WE WALKED INTO Black’s largest frosted glass conference room over an hour later, a room I’d spent a fair bit of time in before all this, but barely recognized now, and not only because it was full of people.

I gazed around at all of the faces and backs of heads in a kind of wonder, noting the multiple screens up on the wall above the massive, industrial-style conference table, along with the number of unusual eye-colors and strangely alien faces I saw among the group.

Black and I had taken them up on their offer of a shower.

While we’d been in there, I’d fought not to make it more than that.

Black more or less offered it outright, but I managed to convince myself it wasn’t a good idea right then, that I needed to talk to Angel, and I needed an update from Black’s team, that I needed an update on Nick, more than I needed sex.

Now I wasn’t so sure I’d made the right choice.

I felt too far away from Black, light-wise and mind-wise, for what I suspected we’d be talking about in here.

Feeling a faint pulse from Black himself, I glanced over in time to see him quirk an eyebrow pointedly in my direction, in an expression that came about as close to “I told you so” as he generally got. Rolling my eyes at him a little, I bumped into him with my shoulder and he smiled, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

I can get a lot closer to “I told you so” than that, doc, he murmured in my mind. I fully intend to demonstrate later tonight, by the way, since you seem to have forgotten.

Clicking at him mildly, I glanced to my left in time to see another seer enter the room, along with a human. Both were familiar faces––so familiar, I jumped a little, staring.

“Hey,” I said. My eyes fell to where they were holding hands. “That’s new.”

Manny burst out in a laugh, glancing at Yarli, whose hand he held. “Not all that new, Miriam. You’ve been out of the loop for a while.” His lip lifted in a sideways smile. “Oh, and… subtle, by the way. I see that big shrink brain of yours is way ahead of us lesser folks when it comes to your powers of observation. And interrogation.”

Black burst out in a laugh.

I felt my face flush hot. “Sorry. No one told me.”

Yarli clicked at both men in mock rebuke, releasing Manny’s hand. Walking directly up to me, the tall seer––who I’d always thought looked like some kind of runway supermodel––enveloped me in a warm hug, squeezing me tightly to her chest.

“We’re glad to see you too, Miri,” she said, smiling as she kissed me on the cheek. Releasing me, even as I felt a pulse of faint irritation on Black, she turned and enveloped Black in a second hug. “I am pleased to see you as well, brother. More than I can say.”

Black looked faintly taken aback.

He hugged the other seer in return, his expression going from a whisper of confusion to what might have been an almost touched look.

When Yarli released him, Black actually smiled at her.

It looked like a real smile.

“I hear I have a lot to thank you for in my absence, sister,” he murmured. “You and the rest of your team. I’m looking forward to hearing about all of it in detail.”

I glanced up at Black, my eyebrow quirked.

That was… beyond formal, for him.

I had to assume it was a seer thing, maybe just basic seer politeness, and maybe also related to her age in some way. Black had told me seers were kind of funny about age and respect for elders, and she was supposedly a few hundred years older than him… despite her looking like she was in her early thirties and him being her boss.

Looking away from Yarli, Black turned, giving Manny a stronger hug, clapping the Native American man roughly on the back. “You look old, Mañuelito,” he retorted with a mock frown, releasing him. “Are you trying to freak me out?”

“Yeah,” Manny grunted, glancing at Yarli. “Well, it’s pretty unlikely that state of affairs will improve, brother. I keep telling her that, but she doesn’t listen.”

Yarli poked him in the ribs, smiling.

There was so much softness in the smile, I couldn’t help smiling as well, looking at the two of them together.

They looked positively smitten, both of them.

I saw Manny give me a double-take then, studying me with faintly narrow eyes. He looked about to speak, then glanced at Black, who gave him a not-particularly-subtle warning look, along with a barely-perceptible shake of his head.

I didn’t ask.

I more or less knew, anyway.

I knew Black had been picking up on things in me for a while now, pretty much ever since we left for Europe. He wasn’t saying anything to me about those things outright, not yet, but I could feel them here and there through his light.

I knew he was worried about me.

