“We have to go after that leprechaun,” Rain interrupts.

  “I want him in this room for at least 24 hours, then get him someplace safe. Preferably close by. As little riding in a car as possible.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to Bear about that.”

  “He needs to give that leg time to heal. At least eight weeks in the cast. Keep him in bed or on a couch the first couple of weeks. Bones heal slowly.”

  “Eight weeks, shiiit,” Gabe says.

  “But…the leprechaun,” Rain says. His eyes bounce from me to Dr. Lee. He must be following the conversation somewhat.

  “Pain should be a lot more manageable now that everything is lined up,” Dr. Lee continues. “You have Vicodin or Percocet?”

  “We’ve got Vicodin,” Gabe says. He lounges against the door, arms crossed over his chest. It’s a manly pose that he’s obviously doing for Francesca.

  “Give him a 300 mg tablet every four hours for 24 hours, then you can back down to every six hours if he can handle it. After two weeks, try to wean him down to a pill in the morning and one at night if needed. He can stay on it as long as he needs to. Get him plenty of fluid and limit movement as much as possible.”

  I nod, letting all of the information soak into my memory.

  Dr. Lee’s voice is stern. “No trying to bend his knee or walk on that leg until that cast comes off. It’ll probably drive him crazy, but he’ll just need to deal with it.”

  Francesca is flicking short, shy glances at Tarren. I ignore the jumping waves in her aura.

  “What happens when the cast comes off?” I say

  “He’ll experience significant muscle atrophy,” Dr. Lee says, blunt as always. “After the cast I’ll transfer him to a brace. He’ll need to rehab. Slow walking, stretching, light strength training. The leg will probably never be as strong as it was, but he should regain most of his mobility back.”

  Will he be able to fight? The question doesn’t quite make it to my lips. I’m not actually sure if I want a yes or a no.

  “Will he be a gimp?” Gabe asks.

  I look to Rain…who has fallen asleep with his mouth open.

  Dr. Lee frowns. “Sometimes the bones knit right back together, and the patient is good as new. Other times…” His pause is like the jab of a hot poker fresh out of the fireplace. “Sometimes the bones don’t heal right. The screws and plates at the clinic were smaller than what I would ideally use for him. It might complicate the healing process. He could end up with a lot of weakness in that limb, or possibly a pronounced limp.”

  I let out a long, slow breath, and look at Rain’s slack face and chapped lips. My eyes travel down his body to that bulky cast, his pink toes sticking out at the bottom.

  “All we can do is take good care of him now,” Francesca says softly. She looks right at me, because I guess I’m being super obvious about my feelings again. “The rest is up to God.”

  I try not to snort. The big guy has been pretty silent in my life, especially during the worst parts of it, but I don’t say this to Francesca. She’s been way too good to us. Instead, I stare past her at that woman in the black and white photograph. I wonder how long it took her to button up that dress in the morning. Did she ever wake up and wonder if it was even worth facing all of those buttons?

  “Thank you for your assistance,” Tarren says to Dr. Lee. “And you.” He nods toward Francesca. Her eyelashes bat, and even though I bet she’s trying to hold herself back, she can’t stop the color that rushes to her cheeks. Her aura blooms in shades of purple wine. Lust.

  I really, really, hope Gabe can’t see what’s going on here. His heart would probably go supernova if he realized the love of his life had the secret hots for his tall, handsome, heroic brother.

  “We owe you so much,” Tarren says.

  “I’ll put it on your tab,” Dr. Lee grumbles and waves his hand, like he’s pushing the compliment away. Gabe and I made the decision not to tell Tarren that it was Francesca who played the biggest role in saving his life after he was badly burned. She was the one who talked me through the stages of care, including the truly awful debridement. If I never have to shave burnt skin off slick, purple muscle again, I think I might die a happy little angel-hybrid freak.

  Tarren’s eyes rest on Gabe and then on me, and I feel the weight of his expectation. “Twenty-four hours, and we’ll rendezvous at the lab.”

  Only Tarren and James Bond could use the word “rendezvous” and not sound like a total tool.

  “Twenty-four hours,” I repeat.

  “Check,” Gabe nods from his corner of the room.

