Tom Phelan frowned at the skeletal shelves of the fridge before scratching his head and closing the door in defeat. They desperately needed to go shopping, which normally wouldn’t be a problem. However, he hadn’t seen his girlfriend in two days (not that he was starting to worry, or anything), and she was the one that knew what sorts of food to pick up. He couldn’t cook worth beans, and she was always so particular about which brand of milk to select, or which type of flour she needed for whatever dish she would be making that evening.

The only problem was that she hadn’t been around to make those dishes lately. No, Tom thought with a frown as he pawed through the minuscule pantry, she was off being secretive again. He wasn’t upset by the fact that she hadn’t been home in two nights, but when she got like this, she was usually considerate enough to leave him a note, or maybe some food to warm up in the microwave. Sometimes she even warned him that she would be gone for a few days. This time there hadn’t been a note, much less a preparatory casserole.

Spotting a can of croutons, he snatched that and the last beer from the fridge and took those into the living room. He could have just ordered Chinese, but he wasn’t that hungry. Besides, the big game was coming on, and the Chinese delivery man would make him wait out on the street. Plus, all of the places were probably closed. He kicked the TV to make it work and settled in with his croutons and his beer to watch the replay of the game.

Really, his girlfriend puzzled him. He knew she’d spent time in some institution up north, but she was so normal. Well, except for the disappearing for days at a time. Oh, yeah, and the fact that she owned a gun. She was a chef—what did she need a gun for? Tom frowned as he crunched a few croutons around inside his mouth. But she didn’t say anything about his job, and he didn’t say anything about the gun. She wouldn’t shoot him, he knew. He loved her too much, and on the days when she wasn’t being secretive, the feeling was mutual.

The door to the apartment opened with its normal whining squeak, and Tom twisted around in his seat. "That you, Rach?"

She didn’t move into his line of sight, so Tom sat up straighter and craned his neck to see her in the gloomy lighting. He could hear her footsteps move from the front door to the kitchen. "Tom? What are you still doing awake? It’s nearly three in the morning. Don’t tell me you were waiting up for me."

"The game’s on." He stood up and moved into the kitchen, croutons still in hand. The kitchen light nearly blinded him when she hit the switch. She was bent over, obviously studying the desolate condition of their fridge with the same defeat he had earlier. "Where’ve you been? It’s been two days."

She turned and he raised an eyebrow at her state. Her nice clothing was disheveled and her normally glossy hair was pulled back into an equally messy ponytail. He didn’t need to see the dark circles under her eyes to know that she was exhausted. Still, she shrugged at him. "Paying off an old debt. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish the transaction." Seeing the croutons, she sighed to herself, but chose not to comment.

"Anybody I know?" Tom asked, determined not to let the subject drop.

"Not really. She’s not very well-known." The pronoun made him relax somewhat, but Rachel didn’t notice. She was too busy studying the pantry and sighing to herself. "Word, Tom, couldn’t you at least shop for milk and eggs and stuff like that? We’re down to salad dressing and baked beans."

"I’ve been busy." He shrugged at her exasperated expression, popping two more croutons into his mouth. He talked around them. "Your mom called today. I told her you were out shopping."

She stilled, and for a moment he saw a smattering of an emotion he couldn’t quite identify flutter across her face. When she spoke, her voice was tight. "Did she leave a message?"

"No. I think she just wanted to chat."

Now Rachel looked skeptical, but Tom just shrugged and headed back to watch the game. A few minutes later, she joined him, curling up against his side on their couch. The sweet smell of beer and the acrid stench of cigarettes warred in the air around her, but her eyes were clear. She rarely drank anything except white wine. She didn’t say another word about her whereabouts, and he didn’t ask.

Someday, he was positive that she would tell him.

Crin fingered the soft, sensitive patch on the back of her head and wished for the third time in as many minutes that her powers didn’t have some ethereal version of punishment and pension. She would have liked a warning about the fact that Rachel was going to attack her. Well, at least they had shoved her forward before she could take the knife that had landed in Willy Spores. Why hadn’t he ducked when she had shouted at him?

