“You think you’re leaving me?” a male voice snarled over the sounds of a child’s sobs as Rachel eased through the small brick ranch’s open back door. “Think again, bitch!”

Evidently Don Gordon had been drinking again.

She swore under her breath. She’d been called to the Gordon household three times in the last six months because Don was a very mean drunk. And when he got mean, he liked to use his fists on his wife and kids. She’d done her best to get Eileen to leave the abusive bastard. Sounded like the woman had finally had enough.

No surprise. The last time Rachel had answered a domestic here, it had taken her and two other cops to get the bastard under control, and she’d still ended up with a black eye. Gordon was big, and he was good with his fists.

She had the ugly feeling this was going to be worse. For one thing, her backup was still ten minutes away.

Ten minutes she probably didn’t have.

“Put the gun down, Daddy! I’m live streaming this. Everybody will see what a jerk you are!”

Sounded like Amy, the fifteen-year-old.

“I don’t give a shit,” Gordon hissed. “Put that fucking phone away, or all your little friends will see you get your head blown off.”

Luckily, one of those friends had called 911. Even more fortunately, Don didn’t know it; Rachel had driven in with her siren off, afraid of triggering a tragedy. With a little more luck, she’d be able to get the drop on the son of a bitch and convince him to go quietly to jail. Yeah, don’t get your hopes up.

“Put the phone away, Amy,” Eileen snapped, her voice shaking.

“But Mom…”

“This isn’t the time!”

Moving quietly on her rubber-soled cop shoes, Rachel ghosted through the painfully neat kitchen, her 9 mm Glock drawn.

“Now, Don, put down the gun,” his wife said in the low, too-calm voice of a woman trying to deal with an unexploded IED. “You’re going to hit one of the kids.”

“I sure as fuck am. I’m sick of you making me look like a pussy, unable to control my own wife.”

Rachel edged along the kitchen wall toward the doorway into the living room. Luckily, there was no door, so she could see Don standing in the middle of the living room. He held a pistol in a one-handed grip he’d probably seen in a movie.

The gun was trained on Eileen Gordon, a plump thirty-five-year-old who held four-year-old Emily in her arms. The child clung to her mother, crying stormily. Dark-haired Amy, fifteen, stood at her shoulder, cell phone pointed at her father.

Way to pour gasoline on a situation, kid. Rachel studied the scene grimly. I’ve got to get this under control before someone ends up dead. Mind working frantically, she tried to come up with some course of action that wouldn’t end badly. Unfortunately, she didn’t have a lot of options. Just going to have to go for it and hope for the best.

“Police!” She stepped into the living room, weapon aimed squarely in the center of Don’s chest. “Put the gun down, Mr. Gordon.”

As she’d hoped, Don jumped and swung the gun to point at her. Luckily, it didn’t go off, which had been a calculated risk. He glared at her. “What the hell are you doing waltzing into my house? You didn’t even knock!”

“You gave me probable cause with that live-streamed death threat on Facebook,” she told him dryly. “Drop the weapon and kick it over to me.”

His thin face flushed dark red. “Fuck you! You get outta here before I put a bullet in your brain!”

“Daddy!” The four-year-old sobbed, lunging toward him, forcing her mother to tighten her grip and sidestep to keep from dropping her.

“Drop the gun,” Rachel said in the cold, steady tone she’d learned in the Academy. “I will not tell you again, sir. Drop. It.”

“Daddy!” Emily wailed. “Don’t hurt my daddy!”

“Dad, don’t!” Amy yelled.

“Shut up!” Don screamed. “Just shut the hell up!” He swung his gun toward them, his red face rage-contorted.

Shit. They were too far away for Rachel to shove them to safety, and there wasn’t time to grab him. She jumped in front of his gun -- and fired. The double reports of the two weapons sounded as thin as a pair of cap guns.

His bullet felt like stepping into the swing of a baseball bat, a brutal impact that drove the breath from her lungs. Her knees buckled, and she hit the carpet at the same time Gordon did. Gagging, she curled into herself, fighting to breathe.

