My mouth snapped shut. True. Even I'd thought those emotions had dried up like a shallow lake bed beneath the desert sun.

"Like you're an expert," I muttered.

"Darling, I fall in love on a daily basis," she said, waving a hand around her. "I love that tree and this drink and Luna here." Ah, that was the name of the beast twining about my legs. I reached down and scratched Luna behind her ears. Her throat rumbled. Outside, lightning flashed. "I love you," Olivia continued, "and I love Ben for loving you too."

I must have looked surprised at that. My hand stilled on Luna's back.

"You know he does," she said.

"Maybe he does," I nodded cautiously, stroking the cat again, "and maybe I know it, but how do you?"

Olivia leaned forward. "Because how could anyone know the real Joanna Archer and not love her?"

I smiled at her sincerity but looked away. It wasn't that the sentiment wasn't appreciated, but her rhetorical question brought to mind that afternoon's confrontation with Xavier.

Olivia, sensing that, quickly changed the subject. "Don't you want to open your present?"

I nodded, but didn't reach for the package in the corner of the coffee tray. "I need to ask your help with something first."

"Want me to take Ben for a little ride? Break him in for you?"

"I think I can handle that on my own," I replied dryly.

"Too bad," she said, demurely sipping her martini.

"I want to find out who my real father is," I said. "I think Xavier knows, but he's keeping it from me."

"Why would he?"

"Knowing him, it's probably just a power trip, something he can use to keep me under his thumb." I frowned and tapped my finger against my gla.s.s. "But I was thinking about it this afternoon. What if he knows where the guy lives? What if Zoe mentioned it to him at some point?"

"What if," Olivia finished for me, "she returned to this man when she left Xavier?"

I smiled at her use of his name. "So you'll help me?"

She looked at me like I had the mental capacity of a two-year-old, which was unsettling. "I've already begun." She rose and jerked her head, indicating I should follow. I did, leaving my present, my martini, and Luna on the couch behind me.

Mother Nature was apparently determined to make the city of light look like a dimly flickering bulb. The gla.s.s wall extending through the bedroom normally offered up a 180-degree view of the valley's surrounding mountain ranges. Tonight, though, the oddly low cloud cover kept us from seeing even two feet beyond the gla.s.s. Lightning slashed at the sky, and as thunder rumbled directly overhead, I shuddered, thankful we were safely inside.

I turned my attention to the computer console, and sure enough, the machine was already on, bathing the corner of the room in an unflattering greenish hue. Circling to the other side, I saw the screen dancing with lipstick tubes and bottles of fingernail polish. I'd have wondered where Olivia found such a thing, but knew she'd probably designed it herself. Then I watched as she positioned herself in front of the monitor, placed acrylic against the ergonomic keyboard, and became the Olivia Archer most people never imagined.

Her fingers flew, following paths that could as easily access data from government sites as blow through a game of FreeCell. She'd gotten her first fake ID this way, and as a teen I'd had her pull up my psych evaluations as well.

Joanna Archer is suffering severe physical and mental trauma due to the attack and subsequent s.e.xual a.s.sault she endured six months ago. Well, duh.

Olivia hummed absently, her eyes fixed on the screen, brows pulled down despite repeated botox injections, and glossed mouth pursed in pretty concentration.

She had discovered computers around the same time I had escaped into Krav Maga. Our mother had left no indication that she would ever be returning, and our father had so thoroughly removed himself that neither of us even thought of turning to him, and I was emotionally unavailable, which left Olivia to fight her demons alone.

I've always felt guilty at how I shut her out in those early days, but this-a skill few possessed-was the good that had come from it, as strange and unexpected as a lotus blooming in a trash heap. She'd developed an ident.i.ty outside of her physical body, one completely at odds with the way others thought of her. She may have had a body manufactured in Sin City, but she had a mind to rival the finest graduates of MIT.

In short, she was an unnaturally talented, self-taught computer genius.

With an underground website catering to hackers and their faceless clients, her business generated a far greater income than her generous monthly allowance from Xavier. There were bulletin boards on everything from the technology needed to take care of outstanding parking tickets to a.s.sistance establishing offsh.o.r.e bank accounts, and help in funneling untraceable money into those accounts. Her screen name? The Archer, of course.

