“Mr. Price . . .”

  “Yes?” He looked up, fingers going still.

  Alice’s first shooting lessons were with her grandmother, of all people: the single member of the family who spent the least amount of time on the firing range because she had the least need for the practice. “If you need to aim, you’ve already missed the shot,” she used to say. “Just fire. Your hand knows the way better than your eye does.”

  She stepped forward before she could second-guess herself again. Slinging her arms around Thomas’ neck, she pressed her body hard against his until she could feel the sheath of the knife she’d always pretended not to know he wore beneath his shirt digging into the skin of her belly and kissed him.

  She didn’t need to aim.

  3.

  * * *

  There was a moment of startled hesitation during which neither of them really breathed. After that, Thomas didn’t need to aim, either. He kissed her back, immediately and without any reservations. She started to pull away, surprised by his participation—she’d been expecting to kiss him and run before he could react, not find herself getting thoroughly kissed in return.

  He slid his arms around her as soon as he felt her starting to retreat, flattening his hands against the smooth outlines of her shoulder blades and spreading his fingers wide to cup her back. He kept kissing her as he pulled her harder against him. Alice’s confusion managed to last a few seconds longer before the rest of her informed it that she had better things to be doing than worrying about whether or not Thomas had lost his mind. Freeing one hand from around his neck, she slid her fingers up and into his hair, and hung on.

  Thomas eventually broke away, pulling back just far enough to look at her without actually letting go. Alice met his eyes, her fingers remaining caught in his hair as she fought not to run.

  Well, she thought, I guess this answers the question of how I convince myself to leave. I’ve never actually gotten him to throw me out before . . .

  “Miss Healy?”

  Alice swallowed. “Yes, Mr. Price?”

  “I’m afraid you may have mumbled a bit at the end there.” His expression was entirely serious, but she thought she heard amusement in his otherwise dry tone.

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “I’m so sorry about that,” she said. “Here, let me try again.” She leaned up onto her toes, tightening her fingers in his hair, and resumed kissing him.

  This time he was expecting her, and more, this time she was expecting him to kiss her back, leaving them both with the attention to focus on other things. Alice ran her left hand down the back of his neck, making the small hairs there stand on end before dragging her nails lightly back up to the base of his skull, where she twined the fingers of both hands together and held on like her life depended on it. Thomas left one hand where it was, but dipped the other down lower, resting it against her hip, fingers still splayed.

  Alice broke the kiss this time, tilting her head back to offer him a small, only slightly worried smile. “Did you hear me that time?”

  “I think so,” he said, with a solemn nod. “You said something like this.” He kissed her for a third time, holding it for only a moment before he pulled back and looked at her. “Am I close?”

  “Very,” she said, and smiled.

  That expression was nearly enough to make Thomas pick her up, carry her into the kitchen, and lock her in the pantry until she told him what was going on. You really are intending to die tonight, aren’t you? he thought. That’s the only reason you’re letting me see you the way you really are. “I thought I might be,” he said aloud. “Were you telling me this for any particular reason?” He brought his right hand around as he spoke, sliding it up her back and moving to cup her cheek. His thumb stroked the side of her face, almost idly.

  “I didn’t want to go without saying it at least once,” she replied, smile fading as her expression grew grave. “Mr. Price . . .”

  “I think that, given what we’ve been saying to one another, we can consider ourselves to be on a first-name basis,” he said. There was a measure of amusement in his tone, despite the growing conviction that anything she said—in words, anyway—would be either a lie or something he really didn’t want to hear. “It’s Thomas, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “Thomas,” she repeated, voice going soft. She took a moment to study his face, considering what she was going to say next.

  The years inside had changed him, although not in the usual ways. He was paler than he’d been before, which was to be expected—no sunlight, after all—but he didn’t have the soft, sheltered look most invalids and recluses tended to acquire. If anything, he looked like a man who did hard physical labor all day, worn down to whipcord leanness and sharp angles. She sometimes fancied she could cut herself on his cheekbones. Even the pallor suited him, in its way, making his eyes seem all the bluer. He didn’t look any older than he should have, save for his hair, where gray was marching through the brown at a truly impressive speed.

  He had the look of a man who didn’t sleep much. She’d learned to recognize that in her own mirror a very long time ago.

  Thomas spoke before she could finish collecting her thoughts, asking mildly, “You’re not going to Ann Arbor, are you?”

  “No, I’m not,” she admitted. “I’m sorry I lied to you. It just seemed . . .”

  “Easier?”

  “Kinder,” she said, with a small shake of her head. “But I guess easier, too. I just wanted to say goodbye.”

  “It took you this long to work up to saying ‘hello,’ and you want to say goodbye already?” He stroked the side of her face with his thumb again. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain. You could have left without saying it at all.”

  She dropped the hand that had been twined in his hair and wrapped her fingers lightly around his wrist. “No, I really couldn’t have. Not this time.”

