Ronan pulled the sturdy hood up before the sandstorm hit and squinted through the blowing dust toward the only shelter on the horizon. The rotted fuselage of a low orbit spacecraft thrust up out of the dunes like the bleached ribcage of some great beast, defying the sand that ripped through the air fast enough to scrape the skin from any exposed body part. If the boy hadn’t taken shelter from the storm there, they’d likely find his corpse in a few hours.

Ronan signaled to the rest of his team, adjusted the fit of his goggles, and leaned into the wind as he fought his way toward the wreck, silently willing the boy to be smart enough to hunker down behind one of the beams that still had a bit of skin attached. The structure loomed over them as they neared, like the tombstone of a long-dead society, and groaned under the stress of the wind. It had likely crashed during the war that ruined this part of the world, and of years of unnatural storms had worn it down to a husk. They’d be lucky if the structure didn’t collapse on top of them.

Cecily stopped next to him and held one of the beams for support as she turned her back to the wind. Behind the safety of her goggles, she closed her eyes and concentrated, letting the sand blow past her as she searched with that other sense the Alfar possessed. A moment later she locked eyes with Ronan and nodded. The boy was close. She signaled the rest of the team to follow her into the maze of wreckage.

The metal bones of the spacecraft had been worn smooth by years of sandstorms but were still strong enough to blunt the edge of the wind and add some protection from the flying sand.

The kid was probably huddling behind a wall somewhere as the wind screamed all around him, wondering where he was and terrified that he would die in an alien place so far from his friends and family. Not for the first time, Ronan wished he could feel the atomic disturbance Walkers created the way Cecily could. No matter how many young Walkers they found, he was never able to disregard their fear or ignore his own impatience to find them, so he stayed close to Cecily.

Porshe and Abasi closed in behind him and switched on their headlamps. As one they used their light to search the wreckage, silently hoping they would find a scared boy and not a dead body.

Every time he Walked to a world where nuclear war had destroyed the planet, he remembered his own verse, the lush green life of the place he’d grown up, and felt a bone-deep pain for everything that had been lost and all that might have been. He also felt a disconcerting kinship with the damaged earth. Someday, far in the future, the planet would recover, and grass would grow over the scars of war, but it would never be the same place it had been before it was damaged. What might have been a grassy plain covered in wildflowers and horses was now a graveyard that would happily drag them down with it.

“Here,” Cecily said.

Ronan blinked and pulled himself back into the present to look at the Alfin woman. For all the inflection in her voice, they might as well have been stopping to admire a moderately interesting painting in an unimpressive museum. She jerked her chin toward the ground.

He glanced down at a lump in the sand. The boy must have curled up against one of the remaining walls between two pillars, and the sand had nearly covered his body. Only a few tufts of dark hair stuck up above the sand. He wasn’t moving.

Porsche knelt by the lump and began scraping sand off, slowly revealing the huddled body beath. Half of his form was still obscured when the boy jerked to a sitting position, flinging trails of sand into the air as he gasped and flailed. Was he speaking Mongolian?

Ronan crouched beside Porshe and wrapped his arms around the boy before he could hurt himself. The boy screeched and fought, but he was weak and didn’t struggle long. As soon as he calmed, his chest heaving, Ronan said, “Don’t be scared. We are here to help you.”

The boy flinched and looked back over his shoulder with wide eyes.

“We are here to take you home. But first, we must find a safer place to wait out the storm. Will you come with us?”

After a moment of silence and suspicious glances at the rest of the team, who must have looked like aliens in their suits and goggles, the boy nodded. They could have simply surrounded the boy and Walked him back to his own verse, but young Walkers who didn’t know what to expect were dangerous. They would fight the process or stop halfway through it out of fear, and more than one Venatore had died alongside their young charge as the energy of Walking tore their atoms apart.

Better to let the boy adjust to the idea before taking that risk.

So, they ushered him out of the wreck and staked down the pop-up shelter Abasi carried. The low dome deflected most of the wind and they huddled inside while the boy–whose name was Batuhan–ate and drank, and Cecily explained to him what he really was.