Because Xavier had discouraged Olivia's interest in anything beyond basic cosmetic application, she'd developed the habit of working at night, an M.O. that served her exceedingly well. To the outside world it appeared she slept all morning, spent her days shopping or lunching with the ladies, and partied all night. But most of the time she could be found here, and this, I'd realized, was Olivia's warrior side. The part of her that flipped the bird at Xavier and everyone else.

"See," she was saying, pointing at a graphic flashing at the top right corner of the screen, "there are multiple levels to break through in order to access your birth records. Shouldn't take more than an hour. We'll see if Mom covered her tracks as well as she thinks she has."

I nodded like I understood, but was distracted by the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. Another screen was currently in use. "What's that?"

Her gaze followed my own, and I thought I saw her body jolt. The screen had my name on it. Mine and another.

"Nothing." A quick dance of fingers and it vanished.

"Olivia," I said, slowly enunciating each syllable of her name. "What was that? You're not trying to find that...that child, are you?"

"No!" she said, too fast, and crossed her arms. It was more a protective move than a defiant one. I stared at her, hard. Olivia might be queen of the computer, but I knew body language.

"Don't play affronted bimbo with me." I jabbed a finger at the screen. "What're you up to?"

Her cell phone rang just then, the theme from Pretty in Pink saving her from reply. I raised one brow, indicating we'd pick this conversation up later. Some things, and some people, were best kept in the past. She quickly turned her back to me and flipped the phone open. "h.e.l.lo?"

I turned my attention back to the screen, letting thoughts of unwanted children fade from my mind. Slowly, the computer was working through the records at Sunrise Hospital. I studied it, toying absently with the chain at my neck as I watched the dates and files flash in front of my eyes, and wondered how Zoe had fooled everybody so thoroughly about my parentage for so long? And why?

Had she cheated on Xavier, and didn't want to risk losing him, or his money? But then, why just up and leave sixteen years later? And why, at least, had she never told me? She knew there was no love lost between he and I.

"But it's almost midnight," I heard Olivia say in her best bubblehead voice. This was followed by a sigh that said the person on the phone already knew this and didn't care. "Look, it's just not a good time, Butch."

She rolled her eyes when she saw my expression, and I shook my head. Butch? She was dating someone named Butch? "My sister's over and we're just having-"

I heard the timbre of a masculine voice arguing his point, but the boom of thunder drowned out the words. I picked up Luna, whose tail had gone bottle-brushed at the accompanying flash of light, and tried to stroke her fur back down into something resembling feline. Outside, rain began to pour in sheets over the gla.s.s walls.

"Yes, I know it's raining," Olivia was saying. "No, you can't stay until the storm pa.s.ses. You can pick up your things, but then you have to go. 'Bye."

She threw the phone across the room and it landed on a pink sea of down comforter and frilly pillows. Then she stalked over to her closet and pulled out handcuffs. And a whip. I stared, openmouthed.

"Don't ask," she muttered, adding a studded d.i.l.d.o to the loot. "I thought it would be fun. That was before the condom broke. I panicked at the thought of wading around in his gene pool, you'll see, and threw him out without giving back his toys. He's come to collect."

"Must have found a new playmate." She gave me a sharp look, and I grinned. "No pun intended."

"Fine with me. He was too obsessive for my tastes anyway. He wanted to lick me in the weirdest places. And he could spend hours smelling me. Not to mention he had more hair than a woolly mammoth."

"Aren't those extinct?"

"So we believed," she said, and threw some sort of belt-I didn't want to know what it looped around-into a pile that was growing at an alarming rate.

"Don't worry," I said, picking up a tube of lipstick with a p.e.n.i.s-shaped wand. "If he gets overly amorous, I've got your back."

"Not necessary," she said, yanking the tube from my hands. I picked up Luna instead. "He looks like a h.e.l.l's Angel, but he's relatively harmless."