  “That’s something, anyway.” He leaned in to kiss her again, breaking her hold and sliding his hand down to join the other one, so that he was cupping her hips a few inches above her gun belt. Ending the kiss, he said, “Your father told me you’d retired from the family business, as it were. Is this a relapse, or have I been laboring under a misconception?”

  “Retired?” Alice blinked at him, startled into brief laughter. “He told you I was retired? Is that why you’ve been so willing to—Thomas, I assure you, I am not retired. I’m the . . . what’s the opposite of ‘retired’?”

  “A Healy?”

  “Exactly.” She paused. “About tonight . . .”

  “Given that you’re not retired, and you’re apparently not going to Ann Arbor, I think I have a reasonably decent idea of what you’re planning to do tonight, even if I haven’t got all the details.” Thomas frowned. “I do have to ask you one thing, and I have to ask that you please not lie to me when you answer.”

  “All right,” she said softly, trying to hide the tension he could feel tightening her body. “I’ll do my best to answer whatever it is.”

  “Thank you.” This time, he kissed her slowly, carefully, like he expected her to pull away. He released her when the stiffness finally left her back and shoulders, and asked, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “I should go.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” he said, not letting go of her hips. “I’ve missed you.”

  “What?” Alice paused, looking at him quizzically. “I’ve been back in town for years now. I’ve come to visit every week. How have you missed me?”

  “You never came back to town, Alice, not that you were willing to admit to me.” He raised one hand to her cheek, stroking her hair back from her face and letting himself take a moment to watch the way it tangled around his fingers. “You went to college, and you didn’t come back. You sent someone who’d been a long-term victim of a cuckoo attack back in your place.”

  “I was never that bad!” she protested.

  “No?” he asked. “You left with violent tendencies, unladylike language, and a strong but not unwelcome tendency to wear inappropriate shorts while sitting on my porch eating frozen juice pops in a vaguely obscene manner. You came back in a nice gingham dress, gave me some home-baked muffins, and complimented me on the curtains. Which are, by the way, entirely hideous.”

  Alice stared at him for a moment before finally admitting, in a faint voice, “All right, maybe I was that bad.”

  “I was actually looking into spells for undoing mental possession, until your father offered to, ahem, ‘break my arrogant face’ if I so much as looked in your direction,” said Thomas, pulling his hand away from her cheek and adjusting his glasses. “He said you were getting away from everything that wasn’t normal, and I just assumed that after everything that happened that it was, well, what you wanted.”

  “Thomas . . .” She reached for his hand, pressing it back against her cheek. “That was never what I wanted.”

  “Really?” he asked. “What was?”

  She leaned in and kissed him again rather than answering, this time freeing both her hands to begin undoing the buttons of his shirt. The fabric was damp from where it had stuck against his post-shower skin and grabbed at her fingers as she slid them inside and spread them flat against his chest. Thomas made a small sound of surprise. She hesitated, but only for as long as it took for him to get his hands back around her hips and yank her closer.

  Taking that as approval, Alice worked her hands further inside his shirt, nails scratching lightly as she ran them down his chest and stopped, just below his navel, fingertips pointed downward. They were both breathing a little raggedly as she broke away, tilting her head down, eyes half-closed.

  “This,” she said, between breaths. “This is what I wanted. Just this.”

  “Alice . . .”

  “Don’t.” She looked up. “I have six hours. That’s all. And then I have to go.”

  He regarded her solemnly. “But not to Ann Arbor.”

  “No, not to Ann Arbor. To Detroit, I suppose, or Grand Rapids, or . . . or anywhere you want to think of me as going. But there’s only one train out, Thomas, and it leaves in six hours, and I have to be on it. I haven’t got a choice.”

  Moonrise. You’re leaving at moonrise. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice that little part of your itinerary? “Six hours it is, then,” he said. “What were you proposing we do with that time?”

  Alice slid her hands farther down the flat incline of his stomach, until her fingers grazed the waistband of his pants, and then dipped slightly beneath. “I thought maybe we could keep talking.”

  “Gladly,” he said, and kissed her again.

  4.

  * * *

  There are a great many kinds of kisses in the world. The kisses they passed back and forth between them were a conversation, in their own way; “Are you sure you have to go?” was answered with, “If I didn’t have to go, I would never have been able to come,” and there was no answer for that, save for regret over all the time that had been casually, unintentionally wasted. By both of them.

  Thomas pulled his hand away from her face, dropping it to her hip before sliding both hands around to the front, where he unfastened her gun belt with two simple flicks of his thumbs. Alice broke away to give him a quizzical look, and he flashed her a quick, half-amused grin.

  “Where did you think your grandmother always took these to be repaired?” he asked. “To the tooth fairy?”

  “Oh, the tooth fairy doesn’t come to our place anymore,” she said, sliding her own hand around to his side and unfastening the straps holding his knife-holster in place. “She got tired of being shot at.”

  “Holding a grudge?”

  “No, just target practice.”