His chewing slowed, stopped, and fear ignited again in his dark eyes. When it came time for the demonstration, Ronan readied himself for the inevitable. Porshe told Batuhan not to be afraid, then disappeared as if she’d never been there.

The boy screamed, dropping his food and scooting backward as he made little frightened mewling sounds. But that wasn’t the dangerous part. When Porshe reappeared a second later, Ronan moved just before Batuhan could react, and stopped the attack before it started.

When faced with the inexplicable and nowhere to hide, most people reacted by either running, freezing, or fighting. Batuhan had already shown that he would fight, so Ronan was ready. He held the boy again, trapping his arms and wrapping a leg around his hips to keep him contained until he had worn himself out. Then they started the process again.

It took several more hours before they had the kid convinced that he wasn’t precisely human, and that he was in the wrong version of his own world. Ronan sat through the explanations, letting his mind wander as the familiar questions were asked and answered until the storm died and they could safely take the kid home.

Now that all the excitement was over, the lassitude began to creep back over him, blanketing his mind in dull dispassion as they broke down the shelter and formed a circle around Batuhan. The circle would let them surround the boy with their electromagnetic fields just in case he didn’t have the strength or willpower to get himself safely home on his own. If he started fighting again, they would stop. The process could be a long, grueling, and boring one, depending on how stubborn the kid was.

“Don’t be scared,” Ronan told the boy, but the kid’s hands shook anyway. He was fourteen and gangly but to Ronan, who was centuries old and rather a big man, he looked small and so very young. He was the same age Ronan had been when he’d first discovered his own ability to Walk the Eververse and everything had changed. Just like the ruined earth, the kid would never be the same, even when he returned to his old life.

Ronan gave the boy his best reassuring smile. It was the only comfort he could offer.

“We’re going to get you home safe, Batuhan,” Porshe told the boy, flipping a lock of hair off her shoulder and winking, “and then we’ll start your training, so this never happens by accident again.”

Porshe offered her hand but Batuhan looked at it as if it was a snake that may or may not be venomous. In a show of solidarity, the rest of the team joined hands and the boy followed hesitantly, leaving the four of them standing alone in a circle in the middle of nowhere.

“Think of home, my boy,” Abasi said from across the circle, “and feel home with your body, feel the sky and the ground, feel your love for your family, your horse, and your herds on the hillside.” Abasi’s deep, melodious voice was almost hypnotic, and Ronan relaxed under the sound of it, but it didn’t have the same effect on the young man; Batuhan glared with suspicious eyes at the leader of Ronan’s team as if the older man were trying to cast a spell on him. Ronan leaned toward the boy and murmured, “Just feel the vibration, and then try to match it. It will be easy once you get it.”

Batuhan gave Ronan a half distrustful sideways glance, which made Ronan wonder if he’d botched a word. He could get by well enough in Mongolian, but it wasn’t his strongest language, and he hoped he hadn’t just said something insulting.

“Begin,” Abasi commanded. One by one, the members of the circle activated their abilities, changing their atomic frequencies and filling the air with humming power that made the hairs on Ronan’s arms stand up despite having done this time without measure. Batuhan looked up at him uncertainly, and Ronan gave him a reassuring nod. The boy closed his eyes as his forehead wrinkled in concentration.

Energy pulsed off Batuhan and beat against Ronan’s body, but the frequency wavered, so Ronan encouraged, “That’s it, lad, don’t stop now!”

Waves of energy throbbed through the air in a peculiar rhythm that pulled at his very atoms, dragging him away from the desiccated plain on which they stood as his vision went black and the collective melody of their combined power brought them into harmony with a different world. When Ronan opened his eyes, they were standing on a grassy plain; clouds now speckled the sky, the shape of the mountains against the horizon had changed, and a herd of goats grazed in the far distance, their bleats carrying in a stiff breeze. It was a far cry from the war-ravaged version of Mongolia they had just been in.