A few feet away, the life drained from Don’s eyes. The hole she’d put in the center of his chest looked far too small to kill a man. It barely bled at all before it stopped.

His heart had stopped.

As she crouched there trying to breathe, Emily began to scream, high-pitched and hysterical. “Daddy, daddy, daddy!”

Instead of the pain Rachel remembered, anger surged through her, building rapidly into rage that burst from her mouth in a furious torrent. “You ungrateful little brat. I took a bullet for you!”

Wait, this isn’t what happened, a faint mental voice protested.

Snarling, Rachel glared at the three people whose lives she’d saved. Emily clutched her mother’s neck as she sobbed hysterically. “She killed my daddy!”

Eileen curled her arms protectively around her child and shrank away from Rachel, much as she had from Don’s gun.

Amy crowded against her mother, eyes wide and frightened, the phone now aimed at Rachel. Her voice sounded numb with shock. “She killed him. She really killed him…”

This is not what happened.

“I saved you!” Rachel snarled, as the storm of rage intensified until red began to cloud her vision. “I could’ve been killed doing it, and you have the gall to whine?”

Slowly, she rose to her feet. From the corner of one eye, she saw her lifted hand began to glow. A ball of fire ignited around her fingers, burning blue white with the heat of her rage.

No! Horror fought rage as she tried to stop herself, to regain control, but the fury only burned hotter.

So did the fireball.

With a screech of rage and madness, Rachel hurled the fireball. All three shrieked in terror as the blast hit them. They screamed even louder when they burst into flames and began to burn.

No no no no! a mental voice wailed in horror and disbelief.

She didn’t care.

“Rachel!” Nathan charged into the room, only to jolt to a stop, staring at the three people who screamed and writhed, burning like torches. “What have you done?” He whirled toward her. “I told you what would happen! I should never have touched you!”

“Fuck you!” And she threw a ball of fire at his head.

He tried to leap aside too late. He bellowed in agony as he burst into flame. Somewhere inside her, a tortured mental voice screamed in grief and horror.

* * *

“Rachel!”

Hands closed over her shoulders, and a body pressed against hers, containing her flailing struggles to escape. “Rachel, wake up!”

Her eyes snapped open as she sucked in a desperate breath. Her throat felt raw, as if she’d been screaming. “Nathan?”

“There you are.” He smiled down at her, though his eyes were dark with concern. For a moment, she was afraid to believe he was even there. “You were having a nightmare. Sounded pretty nasty.” He stroked a lock of hair back from her eyes, his touch soothing.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Shaken, she wrapped her arms around him, taking comfort in his solid warmth. The reality of him, here and safe.

It had only been a dream. Thank God.

But it had felt so fucking real. With a shudder, she pressed the side of her face to his muscled chest. His heartbeat thumped, strong and steady. Listening to it, her own heart slowed its thunder.

Nathan stroked the line of her hair tumbling down her back. “Want to talk about it?”

“I dreamed about the shooting. It was all exactly the way it happened, right up until the end.” Rachel swallowed as her throat went tight with remembered revulsion and fear. “Right up until Don Gordon died, and his little girl began screaming. Then suddenly I was a Maja, and I blasted them. They caught fire and started burning.” She squeezed her eyes shut at the sick memory of screaming. “You came in, and I…” Her voice broke, shook. “… I blasted you too.”

“Yeah, that does sound ugly.” His hand stroked her shoulder and down her back, then up again. “But you’re awake now.”

So why don’t I feel any better? A thought nagged at her, a niggling fear. Something Oriana told her once…”Gee said sometimes Latents get visions the second time.” Her stomach gave a sick lurch. “What if it was a vision?”

“It wasn’t.”

“But…”

“The shooting already happened, Rachel.” Nathan cupped the side of her face in one warm hand until she looked up at him. “Horrific as it was, it was only a nightmare.”

“I… guess that makes sense.” She remembered his hoarse screams, the stink of burning flesh…”But what if I do go insane?”

