The Templeton family had always, Jacks had noticed over the years, arrived at the most inconvenient of times. When he had been younger, they had had the habit of dragging him and his younger brother all over the country to visit odd conventions in weird places like New Mexico and Oregon, even though the family lived in Florida. It was never during the summer—it was always when Jacks and Bobby were in school, always near big test or when it was the most inconvenient time for the two boys. That had been when Jacks’ uncle Phil was in charge of Limbo, after his father had retired. Phil had passed Limbo on to Jacks when he was twelve, so Jacks only had very vague memories of the strange places they’d visited. Now, it looked as though New York City had been added to the list.

He was none too pleased to check his voice mail after returning the office from his meeting, and find out that Robert and Flora Templeton were on their way to New York and wanted to meet him for dinner to discuss a "family crisis."

"Mom probably ran out of Valium again," was all Sheila could think when Jacks called her about it. "They called me and I begrudgingly agreed to go—which means you have to, because I am not spending my Wednesday night being belittled by my own parents without some kind of support."

"Why don’t you bring Tim?" Jacks asked, clicking onto a travel website to see if it was possible to book tickets to Maui or some other distant place within the next ten hours. "Mom and Dad haven’t even met him. Fresh meat."

"I love it so much when you compare my fiancée to food. Hold that thought." Sheila clapped a hand over the receiver, but Jacks still heard her shouting at the cooks. Having a sister who owned a high-class restaurant was always a benefit to any upcoming lawyers looking to host business dinners, but one always had to hear both sides of the story. Sheila returned to the phone, and Jacks practically heard her gritting her teeth through the phone line. "Tim doesn’t know about Limbo, and I have a feeling that’s what this is about."

Jacks’ eyes narrowed. "Why would Mom and Dad want to meet with us about Limbo? Bobby’s the one running it. I talked to him last night, too, after I got back from the night club. He didn’t seem to think something was up."

"I love our darling little brother as much as you do, Jacks, but you have to remember that Bobby doesn’t have a clue about what’s going on—ever." Sheila sighed and snapped an order at a chef while Jacks deliberated between San Francisco and Chicago. "He didn’t know Mom and Dad were coming? What, did they just wake up this morning and think, ‘Hey, let’s go to New York and scare the kids a bit.’"

Jacks wrinkled his nose at the last minute flight prices. "Probably. You know them."

"This, of course, being the last thing I need right before that big convention hits the city and swamps my restaurant." There was a long pause on the other end of the line. "You know, you’re right. I should bring Tim and use him as a shield. I’ll tell him about Limbo tonight—should probably tell him he’s marrying into the Templetons before he actually does."

"Sorry to break it to you, sis, but Tim already knows about Limbo. I talk in my sleep." Sighing in disgust, Jacks stared at the computer screen and leaned back. It didn’t look like there were any unscheduled trips to Brazil to avoid his parents today. "He’s known about it for two years now."

"And he hasn’t said a word to me?"

"Well, I can imagine Limbo’s not exactly a pressing topic between the two of you. Besides, I’ve never actually seen you two talk around each other. It’s like your lips are glued together the instant you two walk into the same room."

"Jacks." Sheila’s voice held a clear warning, but Jacks had been ignoring that tone for years.

"What? I’m just saying." The door to his office opened, and Renée stuck her head in. He waved to her that he would need a minute. "Give me an opinion?"

"Big conventions suck."

He laughed at that. "No—really. Which do you think would be better? Chicago or New Orleans?"

"Jacks, you are not booking tickets out of the city before Mom and Dad get here." Sheila let out an annoyed groan. "If you bail on me, I’m going to hunt you down and force you to watch eighteen hours of ‘Days of Our Lives’ with me."

"On second thought, I’ll meet you there at the restaurant tonight. Right now, I’ve got to go. Bye!" He hung up and leaned forward. "Yes?"

"A Miss Dalmeiier is here to see you—she said she had an appointment, but I don’t see anything in your appointment book—"

"Tell her to come in."

Bobbing her head in a nervous nod, Renée disappeared and a few seconds later Crin appeared in her place. She was still in her jeans and her bulls-eye T-shirt, but she’d found somewhere to stash the backpack she’d been wearing earlier. Her hair was now pulled back into a bun, and she looked a little less wan than she had that morning. "Hey, Jacks."

"I almost didn’t think you were going to come," Jacks remarked. She paused in the doorway to scrutinize his office, comparing . Obviously, she liked this one better, for she shrugged and took a seat. "Can I get you anything? Coffee? A donut?"

"No—I’m good." Crin waved him off and crossed one ankle over her knee, obviously ill at ease. She was studying him under the guise of examining the trinkets atop his desk, Jacks noticed. "Ritzy place. How many families did they have to throw out on the street to clear this for you, again?"

The bantering begins, he thought to himself, and pretended offense at her comment. "Only two and a half. The other half of the third family still lives in that closet back there." He gestured vaguely at a door behind her (which actually led to a meeting room).