  Tarren walks through the door, and on impulse I follow him out. Gabe’s eyes are probably giving me all kinds of warnings, but I don’t look his way.

  “Tarren.”

  My brother pauses. He’d probably prefer that I use his codename now that we’re technically in public, but no one else is on the walkway outside of the motel. He turns and squints at me. Now that the surgery is over and Rain is truly safe, this flood of relief inside of me needs to find a harbor.

  “I know what you think of the Totem,” I babble, “and I…I just…thanks for finding him. Thank you.” I take another step forward, almost close enough to hug him. “Thank you.” I want to hug him. He saved Rain. He saved me with the Prism. He’s spent his entire life saving people, and right now he looks so uncomfortable and tired and embarrassed that I have to say it again.

  “Thank you.”

  Tarren clears his throat as pale strands of amber light and fade in his rigidly controlled aura. “You’re welcome.” The words are soft. “I’ll see you at the lab.”

  “Get some sleep. Four hours at the first rest stop. Lo can wait,” I tell him.

  A small flicker of a smile rises and quickly disappears on his face. Then he turns, and I catch it. A faint, familiar scent. Flowers, smoke, and cashmere.

  Perfume.

  That’s when I realize…it must have been on the angel. Rain must have somehow made contact with her during their fight. And Tarren would have had to pick her up to bury her.

  I watch Tarren walk away in the worn jeans and long-sleeved black shirt that he exchanged for his cowboy outfit. But he changed.

  Tarren turns the corner. For a moment only his shadow remains, and then that too is gone.

  A door opens behind me.

  My mind whirls. How…in…the…

  I feel two auras moving toward me and turn to confront Gabe and Francesca. My brother looks at me, and his face is serious. Gabe is almost never serious, and he’s almost never scared, but I see sharp red bolts of fear in his aura. Francesca has this way of opening him up all the way into the soft, vulnerable parts of his soul.

  “She needs to know the truth,” he says to me. “She deserves to know.”

  I wonder if he thinks I’m going to argue. Tarren might, but this has needed to happen for a long time. Ignorance is bliss until it gets dangerous. I smile at Francesca to try and squelch the clear nerves that light her aura in bright yellows.

  I nod. “It’s time. She’ll be safer if she knows.”

  Gabe swallows and looks generally miserable. I don’t blame him. He wants Francesca out of this world as much as I want Rain to never so much as think of climbing a tree or holding a gun again.

  “It will be hard to believe,” he says to Francesca, “but I’ll tell you everything. All of it.” He holds out his arm to her. Francesca pauses and looks to me. She has a right to be scared about where he might lead her. After all, she’s only seen our injuries, our weapons, the long stretches of absence. For all she knows, we’re crazy cult members, hired assassins, or a secret Russian terrorist cell.

  I give her a small nod. She tucks her hair back behind her ear and slides her arm through Gabe’s. His aura pulses at her touch, but he keeps his face smooth.

  “Okay, so once upon a time there was a scientist named Gary Cook who wanted to make the world a better place…”

  His voice trails off as I step inside our room to check on our patient.

  ***

  I sit on the edge of the bed and watch Rain’s eyelids twitch with dreams. I wonder if penguins are dancing through his mind. That’s another quirk he told me about – he dreams of penguins. Sometimes every night for a week or more.

  “Heart disease,” Dr. Lee says behind me as he packs up his bag. “I’ve had it for years. Runs in the family.”

  I glance at the doctor and watch the brown splotches drift through his aura. “How bad is it?”

  The look he gives me is answer enough. The sheets pull on the bed, and I realize I’m clenching fistfuls of fabric in each hand. “Are you going to die?”

  “Everyone dies, Maya.” I expect bitterness, not the touch of humor I hear in his voice. “I’ve lived a long life already,” he adds.

  Not long enough, I think. “Gabe and Tarren don’t know.” This isn’t a question. Gabe wouldn’t be able to keep something like this from me, and Tarren would never have asked him to come all the way out here for Rain.

  “They have enough burdens.” Dr. Lee picks up his big medical bag, and it must be my imagination, but his hand seems thinner than it was this morning, almost skeletal. I want to snatch the bag out of his grip and carry it for him. “I pray every day that I die before them.”

