Forever (31 page)

He brushed past her and left the room, slamming the door in his wake and making her wince.

“Oh man, has he got it bad,” Leo drawled, moving to
lean back against the headboard. She could tell he was wearing out. She knew she should let him rest, but that remark compelled her to stay.

“What do you mean?” she asked warily, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.

“Seriously? How can you not see it? He’s more than a little crazy about you, Doc. He has been for a while.”

“For … a-a while?” This was Jackson’s best friend. His confidant. If anyone would know anything personal about Jackson and his feelings on a subject it would most likely be this man. “You’re mistaken. He only just … it’s because he wants me to die or whatever and let his queen come and take me over,” she said with no small amount of bitterness entering her tone.

“Yeah? And what about the past year when he’s been mooning over you from afar? Doesn’t that count? I mean sure, he never crossed the line … You know,” he added thoughtfully, “maybe it was more like a year and a half. Yeah. That’s it. You’ve been here two years, right?”

“Well I—yes but I …” She nervously licked her lips. “Did he tell you that?”

“Did he ever say it to me straight out? Not on your life. He’d have died first before admitting he wanted something he couldn’t have. Oh. Hey. There ya go,” he said, smirking at her. “He did die first before admitting to it.”

Marissa blanched, the understanding making her heart race like she was on some kind of thrill ride. “Because,” she said a bit breathlessly, “we worked together.”

“Yeah. And this is a small town with a small precinct. People talk. So Jacks kept his mouth shut and respected you enough to keep his hands to himself. But I guess all that doesn’t matter anymore.” Leo paused as he eyed the shirt she was wearing. Jackson’s shirt. “So I’m assuming
he’s making up for lost time. Dead queen or no dead queen, you’re very special to him Marissa. If you weren’t he would have gone after you with all his barrels blazing. He would have taken you to bed, scratched his itch as it were, and be on his way shortly after. It’s what he’s done all of his life. Has been ever since his parents died anyway. He doesn’t like to get too close to people. He doesn’t want to cope with any more loss if it can at all be avoided.”

Of course.
Of course
, her mind cried out, forcing her to resist the urge to smack her palm to her forehead.
What the hell kind of a shrink are you, Marissa Anderson?
It was one of the reasons why he had taken losing Chico so hard. And the reason why he’d gone ballistic when Docia had died. It must have just about killed him to walk into Leo’s place and see all to make me feel …H better that blood, thinking his best friend was most certainly dead. Christ, and all she’d been doing was worrying about protecting herself.

“You’re going to want to go after him now,” Leo prompted her.

“Yes. Yes I am,” she said absently. “You rest and I’ll …” She didn’t finish because she was already hurrying after Jackson.

In the bed, Leo chuckled.
At least something good might come out of this
, he thought. Leo wasn’t feeling so hot, but preferred not to get comfortable. The pain would keep him awake for a while. Maybe that would protect him from the nightmares he knew were going to come for him. It had happened in the war. It had happened three years back in Nicaragua. It most certainly would happen again.

Damn.

He would have killed for some cold hard Jack Daniel’s right about then.

*    *    *

Why is this house so damn big?
she thought with frustration as she searched for Jackson. She didn’t find him in his room or the kitchen or the main living areas, and she wasn’t about to poke into rooms she didn’t belong in. It had been wrong of her to do so the first time. She had known that but she had let her temper get the best of her … just like she had done now.

He was right. She did try to keep her emotions in check. She had thought it made her a better psychiatrist, more professional, able to see a bigger picture rather than getting mired down in the emotions of her patients. What it had done was completely desensitize her to anyone and everything save her sister. Maybe she would have noticed …

“Jackson?” she called, venturing out onto the deck and the moonlit night. She didn’t know where the switch was, so she was hoping the moon would provide enough light to find him if he was there.

“Nope. Too busty to be Jackson.”

“Oh! I’m sorry,” she said to the woman sitting in the shadows.

“Don’t be. You don’t have the same ability to see in the dark as we do,” Diahmond said. “There’s not much in the way of privacy in a house with this many people in it.”

“I don’t know how everyone does it. I think I’d go mad if I didn’t have some sense of privacy.”

The Gargoyle regarded her for a moment, her eyes—a cool gray that could be seen in the moonlight almost as if they were aglow—moving over her briefly. “It’s the life of a royal,” she told her, almost pointedly. “It’s a price you pay for the good of your people. You bear with all the fuss and limitations it puts on your freedom because the people and their well-being means more to you than yours does. It takes a very special sort of person to be able to make that kind of sacrifice.”

Call her crazy, but Marissa got the feeling Diahmond didn’t think she fit that bill. She shrugged internally. What did she care what the Gargoyle thought of her?

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked her, moving farther out into the night, turning her face up to the moon. She had to admit, the night wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to wake up to. It was cool and crisp and full of curious sounds. expression on his face oihly

“I am merely at a loss to understand you. That is all.”

“What is so perplexing? That I won’t readily alter my life away so I can share it with someone else whom I hardly know anything about?”

“What would you like to know about her that could possibly change your mind?”

Ouch. Two points to the Gargoyle. The way she had said it implied there were circumstances she might approve of. Had she really meant it to sound that way?

“What is she like, your queen? I’m assuming you know her … you sound like you do.”

“I don’t know her half as well as her husband does. If he cannot convince you of her worth, then what can I say to convince you? I will not argue with you or wheedle with you, mortal girl. You do not understand this world, and I see that you fear what you don’t understand.”

Zing. Four points total. Wow. She hadn’t lost a battle of wits like this in ages. And never so resoundingly.

“What’s to understand,” Marissa said petulantly. “I die. She lives. Period.”