“Easy there,” Ronan said as the boy bent double to retch in the grass. After Batuhan composed himself and wiped his mouth, Ronan gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. It was clear from his relieved expression and the slump of his shoulders that Batuhan recognized the new surroundings. Once he was more accustomed to his ability, the boy would be able to feel the differences in the harmony of a place, and he’d be able to tell he was in the right world even with his eyes closed, almost by instinct, as Ronan could.

“We will leave you here,” Ronan said, letting go of his companion’s hands, “but Porshe will stay with you and teach you how to control your gift. She’ll also teach you the Laws. Whether you use your gift again is up to you, but don’t forget the Laws she teaches you, because—” his voice cut off as Cecily gasped and froze, her blue eyes taking on a faraway look.

Porshe glanced at Cecily’s face, then nodded to Ronan and Abasi. It was time for them to go.

She touched Batuhan’s arm and said, “Why don’t you show me where you live, Batuhan? I’ll need to know where to find you when I come back for your next lesson.”

Batuhan stared at Cecily for a long moment, muttered, “thank you,” to the rest of the team, and led Porshe across the grass toward the low silhouettes of yurts huddled against the hillside. They wouldn’t see Porshe for the next few days while she taught her young apprentice how to master his abilities. When she was done, the boy would know all three Laws of Founding, and he’d be able to control himself so that he only ended up in other verses when he meant to, which, if Ronan had to guess by the boy’s behavior, wouldn’t be often.

The ability to Walk between verses was interesting that way. Some people—people like Ronan had been as a boy—couldn’t wait to go off and explore the Eververse, to Walk to strange new worlds and meet the varieties of people who lived in them. Then there were the people like Batuhan appeared to be, ones who would rather stay in the safety of their own world and walk to different verses only when they needed something or found themselves in danger.

Ronan took a deep breath while he waited for Cecily to speak, enjoying the clean bite of air not polluted by modern industrial waste, the fresh scent of grass tempered with goat droppings, and the sight of the wide, vivid sky stretching above them. He could disappear into a land like that. Maybe a simple existence, where he had to carve a life out the earth with his own two hands, would finally pull him out from under the blanket of indifference that had been smothering his will to live.

“What was it?” Abasi asked in English once Porshe and Batuhan were out of earshot.

Cecily looked mildly bemused. As a rule, the Alfar were a very self-contained race, rarely given to displays of emotion, so the fact that Ronan could read anything other than bland disinterest on her face meant something extraordinary must have happened. He leaned forward.

“One of the strongest Walking signatures I have ever felt,” She said, simply.

Ronan’s brows crept up into his hairline and Abasi said with relish, “Indeed?” then pressed, “where?”

“From somewhere in True Earth,” Cecily replied, her eyes unfocused as she thought, “to another verse, one very similar, but in the same geographic location as the departure.”

“I thought we might get a bit of a break between this mission and the next,” Ronan said.

“We will stop in Avalon,” Cecily decided, ignoring his complaint, “I would like to consult the Concillium before we proceed. This signature has left a rather strong aftershock…”

Ronan kept his mouth shut but followed the remaining members of his team as they disappeared from True Earth. He took the idea of a simple life and discarded it, along with all the other possibilities he’d walked away from over the years. He had a duty, and he would fulfill it. It was the only thing he really had worth living for, anyway.

He let the world fall away as he left that verse behind, idly wondering who could have produced such a strong signature that one of the Alfar would be worried. Whoever it was could have an irrevocable impact on the fabric of reality—and it would likely be his job to train them.

When Ronan materialized on the pavement of a deserted parking lot in this version of Earth, he didn’t even bother to look around, simply pulled his hood up and climbed into the back of the stolen delivery van. City lights passed rhythmically as Abasi drove them to the hospital, and Ronan watched the hypnotizing pools of color streak by in the darkness as Cecily repeated the familiar routine to ensure everyone remembered their part in the upcoming kidnapping. He tuned out her voice and let his mind wander.