“You’re not going to go insane.” There was no doubt at all in his eyes.

“You’ve been telling me for the past two days that I could lose it and kill people. Kill you.”

“And I was wrong. You’re not going to hurt anyone.”

God, she wanted to believe him. “So you’re sure you can handle me?”

He snorted. “No, I’m sure you’re not going to go crazy.”

Frowning, Rachel studied his face -- and saw no doubt whatsoever. “What changed your mind?”

“Seeing how you handled Super Chicken. The idea of being eaten alive is a universal human nightmare, but you didn’t even hesitate. You were completely cool under fire.” He grimaced. “I, on the other hand, was ready to flip the hell out just watching you.”

“But…”

Before she could finish, he leaned down and kissed her. It was a slow kiss, deep and gentle, almost iridescent with tenderness.

Despite her fear, she found herself relaxing into his hold, into the delicate pressure of his mouth. His tongue stroked along hers, feeling nubby across the top, slick and wet along the underside, a slow swirling thrust. When he drew back at last, his eyes were very dark. “Besides, I know you.”

“Forty-eight hours isn’t long enough to know anybody.”

He smiled slowly. “Except for everything important: your courage, your intelligence, your strength of will. As for the rest of it, I’m looking forward to finding that out.” His gaze was utterly steady, as if he meant every single word he’d said.

Rachel nibbled her lower lip as she studied him. God, she longed to believe he was right. “Look, I want to be a Maja. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. But I don’t want it if it means risking your life.”

“It’s not a risk.”

“You don’t know that. You said yourself, there’s no way to tell whether a Latent can withstand the Gift.”

He hesitated a long moment. “Ultimately, no. Look, I have no idea how many women I’ve Gifted over the past century. Probably three hundred. Of those, five did not survive. The others did. The odds are in your favor.”

“But all it takes is one,” Rachel told him. “Any cop can tell you that. We do traffic stop after traffic stop until it’s as routine as brushing your teeth. Until you pull over that one motherfucker who’s got a body in the trunk. Next thing you know, he’s going for his gun instead of his license. It’s the routine that gets you. Routine makes cops careless, and then it makes them dead.” She cupped his warm cheek. “I don’t want to be the one who kills you, Nathan. I’d rather not try at all than take that risk with your life.”

He snorted. “I’m a Magekind agent, Rachel. It’s not exactly a desk job.”

“I still don’t want to take that risk.” Which meant she’d never be able to sleep with him again. Jesus, that thought made her feel like her heart was being torn from her chest.

Nathan frowned, studying her. “I have an idea that may clarify things for you. May even help you process what happened with the Gordons.” He grimaced. “Which, from the sound of it, you desperately need.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“A simulation of the shooting. Oriana created it based on that Facebook video the Gordon kid shot.”

She recoiled. “But we know how that turned out. And I have no desire to go through it again.” Especially after that nightmare.

“Look. Morgana originally created the simulation circlets to give people a chance to examine what went wrong on missions. It lets you try other alternatives that might’ve worked better, maybe learn from your mistakes.”

“So you do think I did the wrong thing.”

He shook his dark head. “Fieldwork is never cut and dried. There are times we end up with results that aren’t ideal, but still the best to be had under the circumstances. The simulation will give you the chance to either learn something or make peace with the outcome. Either way, I think it’s worth it.”

Rachel hesitated. He had a point. Besides, she’d do a lot never to have to hear Daddy, daddy, daddy! again. “Is there time before the sun comes up?”

He glanced down at his watch and shrugged. “It’s 2 AM. There should be.”

She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “Let’s do it.”

Ten minutes later, they stood in the dojo as they slid the circlets into place again.

* * *

Rachel found herself in the Gordons’ living room, Nathan by her side.

The Gordons all stood frozen, as if in mid-motion. She frowned, noticing none of them were in the positions she remembered. “I thought this was going to be like the thing with Super Chicken -- where I take part in the action.”

“Not this time. I want you to see what actually happened.”