The truth that there were actually two people out to kill her was frightening in its entirety, but she normally had a stiff upper lip, so none of that showed on her face as Deke showed up the next morning at the hospital and shoved a small bag at her. "Here. Clothing. Kaye went crazy."

"Good morning to you, too," Crin said facetiously. She had insisted on being picked up at eight, knowing full-well that he hated mornings. But there was work to be done and she was already behind. He just grunted and she rolled her eyes. "Go get some bad hospital coffee while I change."

"Don’t know what’s got you in such a good mood," Deke told her as he walked out. "Eileen says she’s gonna read you the riot act today."

"And then some," Crin added. She pulled the curtain partition shut all the way around her overnight hospital bed and dumped the contents of the bag onto it. Her clothing from the night before unfortunately smelled like sewage, but luckily she’d been allowed to use one of the hospital showers. She had thought the smell of the hospital was the worst one, but that was before the smell of herself after a dunking in the Hudson River had pervaded through everything else. Relieved that her niece hadn’t decided to torture her by including a dress, Crin pawed through the pile. Kaye had picked out her favorite jeans, hole in the knee or no, and a baby-tee with a multicolored bulls-eye on the front.

That would be, Crin thought grimly as she located a hairbrush and hair-tie, Kaye’s idea of a joke. Crin had given Adele and her family a shortened version of the night, but Deke and Kaye had waited around after they had all left, and had heard the full version. Although Crin had been amused the night before when she figured out that Adele had met Jacks, she didn’t tell her best friend that she had finally met the man they had both spent many hours of their teenage years complaining about.

As for Jacks, she wasn’t sure what was going on there. When he’d appeared on the platform, her only reaction had been shock. They hadn’t seen each other in eight years, and then suddenly he was there, and she was there…and they were falling. After that, Crin’s memory became a bit hazy. Whatever her abilities had done to send them into the river had sapped all energy from her, leaving her a shaky and babbling mess. She remembered waking on the shore, the sensation of being carried somewhere, hearing the name "darling" and then a few minutes in the ambulance with Adele.

It looked as though she was just going to have to hunt him down and pry some answers from him.

She shoved the smelly clothing into her bag and slung that over her shoulder, wandering in the hallway to find Deke. Clean, with her hair and teeth brushed, and fresh clothing on, she certainly felt better—especially after the industrial strength painkiller they’d given her for her various aching joints and impressive protrusion on the back of her head. Rachel had really clubbed her. It was amazing that she hadn’t been knocked out by that blow.

She nearly plowed straight into Deke, who was leaning on the wall outside of the emergency room with a cup of steaming coffee forgotten in his hand. Crin recognizing the look on his face, turned to greet Kaye, and pulled up short. That wasn’t Kaye at all. Deke was talking to one of the nurses, discussing something that sounded an awful lot like "Kandinsky" or something of that nature. To Crin’s amazement, the nurse was writing something down on a piece of paper. She handed that to Deke just as Crin came up and wordlessly stole the forgotten coffee. She liked it with a considerable amount more sugar than he did, but that didn’t stop her from downing half of it. She needed it.

"Oh, Sasha, this is my friend and business partner, Crin," Deke hurried to introduce her, emphasizing the word friend. "I’m actually here to pick her up. Crin, this is Sasha. She’s one of the interns here."

"A pleasure to meet you," Crin said at her smoothest, sticking a hand out. Sasha was quick to reply that the pleasure was all hers, and why had she come to the ER? She looked so healthy! "I skipped class the day we covered ducking and avoiding injuries to the head," Crin replied, drawing a smile from the pretty nurse. She turned back to Deke. "Deke, I have a couple of errands to run. Are you okay catching a cab on your own?"

"Er—yeah." It was nice, she admitted to herself, to see Deke smitten with somebody who wasn’t Kaye. He was clearly trying not to stare too obviously at Sasha, drawing an amused grin from Crin. He would always be terrible with women. He scrambled now to regain a little ground and to find his keys. "I brought your bike for you. Figured you’d need the air."

