fall out of bed on your head or something. It’s over now, understand? The past is the past.”
Lindsay obeyed, settling into the soft sheets and blankets again, tucking his cheek against a pillow.
“Thank you,” he whispered, more comforted than he knew he ought to be. He was so cold, still, even with
the fire burning.
“You don’t need to thank me.” As if he could read Lindsay’s mind, Dane took another blanket from
the foot of the bed and tucked it around him. “You need to rest.” How long had it been since anyone had
tucked him in? Dane frowned and Lindsay realized he’d been staring up at that calm, inhuman face.
Quickly, he closed his eyes.
It didn’t take long for Lindsay to fall asleep again, feeling safer than he had in years.
From his vantage point on Cyrus’s balcony, Dane could smell the cold world he couldn’t see through
the falling snow, and he itched to be out in it. Soon, perhaps, now that he wasn’t the only one here to watch over Cyrus and the boy. He knew, before she came up to see him, that Vivian had come home. The wind
had brought him a wisp of her voice and the slam of a cab door, not ten minutes ago.
“Where is he?”
“Up on the roof again.” Dane didn’t turn to greet her. If she didn’t know he was happy to see her by
now, he wasn’t going to coddle her.
“And the boy?” Vivian’s heels clicked on the flagstone as she came to stand beside him. Her scent
swirled with the wind and filled his head.
“Sleeping again. The healer’s been.” Dane looked at the slender Asian woman putting her tiny,
smooth hand over his where it curled around the iron railing. “Boy sleeps a lot.”
“He’s recovering. Mortals do that,” she chided him gently, tilting her head so that she could see him
clearly.
“What did you bring back with you?” Dane had smelled her coming, smelled someone else with her,
heard two sets of footfalls, two light female voices, before Vivian had come to find him. “Something for
me?”
“That depends.” Vivian’s smile was slow and wicked. “Do you deserve anything?”
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Anah Crow and Dianne Fox
“I left Jonas crushed to a pulp under a dumpster in the filthiest alley in DC,” Dane mused. “Think
that’s enough?”
Vivian’s eyes glittered and she stood on her toes, lifting her chin in that imperious way that said she
wanted to give him a kiss. Dane bent to oblige her and she kissed him on the forehead. “Definitely,” she
murmured. This close, he could smell the warmth of her, the faint hint of perspiration between her breasts, under her arms, at the nape of her delicate neck. “One of these days, someone should actually kill that
man.”
“I do try,” Dane pointed out.
“You’d be bored as hell if you ever succeeded,” Vivian said loftily. “I doubt the sincerity of your
efforts. Come in, Dane. It’s cold and Cyrus will come down when it suits him.” She turned away, tugging
her dark red cloak closer around her.
“Or when I drag his skinny old ass down here,” Dane threatened, following her inside. The doors
slammed behind him before he could close them and Vivian laughed.
“He hears as well as you,” she reminded him, taking off her cloak and shaking it out. She threw it
over the back of a chair and settled, holding her hands out to the fire.
“I know.” Dane came over to put more wood on, to warm the room. “So, what did you bring me?”
“Her name is Kristan. I’ve been using her for a while. You’ll want to be careful with her. Her
magic…she makes people feel things.”
“Empath?” Dane grimaced. Of all the magics, the ones that touched the mind were his least favorite.
“If only.” Vivian made a contented noise as the fire grew. “No, she controls people’s emotions with
her body chemistry. Pheromones. As you’d expect, she’s a grifter and a whore, but good at both.” Her tone
was uncritical, pragmatic. “Just watch yourself.”
“She’s got to sleep some time,” Dane said, shrugging. Vivian laughed at him again, shaking her head.
“So do you,” she said. “And I think, when you do, I’m going to cut off your beard.”
Dane gave her a dark look and was about to respond when the door to the room opened as Cyrus came
in. He staggered and Dane was there, one hand under his arm. Vivian was on her feet as well, coming to
help with his coat.
“Was there a reason for the noise?” Cyrus asked irritably, ignoring his obvious infirmity in favor of
scolding them. “Or were you simply wasting breath?”
“You should know better than to ask,” Vivian said tartly, working him out of his coat. “We were
being social. People still do that, you know.”
“Yes, yes.” Cyrus waved her off as soon as she had his coat in hand. “People will always waste time.”
“Did you see anything?” Dane asked, once he had Cyrus settled. The older mage glared at him like a
wet, angry crow.
“The wind is unclear,” he said sullenly.
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Tatterdemalion
“You’re tired,” Vivian said. The look she shot Dane was accusatory. She was far more adept at
chivvying Cyrus into resting when he needed it. Dane simply picked him up when he fell over and put him
in bed until he got strong enough to get out on his own. It worked well enough, had for decades, but Vivian was never satisfied with their system.
“I can rest when I’m dead,” Cyrus snapped. Still, he let his head fall to rest on the high back of the
chair. Dane didn’t want to think about that at all and he scowled at Vivian for irritating Cyrus into saying such a thing.
“Or you could rest now.” Vivian was unmoved by the temperamental behavior and Dane’s scowl
alike. She brought over a blanket from the bed and Dane carefully tucked it around Cyrus to warm him.
“Tell me about Washington.” Cyrus gestured for her to come closer.
Vivian came to sit in the other chair by the fire and Dane sank down to rest on the rug between them.
He crossed his arms and rested his head on them, lying on his back near Cyrus’s feet. Like this, he could
see them both.
“Chaos,” Vivian said quietly. “So far, they think it could have been a terrorist attack. Some kind of
biological weapon. The entire block is shut down, the building quarantined, as well as all those who
worked in it.”
“Survivors?” Dane rumbled.
“A few. Dr. Moore, unfortunately. It’s too soon to know more. She must have had an artifact on her.”
Vivian was still, her gaze on the fire as she spoke. “Word is, William Carrington suffered a massive heart
attack that night. And Sophia Carrington, well, she lives. But that might be all.”
“She was here in New York.” Cyrus opened his eyes and Vivian nodded slowly.
“Yes, she was. So was William. Apparently her maid had to stop her from throwing herself off the
penthouse balcony that night.” Vivian did not sound particularly regretful. “Rumor has it that she’s gone mad.”
“His magic reached them across all those miles,” Cyrus said softly.
The idea of a mind mage who could drive someone mad across several hundred miles chilled Dane in
a place nothing could warm. The idea that the same mage was sleeping one floor below should have left
him colder still, if Dane hadn’t seen time and again that intent was needed to drive such a thing.
The thin body Dane had carried, cradling it even in the car to keep it warm, hardly seemed like it
could harness all that power and all that outrage. As Cyrus had ordered, Dane had spent hours watching
over Lindsay, watching him heal, watching him sleep, and watching him wake in terror until he got his