been a few canapés during the New Year’s Eve party, and right on cue, my stomach let out a loud rumble.

“I'm sure you will live,” he commented in a dry tone, “Can't you just heal your need for food or something?”

“Not really how it works.” I rolled my eyes at him, but he gave me a serious look before turning back to the road.

“How does it work? Seriously. How does this healing magic actually work?” For once he actually sounded interested in hearing what I would say, and it threw me a bit.

“Um, I don't know,” I said and realized how stupid that sounded.

How could I not know?

“You must know,” he pushed. “You knew how it worked for yourself, before. It's why you and River hooked up that first time, isn't it? To heal your hand?”

“Well, yeah. But that was just from trial and error, and healing someone else seems totally different somehow.” I frowned. “Also, I don't seem to need the whole emotional trigger thing for my own healing anymore.”

He glanced sharply at me. “Really?”

“Yeah, it just… does it. I barely even have to think about it.” I picked at the fabric of the leather seat. I always fidgeted when I was uncomfortable, and Austin made me seriously uncomfortable.

“Okay, so what was going on when you healed Românul?” He questioned, not obviously trying to start an argument with me, but I wasn't naive enough to think this truce would last long.

“Um, I thought he was dying?” I suggested, and he shook his head.

“Okay, I am just going to spell it out, seeing as I'm not sure if you're being deliberately dense or if you really haven't worked this one through in your head, princess.” His familiar condescending tone was back, and I sighed inwardly. I knew reasonable Austin wasn't going to last long.

“Before your own healing evolved, you needed triggers. Danger, excitement… sex… they were your triggers. So something must have triggered your ability to heal other people, too. You were clearly leaving out some details in your story earlier, so I ask again. What was going on when you healed that Romanian dick? What were you feeling?” His question made me pause.

Had it been that obvious I was leaving details out? I didn't think that my sex dream about Wesley or my attraction to my captor were relevant details. Nothing good could possibly have come from telling the guys that a crime lord had seen me masturbating in the tub. He had a point about the triggers, though; what had I been feeling when the healing had started working?

“Okay, I can see you're thinking really hard there and I don't want you to break your poor little brain, so I'll leave that question with you for now.” His sarcasm made me want to hit him sometimes. Actually, that sounded like a pretty good idea.

Curling my hand into a fist, I smacked a punch into his arm, causing him to yelp.

“What the hell, princess?” he yelled. “You could have caused an accident!”

“Whatever. You deserve so much worse. Why are you always such an asshole?” I demanded, and he flicked an uncertain look at me.

“I'm not,” he replied unconvincingly, and I snorted.

“Oh no? Since the day we met, you have gone out of your way to be a dick to me. You try to antagonize me at every opportunity, and don't even get me started on that stunt you pulled at paintball.” I glared at the side of his gorgeous face while he kept his eyes glued to the traffic in front of us, saying nothing.

“It's like that is it?” I narrowed my eyes, even though he wasn't looking at me. “I wonder what Caleb would say if I told him we made out when you were pretending to be him…”

“Oh look, we're here,” he announced with a tiny grin. Bastard.

We pulled into a carpark inside some tall wrought iron gates and parked in a visitor space. I looked around for some indication of where we were, but could see nothing.

“Okay, I give in. Where have you taken me?” I asked, getting out of the car and following Austin's tight ass up the ramp to the front door of the building.

“Just, cool it,” he told me. “You'll see soon enough.”

Inside the foyer, he stopped us at a reception desk and greeted the uniformed woman in a friendly voice, making me stare at him in confusion. He quickly signed a logbook then ushered me down a corridor to an elevator.

“Okay, but seriously, where are we?” I asked again once we were inside the elevator. “It looks like some sort of hospital?”

He just raised his eyebrows at me and a small smirk pulled at his lips.