"Isn’t he just a sweetheart?" Crin asked Sasha, mimicking the old biddies she always heard around the perfume counter at Bloomingdale’s. She was thrilled to see the other woman’s crafty smile; here was a woman who understood Deke’s motives and obviously thought them endearing. She took the keys from Deke and gave the pair of them a small wave. "Toodles!"

There was her baby, parked in between an old Volvo and a rusty Lincoln, resplendent in its streamlined symmetry. Crin ran a reverent hand over the gas tank and gave a rather feline smirk. She liked to think of herself as a simple girl, uncomplicated, not too spoiled, but when it came to her beautiful Monster 1000, she was possessive, flighty, and downright dangerous. Nothing could brighten her day like her pet bike. She took the turns a hair faster than legally allowed as she sped out of the parking garage.

Her first mission of the day was reconnaissance, so she pulled over at the first public library she found, and headed straight for the computer lab. She would have liked to go back to the headquarters and search from there, but this way was faster. A few minutes later, she had not only a home address, but a work address and a building number. Dropping a dime on the librarian’s desk as she passed, she took the print-out and stuffed it into a pocket, heading back to her bike.

The law offices of Morton, Stoneking, and Stalder were located some distance from the library, buying her a little time to compose herself. She wasn’t nervous—that was a feeling she hardly ever felt—but it had been eight years and a wild night. Of all the people to fall into the river with, why did it have to be her old boss?

Jacks and Crin had always had an odd relationship, dating eleven years back. It had started when Crin came to Podmore School for Girls, just a shy, small twelve-year-old with weird hair and a love for reading. Most of the girls at Podmore had been attending the academy for years, so she was the new kid. She had made her first enemy at twelve, too. Psychotic Rachel Dumont had zeroed in on Crin from the very first week, bullying her and just making life a living nightmare for the bookworm. Crin, who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, spent several months in misery under Rachel’s direct tortures.

Pulling up to a metered space beside the café adjacent to the law firm’s building, Crin removed her helmet and paused a moment to scowl. Rachel had nearly killed her over a decade before, all over some little bauble that Crin couldn’t remember very well. It had gone missing and Crin had been immediately accused of being the culprit, although she thought the bauble was gaudy and downright hideous. She had put up a fight when Rachel attacked, but at twelve she was skeletal and even weak. Sure, she wrestled with her "sister" Kaye, but Rachel had at least thirty pounds on her, and rage to boot.

The police report about the incident claimed that Crin had been knocked unconscious by falling down the stairs, but Crin and the other girls knew better. Falling down the stairs didn’t account for two black eyes and a split lip, or the fact that Crin had been hanging onto life by a shred—or the blood on the tabletop where Crin had nearly met her fatal blow. It didn’t account for Rachel’s bruised knuckles or the single black eye Crin had managed to land before she was almost killed.

Instead of dying, however, Crin had entered a world beyond reality, for she had found herself in Limbo. Not only did the place exist, but it was actually a simple field with a few brown office buildings around. She’d seen several variations of it in movies, but never had she expected it to feel so dead. A cold, open feeling hung about the place, giving one the feeling of constant, impending death. Crin, shivering, frightened, and confused, had stumbled directly into fifteen-year-old Jacks. He had been running Limbo as a sort of transcendental manager at the time, even though people rarely ever entered Limbo.

They were destined to be either friends or enemies for life, Crin thought now. She had been doomed never to leave Limbo like most of the patrons that did come, but Jacks had changed things. He had offered her a deal—if she worked for him for a few years, he’d pull some strings and get her back into her body. The only reason she had stayed alive was her mysterious gift, after all. If she had been just an ordinary girl, she would have been killed. His bosses higher up, whom he called the "dudes," wouldn’t mind him bending the rules a little. Of course, three years later, the "dudes" had indeed found out about their business, and Jacks had been booted from the Limbo throne. Apart from a few letters, Jacks and Crin had never bothered to contact each other on earth.

