"As safe as she would be in here with us. Doors and walls don't mean much to the Fae. I could always-"

"Shut up."

I turned slightly and looked up at him. "What?"

"Shut up," he said, then closed his mouth over mine.

His mouth was hot. His lips. His tongue. I couldn't get enough of his heat. I couldn't get close enough to the source.

It wasn't magick but it seemed like it. He slid his hand under my sweater. I unzipped his jeans. He teased my nipple with the pad of his thumb. I found him with my hand.

There wasn't time to get naked. There wasn't time to tease or stroke or prolong.

We stumbled across the room, still kissing. He pressed me up against the wall, then slid my jeans and panties down my body. His tongue burned a line down between my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, over my belly, lower and lower still until he found me and I cried out in the quiet room.

"Wrap your legs around my waist." His words were m.u.f.fled against the side of my neck. "I want to come inside you."

His hands grasped my hips and I gasped as he lowered me onto his rigid shaft. I gripped him hard with my thighs. He was ferocious in his need and I met him thrust for thrust. The sparks between us turned to flame.

Nothing lasted forever. Not people. Not things. Not even love.

This time tomorrow it might be too late.

KAREN.

I forgot just how far north Sugar Maple was. Spring nights weren't always gentle up here. The light sweater I had borrowed from Chloe wasn't cutting it so I turned back toward the cottage to grab another one.

My mind was a blank. It scared me that, with all there was at stake and a clock ticking away the minutes, I could be so totally devoid of ideas, but I guess there is just so much the human brain can take before it shuts down in self-preservation.

Human brain. Strange to think having one put me in the minority around here. Strange to think having one put me in the minority around here.

Shivering, I jogged up the driveway and was almost at the porch steps when I caught sight of movement in the front window. Luke and Chloe, shadowy in the darkened room, were wrapped in each other's arms, ivory and gold sparks shooting in every direction like fireworks gone crazy.

It's not that I didn't know they were lovers. All you had to do was look at them to know that. But knowing it and seeing it were very different things.

Life went on.

No matter what happened, no matter how battered and bruised you were, sooner or later life swept you up again and threw you back into the river. Luke had moved on while I was still standing onsh.o.r.e, unable to make peace with Steffie's death. There had always been something unfinished to it, as if I'd caught only part of the story and needed to know how it ended.

Or even if it ended.

Clearly I couldn't go back into the cottage without embarra.s.sing all three of us so I checked Luke's truck for a jacket or blanket, then opened the door of Chloe's Buick, where I stumbled on the mother lode. I grabbed a phenomenal Aran cardie with vintage b.u.t.tons and front pockets. It fell practically to my knees, which considering the fact I was freezing, wasn't a bad thing at all.

The creep-out factor was sky-high as I walked toward town. I jumped at every sound in the bushes and looked over my shoulder so many times I would have been better off walking backward.

Maybe Chloe didn't know what to do next, but scarfing ice cream at the kitchen table while Luke made phone calls wasn't going to get us anywhere. Steffie was out here somewhere. I'd seen her with my own eyes. I'd watched as she pounded helplessly at some supernatural cage.

My baby . . . caged.

I stopped walking as the image flashed before my eyes.

She had looked angry and terrified and lonely, and if I could have breached the divide between worlds, I would have torn that creature Isadora apart with my bare hands and enjoyed every moment of the carnage.

How could Luke stand there and do nothing? I knew he had moved on. The supermodel was proof of that. He had gathered up his memories of our marriage and of Steffie and compartmentalized them the way he used to separate his job from his family. But that was his baby girl up there. He'd been there when she was born. He had cut the cord, heard her first cries. How could he maintain that icy distance?

If you can hear me, Steffie, talk to me . . . I'm going to find you . . . Don't worry, baby . . .

Nothing. No visions appearing in the sky. No secret ringtone.

"Steffie!" I screamed into the unyielding silence. "Where are you, Steffie?"

Still nothing.

I broke into a run. "Steffie, talk to me! Help me find you!"

She was out there. I knew she was. Even Luke believed me now. Somebody had to find her before it was too late.

I stumbled over a branch and fell headlong in the road. Shards of gravel and dirt cut into my palms. My brain registered a sharp pain in my right knee, then dismissed it as irrelevant. I got back on my feet and resumed a limping run toward town.

I had nothing to do with Sugar Maple or Chloe's problems with magic types. I didn't care about their ridiculous feuds. All I cared about was my daughter.

I had to get back to the lake. I wanted to stand in the same spot where I'd been standing two hours ago when I saw Steffie trapped in that hideous cage. Maybe without Chloe and Luke and all their baggage, I would be able to talk to that Isadora, mother to mother. She had lost her sons. She knew how it felt to grieve for a child. I would open my heart to her. I'd hold nothing back.