I knew that, and felt mildly guilty about it… I just didn’t know what to say to him about it that would make anything better. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, not exactly. Truthfully, I doubted I knew much more than he did, given how closely he watched my light.

I felt sick all the time.

I felt sick, I wasn’t sleeping, I was having trouble concentrating.

The pain had been worse, and a lot of it didn’t feel like sex pain, or like it had anything to do with Black.

I knew it had something to do with Nick.

I didn’t know what, apart from worry about him and a heavier dread that some part of me already knew where the trail to him would eventually lead. I knew a big part of me wasn’t ready to look at that yet, much less accept it, and that Black knew those things on some level.

My inability to deal with any of this, or frankly, face reality, was probably why he hadn’t been pushing me to talk about it much.

I was terrified some part of me already knew Nick was dead.

I was terrified the seer part of me somehow knew that for certain, not just as a statistical probability.

I was terrified because some of those nights, staring up at the ceilings of strange hotel rooms, Nick being dead was the only thing that made sense to me.

It was the only thing that felt remotely true.

I knew Manny probably saw something in my face that mirrored what Black felt and saw in my light, or echoed it, anyway. The four of us were still standing there, Manny frowning faintly, as if he hadn’t yet made up his mind to drop it––when from my other side, arms enveloped me, crushing me in another tight hug.

I smelled perfume I recognized, even as I recognized the arms themselves, and before I knew consciously what I was doing, I’d turned around and wrapped my arms around Angel in return, hugging her so tightly I couldn’t breathe.

She’d wanted to come with us.

She’d wanted to come with us so badly.

It was the closest I’d seen to a real fight between her and Black since we left New York.

I think I was numb through most of their actual argument, which unfortunately occurred after it really sank in for me that Nick was gone, that Brick wasn’t going to just pop up and tell us he’d decided to take Nick with him to Phuket for some bizarre reason, and that he’d have him back to us, safe and sound, in under an hour.

That delusion was shattered by the time Angel got into it with Black about who should come with us to Europe.

At that point, I didn’t much care who went.

I just wanted to go.

Black had stronger opinions.

He had more specific ones, at least.

He thought a smaller group was better. He thought having fewer people Brick might recognize, or try to use against me and him was better. He figured if the vampires took Nick, it was for some kind of leverage or ransom. He didn’t want to give Brick any more opportunities for pressure points on either of us.

He also figured Brick, like us, would have people monitoring the airports.

He didn’t want to make it easy for Brick to track us.

For these reasons and probably others, he wanted no one else from our core group apart from the two of us. That included Angel, Cowboy, Dex, and Kiko. It also included Jem, Yarli, Holo, Jax, Mika, most of the Natives and Jori, one of the seers who originally worked for my uncle but since moved to our camp.

Brick knew all of them.

Dorian, his silent, sociopathic henchman, who alternately looked like a tech entrepreneur or a Scandinavian lord, knew all of them, too.

So Angel couldn’t go.

She yelled at Black, accused him of all kinds of semi-irrational things, but he wouldn’t budge. He told her to go back to San Francisco or she was fired––in which case, she could go back to San Francisco, since that’s where she’d lived before he hired her. Oh, and she would have to live at the building on California Street, he added, since there was no way in hell he was letting her live on her own, or anywhere really without full-blown security protection by seers and humans, meaning people who worked directly for him… and anyway, Cowboy would be living at California Street so she may as well live with him, whether Black fired her for being an irrational, insubordinate, pain in his ass or not.

I’m pretty surprised she didn’t hit him, truthfully.

Whatever she’d felt at the time, she didn’t feel angry now.

As she hugged me, all I felt on Angel was grief.

I also felt her need to be with someone who would truly comprehend that grief. I felt her wanting to get me alone, so we could talk about what to do. Of course, that brought up another whole host of things I hadn’t wanted to think about.

We needed to talk about Nick’s parents.

We needed to talk about what to tell them, along with the rest of Nick’s family. We needed to decide when to tell them, and how much, and when enough was enough and we had no choice but to tell them something. Angel and I were both close to Nick’s family. We spent Christmases with them. We spent Thanksgivings with them.

We spent birthdays and Fourths of July and Halloweens with them.