Damn him. That smile made me look at his mouth, which made me think of what that mouth felt like on mine…

“We're here,” he announced again, snapping me out of my daze and leading the way off the elevator and down another corridor. He knocked a couple of times on a door, then let himself in without waiting for a response.

“Kit!” The high pitched screech hit me moments before the inhabitant did, her tiny body almost knocking me off my feet as she hug-tackled me in the doorway.

“Luce?” I grabbed her and pulled her away a little to get a good look at her. “What the hell? I thought you were at that fancy rehab in Connecticut that Jonathan set up with your parents? I called there yesterday looking for you, and no one said anything about you leaving!”

“Ah yeah, that's because they don't know I have left.” She grinned at me impishly. Of course she was up to no good. But how was Austin involved in this? I looked over to ask him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Where did he just go?” I looked around the room, a bit confused.

“Oh, he's just being shy.” Lucy laughed and tugged me over to the matching armchairs near her picturesque window.

“Austin? Shy?” I squinted at her. “Are we talking about the same douchebag here?”

My best friend just laughed and shrugged. “Yeah, weirdly, he's not actually as bad as we thought he was.”

Concerned for my friend’s sanity, I looked her over carefully. Maybe she had brain damage. She actually looked pretty good, all things considered. Her left hand was still in a heavy cast, with several metal pins sticking out of the plaster, but other than that, she looked really healthy. Her hair had grown out a bit and was now bright purple, and she had none of her facial piercings in.

“You better start from the top, girl. Right now I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Your hair looks great, by the way.” I winked at her, and she beamed.

“Thanks! Okay, so you know how I had to get all those extra surgeries and shit on my hand?” I nodded. “Okay well, so, the rehab was like a goddamn prison; as you know, they wouldn't let anyone visit or anything, and then there was this whole scandal where they thought someone had broken in but nothing was taken. Turned out to be a whole lot of nothing, but after you got kidnapped, Austin shows up, totally determined that I needed to be moved somewhere safe in case they came for me too. He was, like, legitimately fucking stressing about someone pulling another Dupree, so he found a lookalike Lucy to take my place there and moved me here.”

“Wait a minute. Hold up. Austin?” I clarified, and she nodded. “Austin King. As in, the asshole who has been declaring civil war on me since the moment we met? That Austin?”

“Yes, that Austin.” She giggled. “I think that was all a misunderstanding. Do you know anything about Peyton?”

“Only that I remind him of her; what do you know?” I demanded. The Peyton thing had been bugging me.

She shrugged. “Nothing. Anyway, here I am, and you can visit me all the time! Yay!”

“Sorry, I am still wrapping my head around this act of selflessness. Are you sure it wasn't Caleb pretending to be Austin? It's a surprisingly convincing act when they want it to be.” I glowered a little, and she just rolled her eyes at me.

“Anyway,” she continued, “I have totally finished my surgeries, and once I get these pins taken out of my arm, it's just another few weeks of physical therapy and I should be back to normal!”

“Luce, that's so great. I am happy for you, but I still feel awful that this all happened in the first place…” I chewed the edge of my lip. “So, I think I can heal other people now… if you wanted me to try and heal your arm?”

For a moment, she didn't respond, staring down at her damaged limb. “But that might make me something else, right?” I nodded, and she sighed, looking out the window while she thought it over.

“I think maybe I will just wait and see how the PT goes…” she said tentatively. “Not that there's anything wrong with being, you know, different… It's just…”

“I get it. I just wanted to let you know.” I awkwardly looked around her room. She had every right to decline. It was doubtful I would have made a different choice in her shoes without knowing what might end up happening to me as a side effect of the healing.

“Hey, who are these people?” I asked, getting up to look at a photo sticky-taped to her mirror.

“Oh, those are some of the PTs and patients here. We took that just a couple of days ago when it was Sally's birthday. She’s hot, huh? We had a moment.” She tapped the picture, pointing to a pretty, blond girl.