Since they had been assigned to True Earth for this rotation, the monotony had been mind-numbing. Their recent stop in Avalon only made the comparison less favorable to True Earth—that mother of every world in the Eververse—because True Earth and the rest of her twenty-first-century offspring were depressingly similar. Mongolia had been starkly beautiful, but it was one of the few wild places they ever visited during mandatory rotations. Most people in True Earth lived in cities, and every city had the same cramped, rushed, over-lit, sterile feeling that made Ronan withdraw. At least the strange sights or unique customs in the more obscure parts of the Eververse were enough to keep him entertained. Sometimes the people in those verses even had enough experience with the supernatural that they didn’t lose it when confronted with their own powers. Sometimes. But Walkers from True Earth almost always refused to believe in the supernatural, which only made his job harder.

Cecily claimed their current mark had the most powerful signature she’d ever encountered, and that, at least, had the promise of being interesting. He wondered idly whether this boy would be a fighter or a runner. His arms were still sore from holding Batuhan still while he thrashed, so Ronan hoped the kid would run and tire himself out before being confronted with the truth. It was easier to stop someone from attacking you when they were already tired.

When they finally pulled up to the hospital, Abasi slowed long enough to let Cecily out of the van, then drove around to the back of a nearby building, out of range of the hospital security cameras, and parked in the dark. Ronan climbed up over the center console into the passenger seat. It never took Cecily long to find their mark in the hospital’s database, and she generally met them in the parking lot within fifteen minutes—hospitals turned out to be disturbingly easy places from which to kidnap people—so he’d need to be near a door he could open quickly if the kid ran, and the delivery doors in the back were cumbersome.

“What’s next on our schedule?” he asked Abasi.

The driver pulled out a Multidiv—a small touch-screen tablet that lit up with blue light when he ran his finger down its face—and said, “You remember that Cecily sensed a departure yesterday? One from an obscure Verse…somewhere in Vorth I believe?”

Ronan nodded.

“As the senior team, we have received permission to investigate, so Khorin’s team will take over for us on True Earth. Cecily and I will do a preliminary check as soon as this one,” he jerked his head toward the hospital, “is ready to go home. You and Porshe can meet us on Avalon in two days, and we will update you then. You don’t mind handling the training for this one?”

Ronan shook his head. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d brought a young Walker back to their own Verse, and maybe spending a couple of days training a wide-eyed apprentice would rid him of the malaise that plagued him the last few months.

Who are you kidding, boyo, he thought ruefully, you’ve been trapped in this quagmire for years. After all, one could only live so long before the mere novelty of existence expired, and he’d never found a purpose greater than duty to keep the spark alive. Traveling to different verses, ones unlike True Earth, and seeing the interesting ways nature and humanity diverged from their roots was at least interesting enough to keep him entertained, but once the blush wore off the rose, the blanket of dullness settled over him again with suffocating force.

Cecily’s voice crackled through the speaker of the Multidiv. “The mark is Allison Erin Chapter, twenty-one years of age. She was admitted by her roommate for claiming never to have met her current boyfriend, then attacking him and fainting. The hospital has admitted her for insisting her father died five years ago when their records indicate that Patrick Chapter is alive and well, which has been verified by phone contact.”

“Poor girl,” Abasi said.

“The symptoms match, and she was admitted during the same time we traced the signal to this city. Do I have clearance to proceed?”

Abasi looked at Ronan, who nodded and said, “classic symptoms of displacement.”

“Approved,” Abasi said into the Multidiv speaker, “go get our new Walker and we will meet you in the back of the parking lot.”

So, the mark was a female, and well beyond the general age range when first steps were most likely to happen. Most Walkers took their first steps very early in their teenage years when puberty began altering their minds and bodies. For this woman to have made it so long without her gift manifesting itself was rather rare. What could have caused her to walk now, he wondered? True Earth had already passed the time in late October when the barriers between Verses were thin, and he didn’t feel the pull of any places of power, so he assumed something rather traumatic must have triggered her instinct to flee. If that was the case, it was more likely than normal that she’d be scared, confused, and violent.

Cecily’s voice broke the silence again when she whispered through the Multidiv, “diversion.”

Abasi tapped the screen and, seconds later, the hospital windows began to flash.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Ronan said and put a hand on the door handle as Abasi pushed the shifter into drive. “Is that the updated version?” Ronan gestured to the sleek, iron-grey Multidivice they used in technologically advanced verses, “the response time seems faster.”