Now, eight years later, Crin was voluntarily hunting him down. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing; with Jacks seemed to come the cold feeling of certain death that had drenched Limbo. Even the night before, she’d felt it radiating off of him. His body, she remembered distinctly, was warm, but there had been that frozen doom in all of her memories of him, so she could hardly shake it now. Places like Limbo never truly left you alone.

Buying a little more time to compose her thoughts, she stepped into the café, ordered a latté from the teen behind the counter. The café was dark in a rich, elegant sort of way, decorated in a hunter green and dark brown woods. The styrofoam cup that was handed to her was decorated in the same colors, bearing the café’s name on the side. She sipped her latté and paused outside the café to enjoy the early morning sunshine for a bit. She wasn’t nervous about seeing Jacks again, but she couldn’t deny that it had brought a rush of forgotten things to the surface.

Even at fifteen, he’d been handsome. At twenty-five, his boyish features had matured a bit (but not too much), and he had filled out somewhat in the shoulders and chest. That much had been obvious the night before; they’d both been drenched to the bone. Even in her haze, she’d noticed changes in musculature. His hair was probably darker, although she’d had no way of knowing the night before. The only thing unchanged about him were the blue-gray of his eyes, and that strange feeling she felt coming from him.

At fifteen, he’d been ornery and exasperating. That probably hadn’t changed, either, come to think of it.

"I didn’t think I’d see your face up and about so soon," commented a voice behind her, and Crin turned to see a tall man that she vaguely recognized heading in her direction. He was dark-skinned and bald apart from a well-groomed goatee, and had an easy smile on his face as he approached her. "I don’t suppose you remember me—you were kind of out of it last time we met."

Crin plastered an uneasy smile on her face, ignoring the instincts that told her to bolt. "Of course I remember you, umm…"

"Tim Jaymer." He extended a hand, and she shook it. "You have my jacket, remember?"

Pictures swam into place, and she gave him a grateful smile. "Oh! You! I guess I have you to thank for the shock I had this morning when I searched my clothes and found somebody else’s jacket!" He laughed at that, a boom more than a peal. She decided that his laughter alone made him likable. "Thanks. I’m Crin Dalmeiier, by the way, seeing as our first meeting was rather…bizarre."

Tim waved that off, smiling pleasantly. Thanks to her rather polished education growing up, she was able to recognize that his suit was Armani, and that the watch on his wrist was no Timex. His smile was straight, which surprised her. She had always expected any friends that Jacks might have to sport black, gothic clothing and have leers instead of smiles. Yet Tim seemed perfectly nice. "Yes," he agreed, shifting around the two coffees and a briefcase he was managing to hold. "Jacks has mentioned you a time or two. He’s right."

"Right? About what?"

Tim’s smile grew. "You are pretty short."

Her eyebrows drew together in annoyance. In the entire three years she had known him, Jacks’ short jokes were countless. "You and Jacks could make Vin Baker look short."

He caught the reference easily. "Ah. A Knicks fan?"

"My older brother is. I just watch the games with him. He drills stats into my head so much that it’s a wonder I don’t quote them in my sleep." She tried not to squirm guiltily. Evan was probably at home, waiting for her to drop by so that he and Eileen could read her, as Deke put it, the riot act. "So…do you work with Jacks?"

"No, no, I’m an accountant." Tim grinned at her confusion. "Jacks and I met in college. He introduced me to my boss—and his sister."

Crin was perceptive enough to guess at the reason for his grin. "You’re dating Sheila?" She was amazed that she still remembered the name. Jacks had talked about his sister with a reverence usually reserved for a favorite aunt or cousin. His letters to him eight years before had mentioned that she was a stripper, and Crin wondered if she still followed that profession. She thought it better not to ask, though.

"Engaged, actually. Jacks will be my brother-in-law in…four months and two days." Tim checked his watch and shook his head. "Speaking of which—"

"Tim, buddy." Jacks appeared almost out of nowhere, coming up from behind Crin and partially blocking her view of Tim. Like Tim he was wearing a fancy suit, and even a tie, although this article of clothing bore a picture of Marvin the Martian. He didn’t even notice her standing there, much to her amusement. "You’re early! Did the stars realign themselves and I not realize it or something?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow the city will be overtaken with locusts. The apocalypse is near, my friend." Tim took a long drink of coffee and indicating Crin, who was watching him with laughter hidden behind her grey eyes. "You remember my friend Crin, right? Short, redhead, likes to swim?"