"Ah." Crin turned to study the door, presenting a clear view of the right side of her face to Jacks. He raised an eyebrow; Crin hadn’t had that long, thin scar running down to the side of her mouth in Limbo. Of course, the mind didn’t really carry scars along with it when it manifested a body in Limbo, but that scar definitely didn’t look new. When she turned back around, it was to find him mindlessly shuffling paperwork about. "I was going to come in tomorrow and surprise you, but I was already near the building, so I figured it would be easiest to come in today."

"How thoughtful of you." Despite her earlier protests, Jacks handed her a cup of coffee. "I guess we have a lot of catching up to do."

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Only eight years worth or so. You start."

That was what he had liked most about Crin. She didn’t dawdle; when she was looking for something, she went straight to the point, usually aggressively. She had been a spitfire of energy over the three years that she had visited Limbo, and now he could see some of that energy leaking out behind her calm mask. To most she would have looked placid, almost bored, but he could see her fingers twisting a shed of paper. She was anxious to move and be done with this.

"It’s really simple—pre-law, law school, and now I’m here." Jacks gestured at the office all around them, hiding a grin as she covertly took another look. "I’m sure your story is much more interesting."

"Really, it’s kind of boring. I went to college for a couple of years, decided it wasn’t for me, and dropped out. I went after my first bounty three years ago, and ever since then I’ve been making a name for myself."

He narrowed his eyes. "Any chance it’s ‘Sticks?’"

"Ah, so you’ve heard of me." She didn’t look particularly surprised or even mollified that he had. Actually, she looked rather bored, if a bit curious. "How? I mean, you’re not even a public defender, so it’s not like you’ve ever defended any of the hostiles I’ve bagged."

"Word gets around—actually, it doesn’t. Willy Spores got word that somebody was going to try and kill you at the Parisian Fox last night, so he asked me to do him a favor and look out for ‘Sticks.’"

"And the world continues to get smaller." He should have expected this. He should also have known better. In his twenty-six years, he had more than learned that the universe had a way of dropping surprises into laps: meeting up with Crin at a high-class nightclub was just another twist in life that he had never expected to happen. Eleven years before they had crafted a deal: she would work for him whenever he needed somebody to run an errand on earth, and he would let her out of Limbo. By all means, her body should still be in a coma and her mind should still be hanging around Limbo, but things had changed. "So, you’re—what? Rich and infamous now?"

"I was rich to begin with." Crin had never made a big deal about her trust fund. She was the sole remaining Dalmeiier left, and therefore the heir to many trust funds and estates. "This is how I get my kicks."

Jacks bit down on a trite question before it could get him in trouble. "So…you run errands for me all over earth for two weeks while your body stays in that coma, and end up getting a taste for mercenary work?"

Her smile was as opaque as he remembered. "I guess I have you to blame. Just like you have me to blame for getting you kicked out of Limbo."

"Actually, I have you to thank." Jacks laughed and leaned back, pushing his hands through his hair so that it stuck up in soft brown spikes. "If we hadn’t worked that deal where I let you go early if you run errands, I would still be sitting up there, bored stupid. Did you keep your letters? I still have mine. I read them a couple years back—we certainly took it out on each other, didn’t we?"

"I was an angry kid."

"Not much has changed," Jacks lied. At fifteen, she had still had a bit of baby fat to make her cheeks just a little chubbier, and her hair had been considerably lighter, almost coppery. Now it was a dark red, subdued and somehow more dangerous. The loss of the baby fat had given in to prominent cheekbones and a more elven look to her features. The typical closed look on her face would keep her from being a stunning beauty, but even with her hair a bit of a mess, and with black circles under her eyes as a result of the night before, she looked…well, she looked hot. And that was the last thing Jacks had been expecting. "Well, I guess you look older. And a lot better than last night."

She smirked. "You mean, you don’t prefer the drowned rat look?"

"Oh, I’ll admit that I enjoy a wet shirt as much as the next guy, but not when the woman is fainting and coughing up water. Oh, yes, and turning blue."

She froze. "I—I turned blue? Like the color?"

"Well, there certainly wasn’t any sort of song coming from you, so yes, exactly like the color. Your eyes, especially." Jacks watched her face carefully, his hands steepled. He had to hand it to her; she was a wonderful actress. She kept her expression neutral, but he could see the desperation leaking out of the edges. "Care to tell me why that happened? Whatever you did, it flung us over fifty feet into the middle of a river."

Crin shook her head, her eyes staring down at the floor. "I’ve never turned all the way blue before. My eyes did, once, when I flung my co-worker through a glass panel. But…beyond that…" She looked bewildered. "How on earth does that happen? My gift is supposed to be instincts! But lately it’s been flinging me this way, and shoving others that way, and I don’t even know what’s going on anymore!"