  There’s the bitterness. I follow his gaze to Rain, and I don’t need to interpret his aura to know his thoughts. He thinks that the mission is a fool’s errand. If it were up to Dr. Lee, he would have called in the National Guard the moment he learned about angels and let the government deal with the threat. Canton and Diana Fox believed that the angel network had already infiltrated the government. They didn’t trust anyone except each other. Gabe has told me that Diana gave all of her children a choice when it came to accepting the mission. Only Tarren declined, but Tammy’s death changed things. Changed him.

  “I won’t say anything,” I tell Dr. Lee.

  “I know. I wrote instructions for him. I want to see him again in two weeks.” Dr. Lee nods over to Rain. “Will you have any trouble getting medicine for him?”

  I shake my head. Sir Hopsalot jumps up from his lounging position in the corner and grabs a long piece of hay out of the little tub that Gabe set up for his pet. The crunch, crunch, crunch of his chewing plays a melody behind our conversation.

  “Our kit is stocked. Gabe has a special talent for picking up meds on the street,” I tell the doctor. Speaking of my extroverted brother, my sixth sense picks up on his aura moving closer.

  I open the door just as he holds out the swipe card. Francesca stands behind him, her aura a cascade of jerking colors. I take a step back and press my hands against each hip. Gabe’s expression is hard in a way I definitely don’t like.

  His eyes find mine, and the intensity in them unnerves me. “Maya, show Francesca your hands.”

  “What?” I ball my hands into fists and pull them behind my back.

  “Please,” Gabe says.

  “It’s okay,” Francesca stammers, “I believe, I really…”

  I hold Gabe’s gaze. He knows exactly what he’s asking of me, and he’s asking anyway. I turn to Francesca. “Come here,” I tell her.

  The chewing noises stop as the gray bunny stares at me with his liquid black eyes. He makes a decision and hauls tail under the bed. I look at Gabe again to make sure he’s ready. That he really wants me to do this. Francesca takes small steps toward me, and I watch buttercup yellows swirl in her aura. This is what her fear looks like. Her fear of me. And she should be afraid. Gabe has told her that I feed off the energy of living creatures. He probably made all sorts of excuses for me, told Francesca how I was different – a hybrid angel – how I use Tarren’s prism of mirrors to absorb energy from the sun and only occasionally snack on rats. But that doesn’t change what I am.

  A freak.

  A monster.

  A thing that lurks in the night.

  “Stop there,” I say sharply when she’s just out of arm’s reach.

  Francesca stares at me with big, dark eyes. It’s funny, the longer I know her, the more I forget how beautiful she is until it springs on me, like right now when her glowing aura highlights her high cheekbones, the long spill of her black hair around her shoulders, and her curvy figure. Even amidst my anxiety, I wonder again what she’s doing hidden away in Dr. Lee’s cabin in the middle of nowhere. She could have her pick of men, probably even get her face on billboards if she wanted. But she spends her days cleaning house for an aging doctor, sewing my family back together, and taking nursing classes at the local college.

  I shake my head to clear my thoughts. The mysterious origins of Francesca will have to be solved another day. I have far more important things to focus on, like not killing everyone in this room. Slowly, I tug the fingerless glove off my left hand. At first glance, my hand looks completely normal. It’s only when I uncurl my fingers that a keen observer would notice two thick lines Xing across my palm, deeper and darker than the usual creases. I let out a short breath and allow my natural instincts to take over. Heat builds in my palm, and a pale glow throbs from beneath the surface of my skin. Francesca’s aura arcs higher, and my body automatically responds, that animal part of me creeping closer to the surface. The skin of my palms splits and pulls back like curling petals.

  Francesca gasps, but she doesn’t step back or turn away.

  The glow is bright now, emanating from the center of my palm. And now, for my final trick… A purplish, vein-covered bulb lifts out from the glowing cavern in my palm. I feel the second bulb in my right hand pushing against my glove.

  “This is what attaches to the aura,” I say. The sound of my words is far away as I focus on containing the need. My hunger fills the room, fills my bones, fills every empty space inside of me with a song only I can hear. “This is how I feed.”