“Who is that?” I asked, pointing to a darkly handsome man standing behind Lucy. Something about him seemed familiar.

“Oh, that's Finn. He's my trainer. Isn't he gorgeous, too? I’m seriously spoiled for choice here!” She winked, but a shiver of ice ran down my spine.

“Finn? Are you sure? That's Finn?” I tapped on his picture a little more urgently, having realized why he looked so familiar. Although the last time I had seen him he had a scruffy beard and was looking really malnourished.

“Uh yeah, why? Do you know him?” She frowned at me like I was a nutjob.

“Luce, that's the guy from Blood Moon!” I exclaimed in a bit of a panic.

“What guy?” she asked, clearly not getting it.

“The, argh, the guy! You know, the one that punched his fucking fist through a guard’s chest!” I was freaking out now, looking around Lucy's room for a suitcase so I could pack her up and get the hell out of here.

“Okay, woah. Kit. Chill the fuck out, girl,” she said, pushing me back into a chair. “I'm not leaving, so you can stop looking around like you're going to drag me out of here.” Damn best friends and their ability to read your mind.

“Look, he has been my trainer since I got here almost two weeks ago and has never been anything but nice to me. If he wanted to hurt me, he would have already done it, don't you think?” She sounded rational. When had she become so rational? I was used to her being the one freaking out.

“Didn't you say that after he killed those guards, he was polite? Even thanked you?” she reminded me, and I nodded slowly. “Okay, so that kind of sounds like he's a victim of theirs just as much as we were.”

“I see your point…” I agreed slowly. “I don't like it, though. It's too much of a coincidence.”

“Of course it is. But I don't think he's the bad guy in all of this. Look, he's not on shift today, so let’s just calm the fuck down and speak with him next time he's here. Okay?” She gave me a serious look, as if to say I won't be budged on this, Kit.

“Fine,” I said grudgingly. “But you have to call me as soon as you know he's here, and I will come question him.”

“Come question whom?” Austin asked, reappearing in the doorway like magic.

“I'll tell you later,” I lied with no intention of telling Austin anything. Despite Lucy's claims that he wasn't such a bad guy, he had been nothing but nasty to me from day one, and I wasn't the type to forgive and forget easily.

“Whatever, visiting hours are over, and the guys are blowing up my phone. Can we go?” he asked me in a bored voice, but his gaze was shrewd, and I suspected he wasn't going to let it go that easily.

“Oh! Here! Before you leave.” Lucy jumped up and rifled through her bedside table, pulling out a small gift-wrapped box. “Happy birthday for the other day, girl.” She handed me the present with a beaming smile, and I grabbed her in a tight hug.

“You didn't have to do that,” I muttered, and she laughed.

“Whatever. Open it later. I'll call you when I see Finn next.” She smacked a kiss on my cheek then, surprisingly, on Austin's cheek as well before ushering us out.

“Who is Finn?” Austin asked as we walked back to his car.

“Lucy's PT,” I replied evasively, and he yanked me to a stop, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.

“I know that. But who is he to you? Why do you need to question him?” The scowl on his face said he wasn't letting this go without clearer answers, but I was nothing if not antagonistic.

“None of your business,” I replied, like the shithead I was, and watched as he ground his teeth together hard.

“Princess,” he said from behind clenched teeth, “I am trying really hard not to be an asshole because you've had a rough time lately, but you don't make it easy.”

“Oh now you care?” I challenged, for some reason really wanting to provoke him into an argument. Maybe because it was the only time I saw a bit of fire in him? Or maybe because I had determined that he did care and just wouldn't admit it.

For a long moment he just stared, his burning green gaze on mine, then he sighed.

“I've never not cared, Christina.” He dropped the tight hold he had on my arm and unlocked his car, holding the passenger door open for me. “That's part of the problem.”

Selfishly, I wanted to push him further but could tell by the tightness in his shoulders and the blank, closed off look to his face that I would get nothing more from him. For now.