"Not much time." Nick patted Margo's hand and looked at her. "I love you, but not the way he does. But if he screws up, I'm going to find a way to come back down here and kick his ass."
Margo nodded. "You know I didn't buy into that affair garbage."
"Ah, well…" Nick shrugged. "Thanks for that."
Jared shook himself. I'm losing my mind.
Steph took Nick's free hand and kissed the back of his knuckles. "I've missed you."
"Ah, I've missed you, too, but don't be sad." Nick placed Margo's hand in Jared's. "You'll get to break in another brother-in-law. Make him suffer just a little, though. Will ya?"
"You bet I will." Steph sniffled and smiled at the same time.
"How about you, Mrs. Brown?" Nick looked at the older woman. "Have you missed me, too?"
"I… I bought you tampons and evening primrose."
Steph leapt to her feet to catch Mrs. Brown, but the woman shook her head and righted herself.
Nick managed a weak smile. "And I'll never forget it either."
"And you…" Nick turned his gaze on Jared, his expression solemn. "There's a letter for you in my desk. You won't like it."
"What?"
Nick blinked. "Our father should've told you, but I figure he's living his own kind of hell now."
The air whooshed out of Jared's lungs. "We're…"
"Brothers." He took Jared's hand and gave it a firm shake. Their gazes met and held. After a moment, he looked upward. "I hear you, Séamus." Nick looked at Margo again. "Name your first daughter Raquel. Okay? Hey, if it's a boy, name him after his uncle Nick."
Nick's face transformed back into Raquel's. The blood returned, though no longer flowing. Her eyes closed, and she released her final breath.
Jared remained at Raquel's side with Margo until the paramedics arrived. Nick — his brother—was already gone. Back, he'd said.
"Do dead lawyers really go to Heaven?" Mrs. Brown asked, echoing Jared's thoughts.
Margo smiled. "This one did."
Epilogue
"I never thought I'd say this to you, but I'm impressed," Séamus said upon Nick's return.
Still numbed by all his experiences, Nick blinked several times before he realized it was all over. Raquel was dead, and he was back where he belonged. Resignation eased through him, and he gave Séamus a nod. "Thanks."
Séamus patted Nick on the shoulder. "Well done. Your promotion is in the works."
"Good to hear." Nick walked over to the monitor and peered down at the scene he'd left a few moments ago. Seeing Jared and Margo together didn't upset him now. Instead, it made him smile. This was as it should be. Fate. Destiny. More…
"Not only did you learn about sacrifice, but also to forgive."
Nick turned to face Séamus again, oddly at peace.
The Trouble with Heroes
by Jo Beverley
1
Refugees.
A dead word from the Earth history books had shockingly come to life. Jenny Hart first heard it at the print shop as she was closing her station ready to go home.
"… a queue of refugees that goes out of sight and beyond because the gates of Anglia are closed for the first time during the day in living memory."
The office screen ran Angliacom most of the day and Jenny was used to treating it as background noise. It took a moment to register, but then she turned to stare at the wall. The screen was split into max cells, but Sam Witherspoon, the manager, had the volume pegged to the picture of a line of crowded vehicles on the road. Buses, lorries, even farmvees of one sort or another.
"Refugees?" Sam echoed blankly.
"Like from plague, famine, and war?" Jenny asked, and they looked at each other.
She'd asked a question, but she knew. He probably knew, too.
"The blighters," she said.
He turned and picked up his case. "I'd better get home. Lock up, all right?"
"Sure." Jenny was still staring at the screen, but she knew why he was rushing away. He had a family. Children. Probably her mother would be fretting about her.
She picked up a phone and claimed a screen cell for it. Her mother liked to see her children when she was worried. Her younger brother's face came on first. He took one look and yelled, "Mum! Jenny!"
Madge Hart appeared, red hair wild, eyes flashing. "Are you all right?"
"Of course I am, Mum. I'm not outside, you know."
"But isn't it awful? Those poor people. We should take them in. But they say there's more and more, and room elsewhere. But they'll end up out in the dark. I don't know."
"It makes no difference, Mum. Blighters don't care whether it's night or day." All the same, Gaians didn't like to be outside at night.
"It's all panic," her mother said, clearly remembering her maternal duty to reassure her children. "If there was real trouble, we'd know."
"That's right."
"Are you coming home for dinner?"
"Not right now. I want to see if I can find out what's really going on."
"That's a good idea. Ask Dan. He'll know. Bring him home for dinner as long as it's not too late. He's been looking peaky."
"Right, Mum."
Jenny clicked off before she smiled. Her mother had fussed over Dan since he'd been a toddler, long before he'd been spotted as a fixer and sent off to the Gaian Center for Investigation and Control of the Hostile Amorphic Native Entities — generally known as Hellbane U. Now he was back and living on his own in the fixer's flat, she acted as if he might be starving to death. It wasn't as if he didn't have a family of his own here.
She powered down the screen and checked the place over, then went out, coding the lock. Where to go for news? The Merrie England pub?
No. She wanted to go up on the walls to see for herself. God knew why. A camera did a better job than human eyes, but she was sure the walls were crowded with gawkers. The Olde English battlements and turrets had always seemed like a pleasant whimsy, but as Jenny hurried toward the nearest steps, she wished they really could keep an enemy out.
They couldn't. In nearly two hundred years, Anglia had only experienced one blighter attack, but one was enough to show thick walls and drawbridges were no protection at all. Sixty-eight years ago, in the lovely Public Gardens, a blighter had killed a child in front of her horrified mother. Rendered her into a pile of greasy ash amid her pink pantsuit. There were photos.
A statue in the Gardens depicted a beautiful little girl holding a posy of flowers. Quite likely she'd been a pest, but she hadn't deserved to die in terror like that. No one did.
"Hostile amorphic native entities." That was how the exploratory services had labeled the one, puzzling problem on an otherwise perfect settlement planet. HANES.
Technically accurate, but it hadn't captured reality. Within a generation they had become known as hellbanes, and some settlements had their own name as well. Anglia, with typical wry humor, called them blighters. No coincidence that back on Earth blight had been a disease that turned plants to slime. But the Frankland "terreurs" was perhaps a better word. Jenny could feel it now, in herself and in the people all around, milling in gossip, heading to the walls, or hurrying home to protect or be protected.
Fear. Deep, formless fear, as if something terrible were blowing on the winds from the south.
An arm snagged around Jenny's waist and she whirled.
"Gyrth!"
Gyrth Fletcher was thin, long-faced, with blond curls and beard that made him look as if he'd stepped out of a medieval manuscript.
"Want to come down a dark passageway with me, pet?" he asked in mock villain voice.