He jumped, and Tim smirked. "Crin! You’re okay?" To her surprise, he swept her into a huge bear-hug. She stiffened, but nothing showed on her face.

"What?" she asked instead, her face blank. "You mean I’m not supposed to be?"

"I think Crin wants to join our little daily coffee break," Tim told Jacks, handing him one of the styrofoam cups. He turned back to Crin, eyes twinkling. "Now that we’ve become mainstream white-collar workers, we don’t even have our coffee sitting down anymore."

Jacks, who had just taken a large swallow, coughed suddenly. "Wrong drink," he choked, handing it back to Tim and taking the other drink in turn. "What’s the point of decaf coffee again?"

"Ask me that again at the nursing home when I’m kicking your eighty-year-old butt at basketball." Tim turned back to Crin. "So Jacks told me all about what happened to the pair of you last night, but what’s your side of the story? Is it true that you jumped all the way from that platform to the river? I say it’s bull."

"Jump? No, it was more of a falling thing." Crin scowled at the ever-brightening sun and pulled a pair of sunglasses from the knapsack she was still wearing. "It was kind of a simple process—old enemy hunts me down, I duck, guy I’ve never met takes a knife that was meant for me. Old enemy steals my gun, I chase after her, Jacks chases after the guy that threw the knife. We end up on the same platform—and boom, ba-da-bing, we’re in the Hudson River." She twitched her left shoulder, shrugging.

Tim and Jacks, meanwhile, gaped at her. "What?" she asked defensively.

Before either of the men could reply, a very frightening ring-tone version of The Stripper began to play loudly. "Oh—Sheila’s calling me," Tim muttered, pulling a cell phone from his pocket.

"She’s going to kill you if she finds out that’s the ring-tone you’ve set for her," Jacks warned as his friend excused himself. He took a long drink of coffee and Crin distinctly felt his eyes on her, although she did not comment. The cold was still washing off of him, pinpointing at a spot directly between her shoulder blades. "So. This is a bit awkward."

"Always were a master of the obvious," Crin observed, studying him in return as she shifted her shoulders. She lifted an eyebrow at him, shoved her hand into the pocket of her jeans. "I see you’re a big, bad lawyer now. Scaring small children to sleep at night yet?" Her eyes, hidden behind the dark lenses, flicked to his left hand.

"No, but I do make a trip through the nursing home to kick elderly old ladies in the shin every once in a while," he was quick to reply. "I would hate to disappoint your rather skewed vision of lawyers."

Her smile was slow. "And here I was, worrying that you might have changed since you came to good old New York City." She shook her head, ringlets of dark red cascading down to frame her face. "You didn’t see the guy who threw the knife, right?"

He checked over his shoulder to make sure that Tim had not bailed on them and took a bolstering sip of coffee. "No—I thought it was the woman that threw the knife. That’s certainly what the police are believing."

For a moment, he suspected that a storm was brewing behind the mask, but she kept her features even. "Two people who want to kill me at once. This is…new." She was grateful that she had left Deke at the hospital. He would have known in an instant that she was hiding all emotion and would have called her on it. Jacks had no way of knowing that the fact that there were two people out for her head was scaring her like nothing else. "What were you doing at the Fox, anyway? It doesn’t seem like your type of place."

"I have a type of place?"

"Cool, dark, quiet. Filled with intellectual types who like to argue." She could tell by the look on his face that she had him pegged, even after all of this time. "Or at least trade witty banter with you. You live for that sort of thing, you know."

Before he could remind her that there were more important things to discuss (and avoid answering her question), Tim walked back up to the pair of them. "Crisis averted!" he announced. "Listen, kids, I don’t know about you two, but I have office hours, and a very cranky boss. See you tomorrow, same time, same place?" Without waiting for a reply, he hurried off, towing a briefcase behind him. Crin could almost swear she saw cartoon-like grey smoke puff up behind his retreating form.

