Once again, I had placed the people I loved most in mortal danger. Maybe my father was right. Maybe I needed to give it up, become an accountant or a dog walker. How much trouble could I get in then?

Reyes was always here for me, but I’d bound him. I’d kept him from killing himself and killed myself instead. It was a sad testament to my ineptitude that I could hardly go two weeks without needing him to save my ass.

“Your choice,” he said, a microsecond before I felt a fiery slash on the underside my left arm.

I felt tendons snap apart that time, and my head fell back as I bit my tongue to keep from screaming. But the pain overwhelmed me. My eyes rolled heavenward as I tumbled back to Reyes.

“Dutch,” he said from somewhere in the darkness. “Where are you?”

“Home,” I muttered, fighting to stay with him.

“Unbind me,” he commanded breathlessly, and I had the distinct feeling he was running. “I won’t get to you in time. Charley, damn it.”

“I don’t know h—”

“Say it!” he ordered through gritted teeth. “Just say the words.”

“I’m sorry.” Helplessness washed over me as I felt myself leaving him again. For the first time in my life, I believed I was going to die and there was nothing he or I could do about it.

The scalpel sent another shock wave skirting over my nerve endings. I blinked past the blood pooling in my lashes as a jolt of the most unimaginable pain I’d ever felt brought me skyrocketing to the surface again. I breathed in deep, as if coming up for air from the bottom of the ocean.

Walker had sliced up my rib cage, the scalpel running along the bones like a kid with a stick and a white picket fence. Shaking so hard I wondered if I was seizing, I clutched the chair and forced my teeth to stay locked. But trying so desperately to stay in control of certain bodily functions had me losing control of others, and I felt the warmth of urine seep between my legs and pool underneath me, mingling with the blood already there.

He bent over me and was poking around the cut on my thigh. Then he turned, looked right into my eyes. I could barely focus, but he was frowning, studying. “Reyes,” he said, and I blinked back to him. “You’re like him. You heal like he did.” He pressed the scalpel against my cheek, readying for his next strike. “What are you?”

He didn’t wait long for an answer before blood was streaming into my mouth and down my throat. I tried to spit it out, but that would require the unclenching of my jaw, a risk I wasn’t willing to take.

“I wonder what would happen,” he said, prying my hand off the arm of the chair, “if I took a finger.”

Just as he started to do that very thing—the sharp sting of metal slicing through flesh becoming mind shattering when it hit bone—we both heard someone running up the stairs in the hall.

“Finally,” I heard the monster say. He smiled and turned back to me. “It’s our little escaped convict, isn’t it?”

Half a heartbeat later, the door crashed open and the silhouette of a large man stood framed in the doorway.

Reyes. No.

Before I could say anything, before I could think, the gun went off. Walker had been waiting for him, knowing he would come. And I closed my eyes and stopped the spin of the Earth on its axis.

When I opened them, the bullet was inching through the air halfway between Walker and Reyes. It crawled forward, and I struggled with every ounce of my being to keep my grip on time, but it slipped through my fingers like smoke in a summer breeze.

I could only watch as it crept forward, its target still unaware of its existence, and the words came to me in a flash.

“Rey’aziel,” I said, forcing my teeth apart. “Te libero.”

In an instant, Reyes materialized beside me as time crashed through my barrier with a vengeance. I heard another gunshot a microsecond before I heard the shiiiiing of Reyes’s sword.

His robe, thick and undulating like an ocean wave, swallowed half the room as his blade sliced through Walker with the grace of a seasoned golfer.

Walker froze, his eyes wide with disbelief as he glanced down, wondering what was wrong, because Reyes sliced from the inside out. No external trauma. Nothing distasteful like gaping wounds or gushing blood. So the fact that he had been drenched in pain and could no longer move boggled him. I wished he could see Reyes, the massive presence of his robe and what lay beneath it. Since he couldn’t, he’d have no idea what was now picking him up and throwing him across the room. The walls shook when Walker hit, and I realized I could no longer see Reyes’s corporeal self. I could only hope the bullets were less strategically placed than Reyes’s blade. It would take more than a couple of bullets to bring him down.

Then he turned toward me and lowered the hood of his robe, revealing the most beautiful face I’d ever seen. He kneeled and took mine into his hands. “Dutch, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry?” I tried to say, but I realized my mouth and throat were too full of blood to say anything. Then I tumbled back into oblivion and slept at last.

25

An integral part of any best friend’s job is to

immediately clear your computer history if you die.

—T-SHIRT

“I think you’re right. Should we get a doctor?”

I tried to focus on the voice by my side, male and distinctly Uncle Bob–ish, but I couldn’t quite place the source. Then another one chimed in, so I tried to focus on it instead.

“Definitely, yes, go get someone.”