Angel grew up with Nick, more or less down the street from him, so her family was close to Nick’s family. Their mothers were friends.

I couldn’t think about any of this though, not now.

I needed to be alone with Angel to do that.

There needed to be a lot of alcohol before we could do that.

For now, I made myself let her go.

Gripping her arms, I pulled back from the hug, and looked her in the face, my jaw clenched hard enough to hurt.

“Tonight, okay?” I told her, my voice gruff. I shook her a little, sending her as much love and warmth as I could muster without losing my shit. “Tonight.”

Angel understood.

Tears shone in her eyes, but she wiped them while I watched, without trying to pull out of my grasp. Nodding, she sniffed, then nodded again.

While she did, I glanced over her shoulder at Cowboy. I found him watching the two of us, watching Angel especially, a worried look on his face.

I could tell from his expression the worry wasn’t new.

Moreover, it reminded me a little too much of the expression I’d seen on Black’s face a lot lately, pretty much whenever he thought I wasn’t watching him look.

Pushing that from my mind, I turned from Angel with an effort, and did my best to face the rest of the room.

A lot of eyes were watching us now, watching me in particular.

I felt Black watching me too, that now-familiar worry emanating off his very skin. Even as I thought it, I saw Cowboy and Black exchange looks, then look back at me and Angel.

I wondered if Angel and I would be the only ones drinking tonight.

Even as I thought it, I saw Kiko staring at me.

When she saw me notice, mid-stare, she swallowed, flushing, right before she looked away. I felt guilt on her, along with a plume of grief so intense it closed my eyes. I knew she and Nick had been close, although I wasn’t sure how close. I also knew Nick wanted more from her, meaning more than just friendship, and she’d turned him down.

She’d started sleeping with Jem instead.

Nick found out about the two of them when Kiko and the dark-haired, inhumanly beautiful seer started making out right in front of him.

I’d never even gotten a chance to talk to Nick about it.

I’d never gotten a chance to talk to Nick about any of that.

Angel was there when it happened. She told me Nick looked pretty gut-punched by the whole thing. She also told me she tried to get him to talk about it while they were out in the jungle with that rescue team, but he pulled a Nick and mostly blew her off.

Besides making it clear he didn’t want to talk about it, Nick told her he knew Kiko wasn’t into him that way, that it wasn’t a big deal. He muttered something about Kiko saying he “reminded her of her brother” a bunch of times, so he wasn’t exactly shocked when she turned him down.

Angel hadn’t been convinced.

I wasn’t convinced either, truthfully.

Knowing something and knowing it are two different things, and Angel knew Nick better than anyone. If she believed Nick hadn’t been anywhere near as “okay” with the whole thing as he pretended, I was inclined to agree.

Anyway, none of it mattered now.

That didn’t stop me from feeling an irrational wave of anger at Kiko, anyway.

Nick was one of the best people I knew.

He was also charming, handsome, athletic, and had more than his fair share of that “thing” that a lot of women liked, that made men attractive. As long as I’d known Nick, he’d had women approach him in bars, coffee shops, on the beach, sometimes on the street. He was one of the handful of men I’d known in my life who had total strangers trying to pick him up on a semi-regular basis. He might not have pulled off Black levels of attractive women offering him sex, but he did better than probably eighty or ninety percent of the men I knew.

He also had a knack for picking women who weren’t into him.

He also waited too long to approach women who might actually be into him, if he’d worked up the nerve to say something before they got involved with someone else.

And yeah, it was ironic, since women threw themselves at Nick all the time.

When he didn’t have any skin in the game, he could be charming as hell, funny, sweet. He could even be the alpha-sexy-mysterious guy on his motorcycle, or at the martial arts studio, or carrying around his surfboard. He was considerate, kind, a good listener. He was a decorated vet and a homicide detective. He also had more black belts than anyone I knew apart from Black and maybe Kiko, and he’d been winning surfing competitions since high school. He didn’t play mind games or lie about his intentions, and while I’d never slept with him, I got the impression from Angel’s stories that he didn’t get any complaints.

Nick never had a problem with women.