Diahmond smiled. “So simple. Yet so complex. Each Bodywalker comes equipped with a special ability. My lord pharaoh is telekinetic. Ramses can control the weather. Do you know what hers is?”

“I don’t …” Marissa said a bit lamely.

“Empathy. Emotions, mortal girl. She feels what others feel so keenly, that sometimes all that keeps her balanced
is the man you are looking for now. Menes. Jackson. Call him what you will. Now, do you know what I fail to understand?”

“Do tell,” Marissa invited dryly.

“Here you have this proposition laid before you … a man who loves you and wants you to do something that will increase his passion for you a thousandfold. He has chosen you—I can only assume he sees something of worth in you—over every other woman in the world. And if you think he makes this choice lightly you would be terribly mistaken, so know that now. The last time he was sent to choose for her it took him eleven years before he found someone he deemed worthy enough. Do you know what that must have done to him? To wait so long? This man has offered you something that will make you stronger, make your senses keener, and will add untold amount of time to your life. I’m not saying it doesn’t have its pitfalls. It does. And to say otherwise would insult your intelligence. I don’t know you but I’m assuming you have some.”

All right, now that one was just low, Marissa thought with a sigh.

“Here he offers you this, and then on top of all of that …” she said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, “a love for all time. A love of the ages. Something no mortal woman on earth can lay claim to. A relationship with no doubt. No questioning. No insecurity. I know this because I have seen it. Iit all over ag

“This is so cool!” Angelina cried after her sister dumped the entire story of what had been happening, what was happening, and what she was actually considering doing into her sister’s lap. After all, she couldn’t do any of this without her. She couldn’t give up her sister as well as daylight and her job and everything else.

“It’s not cool, it’s insane!” Marissa argued breathlessly. “You need to tell me it’s insane!”

“Look,” Lina said dryly, “if you came here wanting
me
to be the voice of reason, then clearly you don’t really want to be talked out of this.”

Well, she had a point there.

“I guess I don’t,” she confessed aloud, as if it were a dirty little secret that shouldn’t be spoken of, because saying it made it real. “But what about the whole dying part? I mean, surely …”

“You’re looking at it all wrong,” Lina said, her eagerness almost infectious. “It’s not dying, it’s … it’s … metamorphosis. You’re a pretty, fuzzy warm little caterpillar … and when you take this step you’ll be this magnificent, powerful, beautiful butterfly that will be so deeply loved and … oh, I’m so jealous I could spit! The only thing that kind of sucks is the sunlight part. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t see the world in
daylight every day.” Then she shrugged. “But from the sound of it you’ll be able to see in the dark almost as if it were daylight, so maybe it won’t really matter. Anyway …” She looked down at the bedspread and tugged at the fabric a little. “Anyway, it’ll be nice knowing that you’re safe, you’ll be happy, and that I won’t lose you anytime soon. From the sound of it you’ll potentially outlive me.”

“Believe me, some of those things are the ones I question. But … I’m realizing something. These people here are in pieces right now. With Jackson only just now becoming fully Blended, coming here to take on the reins of his government, they’ve been without the leaders they depend on for a very long time. Especially her. She only lived a week, as I understand it, before the Templars got to her last time. That means it’s been almost two hundred years since they were truly together.” She sighed in tandem with her sister. It really was terribly romantic, the idea of two souls striving for centuries for the expression on his faceu when that, opportunity to simply be with each other. To be able to touch one another. It made it easy to understand why Menes’s grief had outweighed his sense of duty to his people when he had lost his bride after only a few days. “And provided I can keep out of reach of the Templars, I could maybe help.”

“Think about it,” Lina said eagerly. “You’re a psychiatrist! Who better to have an empathic ability? How are you going to do it? Bullet to the brain? Or poison, like Cleopatra, dying in beautiful repose.” She laid back in the bed, one arm thrown dramatically over her head.

“Okay, it really creeps me out that you are excitedly talking about my suicide.” Marissa frowned. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I mean the bullet thing …” She shuddered. “No. It might be fast but … no. I think I’ll stick with the poison idea. Write myself a script for some heavy-duty sleep meds. I guess I have to
talk to Jackson about it. I don’t know what the rules are here. Oh my god, I’m really doing this.” Marissa felt her throat clench tight even as the rest of her squirmed with excitement. “Provided he still wants me.” She sighed. “I haven’t been very nice to him.”

“He’ll forgive ya. They always do.”

“What if …” she began.

“Oh stop thinking and for once in your life just do,” her sister said with sudden vehemence. “Do what you really want to do and stop analyzing it. Stop trying to control it. Just … stop.”

Marissa took a breath and nodded. Angelina smiled and, wrapping her arms around her sister’s neck, hugged her tight. “Now … drop dead.”

She sniggered and Marissa pushed her away with a laugh, getting up and smoothing her skirt. “All right,” she said. “Here goes nothing … and everything. This is me, just doing. Going with those instincts and emotions and …”

“Leave!”

“Oh fine,” Marissa said, sticking her tongue out at Lina, dissolving their maturity completely back to when they’d been kids, making fun and teasing each other. Then she took another breath and hurried out of Lina’s bedroom and out of the guesthouse.

She found him rather unexpectedly as she was approaching the house around the southwest corner of the building. Actually she heard his voice first and the sentence that hit her ears made her freeze in her tracks.

“I know you need to get to bed, Max, but I need you to do me a favor and bring Sargent back to the SPD. Tell them … just tell them he’s going to need a new trainer,” he said, his tone low and his words tight with the emotion he was refusing to show. “Tell them that I had to move away due to an unexpected family crisis that
won’t resolve itself anytime soon. I’ll write a resignation letter to make it official and have one of the Gargoyles send it from another state. Just in case they are looking for me. In a few weeks Leo can go home and make them understand that he’s not dead and I had nothing to do with it.”