"Instincts?" Jacks had known about her strange gift for eleven years now, but he didn’t quite remember the specifics. He knew it was why she had gone to Limbo instead of dying, but beyond that…

Now Crin just looked lost. "Yeah—like sometimes I just know things. It’s what told me to duck last night I shouted at that man—Willy Spores—to duck, too, but he must have turned or something. He took the knife in the back. I was supposed to be between him and the guy that threw the knife."

"And you’re sure that the knife was meant for you?"

"Positive." Crin tapped her temple. "If Rachel hadn’t chosen that particular moment to try and kill me, too, Willy Spores would probably still be alive. He was trying to intervene between Rachel and I."

"And Rachel’s…"

"The one who threw me in Limbo all those years ago. I did some research online before I met you for coffee—she’s been released, as long as she goes to group therapy, but I don’t know where she is or how to find her." Frustration welled up in Crin’s face, and she gritted her teeth. She shook her head. "Are you going to defend Willy Spores’ death in court?"

"No—the government will assign a lawyer for that." Jacks waved that off. "They’ll find his killer soon enough. Unless you find him first."

"I have a feeling I know who did this." Crin shrugged, but Jacks could tell that she was still angry. Her mouth was still pressed into an imperceptible line. "This reeks of Calvin Berry. I should have taken him out when I had the chance—"

"Um—"

"I should have bagged him weeks ago!" Crin continued, ignoring him completely. "And now he’s gone and killed an innocent person—"

"I assure you that Willy Spores was far from innocent." Not sure what else to do, Jacks lunged forward and seized one of her hands. That proved to be a big mistake; it was hot to the point of melting flesh. Jacks dropped the article with a yell, and Crin stared.

The tips of her fingernails were glowing blue.

It was a bright, roiling blue just at the edges of her fingernails, leaking into the light around her hands like miniature blue sunbeams. Crin stared at the ten beams, horrified and eyes wide. "What—is going on?" she demanded, holding her hands up, fingers splayed through the air. Her voice was barely audible. "What is happening to me?"

"I—I’m not sure." Jacks’ injured hand was held up, forgotten. "It’s never done this before?"

Even upset and worried, she could still belittle him with an exasperated look. "No!" She snapped her head back, and Jacks leaped up, worried that she was about to pull some movie-sized possession stunt. However, all she did was sneeze—and blow up the world around them with blue.

"AH-AH-CHOO!"

Almost tangible in its ferocity, azure stabbed into every crevice of Jacks’ office, blinding him momentarily. Just as he threw his arm up to shield his eyes, hot liquid exploded all over his torso, and he shouted. In front of him, there was the unmistakable crash of furniture being knocked over, followed by a very vigorous stream of curses. Jacks blinked away blue afterimages to find that coffee coated most of his nice shirt and a great portion of his desk, floor, and walls. Crin was struggling to her feet several feet away, most of the traces of blue gone from her person. Her eyes, however, still held the flashing blue light. Jacks just gawked at her. Coffee dripped unpleasant off of his nose and onto his files, but he didn’t care. "What did you just do?"

Crin winced and rubbed the back of her head, grimacing. "I sneezed. I think."

"If that was a sneeze, I would really hate to see what you do during a major coughing fit." Jacks wiped at his face with a relatively dry part of his shirt and surveyed the damage. The power behind Crin’s so-called sneeze had knocked all of the chairs in the room over, and had demolished his coffee mug, as made obvious by the dripping hot liquid cascading slowly down the walls around him.

Before Crin could reply, there was a knock at the door and Renée, looking shell-shocked and nervous, poked her head in. She gasped at the wreckage of Jacks’ office. "What happened in here?!"

"You’ll have to excuse my friend," Jacks said quickly, shooting a meaningful look at Crin. "She has episodes of hysterical blindness. She accidentally hit my coffee mug and tripped over the chairs. Nothing serious." Crin looked at him puzzled, and only seemed to understand when he moved a hand dramatically over his eyes. She squeaked and clapped her own hands over her eyes, which were still blazing cobalt brightly enough to light the inside of a gymnasium. "If you would fetch us some paper towels, please? And cancel any afternoon appointments I have? I really must get Miss Dalmeiier home."

Renée bobbed her head. "You might as well head home now, sir, and get that shirt changed. I’ll have a janitor come in and deal with the mess."

"Thank you." The instant Renée disappeared from the room, Crin removed her hands and reached into her bag for her sunglasses. "What the—"

"Before you ask again, I don’t even know what that was. It’s never done that before." Thankfully, the blue light wasn’t visible through her sunglasses, but neither were most of her emotions. Crin rubbed gingerly at the lump on the back of her head. "I think something snapped at the nightclub last night. I’ve been feeling kind of funny all morning."

"Something snapped in here," Jacks said woefully, studying the debris on his desk. "It’s never done that before? When you sneezed?"

"No. Never." Crin paled as she looked at the wreckage. "I don’t know what’s wrong with me. But I need to get out of here."