Abasi nodded, his dark, triangle-shaped goatee wiggling as he pulled onto the empty street. “One of the Alfar delivered it while we were in Avalon. It does seem to handle the quantum shift without malfunctioning as often as the old one did. Ahh,” the tablet vibrated and Abasi glanced at it, “they should be exiting the building soon.” Then, looking at Ronan with a mischievous twinkle in his dark eyes, he said, “Try not to break this one’s arm when we catch her.”

“That boy broke his own arm, I was only holding him,” Ronan protested, though he couldn’t help but smile a bit. Alexis, a fourteen-year-old hell-raiser they’d found before chasing down Batuhan, hadn’t listened to a word they’d said and had attacked Ronan when he’d reappeared after demonstrating the Walker’s ability to disappear and reappear at will. He’d tried to hold the kid still to keep him from hurting himself or anyone else, but the boy had twisted so hard that he’d broken his arm. The stubborn fool reminded him a bit of himself, at that age; no one could tell him anything, either, and he did remember his violent fright when his foster father disappeared into thin air to show Ronan what walking looked like. Of course, Ronan had already been a trained fighter by that age and knew better than to break his own damned arm.

“There they are,” Abasi pointed to the double set of sliding doors at the front of the building. Cecily was pushing a wheelchair through the half-empty lot, moving quickly. He watched the pair as they approached the back of the lot and stopped near one of the industrial street lamps, which glowed brilliantly off hair so red it was almost orange. As Cecily’s hair was white-blonde, the fiery locks must belong to their mark. The woman stood up—she’s tall. She must have caught sight of the van as they pulled into the parking lot because her body tensed, she crouched, and an answering spike of adrenaline electrified his body. Cecily’s calm voice sounded inside the van. “She is going to run.”

Almost as soon as Cecily spoke, the girl bolted like a frightened deer. Ronan leaped through the open van door and hit the ground running. Long limbs, bleached pale by the moonlight, flashed beneath the blue hospital gown as she darted between parked cars. She was too fast, and Ronan knew that he’d have a serious chase on his hands if he let her get into the open, so he waited until she slowed from a quick turn around a sedan and leaped. He took the brunt of the impact on his forearms and knees, doing his best to keep her from striking the pavement hard enough to do her harm.

“Get off me,” she growled as she struggled beneath him. Keeping her still was like trying to hold a bag of snakes.

“Unless you want the world to see every inch of your backside,” he whispered in her ear, “you should stop that writhing. I’m not going to hurt you, but I cannot let you run. You understand me?”

“You are hurting me,” she spat at him, but his warning had it’s intended effect; the woman stilled but it wasn’t the danger of exposing herself that stopped the writhing, it was fear; she had misread his warning. He sighed. “I’m sure it’s a nice enough arse, my girl, but it’s not going to tempt me to ravish you here on the concrete. If I let you up, will you fight me?”

She didn’t answer him. Her mutinous silence almost guaranteed she would put up a fight as soon as he gave her enough space to move, so he sighed and then jerked upright, pulling her with him while pinning her arms against her body. As soon as he began hauling her toward the van, she fought like a cornered cat. He blocked a kick with his knee, barely saving himself from a heel to the groin, before dragging her through the open door and into the back of the van.

He slammed the door and locked it before she could right herself, then turned toward her crouched for the inevitable fight…but she simply sat on the floor of the van and curled in on herself, wrapping her arms around her knees. Ronan narrowed his eyes at her. Why wasn’t she at least screaming at him?

Abasi took a sharp corner and she squeaked, rolling to the side with the force of the turn—nearly exposing her naked rear end—but managed to right herself quickly, glaring up at him as if it was his fault. She looked like an angry kitten. He tried valiantly not to laugh, swallowing his surprised humor in a grunt, and looked out the window so she wouldn’t see the amusement on his face. The poor woman was dealing with enough without being laughed at.

