“Don’t listen to his rhetoric,” she commanded of Docia as she took her hand and promptly tucked the fingers into her inner elbow, covered them securely, and turned to draw Docia into step with her right back out of the room. “The older royals like him are so mired down in who they used to be. They forget they are dust, linen cloth, and canopic jars somewhere and that these are modern bodies in a modern world.”

“Cleo,” Ram said warningly, the name almost a growl of displeasure. Cleo was clearly unimpressed.

“Here’s the scoop. You died, right? Almost. When you died you stepped into the Ether. Right?” Docia nodded, not knowing what else to do in response to Cleo’s questioning remarks. “There you met … whom did you meet, anyway? Did she say?”

Docia shook her head mutely, trying to figure out how everyone knew about what had happened during her near death experience.

“Was it even a her? Kahotep came back as a woman in two of his Blended incarnations just to see what the experience would be like. I thought of choosing a male myself once or twice. But really, who would want to be a man? The idea of not being able to grow a child … it saddens me.”

“It w-was a woman.…”

“Of course it was! And who are you?”

“I— she didn’t …”

“Hatshepsut.” Ram spoke up from behind them, his voice falling dark and hard, the word spitting from him like a cross between a curse and a sneeze.

Cleo froze midstep, her carefree air evaporating instantly. She immediately let go of Docia’s arm and dropped to her knees, bowing her beautiful head down low, her hands reaching out to touch Docia’s feet as her tail of hair fanned out over the tile floor before settling into stillness.

“My queen. I apologize. I did not realize it was you,” she said with breathless reverence. “Ram, I never thought you’d find her this quickly! I assumed …” She went silent, leaving Docia to stare down at her in shock and an absolute sense of having leapt down a rabbit hole somewhere along the way. She was struggling to figure things out, to catch up and work off the same script that they seemed to be working off.

“I’m a little confused,” was all she could manage to eke out.

And that was as long as Cleo’s contrition lasted. She was just as quickly back at full height and had Docia’s shoulders snuggled under her arm in that very next instant.

“Never you fear. Cleo is here to help you.”

“Cleo, I am here to help her,” Ram said darkly in warning.

“Sorry, I didn’t get that,” Cleo lied breezily, brushing a hand of dismissal in Ram’s face. “You know, this original is deaf in this ear, I think.” She wiggled a finger in the suspect ear.

“Cleo!”

“I understand how you feel,” she continued on in Docia’s ear. “My last incarnation before this one, it took nearly six weeks for the Blending to happen. I walked around the whole time utterly confused. It didn’t help that it was the Civil War and every time I turned around someone was stuffing me into a corset. Damned distracting, let me tell you. Let me finish giving you the scoop. So. Died. Ether.” Cleo ticked off the steps on her finger. “Our queen chose you. She piggybacked on your soul, so to speak, to get back here to the mortal plane. Now you and she are going to Blend over the next few weeks. Downside? It’s as confusing and disturbing as a game of drag queen bingo in the lobby of the Carlisle Hotel.” Cleo brushed that off. “Upside? You’ll heal superfast now. You’ll become very strong. The aging process comes to a screeching halt. Even reverses in some cases! Yay, right?” She was obviously excited about that one. “I forget what other power Hatshepsut draws with her … but one step at a time. Right? You look like you went through hell. I’m amazed she was able to claim you at all.”

Docia just stared at her, mouth agape.

“I guess that’s … um … good?” she said when Cleo looked at her expectantly.

“Good? That’s great! You’re so lucky you were claimed by the highest of all queens! You are destined to be—”

“Cleo!”

This time Ram’s bark of warning was something even Cleo couldn’t ignore. It rolled over them both like storm clouds, and Docia could swear she heard and felt a slam of thunder outside in time with it. Now that was just creepy, she thought. Rather like the scary butler in the vampire mansion who elicited a clap of thunder and lightning after opening the door and saying, “Good eeeevening!”

Again, Cleo wasn’t in the least impressed. She huffed at Ram, but she also discontinued her sentence, much to Docia’s frustration. The highest of queens? Was that who was knocking around inside of her? That is, if she was going to listen to either of these raving lunatics. Of course, it was a little compelling as far as lunacy went. Highest of queens? Destined to be something other than the manager of a dinky little office? If she had to almost die, that’d be kind of a really nice side effect of the whole nasty business.

“I think I need something to drink.”

“I’ll get you some water, beauteous majesty,” said a quiet man she hadn’t had time to notice, kneeling deeply before he rose to leave.

Beauteous majesty? Fucking A! What woman couldn’t use a bunch of men referring to her as “beauteous majesty”? That alone almost made the dance on the rocks worthwhile.

“Liquor,” she managed to choke out. After all, being a beauteous majesty was going to take some getting used to. Just resisting the urge to giggle was going to take superior training and maybe some severe lip biting. “Need liquor.”

The man stopped and nodded. “As you wish.”

“No,” Ram barked. “The doctors said you were not to have any such spirits.”

And bam. There it was. The end of her beauteousness and her majesty. Well, as far as Ram was concerned, in any event. The other man looked torn, however, hesitating between the two commands he’d been given. He shifted his weight awkwardly on the balls of his feet, his gaze darting from Ram to her.

“I think I made my wishes clear,” she said firmly and reproachfully, not really knowing where the mischief came from. Hmm. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with a wild urge to pull rank on this man who had done nothing but move her around like a frigging chess piece as she stood there all confused on his little chessboard, could it? But if she was the queen, that meant she was the strongest piece on the board … and she wasn’t above testing that out.