Jacks winced and checked his watch. "I have to be in a meeting in half an hour, but I’m free until then. Want to come up to my office and talk? If nothing else, it’d be nice to catch up. It’s been eight years without so much as a phone call to say hello, and then we’re river-jumping together? Merits at least a good long catching-up conversation."

She wavered for a minute. He’d changed considerably over the eight years, but she had a feeling that he could get under her skin just as quickly now as ever. She needed his help too much to turn him down, however. Maybe that cold feeling would even go away with time. "Sure. Lead the way."

Deke hadn’t returned immediately back to headquarters, as Crin had thought he would. Instead, stuffing the paper Sasha handed to him into his pocket, he hailed a cab from outside the hospital and headed over to the campus where Kaye attended classes. With his satchel and a baseball cap covering his flyaway hair, he was pleased to think that he looked like the average college student; Crin, although she had attended college, always managed to draw bizarre looks whenever she visited the campus. It didn’t take him long to find Kaye, sequestered as far back into the library as possible. She barely looked up when he arrived and sat down at the table, pushing a styrofoam cup of coffee over to her. "G’morning, Deke. Aren’t you up a bit early?"

"Crin’s almost as bad as the old ball and chain," Deke told her as he slung his satchel onto the tabletop. He resisted the urge to put his forehead onto the table and fall asleep on the spot by tapping his fingers against the edge.

Kaye’s eyes narrowed on her textbook as she underlined a passage. "You mean, she’s out of the hospital already? Didn’t Mom tell her to take it easy?" For a moment, Deke wondered if he was going to have to stop her from stomping out of the library and hunting her stubborn relative down herself. However, Kaye merely relented with a gusty sigh.

He smiled sympathetically. "Must still have water in her ears. Anyway, do you have another class today, or are you willing to spare me a few hours? I figured that we could do some sleuthing."

"Sleuthing?" Kaye repeated, eyebrows rising at the challenge in his voice. "I thought that was Crin’s job. We’re here to be lackeys."

He leaned forward and dropped his voice, as though the books around them had ears and were just waiting to report back to Crin. "Not when the sleuthing is about Crin herself, it isn’t."

Immediately, Kaye’s eyes widened to saucer-proportion, and her mouth hung open. Most would look as though they had been brained with a two-by-four, but Kaye managed to pull it off flawlessly. Her expression practically belonged on the front of every teen magazine. "You’re going to spy on Crin? Just when did you develop this death wish? She’ll kill you!"

"Does that mean you’re concerned?" Deke couldn’t resist asking, although he squirmed a bit guiltily at the thought of the paper in his pocket. Quit it, his brain told him. This is how you always act with Kaye. Suck it up already, will you?

She regained "Only because I’d have to train up her new assistant to fetch me the right style of corn chips, and that took ages the first time."

He pretended to glower at her. "You know, between you and Crin, it’s a wonder my ego isn’t in therapy with the rest of me right now."

"Ouch—buddy, I finally think you’re learning the value of a good quip." Kaye gave him her typical smile, known to light up whole cities, and he practically felt Sasha’s phone number burn into his skin. He smiled uneasily back, but she had already turned her attention to collecting her books into her backpack. "So—where do we begin, then? And what about Crin are we looking up, because there’s a high chance I’ll already know it."

Deke took her backpack before she could pick it up and slung it over his own shoulder, cursing chivalry when it threatened to wrench his arm off. Of course he had to go and fall for a smart girl. No wonder, he told himself as he let Kaye lead him from the library, guys always fell for the rather empty-headed blonde chicks. They came without strings—and without forty-pound backpacks. "Her friend Adele. I called her before I picked Crin up from the hospital and she’s agreed to meet us for an early lunch before her meeting."

They emerged into the midmorning sun and Kaye pulled on a pair of mirrored sunglasses. "We are so dead if Crin ever finds out," she observed. "What do you want to ask Adele about?"

"Crin said she knew the girl who attacked her—the one with the gun. I want to know if Adele did, too."