He tried to watch the darkened city pass by, but he couldn’t stop sneaking glances at her face. In strobe-like effect of passing freeway lights, the wealth of red hair splayed across her shoulders flashed from brilliant orange to subdued red-brown. She’d fought hard until he’d dragged her inside the van, and that fiery energy seemed to have withdrawn to her hair alone. At first, she had looked like a rebellious child huddling in the corner and glaring at her parents, but her expression shifted as her eyes unfocused, like she was remembering something. Sometimes young Walkers dealt with the stress of being taken by shutting down and becoming non-responsive, like a possum or a dear in the headlights, but the red-haired lass didn’t look like she was breaking under the pressure. Her expression shifted from calculating to melancholy, amusement, and then profound pain. He wanted to turn away, to give her a modicum of privacy to deal with whatever she was thinking about, but he found her reactions too fascinating to ignore.

Ronan had been Venatore for a very long time, so he’d retrieved his fair share of lost young Walkers from worlds they didn’t belong in, and despite having performed similar missions across the Eververse hundreds of times, he’d never been so intrigued by the reactions of a mark. When her expression shifted again and she groaned, he found himself kneeling beside her.

She flinched away from his touch. He grimaced, but said softly, “calm down. Put your head between your knees and breathe through your teeth.”

She frowned, and for a moment he thought she’d ignore him, but she took his advice, and the traces of nausea cleared from her face. Ronan returned to his place by the window, this time determined to watch the nighttime scenery pass at least until she asked, “who are you?” Her tone was accusatory, and there was no way she’d accept the answer—they never did—so he said nothing.

“Where are you taking me?”

This one was a fair question, so he replied, “someplace safe.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

What had Cecily said her name was? “Someplace safe, Allison. We’ll be there shortly, and your questions will be answered. For now, relax.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “That could just be what you say to keep people calm before you sell them to some pimp in Singapore or something.”

Her quick response made him want to smile. “It could be, but it’s not. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you now, anyway,” he said, which was nothing but the truth, “you’ve seen too many movies.”

That didn’t go over well, and Allison sat back in a huff only to gasp and jerk upright. Of course, the un-lined walls of the van must be cold on her exposed skin, Ronan berated himself silently. He’d been so engrossed in watching her face that he’d forgotten even to be courteous. With a sigh at his oversight, he stepped forward and wrapped his jacket around her shoulders. She opened her mouth as if to say something, then snapped it shut and glared at the floor. He clenched his jaw against a smile and resumed his position by the window, trying not to be distracted by her shifting expressions.

“Two minutes,” Cecily announced from the passenger seat.

Allison lunged to her feet and grabbed the back of the chair before he could stop her, but she only seemed angry, not violent, so he didn’t restrain her, though he did pay very close attention to her body language. Her hands barely peeked out from the sleeves of his jacket. She looked incredibly small and vulnerable inside it.

“What is going on?” Allison demanded.

“We are taking you to a safe house,” Cecily answered without bothering to look at her.

“Safe from what? Why?”

“I will explain that to you once we are inside.”

Allison dug her fingers into the back of the seat as they took another sharp corner, and Ronan bent his knees to account for the motion, watching as their new young Walker scanned the neighborhood they drove through. Will this be it, will she finally try to escape? He’d half expected her to attack Abasi earlier—it wouldn’t have been the first time someone tried to free themselves by attacking the driver—but she only glared at the dark-skinned man and peered out the window.

The van turned into the garage of the bland suburban home they’d prepped before heading to the hospital, and Ronan watched Allison carefully as Abasi and Cecily climbed out of the van; she didn’t move toward either of the doors.

“Come on,” he said, and she turned to pin him with a suspicious glare. He could barely see her face, but it was clear her mind was working like a steam engine pumped full of too much coal, and fear was clear in her eyes even in the dim light. Ronan sighed and reached for the knife he always carried in a hidden sheath just inside the waist of his jeans. She’d feel more confident if she had a weapon with which to defend herself, even if it would do her no good. She misinterpreted the motion, though, and took a reflexive backward step, almost tripping over the center console. Ronan didn’t appreciate being taken for a rapist. Even if he could understand her misgivings under the circumstances, it still left a trace of irritation in his voice when he said, “I already told you, I’m not going to hurt you. I swear it. Here, take this. You won’t need it, but it will make you feel safer.”