  Thomas shook his head, laughing for what felt like the first time in years, and bent to kiss her again as he pulled her with him toward the couch. The floor was a dangerous labyrinth of stacked books and half-repaired weapons, but he navigated it with grace, never missing a step.

  “Showoff,” murmured Alice, pulling his holster away and dropping it to the floor.

  “Says the woman who shot the tooth fairy,” he replied, and dropped backward onto the couch, pulling her down with him.

  “I don’t like things that buzz,” she said as she straddled his lap, bracing her knees on either side of his thighs as she began undoing his belt. “I’ve never liked things that buzz. Nothing that buzzes should come sneaking into my room and putting things under my pillow in the middle of the night.”

  “I’ll try to make it a point not to,” his breath caught as the fingers of one hand slid below the top of his pants, “buzz.”

  Alice’s expression sobered, even as she splayed her left hand flat against his chest and pinned him back against the couch. “I’ll hold you to that,” she said, voice gone suddenly quiet.

  “I’m sorry?” What she was doing with her right hand was making it difficult to focus on what she was actually saying.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, kissing him again.

  There was a moment where he could have argued with her. The moment passed. He tangled the fingers of his left hand through her hair as he used his right to unzip her vest and peel it away. Several throwing knives and a box of shotgun shells thudded to the floor, disregarded by both of them as the tempo of Alice’s fingers increased. She bent forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder, and he bit down on the curve of her neck, sliding his right hand up and under the back of her tank top. Alice made a small, surprised noise, but didn’t pull away. Her left hand slid down his chest to join the right. The rhythm faltered for a moment as she adjusted her fingers, and then resumed itself, her hands moving in long, slow strokes.

  Thomas continued working his hand up under the curve of her back until he reached the strap of her brassiere, tangled as it was with the shoulder holster she was wearing on her right arm. The same quick motion of his thumbs that had removed the gun belt unfastened the clasp, and he began working at the straps on her holster, undoing buckles during the lulls in her rhythmic stroking.

  There were no sounds but their rapidly-quickening breath for several minutes after that. Alice focused on the motion of her hands while Thomas worked to remove her shoulder holster, finally managing to peel it out through the armhole of her shirt without breaking her concentration and begin trailing kisses down the side of her neck, bracing his hands at the small of her back to keep her balanced. Alice responded by biting his collarbone, hands increasing tempo once again.

  He rocked his hips up to meet hers. She answered the motion in kind, her hands continuing to work as he dug his nails into the small of her back, mapping the thin lines of scar tissue that crisscrossed her spine. For a moment, they simply rocked together, until he sagged backward with an incoherent noise, and she pulled her hands free, twining her arms back around his neck.

  “Mmmm?” she inquired, kissing his ear.

  After a moment of looking for the appropriate words, he finally settled for, “Do I even want to know where you learned that sort of language?”

  “I went to college, and I read a lot,” she said, cheeks still flushed. Running her fingers along the back of his collar, she frowned. “Is this a garrote?”

  “That depends.” He slid his hand down to the waistband of her jeans. “Is this a small-caliber pistol?”

  Alice smiled blithely. “Maybe.”

  “In that case, maybe it’s a garrote.” Thomas turned to kiss her shoulder again. “Why do you ask?”

  “Didn’t I just get you out of the shower?” Alice asked, rolling her shoulder back to allow him easier access.

  Kissing the hollow of her collarbone, he said, “Yes. That’s why I’m so woefully underdressed.”

  “Three ways to kill a man is underdressed?” she said dubiously.

  Thomas pulled back, eyeing her. “Three ways to kill a man?”

  “The knife I took off your belt, the garrote, and the folding sword at the back of your trousers,” she said, with a blink.

  “You think I only have three ways to kill a man?” He shook his head. “Frankly, Alice, I think I’m rather offended.”

  “Oh.” Expression grave, Alice leaned back, away from him, and removed first her shirt, then her already-unfastened bra. “Does this help?”

  Thomas considered her, studying her breasts, stomach, and shoulders before turning his attention toward the bandages still taped around her left bicep. Then he nodded and tugged her close again. “Yes, it does. I’m substantially less offended now, if slightly overdressed.”

  “You were underdressed a moment ago,” she said, before she kissed him, twining the fingers of her left hand into his hair again. “We’re making progress.”

  “Progress is good,” he agreed, taking the pistol from the back of her jeans and setting it carefully on the table next to the couch before sliding his hands down below the level of her waistband, cupping her rear in his palms. “Mankind has always favored progress over stagnation.”

  “So let’s progress.”

  There was no need for further conversation for some time after that. Alice removed his shirt, discovering two more weapons in the process—the knife in his left shirt sleeve wasn’t surprising, but the derringer in his right sleeve was, at least slightly; she’d never considered him that much of a gun man—and began performing the long-delayed task of mapping the tattoos covering his arms and torso with her tongue. He leaned back long enough to catch his breath, then began stripping her in return, removing the knives from her belt one by one before undoing the belt itself, working it carefully out of the loops of her jeans.