"Here—I’ll walk you out of the building." Hoping to keep the charade up, Jacks grabbed her by the elbow and nodded to her to indicate that he should lead the way. They left the room together and said nothing on the elevator ride down to the floor building. Jacks’ head was still reeling. Without a word, he walked Crin out of the building. She led him to an alley, where she had parked what had to be the most beautiful motorcycle he had ever seen. "You really own this?"

She managed to grin, although she still looked shaken. "I told you I was rich. Do you want a ride?" She reached into her backpack and pulled out a spare helmet, offering it to him. "Do you want a ride? Least I could do, seeing as I just almost destroyed your office." She winced apologetically.

"Can I drive?"

"No."

He smiled quickly. "It was worth a shot. Yes, I’d like a ride."

Later that day, considerably calmer and on her way to a 7-11 to pick up a slushee, Crin was still pondering what had happened in Jacks’ office. Her powers had never done anything of that sort. Why on earth were they starting now? Had her head energy the night before caused it? Just what was going on?

A cold feeling started up the back of her neck, creeping along her skin and down into her shoulder blades. Crin shifted her shoulders a little bit, trying not to appear ill at ease. Sometimes, her power had a way of sneaking up on her and make her feel like she was the star of some slasher flick, about to have her throat cut and her blood spilled all over some cheap hotel room. The intense feeling of being watched made her straighten up and glance around covertly.

There, in the corner of her eye. She didn’t dare look straight at him, but she deciphered general details from her glimpse. A man in a denim jacket and blue jeans, dark hair, tall, thick build. A warned clanged loudly in the back of her head, and she hurried her pace slightly. Behind her, her stalker did the same. She had two choices: she could call Evan and have the police deal with this guy, or she would deal with it herself. As her cell phone was still powered down in her apartment, it fell upon her own shoulders to deal with the stranger.

Sucking in a steadying breath, she stopped and turned. "You want something?" She had to shout it across the street.

The stranger’s footsteps slowed. "You talking to me, miss?"

Crin glanced around and threw her hands into the air, eyebrows high above a smirk. "You see anybody else stalking me on this street?"

Taunting the man that was out to kill her was never a good idea, but saying that Crin lived by the rules was rather farcical. She crossed her arms and reached beneath the hem of her shirt for her gun. A brief spurt of panic flared when her fingers met empty air—her gun, as far as she knew, was still at the bottom of the Hudson River. "You’ve got two options, buddy. You can just turn around and walk away, and I promise I won’t hurt you. Or you can try, and I’ll probably end up killing you. The choice is yours."

That earned her a snort. "Bluffing! You’re bluffing!"

Her whole body was practically in spasms from the warning klaxons her power was sending through her. Still, she kept her stance perfectly easy. "Am I?"

A flash of blue on the very fringe of her vision threw her sideways just as the sound of gunshots rocked the air around her. She hit the pavement and rolled back to her feet, already running. Footsteps slapped on the concrete behind her, but she didn’t dare look back. Years of playing soccer against Kaye lent her enough speed to stay ahead of the mercenary. Her Doc Martens barely touched the concrete. She felt as though she might be flying if the weight of her fear weren’t shoving down on her.

Heart bumping loudly against her ribcage, she skidded around a corner and vaulted over a fallen trash can. Her arm swung around on its own and knocked two more plastic trash cans across the sidewalk. Before her attacker even rounded the corner, she curved sharply into an alleyway. Her first impulse was to leap straight into the dumpster, but she quelled that. There! A window! She dove through, her stomach skidding unpleasantly against the sill. She tumbled into a dining room with a grunt. Just as quickly, she was on her feet and slamming the window closed.

"What the—"

A family of five stared at her from around a table, forks paused halfway between plates and mouths. Crin stared at them. "Um, look, there’s a guy out there trying to kill me…Stay there, no matter what!"

Before they could even think about it, she was off running for the front door, tearing through a house with decorative touches she might have enjoyed had she not been running for her life. A baseball bat by the front door, possibly to ward off burglars, was snatched up on her way through.

Holding it up, she crept back into the alley. As she had hoped, her stalker was just heading for the dumpster, gun high and walk triumphant. He thought he had her cornered. Well, he was in for a surprise. She walked directly up to him, her Doc Martens making no noise on the trash in the alley. Just as he started to turn, she swung and brained him with the bat.

He doubled forward onto the dumpster, swearing.

"Hi." Crin swung again and knocked the gun away from his hand. Holding the bat up, she bent and retrieved the gun, and then pressed it into the small of his back with her right hand, left still holding the bat. "Mind telling me who sent you?"

His answer was a string of words that normally earned the soap in the mouth punishment. At least he was smart enough to keep his hands on his head.

"Well, that’s not very nice." Purposely moving slowly, Crin clicked the safety off of the gun. "Really—now tell me: who sent you? Lie to me and I’ll shoot. I don’t even care if you’ve got a wife and seven little babies at home. I will shoot you, point blank, and claim self defense. There’s a family in that apartment right there," and she jerked her head at the window she had just escaped through, "that will back my story up. Your best bet would be to just give me the name of your boss. I’ll give the gun back, and we’ll go along our own happy ways."