He flipped the weapon and offered her the hilt, which she took cautiously. The effect was almost instant; her shoulders dropped, and her tense muscles relaxed. Ronan nodded, then stepped out of the van and waited. She took a few deep breaths and followed him, halting when her bare feet touched the pavement. For a moment he considered picking her up so the cold stone didn’t steal more vital warmth from her body, but she’d misunderstand that and turn his own knife on him—with good reason—so he just waited quietly, wondering what she would do. Up till now, she hadn’t reacted like any of the marks he’d rescued. They fought, they cursed, they cried, they yelled, they tried to escape, they passed out, but never had one taken their kidnapping so calmly, thinking through the implications rather than acting irrationally out of pure survival instinct. Ronan found her reactions fascinating, even admirable. As she looked toward the potential freedom of the darkness, though, he got the distinct impression that she was tempted to run; her body leaned forward toward the empty alley, so he cleared his throat.

She flinched and turned to glare at him. He wished he could see her face better.

Finally, with a fortifying sigh, she straightened her shoulders and strode into the dark doorway of the safe house. Ronan had rarely respected a stranger more. He followed her, smiling.

The interior of the house was warm, and Allison stopped as soon as her feet touched the carpet. Ronan had to catch himself on the wall to stop from plowing into her as she made little noises of satisfaction and wiggled her toes into the rug. He wasn’t fooled, though. Her head turned toward the living room, where the front door stood invitingly, so he leaned in, gestured toward the stairs, and said, “go on.”

He followed her toward the light at the top of the stairs, admiring the graceful sway of her hips as she climbed, surprised that she trailed the faint aroma of lemons and something musky—rosemary, maybe? The clean, homey scent made his senses tingle. He must have been too distracted to notice the smell of her in the parking lot, but he had to admit that it was more appealing to him than the cloying, floral perfumes he noticed on most True Earth women her age. As soon as she entered the room where Abasi and Cecily waited, he turned to check the rest of the house. He’d requested to be the muscle for this rotation, so Ronan prowled the dark rooms and corridors with competent efficiency, in a hurry to get back to the room upstairs just in case Allison reacted violently to the news.

All the rooms were dark and empty, doors and windows locked, so there would be no danger while Cecily explained that Allison wasn’t exactly human. This was always the longest part of the hunt—it wasn’t easy to convince someone they were capable of interdimensional travel—and his bladder was full, so Ronan took the stairs two at a time and headed toward the bathroom. When he reached for the handle, the bathroom door swung open and Allison ran bodily into him, her head bouncing off his collar bone. She grunted and backed up with the knife clutched in one fist.

“You’re a solid one, aren’t you?” he said in his most disarming voice.

Her mouth twisted as if she was about retort but then she looked up at his face and her expression froze. He watched as her eyes widened and roamed across the planes of his face, feeling the familiar irritation that always accompanied this reaction. He knew that his curse was hidden by the hair he kept long enough to cover his forehead, but he was never quite able to free himself from the suspicion that the woman looking at him might have seen it. Several lifetimes hadn’t been enough to make up for the last time one of them had; he still lived with the regret of his betrayal, and her death. Allison’s pale cheeks flushed when she realized she was looking at him like a piece of jewelry in a store window, and she shook her head. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking by her expression, but her brows lowered, and that was a good sign. If she had seen the mark on his forehead, her eyes would have gone all dreamy already. He wished he knew what she was thinking, but they couldn’t keep standing there forever, so he sighed and stepped back to give her enough room to pass and said, “go on.”

She spun around and disappeared into the bathroom instead, only to reappear a second later with his jacket.

“Here,” she said and thrust the jacket at his chest then rushed past him into the adjoining room.

He smiled as he watched her go, then pulled the door shut behind himself. Allison seemed to be approaching her current situation with cool logic, which convinced him that she was no immediate danger to Cecily and Abasi. As he washed his hands he imagined Allison standing in the same place moments before, imagined her trying the latch on the small bathroom window and wondering if she could fit through. He could see her cinnamon-colored brows drawn together as she thought about whether the fall would be worth the escape, calculating her chances of getting away with sprained ankles.