"Probably did—the girl went to school with Crin and Adele was Crin’s closest friend at Podmore."

"K-West! Hey, Kaye!"

Both Deke and Kaye turned to see another student rushing up to them, waving as he ran. He had a look on his face that Deke recognized all too well, and the young man found himself tensing up as though there would be a fight. Kaye, on the other hand, let out her pealing laughter and practically jumped on him, squealing her happiness at seeing him. "Deke—you’ve met my friend Joe, right?" she asked when he released her. "Joe, this is my friend Deke. We work together."

"Nice to meet you," Deke said tightly, shaking Joe’s hand. What an appropriate name, he thought snidely, eyeing the other man’s baggy khaki shorts and blue button-up shirt. He had a backpack hanging from one shoulder, completing the Joe College image. Deke wondered when he was going to whip out the fraternity he had to have hiding in the overlarge pocket of his shorts. Kaye didn’t seem to notice Deke’s cynical look as she chattered at Joe almost too fast for Deke to understand. Joe didn’t seem to have a problem at all. "Er, Kaye—maybe we should go? Remember our lunch date?"

Her eyes narrowed a bit in confusion. "Lunch date?"

"Yes—remember? We’re meeting Adele?"

For an agonizing minute, Kaye looked at Joe and Deke got the sinking feeling that she was going to ask him to go meet Adele without her. He shuffled his feet and waited for the blow, but it never came. "Oh, right. Joe, I’m sorry to cut this so short, but I have a lunch thing to attend. Maybe we can catch up some other time?"

"That would be great," Joe replied, giving her a winning smile that made Deke want to gag. "Do you have any plans for tomorrow night? I know it’s kind of short notice, but the guys and I found a new spot. They don’t even card. You two interested?" Deke blinked; had he just been included in that invitation? It appeared as though he had; Kaye’s expression had darkened ostensibly, and he could see a muscle working in her jaw—always a sure-fire sign that she was annoyed with him.

"Sure—give me a call!" Giving Joe a slight wave, Kaye hauled on Deke’s arm and pulled him down the library steps, far away from Joe. "What is your problem? Did you not feel that connection?"

She had switched from cheerful to dangerous so quickly that he nearly felt his head spin. "Huh?" That probably wasn’t the best word with which to defend himself, but he really was clueless. What had he done now?

She threw both hands into the air, and he moved a half-step away to avoid being swatted. "Joe and I—we had a thing going and then you had to go and make things awkward with that lunch date reminder!"

"What are you complaining about?" he demanded instead, moving out of the line of fire and glaring at her. "He asked you out and everything! To that ‘new spot,’ remember?"

"Yeah, but he asked you, too! I nearly had a chance for a minute there, and then—"

He felt his ears growing even warmer in the midmorning heat. "Now hold up just one minute! For one thing, you wouldn’t have even run into the guy if I hadn’t been there! And what makes you even think that I would want to go hang out a bar with Joe College and all of his friends! Go on! Have a good time without me, for all I care!"

Instead of shouting back, however, her face turned bright red and she stopped breathing. He glared at her as she slowly surpassed tomatoes, and then hot lava, and then Bozo the Clown’s nose…and then he started to panic. Was she choking? She doubled over, still reddening. Worried, he grabbed onto her arms and pulled her upright, ducking so that he could get a good look at her face.

And she burst out laughing.

His eyes flared, ire rising deep in his stomach. "I don’t see what’s so funny!"

"You—Joe invited—you—and…" She couldn’t speak for the gales of laughter that were threatening to tear her small frame apart. Deke just glared. She swiped hastily at the mirthful tears overflowing down her cheeks, and suppressed her laughter enough to say, "Oh, come on, Deke, this isn’t worth getting mad over—you wouldn’t even want to go to a place like that anyway. I’m sorry—it’s just too funny."

Maybe, Deke thought as he watched her with his eyes narrowed, he would give Sasha a call. At least she seemed to appreciate him as a human being. He walked away from the still-laughing Kaye, stewing. And they said men were daft.

Reconnaissance

Index