"I’m here to kill you, lady, not inform you!" the man snapped at her, still pausing every breath or so to swear. As Crin had heard three other people refer to her ancestors and their habits in such a manner, she wasn’t fazed.

"Therein lies the problem." Crin shrugged and patted him down easily, unearthing a knife in his left boot. "You see, you’ve already tried to kill me twice, and both times you’ve missed. In fact, last time you tried, you hit my friend’s client, and now my friend doesn’t get paid very much until I find you and bring you into custody. So, really, you can give me the information and I’ll whistle and walk away and pretend I don’t know you—or you can refuse and I’ll turn you in for a hefty sum. I’m sure Willy Spores has some friends somewhere with a bounty on your head. You can keep your life or you can make me rich. It’s all up to you."

"You talk too much!" her captive shouted at her.

"All right. We’ll start simple." Crin poked him with the gun, just enough to make him tense up again. "You got a name?"

"Not one I’m telling you!"

She had expected this answer, but it didn’t stop her from shoving the baseball bat into the back of his head and slamming his forehead onto the top of the dumpster. He swore yet again. "Fine, then, if that’s the way you’re going to be, I’ll just call you Bat-Man."

"Batman?!"

"No, Bat-Man. There’s a hyphen there." Crin shrugged at his disbelieving look. "Look, mister, you’re the one who refused to tell me his name. Now—who’re you working for?" Her watch beeped twice, and she sighed. "On second thought, I already know. Tell Calvin Berry that I will be handing his head over on a silver platter if he keeps this up. I wanted to play nice, but obviously, he’s not willing to follow the rules." Without another word, she unloaded the clip from the gun and handed the gun back to him, pocketing the clip. "Leave!"

"What?" Bat-Man stared at her as though she were speaking a foreign language. "Just—just go?"

Crin shrugged, but did not loosen her grip on the bat. "You still have both legs intact for a reason. Now, get out of my sight."

Bat-Man couldn’t get away fast enough. Sighing to herself, Crin pushed a hand through her hair, returned the baseball bat to the family with a very short explanation, and headed off. It was time for her own family to have their say. But first, she needed to talk to Adele.

"Crin—what are you doing here?"

Adele pulled up short at the sight of her small friend seated in one of the gray plush reception chairs, dressed as though she were headed to a ball game or something of that nature. For all of the girl’s classy education, she certainly liked dressing like a college student. She sprang to her feet as Adele approached, still the picture of wiry agility that she had been in school. "I thought I’d drop in and surprise you."

"Well, consider me surprised, then. I thought you were still in the hospital."

"They released me a few hours ago." Adele more than recognized the alarmed look Crin cast around the room. However, when the woman turned back to her friend, her expression was neutral. "Is this a bad time? I can come back later, if it’s more convenient. I was in the neighborhood—"

"No, it’s fine. Here, come on back. They gave me a temporary office, probably in hopes that I’ll stick around." Adele gave the receptionist a reassuring smile as she led Crin down one of the back hallways. Lydia was a nice lady, but Crin’s attire made her stick out like a sore thumb, and Adele could tell that Lydia had been about a minute from asking Crin to leave the reception area. That wouldn’t have gone over well. Adele led her into the temporary office—little more than a desk and a few chairs, all covered by varying stacks of paperwork—and shut the door firmly behind them. "Something on your mind?"

Adele could practically see the gears working behind Crin’s eyes as the other woman debated what to tell her. Finally, the redhead sighed and sat down in one of the wooden chairs in the small office. "A few things, actually."

"About last night?"

"Some of it, yeah. Most of it, though…do you remember Jacks?"

The name alone made Adele’s eyebrows disappear into her hairline. It had been at least eight years since Crin had even mentioned him and even then Adele had doubted that he even existed. She had thought Jacks was just a figment of Crin’s overactive imagination until letters arrived at Podmore for her friend bearing a looping signature in his name. Sometimes she lay awake at night wondering if Crin’s stories about "Limbo" were as fabricated as she had imagined them. Crin seemed to genuinely believe that she had been to Limbo, after all. As Crin’s skepticism normally reached above and beyond the human scope, that was a big deal in and of itself.

"Jacks? The guy that wrote those letters?" she asked, keeping her voice neutral.

Crin didn’t notice her hesitation. She was looking down at her hands, her expression unreadable. "Yeah. The Limbo one. He pulled me out of the Hudson River last night."

A flash of a man in a set of drenched slacks and a nice shirt hit Adele. He had looked as though he knew Crin, and she had just assumed that he was a coworker of some type, not the mysterious Jacks. "You mean—the guy that carried you? Seriously? That was Jacks?"

Now, her friend didn’t look up. "Tall, isn’t he?"