I saw what she meant when she opened her door to a six and a half foot ape dressed entirely in leather a minute later. I actually thought he looked rather like a large bulldog, complete with sunken eyes and hanging jowls, and she was right-he was hairy. I could see where Olivia might balk at banging chromosomes with a physiological mutant.

"Jo, this is Butch."

"Yes, it is," I muttered, giving the giant a hesitant nod.

Luna apparently experienced a similar reaction. She took one look at Butch and sprung from my arms like an Olympic platform diver. "Ouch, s.h.i.t!"

The bundle of fur wheeled across the marble floor, scrambling for purchase with a click-clack of sharpened nails, and disappeared into the bedroom. As I watched, the stinging marks on my arm became angry pink ribbons, then filled with bright red blood, promising scarring.

"s.h.i.t," I said again.

"Are you all right?" Olivia rushed over, leaving Butch in the foyer.

"He never did like me," Butch mumbled, shutting the door behind him.

"She," Olivia corrected as Butch joined us in the living room. "She never liked you. And maybe she would have if you hadn't stepped on her tail. Twice."

Butch just shrugged. Big bad bulldog.

"You two stay here," she said, catching my eye. That meant she didn't want him following her into the bedroom. "I'll just get your things and find Jo something to wash off with."

She disappeared, leaving me with Leather Man. He was practically wearing the whole cow-when he started moving toward me I almost expected him to moo.

"Want me to take a look?" He held out his hand. I hesitated, without reason, though I generally didn't need one. I didn't know Butch, but there was some sort of unease or smothered energy that I didn't like. The drop-point knife was still sitting on the coffee table, close enough to see, but far enough away to be as useful as a b.u.t.ter knife. Still, I had the folded blade in my boot, and was confident enough to hold out my arm for his inspection, testing us both. If there was something off about Butch, I didn't want him around Olivia, and better I find out about it than she.

He took my wrist gently, gazing at the scratch almost clinically, a concerned enough expression on his fleshy face. I relaxed a fraction. Then he raised my arm and inhaled deeply of the wound, nostrils flaring. That's when I saw.

The pads of his fingertips were curiously smooth, almost shiny with luminescence, and unlined. Without prints. I forced my arm not to tense beneath his touch and quickly returned my eyes to his face.

The lightning flashed outside, firing the room and slashing across his features to illuminate chiseled bone and hollow eyes; a skeleton's bony sneer with teeth shaped like daggers. His hold tightened a fraction, just the fingertips, those too-smooth pads, but it was enough to make me still and wait for an opening to reclaim my arm.

As thunder rolled across the sky, Butch smiled lopsidedly. "Do you know what time it is?"

I didn't look at my watch. "Yeah. It's time for you to let go of my hand."

His fingers tightened over mine, and given one moment more I'd have broken them, but he dropped my arm suddenly and walked away. Tensed, braced for a fight, this unbalanced me. He just drifted away like he'd never sniffed at my skin in an intimate way or held a look of naked hunger in those hollow eyes. Retrieving my long blade from the coffee table, I tucked it in the waistband of my pants, then grabbed the kubotan from my purse, concealing it in my pocket. And I followed him into her bedroom.

"I think that's everything," Olivia was saying. Her back to us both, she was bent over a mound of stilettos and boots emptied from her shoe closet. She continued talking, her voice a breathy staccato thrumming in the air, but I don't think either Butch or I heard a word. There was something else going on, like the dark undercurrent stirring beneath a placid lake just before the monster struck. I inched toward Olivia, my back to the wall. Butch, strangely enough, kept his gaze on the bedside clock. It was one minute to midnight.

"Olivia," I said in my quietest, deadliest voice. "Get behind me."

Two pairs of eyes looked at me, but only one seemed surprised. Butch merely looked amused. I moved to my sister's side.

"How about that. Ajax was right." He shook his head wonderingly. "It was you all along. Hidden in plain sight. Xavier's daughter, no less."

Whatever the h.e.l.l that meant. "I'm not Xavier's daughter."

He laughed. "Then whoever hid you knew what they were doing."

"Excuse me? What's going on here? Am I missing something?"