The simulation exploded into movement. With a cry of pain, Eileen Gordon reeled back from her husband’s brutal slap, her back hitting the living room wall.

Emily wailed as she clung to her sister’s thigh. Amy fumbled with her cell phone, getting it up and pointed as Don hit his wife again. Tears ran silently down the girl’s face, and her eyes were wild, but there was determination in the set of her lips. “Stop it! I’m live streaming this, Daddy!”

“Wait a minute,” Rachel said, and the simulation froze. “This isn’t what happened.”

“This is before you arrived,” Nathan explained. “You didn’t see the whole video?”

“Just what was on TV.”

“They must’ve edited it. The video ran for eleven minutes before you got there. One of Amy’s friends called 911 five minutes in. You arrived six minutes after that.”

When they fell silent, the simulation took up where it left off. Don whirled on his daughter and took a threatening step toward her, one big fist drawn back.

“No, Don!” Eileen grabbed for his forearm.

Without hesitating, he spun into a brutal roundhouse punch that slammed his wife into the wall behind her. Framed pictures fell with the sound of splintering glass. Rachel hadn’t even noticed the debris when she walked in.

Eileen slid down the wall and landed on her backside with a bang. Don ignored her, trying to snatch Amy’s phone. The girl pushed her little sister clear and ducked his clawing hand. Emily ran to the couch, kneeling to shove her way between it and the wall.

“Even if you break the phone, the evidence is online!” Amy yelled, darting away from his wild swings at her head. “Give it up and go sleep it off!”

Amy has more guts than I realized, Rachel thought.

He swayed there, flushed with rage and frustration, head down like an infuriated bull.

Even if Rachel hadn’t known how this was going to turn out, she would’ve recognize the signs of a situation about to go critical. Don Gordon was like a lot of abusers -- a bully who took his sense of self-worth from his ability to terrorize anyone smaller and weaker than he was. And if those he viewed as his natural inferiors dared stand up to him, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill to reclaim his sense of power.

Amy played a very dangerous game.

Don glared at her, his lips pulling off his teeth. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You fuckin’ don’t mouth off to me!”

“And you’re not supposed to treat us like this!” Amy cried, backing away, the camera still aimed at him. “I hate lying about bruises or sayin’ Emily fell out of the swing when you broke her arm!”

“If you little bitches did what I told you, I wouldn’t have to teach you a lesson!” He lunged forward, swinging a fist at his daughter’s fragile face.

Eileen grabbed his ankle as he went by. He crashed to the floor, cursing.

She scrambled up, yelling at her daughter. “Why did you do that? He’s going to kill us!”

“You got that right, cunt!” He staggered to his feet again, eyes glittering, teeth bared, then turned and reeled off down the hall.

“We got to get out of here.” Eileen looked around, her face white and tight with desperation. “Emily! Where’s Emily?”

“Behind the couch, Mom.” Amy wore a sick expression, as if it had finally dawned on her that she’d miscalculated.

“Emily, come out!” Eileen ran to the couch and pushed it aside so she could pull her child out from behind it. The sobbing child fought her hold, forcing her to bend over and scoop her into her arms. At four, Emily was no longer a lightweight, and Eileen had to struggle with her writhing weight.

“Daddy! What are you doing?” Genuine terror rang in Amy’s voice.

Rachel jerked around and saw why. The big man stood in the hallway with his semi-auto in his hand and a twisted grin of fury and anticipation on his face.

“Put the gun down, Daddy!” Amy pointed the phone at him with shaking hands. “I’m live streaming this. Everybody will see!”

“I don’t give a shit,” Don hissed. “Put that fucking phone away, or all your little friends will see you get your head blown off.”

“Put the phone away, Amy,” Eileen snapped, her voice shaking, as she moved quickly toward the teen, Emily in her arms.

“But Mom…”

“This isn’t the time!”

“Now, Don, put down the gun. You’re going to hit one of the kids.”

“I sure as fuck am. I’m sick of you making me look like a pussy, unable to control my own wife.” He wore the frenzied expression of a man doing something he’d always fantasized about.