That was certainly the first impression Adele had had of Jacks, but she didn’t say so. The shock of finding out that Jacks did exist was too monumental to work past quickly. "What on earth was he doing at the Fox?"

Crin shrugged listlessly. "Apparently, somebody sent him to stop a murder."

Adele stared. "Whose?"

"Mine, I think."

"What?"
Crin jumped to her feet and paced the few feet of space open in the tiny office, the whirlwind of energy that Adele remembered from school. The listlessness had disappeared into a mass of flying red hair and pale skin. "Yeah—you know the man who was killed? Turns out I knew him, indirectly. I got information from him a time or two, under my street name. Everybody knew him as Willy Spores."

Now Adele was positive that her head was spinning, or that the universe had tilted onto its angle. Crin was never this indirect when telling a story; she liked to use as few words as possible to get the point across. "So, what does this have to do with Jacks?"

She bit her lip and shook her head, sending the rust-colored mess into her face. "Everything! He sent Jacks to the Parisian Fox to look out for ‘Sticks’—"

"‘Sticks?’"

"Quit laughing—it’s just a street name." Crin’s face contorted into a scowl and her energy dropped considerably. She sagged against the wall and pushed at her forehead with her palm. "Anyway, Jacks was supposed to be there looking for me, because somebody was trying to kill me last night. I don’t know if he was supposed to be guarding me from Rachel or from whoever it was that threw the knife."

Despite the lump of information still waiting to be digested and processed in the front of her brain, Adele’s eyes still narrowed in suspicion. "What makes you so sure Rachel wasn’t working with the guy that threw the knife?"

Crin merely tapped the side of her head. Her instincts had already had their say, it seemed.

"So who do you think threw the knife, then?"

The lost look on Crin’s face was distinctly out of place. For the first time, Adele appreciated Crin’s job and the stresses it brought. Did she have to live with this on a weekly basis? A small worm of guilt snaked into her belly at the thought of it—Crin was as close-mouthed as they came, but Adele hadn’t done anything to draw information out of her, either. As Adele watched now, Crin pushed her palm into her forehead again, still at ends. "Probably a hired hand, I guess."

"Who would hire somebody to take you out?"

"Trust me, you don’t have enough time to read the list. I’ve got a hunch that Calvin Berry’s behind this. I took his brother out last week and up until yesterday, I was sniffing directly on his trail." Crin seemed to jerk into another personality right before Adele’s eyes, a well-known façade that Adele had seen time and again over the years. The lost look had disappeared into a businesslike one. "Look, Addy, I’m here to warn you. I think Rachel traced you to get to me, so be careful while you’re in New York, okay? Don’t go anywhere alone, please?"

Adele opened her mouth, about to flounder for words, but a soft knock rang throughout the office. Lydia, the receptionist, poked her head in apologetically. "Ms. Warren? You’ve got a call on line one, and your lunch appointment is on their way up."

"Thank you, Lydia. Could you take a message for me?"

"Of course, Ms. Warren." As quickly as she’d come, Lydia was gone, leaving Crin staring woodenly at Adele. "Look, my lunch appointment’s almost here—I hate to kick you out—"

Crin shrugged, and Adele heartily wished that she didn’t have the mask in place that hid all emotion. The redhead was difficult to work with when she hit her stubborn mode. "Just don’t go anywhere alone."

"Of course not. I’ll stick with you or Colin when I go anywhere," Adele promised, hoping to get Crin out of the office quickly. She wouldn’t be pleased to know that her niece and her business partner were on their way over to discuss Rachel Dumont, after all. Before Crin could stand and go anywhere, however, another thought struck her. "Oh—Colin wants to know if you’re free for dinner tomorrow night. He’s hosting a dinner party."

"Sure. Give me a call, then." As if sensing Adele’s urgency, Crin slipped silently from the office and down the hallway. Adele continued to sit at her desk for a long moment, eyes wide and unblinking. Two people wanted her best friend dead. One might even want her dead. And there was Crin, strong-faced and silent about it. Adele honestly didn’t know how she held up at times. The only thing Adele could do now was to gather her purse and head out of her office, acting as though nothing had happened.

Such was the story of her life.

Jacks’ parents’ favorite spot was a little bistro tucked away from most of the city’s action, nestled in between a couple of large corporate buildings like a safe haven away from everyday life. The most ironic thing about the bistro, which was decorated in cheerful colors and bold designs, was that it was anywhere but safe to Jacks. Every time his parents came to the city, they insisted that Jacks and Sheila come there for dinner. The Suntown Bistro, with its yellow dimity curtains and its bright red stool cushions, had been a setting for many awkward conversations, and would continue to be as long as Robert and Flora Templeton felt the need to drive up to the city and scare their eldest children.

Jacks paused for a minute outside the bistro’s large front windows, collecting his thoughts and categorizing them. He brushed nervously at his shirt, although he knew that it was pointless. He had always been a snazzy dresser, but Flora would always find something wrong with his clothes. Sometimes, growing up, he’d purposely left buttons undone just so that she wouldn’t go too far out of her way to criticize him. He was considerate like that.