It was only when he got serious about someone that he seemed to fumble the ball every damned time. He just couldn’t get his act together when he really cared.

I couldn’t think about that either, though.

I knew it wasn’t really Kiko I was mad at.

“Hey, doc.” I turned my head, and found Black staring at me, his gold eyes soft. “You ready? We need to get started here.”

It was only then that I realized I’d just been standing there, staring off into space.

I felt my cheeks warm, not only for that, but because every seer in the room probably heard everything I’d been thinking just then, including Black.

Nodding, I walked over to the table, and pulled out a chair.

I felt almost robotic as I took my seat. I hadn’t even paid attention to where I sat, so I ended up on the opposite side of the table from just about every seer and human in the room I actually knew.

When I looked up, I found myself seated between A.J. and Luce, two of Black’s people who I only knew in passing. Although I’d talked to A.J. a few times before, I only knew Luce because she was so striking-looking, and because she’d been promoted within Black’s company when Alice died in Thailand.

Luce was short, maybe only 5’1” or even 5’, but she was one of the most muscular women I’d ever met in my life. Half-Filipino and half-some form of European or possibly Middle Eastern or South Asian, she had darkish skin, a broad face with light freckles and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She bleached her short hair platinum blond and her arms were covered in tattoos of flowers.

She was also a semi-professional boxer on the weekends, according to Angel.

I’d heard she did some cage fighting and ultimate fighting too.

So yeah, Luce was a badass.

She was also probably the friendliest, smiley-ist person on Black’s entire San Francisco team. Even now, when I glanced at her, I saw nothing but sympathy in her wide, dark eyes. I was still looking at her when she wrapped an arm around me, giving me a hard squeeze.

I found myself leaning my light into hers without making the conscious decision.

I’d just taken a deep breath, when Black spoke up from the head of the table.

“I know we have a full agenda,” he said. “I know a lot of you have questions about what we found and didn’t find in Europe. I know we need to debrief on both sides of the Nick Tanaka issue and discuss next steps. Before any of that though, I want to talk about Charles.”

When I glanced up, he was looking at me.

I could tell, just from a whisper I got off his light, that he wished I’d come over to sit by him. I could also feel he was grateful it was Luce I sat next to instead.

I could also feel his protective thing gearing into that darker, deeper part of his light, turning it into a desire to drag me back to our penthouse apartment to spend the rest of the day with me in there, fucking and comforting me, maybe at the same time, maybe in turn.

His gold eyes flickered away from mine.

I saw his face color slightly, but his expression never changed.

“…It’s pretty clear he’s not happy with our set up here,” Black said, his voice gruff. “It’s also pretty clear he’s feeding stories to the news about me, likely in the event he needs to take me out directly. He’ll likely try to discredit me first, go after my assets. But I don’t think we should discount more drastic measures he’d likely to take. I don’t think he’ll kill me, because of Miri. It’s more likely he’d have me thrown in jail… or maybe just have me deported.”

He gave me a grim look.

I saw a faint apology in his eyes.

Don’t be ridiculous, I chided him softly. You don’t need to apologize, Black. Trust me, I’d rather spend the day with you. If you think I’d prefer to be in here, talking about all of this shit, you’re crazy. I love my friends, but Christ. No. Just… no.

His expression lost some of its tautness.

I felt a flicker of regret on him, right before he glanced at Kiko, Dex, Yarli and Manny.

They’d more or less become his leadership team since Thailand.

Well, them and Dalejem.

“So?” he said, still gruff, but now with his light more entwined in mine. “We weren’t able to keep up on all of that in Europe, not in detail. Do you have an update on this Purity Movement crap? And what he’s rolling out policy-wise, now that the construct in the United States is more or less in place?”

There was a silence.

Then everyone seemed to look at Yarli.

They were still looking at her, when the door opened behind me and I turned along with everyone else.

Dalejem walked in, his face set in a determined-looking if distracted scowl, his light exuding an almost warlike quality. He looked like he was in the middle of something with potentially life or death consequences.

He saw me then and started, right before his eyes flickered to Black, sitting across the table. Jem still looked thin to me, after everything that happened in Thailand, and I noticed he still had a cut or something healing on his neck.