A slender figure stepped into the room, wearing a black Tayunita County uniform, a gun in her hand. Her expression was grim and cold. “Police!” she said in a sharp, icy voice, weapon aimed squarely in the center of Don’s chest. “Put the gun down, Mr. Gordon.”

Rachel drew in a breath. It felt fucking weird to look at herself, not in a mirror or recording, but as if she were someone else.

Don jerked around, pointing his gun at the simulated Rachel. “What the hell are you doing waltzing into my house? You didn’t even knock!”

“You gave me probable cause with that live streamed death threat on Facebook. Drop the weapon and kick it over to me.”

“Fuck you! You get out of my house before I put a bullet in your brain.”

“Daddy!” The four-year-old sobbed, lunging toward him, forcing her mother to tighten her grip and sidestep to keep from dropping her.

“Drop the gun,” the Rachel simulation ordered. “I will not tell you again, sir. Drop. It.”

“Daddy!” Emily wailed. “Don’t hurt my daddy!”

“Dad, don’t!” Amy yelled.

“Shut up!” Don screamed. “Shut the hell up!” He swung his gun toward them, his face contorted with rage.

“Freeze it,” Nathan ordered. Around them, all the figures stopped in mid-motion, like a freeze frame. For a long moment, he and Rachel studied the scene. “Doesn’t look to me as if you had a lot of alternatives.”

She moved from her simulation to Don, then paced the distance to his three targets. At last she shook her head. “I’m not seeing anything. I really am too far from him to disarm him, and too far from them to knock them out of the way. Which is pretty much what I thought to begin with, so at least there’s that.”

“Continue,” Nathan said.

The simulation jumped in front of Don’s gun. The double report as they both fired was deafening -- totally unlike the thin pops she remembered. Both shooters went down at the same time, Rachel’s simulation hitting her knees as Gordon toppled.

Her gaze fell on Eileen and Amy, standing huddled together with the little girl. Both the woman and the teen wore expressions of disbelief that gave way to relief. Then, a moment later, to guilt.

“Daddy, daddy…”

“Freeze it,” Nathan ordered, cutting off the child’s scream.

“I didn’t realize how fast it happened,” Rachel said hoarsely. “It seemed to take so much longer than that.”

“Adrenaline does that. It doesn’t really slow down time, but it does give that illusion.”

She moved to crouch over Don’s crumpled body. “His mother told a reporter I could’ve shot him in the arm.”

Nathan lifted a dark brow. “Funny, you don’t look like the Lone Ranger.”

“I sure hope not.” Rachel snorted. “I aimed center mass because that’s what we’re taught in the Academy. Arms and legs are risky targets with lives on the line.” She considered it, then shrugged. “What the hell, I’ve always been a good shot. Let me try it.” She moved over to where the Rachel simulation had been standing when Don pointed his gun at his wife and kids.

There was a disorienting flash. Suddenly she found herself standing in the same location as the simulated Rachel a moment before, looking down the barrel of Don’s gun.

“Shut up!” Don bellowed. “Shut the hell up!” He swung his semi-auto toward his wife and children, his face contorted and red with rage. Rachel switched her aim to his weapon arm, high on his shoulder. The two weapons thundered.

This time the little girl screamed. Her mother shrieked, “Emily!”

The man staggered with a shout of pain, clutching his wounded shoulder. The pistol tumbled from his hand even as Emily started to fall from her mother’s arms.

“Bitch!” Don roared, and dove on the gun, grabbing it with his left hand and pointing it at her. Distracted by the sight of Emily limp and bloody in her hysterical mother’s arms, she was too late bringing her gun up again.

This time the baseball bat hit her in the head.

* * *

When Rachel opened her eyes, she stood in the dojo.

Nathan looked disgusted. “And that, boys and girls, is why you don’t shoot people in the arm.”

“No shit.” She probed her forehead gingerly, looking for the bullet wound. There wasn’t one, of course.