‘Are you going to stand out here all day?’ his inner voice asked him. Jacks straightened his collar and sighed. There were times that he disliked even himself.

He turned and slowly walked towards the bistro’s entrance like a man shuffling to face his doom. He could see his parents through the glass, seated inside and sipping coffee. On the outside, they looked deceptively normal, almost like tourist. His mother looked almost nice, which was certainly news to Jacks. She was sipping her coffee with a strained sort of look on her face, one that he recognized all too well. That look alone made him want to turn around and head back to his apartment. He had root canals he was more excited about than this.

"Thinking of backing out on us?" One hand on the doorknob, Jacks turned to see Sheila and Tim, hand-in-hand, walking up to the bistro. Tim was tugging nervously at a tie with his free hand, and Jacks noticed that Sheila was clutching his hand rather tightly. She smiled teasingly and wrapped her arm around her younger brother. "Come on, Jacks, you promised."

"Actually," he said, nodding at Tim as she released him, "I promised not to run to New Orleans or Chicago before dinner tonight. If I run screaming from here right now, I won’t be breaking any contracts."

"Taking the cowardly way out?" Tim asked, laughing uneasily.

Jacks just shook his head. "I can’t wait to make you eat your own words after you meet the twenty-first century dysfunctional Ward and June."

Sheila reached out and seized a full handful of his shirt, tugging him forward. "Jacks, we’ve talked about this. Scaring my fiancé off is a bad idea, remember?"

"It’s all right, She, I lived with this guy for four years. If that didn’t make me run away in terror, you can rest assured that I’m in for the whole nine yards." Tim’s smile was almost disarming now, but Jacks just grinned back, quelling the instinct to sprint away from the bistro as fast as his legs could take him. "After you."

Gritting his teeth, Jacks entered first. He kept his hands shoved into his pockets as he approached the table, shoulders set. Robert and Flora stood as he neared. "Mom. Dad. You rang?" Bypassing the hug/handshake that usually marked the beginning of these awkward conversations, he slipped directly into one of the empty chairs under the heavy frowns of both of his parents.

Sheila, on the other hand, hugged both of their parents, smiling as genuinely as she could. "Mom, Dad, this is Tim, my fiancé. Tim, these are my parents, Robert and Flora."

"It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Templeton," Tim said politely, shaking hands with both of the elder Templetons, both of whom were trying not to look too disgusted. "Sheila’s told me a lot about the both of you."

"She has?" Robert asked, looking surprised. "That’s odd—she hasn’t voluntarily seen us in twelve years. What on earth could she possibly have to talk about?"

The last time Jacks had seen Sheila turn so red had led to the both of them landing in jail, so it was understandable that he cleared his throat and hastened to intervene. "Have you lost weight, Mom? You look nice."

Flora eyed her eldest son with a manner that might be mistaken for contempt by anybody who didn’t know her. Those who knew her were well aware that this was just her regular expression. "Thanks," she sniffed. "I see your regard for dressing yourself hasn’t improved over the years. Did you even try this time, Jackson?"

"They say a leopard can’t change its spots, Mom," Jacks said in a deceptively sweet voice. Even though Sheila had brought Tim along to act as a buffer between herself and Robert and Flora, Jacks had already fallen into his normal role of taking the brunt of the criticism. "Dad, how’s the golf game going?"

Robert snorted. "It’s been better. Have you been keeping your game up?"

Lying and admitting that he had would only result in a challenge to prove it on the golf course the next day, so Jacks opted to tell the truth. "Dad, I play hockey, not golf."

"Why not just skip the formalities and take up boxing? That’s all it is. Bunch of sorry men on ice just waiting to hit each other."

Jacks bit his tongue over a scathing retort, mostly for Tim’s sake. They had to survive the evening somehow. It just wouldn’t be salvageable if Tim had to witness a Templeton Blow-Out. If they got through the evening without fighting, there would be margaritas to be had by all of the younger generation, and maybe the night could be fruitful. But those margaritas weren’t coming soon enough.

"Hey, guys. Did I miss anything?"

Sheila stood up so quickly that she jarred the table. "Bobby?" She squealed in surprise and immediately attempted to choke Bobby, the third and youngest of the Templeton children, in a tight hug. He laughed and hugged her back. When she pulled away, he nodded rather frostily to Jacks and his parents. "Oh, Bobby, this is my fiancé, Tim. Tim, this is my youngest brother Bobby."

Tim stood up to shake Bobby’s hand. "You’re the one that runs Limbo, correct?"

Liquid Nitrogen wouldn’t have frozen the scene half so well as Tim’s words did. At his question, both Robert and Flora stopped moving altogether. Bobby’s mouth seemed to hang open for an eternity. Tim paused uncertainly. Jacks and Sheila, the only ones capable of normal movement, exchanged a panicked look. "You told him?" Bobby demanded of Sheila. "What are you, stupid?"