He looked a million times better than the last time I’d seen him though, so I couldn’t help exhaling in relief once I took in his overall appearance.

Seeing that relief in my face, or maybe feeling it off my light, he smiled, and it reached his eyes. Walking to me in two strides, he bent down and hugged me tightly where I sat, kissing me on the cheek. Before I could say a word to him, he spoke grimly in my mind.

Nothing? he sent, still holding me.

Meeting his gaze, I fought the pain that came to my chest.

In the end, I only shook my head.

Pain left Jem’s light, right before he leaned closer, kissing me again and squeezing me in a tighter hug before he let go. I felt grief on him, but also guilt, frustration, and an anger that didn’t feel like it had anything at all to do with me.

It had everything to do with Nick.

Watching Jem walk around the table to the nearest empty seat, it hit me that he was upset about Nick in his own right, not just in solidarity with me and Angel and the rest of us who’d known Nick well.

I couldn’t help wondering if that had anything to do with Kiko.

Glancing between him and Kiko at the thought, I noticed their light was pretty damned closed to one another. Even as I thought it, Kiko glanced in his direction, even as she appeared to be pretending not to. I saw the faintest scowl on her lips as she did.

Whatever had been going on between them, it felt like it was over.

It also felt like it hadn’t ended well.

I was still watching Jem, puzzled, when a flicker of reaction reached me from another part of the room. Since I’d felt absolutely nothing in Jem’s anything that came across as sexual, not even in a joking, flirty way, which was pretty ho-hum for seers, I found myself quirking an eyebrow pointedly in Black’s direction.

It’s not that, doc, Black sent, his thoughts a little annoyed. It didn’t feel like that annoyance was aimed at me. It’s nothing to do with you.

I pursed my lips, staring at him harder. Then what? I thought you said Jem was doing an unbelievable job here. You said him and Yarli were the most highly-competent seers you’d ever worked with, that you were damned lucky to have both of them––

We’ll talk later, okay?

I hesitated.

When he sent me a plume of heat, I frowned.

Later, doc. I promise. Now isn’t the time.

Feeling his concern that Jem would overhear us, even if we talked solely via our bond structure, coupled with the fact that he wasn’t ready to talk to Jem about whatever it was yet, I reluctantly backed down.

Okay, I sent. Soon, though.

Before he could answer, the door opened behind me a second time.

That time, Holo, Jax, Mika and two more people walked into the room, pulling my eyes off both Jem and Black.

Holo, Jax and Mika each started when they saw me, too. They also each gave me a hug while the two newcomers hung back. I glanced at those two long enough to determine they pretty much had to be seers, just from their height, their oddly near-Asian features and weird eye colors.

I smiled at both of them.

Following my eyes, Mika made introductions.

One, the female, had eyes that were nearly black, with a ring of white around the outer iris. Her long, dark blue hair contained streaks of black and gold. Mika introduced her as Kiessa, and I don’t think I’d ever even laid eyes on her before. Her name definitely wasn’t familiar. The other, a male, had one silver eye and one light blue eye, black hair, and looked Eurasian.

His name was Zairei, and I vaguely recognized him from the team of new infiltration recruits Black and Jem had been training on Koh Mangaan.

“All right?” Black said, his voice a low growl. “Can we start?”

He looked pointedly at his watch, then at Mika, lifting an eyebrow.

When no one moved, he added, “I’m glad to see everyone. I’m really impressed with everything I’ve heard and seen regarding what you’ve done while we were gone. But we’re under the gun here, in terms of time. Let’s get business done first.” Grunting, he added, “We’ll bring food in here and catch up after… if you’re not all fucking sick of me by then.”

Everyone fell silent, looking at him as if they weren’t sure if he was kidding.

When Black didn’t move, or change expression, they seemed to make up their minds. I watched the few people still standing move quickly, finding seats around the table.

Once everyone was settled and quiet, Black looked back at Yarli and Kiko.

“All right,” he said, giving Jem a brief, dark look. “Now tell me about these crackpot Purity assholes. Start from the beginning.”

So they did.