  Francesca’s aura jumps, and it hurts like the lash of a whip. I hold myself still, gritting my teeth, forcing my feet to stay planted. The monster part of me is close to the surface playing with the levers of my brain, and it’s been too long since I’ve fed. I can’t help the choked sob that bubbles up out of my throat as I turn toward the wall and tuck my hand into my body. Their auras beat against my consciousness, pulling the monster out. I’m too close to Rain, and he’s completely vulnerable. In my mind’s eye, I can see myself leaping on top of him, my palm connecting to his bright aura. Would Gabe shoot me? Could he do it?

  “Maya,” Gabe says.

  “Don’t,” I pant. “Just give me….” I squeeze my eyes shut and take another step forward until I feel the wall brush my shoulder.

  “Francesca, come here. Get behind me,” Gabe says. His voice is calm, but I feel the rising pulse of his aura. “Dr. Lee, you too.”

  “It’s okay,” I manage. I force my breath out in even whooshes as I push the monster and the music back.

  “Maya.” The voice is soft. Sad. I turn my head and force my eyes open. Rain sits up in the bed, and his hair is ridiculous. Flattened on one side, wild and spiky on the other. I snort out a laugh as my hands tremble. “You’re doing good. Get the control back.” He smiles at me, and that isn’t helping my concentration at all.

  I shut my eyes again and force the bulbs to retreat into the pits of my palms. Finally, the skin unfurls back over my palms, sealing along the X pattern.

  Rain saw me, I think. He saw my utter freakitude. Rain has always known what I am, but this is the first time he’s actually seen the whole angel show. What if it disgusted him? Or scared the shit out of him?

  I turn back around to find four sets of eyes on me. Francesca stands against the wall next to the door behind Gabe, and I notice that he’s pushed his coat back, giving him easy access to his tranq gun. Rain is giving me one of those, You okay? Looks.

  Tears glide down Francesca’s round cheeks, and her aura snaps and flickers with ribbons of yellow. I’ve given her a monster to fear in the darkest part of the night. Only Dr. Lee looks unfazed from his corner of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” I say roughly to everyone. I give Gabe a nod, and he lets his coat drop back into place.

  “Thank you,” he says, though he doesn’t look thankful at all.

  Francesca brings a shaking hand up to her eyes to scrub her tears away. Gabe turns to her, and the flush of red in his aura is all regret. “You were never supposed to get involved,” he says. “We were going to stay away, keep you out of it, but then I got hurt and they didn’t have a choice…” The red pierces deeper into his aura. His eyes are round and ardent with emotion. “Francesca, you have to go. You can’t help us anymore. You can’t stay with Dr. Lee. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Hold on,” Dr. Lee says, but Gabe cuts off his next words.

  “Maya was taken earlier this year. They interrogated her, and not in a nice way. That could happen again. Any one of us might get captured. If they find out that you’ve helped it won’t matter what you knew and didn’t know. They’ll come after you. They’ll kill you.”

  Gabe reaches for Francesca but stops. His hand hangs in the air, so close to hers, as if he suddenly realized she would break with a touch. Or maybe I have it the wrong way around.

  “When you get back to the cabin, you have to pack your things and leave. Get a new life. Forget that we ever existed.” Gabe’s voice cracks, and I think his heart might be cracking too. All I see in his aura is red. Pain, pain, pain. I press my shoulder hard into the wall.

  “Don’t come back,” Gabe says. “Don’t contact…”

  “No.” Francesca’s voice is so soft, it’s almost a whisper, but it stops Gabe. Tears drip off her chin. “I won’t leave. This is my home. You’re my friends.”

  “You’re in danger!” Gabe’s voice is desperate.

  “It’s my choice.”

  “Francesca…”

  “You should have told me sooner!”

  Whoa. Of all the responses I might have predicted, this isn’t it. I wouldn’t have begrudged Francesca if she’d fled the room screaming or grabbed her phone and called in the nearest S.W.A.T. team. But she’s not terrified or disgusted. She’s angry. I didn’t think her soft, gentle programming even included an anger mode.