Jacks jumped to his feet warningly. To his satisfaction, he still towered over Bobby, who had inherited his height from the Templeton side of the family, by at least half a foot. Bobby might have a few pounds on him, but Jacks didn’t spend three days a week at the gym for nothing. "Cool it, Butthead. I told him years ago."

Robert’s face turned as red as Sheila’s had earlier. "How dare you? What are you, stupid? Does he look like a Templeton to you?"

Jacks rolled his eyes. "Get rid of the drama, Dad. I wasn’t betraying any our family—there’s nothing to betray! Take a good look at us, Dad." He waved around the table, at the tensed shoulders and clenched jaws. "Take a good look! This is what you created. Aren’t you proud? You drove your oldest daughter to becoming a stripper! Your youngest son does junk! And just what do you think drove me to drinking? That’s right! You! You and Mom and your controlling little games! ‘Jackson, we’re coming to the city—come eat dinner with us tonight.’ Well, guess what? I already have plans." He pushed his chair away from the table and threw his napkin down. "I don’t’ care if it’s a family crisis. You lost the right to call those a long time ago."

Twenty minutes later, contemplating his shot glass at the nearest dark, smelly bar he could find, it occurred to him that he might have been a little rash. Well, downright foolish and immature, when it came to it. But there was a lot of hostility still waiting to be spilled in the direction of his parents. It would have just worsened if he stayed, too. They hadn’t even had a chance to make a slur at Tim, but it would have happened sooner or later.

"It works better if you actually drink it," said a voice at his elbow.

Jacks didn’t turn. "Shut up and go away, Bobby."

As usual, Bobby didn’t listen. Instead, he waved at the bartender and soon received a drink identical to Jacks’. Unlike Jacks, however, he threw it back in one swallow, and then looked challengingly at his older brother. Jacks just shrugged at him. "What are you doing in this realm, Bobby? You don’t belong here."

"What makes you so sure I’m not fired?" Bobby asked, ordering another drink and throwing that down as well. "Like you were?"

‘Because you’re not smart enough to break the rules like I did.’ Jacks threw the contents of his drink down his throat and closed his eyes against the burn. "Unemployed people aren’t that smug. What, did the Dudes give you a vacation? Mom and Dad try to pull a family reunion on your off time?"

The Dudes, which was what Sheila, Jacks, and Bobby all called the higher management in charge of the universe, were an enigma. The Templetons usually just referred to the upper management as a group, even though they had no clue if it was just one person, or a thousand people, male or female, human or not. The Templetons were all human, but that didn’t mean the Dudes were. They usually communicated through memos and business letters, so nobody knew what they looked like. For a mystical realm, Limbo certainly seemed to come with a lot of official paperwork. Jacks had found out the hard way that there was even a "Persona Non Grata" form for Limbo. He had a copy of it in his desk at work.

"I’m only on Earth for a night," Bobby said, dropping his voice. "I left Sheila and Tim to hold their own against Mom and Dad so that I can enjoy a few minutes of my time here. But really, I’m here to deliver some news—and this message." He reached into his jacket (had he not noticed the broiling heat outside?) and pulled out a thick white envelope. "It’s for you."

"You came all the way from Limbo to bring me a letter." Jacks pushed both hands through his hair and sighed. "All right. I’ll bite. Hand it over."

"Don’t read it now," Bobby warned before Jacks could open the envelope. "Save it for later when you’re alone. I have an idea what’s inside, and you’re not going to want your reaction to be public."

Jacks raised his eyebrows, but wisely pocketed the letter. Knowing the Dudes, it could be anything. "You’re not even going to give me a hint?"

"That would be cheating. Besides, I have to get back to Limbo. There’s probably a mountain of paperwork with my name on it now." Bobby rolled his eyes and downed a third drink, wobbling enough to make Jacks reach out a concerned arm.

"Should you be attempting inter-dimensional travel while intoxicated?"

"Sure—not a problem. Not like I do anything but feel the pain for days. The Dudes do all of the work. It’s kind of like riding in a limo." Bobby shrugged and rose to his feet, his movements slow and calculated enough to inform Jacks that he was trying as hard as he could not to let his brother know how drunk he was. The thought made Jacks want to sigh to himself. Bobby might have been pounds heavier than his younger brother, but Jacks was a practiced drinker. It was just another rivalry. "I’ll just get to an alley and let them zap me about."

"Try not to throw up when you land. I always do it even without alcohol in my system, so I think you’re in trouble," Jacks advised, watching Bobby leave the bar without much sympathy. Bobby’s presence was just another thing to shake him up, just like Crin’s reappearance into his life was. Honestly, it was like every person he’d fallen out of touch with was coming out of the woodwork to meet with him. He fingered the letter in his pocket and sighed. Without another word, he got up, paid for the drinks, and left.

Index