“Anthony.” There was a clear and present warning in the way Ram said the other man’s name. Anthony swallowed hard, even as he went terribly pale. But he didn’t look at Ram, he looked at Docia. His eyes were begging her for reprieve. He certainly knew she was more human than she was his queen at present, and he was hoping she would be willing to relent based on that fact. It made her wonder just how much of a bitch this queen of theirs was. Was that the calm, strong voice that had suddenly appeared in her head? Was there going to be a major bitchy side to her as well?

“Fine. Whatever,” she said, waving off the suffering man. She felt terribly guilty when she saw the wash of pure relief that went through him. She realized as he turned and the light glinted off his skin that he had broken a significant sweat. She had not meant to cause him any real discomfort. It wasn’t as though he’d been in any kind of danger … was it?

“Cleo, if you don’t mind, I would like to give Docia a better explanation of what she can expect,” Ram said, coming across the room and standing over her, making her suddenly recall just how big and tall he was in comparison with her reasonably shrimpy proportions. Truth was, outside of their respect for this queen she was purportedly lugging around inside of her, she had absolutely no bargaining chips in this situation.

Cleo opened her mouth to argue, but Vincent or Ram or whatever the hell he wanted to call himself from one minute to the next had pulled out a cellphone and snapped it open and was holding it in front of Docia’s face.

“I assume you’d like to call your brother?”

Holy shitcakes!

She grabbed for the phone, panicking as she stared at the unfamiliar configuration and tried to decide which button required hitting first. What was his number? “Oh, my God, I can’t remember his number! My brain is broken!”

“Or, like most humans, you’ve become overly dependent on your contacts list,” he said dryly, coming around so that he was behind her. He reached out and cupped her flailing hands and fingers in his, holding them firmly for an instant, willing her to calm down. It worked for some reason, the strength and warmth of him surrounding her like the powerful heat of a fire that fought back a freezing chill. And just like that, the contrast in temperatures, the clash in counterproductive forces, caused a deep-rooted shiver to rattle through her, and goose bumps rippled up her arms and across her breasts.

God, he is so freaking warm! It was like lying out in the sun as a child without a stitch of shade around … and not a single instant of worry in your mind about the harm it could be causing you. An abandoned and beautiful warmth, one that made prickles dance on your skin if, say, a stray hair was lying the wrong way or a dust mote skipped over it. Only then, in the quiet of that baking warmth, were you still enough to notice those things.

He also smelled incredibly … well, the only word she could think of right then was yummy. It wasn’t some gagging, cloying cologne manufactured by man in an attempt to lure a woman with falseness and trickery … a trickery that often failed because the man himself failed to consider the whole “less is more” approach to these things. It was clean, pure … with a dusting of something … not smoky, but … crap, she couldn’t figure it out. And somewhere along the line she had turned her head so her nose was almost touching the long, strong column of his throat. It was also intriguing to see he had a hard, strong pulse dancing through his carotid artery. Of course, they all had pulses in their carotid arteries, but … anyway, despite all this weird possession mumbo jumbo she was being subjected to, it was nice to know they weren’t the walking dead or anything.

She snapped her attention back to the phone. Phone. Brother. Jackson. Must call Jackson. Wait a minute …

“Just like that?” she asked as her already overloaded mind jumped focus once again. “You’re just going to let me call my police officer brother?”

“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” he asked, sounding amused as he dialed Jackson’s cellphone number. Okay, well, should this worry me? she wondered. How the hell did he know her brother’s cellphone number better than she did? “Just tell him you are safe with friends, not to worry about you, only that you needed a change of pace.”

“Lie to him,” she said with a frown. “Okay, I don’t think you understand the whole dynamic between me and Jackson. First off, I suck at lying. I mean supersuck at it. And second, Jackson knows who all my friends are and he’s going to have already tried to call all of them, I’m sure.”

“So, you are trying to talk me out of it?”

“No. I just—”

“Listen. I want you to try something. Just … be still a moment. Try going quiet in your head … as if you were trying to go to sleep.”

“Right now? Like this?” With big, hunkalicious male arms around me? Yeah. Not so much conducive to calm, if her jittery heart were anything to go by.

“Try it. Do that for sixty seconds and then hit send. What’s the worst that can happen? He realizes you’ve been kidnapped and he tries to hunt you down. Which is exactly what he’s doing right now, I assure you. Either way, he’ll hear your voice, know you’re still alive, and find a small piece of comfort in the knowledge.”

Docia looked at him curiously. There was such a strange thread of thoughtfulness in his dissection of the situation. She had been picking up on that repeatedly since they’d come into contact. She looked back at the phone, at his hands surrounding hers, and invariably at the wicked red line down the back of his hand that indicated where, less than a couple of hours ago, he’d allowed himself to take a knife through his hand to keep her from being stabbed instead. How had he healed so much so quickly? Was it true what Cleo had said? Would she heal that quickly now? Did that explain how she had gone from near death in the ICU to walking around the way she was in just a matter of days?

“Shh,” he said softly, whispering the sibilant sound against her right temple. “As if you were going to sleep. No thinking.”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but when I go to sleep I do nothing but think. You’re sitting still and it’s kinda boring just lying there, so really there’s nothing else to do but—”