He eyed her, visibly unhappy. “I trust that answers your questions.”

“Is that really what would’ve happened?”

Nathan shrugged. “I have no idea. There are a lot of factors at play, and you can’t really predict all of them. But those circlets act like magical computers -- they’re designed to create the most likely result of whatever action you take in the simulation.”

“In that case, I prefer the outcome I got in real life,” Rachel said, pulling off the circlet and handing it over. He took off his own and put both back in the wooden case.

Watching him, she blew out a breath. She felt oddly… light, as if a weight had disappeared from her shoulders. She’d had to kill a man, yes, and she’d left a child without a father. She knew she’d carry the weight of that act for a long time, a reminder she could never make such decisions hastily. But the simulation had brought home that she could have made worse choices.

Ultimately, Don Gordon had forced her to choose between the lives of innocents and killing him. He could have surrendered, but he’d been too determined to make those who loved him pay for the slight to his ego. The responsibility for his death was his.

She took another long, relieved breath, and smiled. Really smiled.

She lost the relief when Nathan said, “We’ve still got two hours until dawn.”

Time enough for the Gift. Oh God.

* * *

As Nathan watched, Rachel’s eyes widened, and the peace of a moment before gave way to anxiety. She glanced away, as if not wanting him to read her fear. He didn’t tell her that her scent gave her away with its acrid tang. “I… uh… I need a shower.” Her dark gaze slid to his, then away. “Alone. I need a little time to think.”

“Sure,” he said easily. “The house has more than one bathroom and a magical water heater. You can use the one in the master bedroom, and I’ll take one of the guest rooms.”

She nodded, turned, and strode from the room just short of running. He watched her go, then went to put the circlet box away in the armoire.

Actually, she wasn’t the only one who needed time to think. He felt every bit as shaken as she did. He simply hid it better.

Nathan stood for moment, staring blankly at the selection of gleaming weapons. An image flashed to his mind: the bark of Gordon’s gun, Rachel falling backward with a bullet hole in her forehead.

Just a simulation. And yet when the bastard bent and picked up his gun, it had been all Nathan could do not to leap on him and beat him like a drum.

The idea of the whole exercise had been to give her an opportunity to see what would have happened if she’d done something different. He was not supposed to interfere, but his instincts had howled in protest like starving wolves.

He’d never felt so damned out of control.

Nathan had trained plenty of rookie agents and never had any trouble whatsoever letting them handle their tests on their own.

Not that it was the first time he’d lost his shit when Rachel was endangered. Look at the way he’d hacked at Super Chicken after it tried to eat her. The idea of the simulation had been to see how she worked with a partner in a combat situation. Nathan had planned to hang back, observe what she did, maybe even make himself a target for the raptor to see how she handled it. Instead he’d gone after the creature as if it was a real threat.

It had been fucking irrational. He’d known that at the time, and yet he’d found himself doing it anyway.

Standing by and watching Gordon shoot her had been even worse.

It was only when Nathan heard the hiss of water coming from upstairs that he realized he’d been standing staring into the open armoire for several minutes. Prodded, he closed its twin doors and headed off in search of a shower in the nearest guest room.

What the hell is she doing to me? Never mind, the answer to that was obvious. I guess I owe Galahad an apology. He’d given his friend hell a decade ago when the knight had fallen like a brick for Caroline Lang, a brand-new Maja Galahad had only known a matter of days. Nathan had told him he’d mistaken infatuation for love.

Now Nathan understood just how far it was possible to fall, just how fast. This was definitely no infatuation.

He’d slept with too many women over the past four centuries to let his dick do his thinking for him. Known too many incredible Majae to mistake respect and friendship for love.

I love Rachel Kent.

Nathan stopped dead in the doorway of the guest room as the thought hit him with the impact of a bullet, shredding his old life, his old conception of himself. The shocking thing was that it didn’t hurt at all.

His lips curved into a manic grin. I love Rachel Kent.

And I just spent the last forty-eight hours demonstrating what an asshole I can be.

The grin vanished.