Anything Isadora wanted. Anything Anything. She could have it. There was nothing I wouldn't do for my child.

But wouldn't she know that already? She had magical powers. She was some kind of wizard. She should know I was on whichever side was best for my baby girl.

"That's not how it works."

I jumped at the sound of a high-pitched woman's voice.

"Over here," the voice said.

I turned to my right. "Where are you?"

"You're looking at me."

And suddenly I was. She was about my height, twice my weight, and impossibly rosy-cheeked. "You realize you're going about this all wrong."

"Have we met?" I asked. "You look familiar."

"You remember! I'm so pleased. I was with you at the town hall last night when you pa.s.sed out." Her eyes were the deep brown of strong coffee. So dark I couldn't differentiate pupil from iris.

"I didn't pa.s.s out," I said. "Luke said I pa.s.sed out but I know I walked into a wall."

"You're half right," she said. "It wasn't a wall. It was Isadora's force field. No point pretending. You know everything now."

She had a crazy-wide smile. Lots of big white teeth. Really big white teeth. Especially those incisors.

"Oh G.o.d." I jumped back a step, unable to tear my eyes away from those teeth.

"You humans," she said with a merry laugh. "How many times have I told Luke we don't feed that way anymore? This is the twenty-first century. Why shackle ourselves to messy, archaic methods when modern science is at our disposal?"

I a.s.sumed it was a rhetorical question. At least I hoped it was because I was too shocked to speak. I mean, what do you say to a short, fat vampire with a bad perm and press-on nails?

"We know all about what happened tonight," she said, linking her plump arm through mine. Those eyes! I couldn't look away. "Someone should have taught Isadora some manners. I always said half of our troubles could have been avoided if she understood the difference between honey and vinegar."

I finally found my voice. "Um, who are you exactly?"

Again that helium-enhanced laugh. "Oh, honey, didn't I introduce myself? I'm Midge Stallworth and I'm the answer to your prayers."

18.

LUKE.

We barely had time to put our clothes back on before the first blue flame message flared to life.

Nothing like a hologram of your lover's best friend in her bathrobe and bunny slippers to quench the afterglow.

"Fair warning," Janice's image said. "Half the village is on the way over. They want to show their support."

I looked over at Chloe, who was finger-combing her hair. "Can they see us when we-?"

She shivered visibly. "I try not to think about that."

I replayed the last ten minutes and almost singed my brain. "I figured there was some kind of spell to keep them out."

"And there used to be a spell that kept you from seeing blue flame messages," she reminded me. "Things are changing around here."

"Some things won't," I said. "We're in this together."

She wasn't the kind of woman who cried easily. Seeing her eyes well up with tears. .h.i.t me hard. "You wouldn't be in this at all if you hadn't decided to stay here with me."

"No magic spells," I reminded her. "It was my choice to stay."

"You didn't know what you were getting yourself into. You didn't know your daughter's spirit would be involved."

"You didn't know either."

"The thought probes," she said, shaking her head. "I must have missed one."

"Thought probes? What the h.e.l.l is a thought probe?"

She looked extremely uncomfortable as she explained the small missile-shaped objects that copied both memory and emotion and added the components to mystical data banks the Pentagon would envy.

"You're telling me my memories are being stored someplace?"

"I'm not sure," she said uneasily. "Maybe not. I wove a pretty good spell around you to-"

"You put a spell on me?"

"Think of it like a flu shot. Just a little extra protection."

"What else aren't you telling me?"

"You know as much as I do now."

I wasn't sure I believed her. Not because she was a liar but because even Chloe didn't know the depth of her knowledge.

Or her powers, for that matter.

"I know what you're thinking."

I met her eyes. "I thought you weren't psychic."

She forced a smile. "You're thinking you never should have left Boston."

"That's not what I'm thinking."

"But you've thought it before."

I wouldn't lie to her. "A time or two."

"I'll understand if you want to leave when this is over."

I tried to find the right words but there weren't any. I loved her. I wanted to see where that love would lead us. But there was little doubt I was done with Sugar Maple.

CHLOE.

It was the middle of the night and my living room was filled with friends who had all converged on my cottage to tell Luke and me they were standing with us no matter what Isadora threw our way. Janice and her entire family. Lynette and her daughters, sadly without Cyrus and the boys, who were leaning in Isadora's direction. Paul Griggs and his sons. Lilith from the library and, to my surprise, her husband, Archie, as well. The entire crew from Fully Caffeinated.

I tried to be grateful for those who were there and not worry about the ones who were missing.

Or the fact that Luke and I hadn't exchanged a word in more than two hours.

"What's wrong?" Janice demanded as we retreated to the kitchen to brew another pot of tea. "Did you two have a fight?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "One second we were fine and the next we weren't."