"I thought it was her," Butch said, jerking his head at Olivia. "It was the closest I could come to scenting you, but once I was in her..." He shook his head in a sorrowful gesture. "I thought I was going anosmic."

Then he slid a smoothly curving scimitar from behind the nape of his neck. I had to give it to these guys-whoever they were, they had unique weapons.

"Whoa!" Olivia's breath escaped her in a whoosh. I don't think I was breathing at all. "I've heard of unsafe s.e.x, but this is ridiculous!"

"It was you we were after," he said, ignoring her. "You I detected on your sister's skin, your signature scent all along. But what I can't understand," he continued, looking at the bedside clock, tapping the flat edge of the blade against his palm like he was waiting, "is how you recognized me. You don't fully come into your sixth sense for another...thirty seconds."

Midnight. Like that homeless freak had said. Make sure you survive.

"Signature scent?" I mimicked, my eyes also on the clock. "Kinda girly, don't you think?"

"Well, I'm a right softie at heart." He flashed those dagger teeth. "Tell me, Joanna, been smelling things lately? Interesting things? Foul things on the wind?"

I swallowed hard. "What, Ajax tell you that too?"

"Common knowledge. You're turning twenty-five, right? That's when the metamorphosis begins."

"Excuse me," Olivia said, "but do you two know each other?"

Butch smiled and took a step forward. "Not as well as we're about to."

"That's enough, Butch. One more step and this stiletto's going up your a.s.s." We all looked down at Olivia's hand. I frowned, recognizing the ebony pump as one of her favorites. The same thought must have occurred to her. She dropped the shoe and picked up another. "This stiletto's going up your a.s.s."

I sighed. Bless her for trying.

Butch returned his eyes to me. "Get ready, innocent. Your first real breath will also be your last."

I only had a vague notion of what he was talking about, based on snippets from a very unreal last twenty-four hours, but I knew a real threat when I heard one.

Ten, nine, eight...the seconds inched by, midnight looming. Outside, thunder cracked like a whip overhead, and the sheet of pattering rain deteriorated into a full-force onslaught of sleet and hail. Wind whistled, rattling at the walls, and the building began to shake in palsied tremors. Some of Olivia's knickknacks tinkled, others shattered, and then the core of the building began to rock on its braces. An explosion sounded as we crossed into midnight.

"Olivia, get back!" I had to yell as the tempest blew through the bedroom. It was like being at the top of a tornado's funnel, poised to be sucked inside. Then the gla.s.s wall began to splinter, a sound like fingernails raking a chalkboard, sending spasms up my spine. I resisted the impulse to cover my ears, and went for the blade at my back instead. Butch tensed and raised his scimitar. A bolt of lightning arrowed the sky as Olivia screamed behind me, and there was a flicker of movement from the corner of my eye.

And then I saw nothing.

Molten licorice, smoking iron, and bright flames filled my mouth. I was singed, burning from the inside out, and my teeth felt like they were being collectively yanked from my jaw. I knew somewhere in my mind I'd been hit, and my fallen knife now lay uselessly on the floor, but that knowledge was the only lingering connection between brain and body. The synapses controlling movement had been severed by the bolt, much like how the muscles continue to twitch in a decapitated chicken's body. I couldn't tell if I was still standing or had fallen. In the whiplash of that storm, I totally lost myself.

Once, in my early teens, I'd ventured into the high desert during a flash flood, driven by a youthful sense of adventure and an even greater sense of invulnerability. A stray dog had been my unlikely companion that night, and as it galloped unevenly across the rocky terrain, I saw it struck by lightning. Its golden fur disintegrated instantly into ash, and smoke streamed from its body like a signal for help. When I reached the fallen animal's side, its eyes were wide saucers, unblinking, and the heat emanating from that blistering body warded me off. This was how I felt now; sightless, terrified, and smoldering. And just before all my senses were lost, I felt an acute pain sear through my left shoulder.

Then there was nothing. No pain, no light, not even darkness. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed, and my body felt like I was suspended in water; numb, floating, and impervious from all sides. I knew I was in trouble, if not already dead, but I was unable to react, and had no idea how long I remained in this state.

It felt like forever.

It felt like a nanosecond.