Why did his mind keep straying back to this woman? Her features weren’t striking, though she was pretty enough, with lovely hazel eyes, creamy skin, and a sprinkling of golden freckles across both cheeks and the bridge of her nose, but there was nothing remarkable enough to keep bringing her face to his mind, aside from those animated expressions and the intelligence in her eyes. Maybe it was the circumstances surrounding her? When his team had stopped in Avalon to consult with the head of the Concillium, Arthur had sounded intrigued. The man was the founder of their very way of life, and Ronan couldn’t help but feel a sense of awe every time he spoke with Arthur. It didn’t help that the man was the subject of legend in many verses. Of course, Ronan was part of his own legends, but he did his best to avoid thinking about those.

“Find this young Walker, by all means, and follow standard protocol,” Arthur had said after Cecily described the strength of the signature she’d felt. Then, in a lower voice, “if it’s possible to discover what makes this Walker so strong, I’d like to know whether he has gifts that will be useful to the Concillium. One can never have too many friends, particularly with an entire Eververse to police.”

“Ronan,” Cecily called, drawing him back to the present, “will you come in here please?”

He took a deep breath and walked into the room for the inevitable demonstration. Allison was sitting in a chair facing his teammates, her mouth twisted in irritation, and he crossed the room to stand near the window, far enough away that he could respond if she decided to attack him when he reappeared. He ignored her scowl.

Cecily followed the normal protocol, asking the young Walker questions and giving her the standard explanations. At first, Allison looked almost sick as she remembered her first time walking, which obviously hadn’t been this time. How was she able to walk without alerting some Venatore the first time, he wondered, if her signature was so powerful? He assumed something must have been cloaking her signature because the Alfar were particularly attuned to detect Walkers, and the signatures from True Earth always seemed to travel the farthest, which was why they rotated teams of Venatore through True Earth regularly. A Walker’s first steps were usually the most violent, which was how the Alfar were able to tell the signature apart from those of average Walkers going about their business. How was it they’d missed her the first time?

“Interdimensional travel? Seriously? Come on, Cecily, I want real answers,” Allison was saying, “I’ve had a lot of really weird crap happen to me today, and I’ve even questioned my sanity. Now you’re making me wonder about yours.”

Cecily turned to him and nodded. He gave Allison an apologetic smile, closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and left that Verse, appearing in the kitchen of a Domus Venatorum in another version of Earth. Most of the heavily trafficked verses had bases for the Venatore to work out of, safe places for them to stay when hunting Walkers in those worlds, and this particular Domus always had a ready supply of hot cocoa. He took a cup from Yddra, who smiled and winked at him before he fixed the safehouse room in his mind and reappeared in front of his teammates and the red-haired woman who jerked violently when she saw him. Her mouth worked a few times, like a landed fish, and she looked at the other people in the room as if to confirm that she’d really just seen him disappear and reappear out of nowhere.

“He is real,” Cecily insisted, but Allison shook her head violently enough to make her red braid swing like a horse’s tail flicking flies. Cecily gestured toward him and said, “touch him, if you do not trust me.”

Allison looked up at him, white-lipped. He held the cup out to her slowly, bemused by her self-control. She hadn’t even screamed.

“He will not bite you, my dear,” Abasi coaxed, “touch him. You’ll feel better when you see that he is flesh and blood, just as you are.”

Her hand seemed to move of its own accord, reaching slowly, until she touched the exposed skin of his wrist with trembling fingertips. The shock of her skin sent tingling sensations up his arm, and he would have gasped if not for centuries of mastering his reactions. Ronan had lived an exceptionally long life, but he’d never experienced anything like that before. His mind raced as Allie took the cup and sat on the floor.

Cecily explained the necessary information in the same level tone she always used, with Abasi’s musical accent chiming in now and then, but it was Allison’s responses that interested him. She didn’t deny, or object, or try to find out how they could be lying to her, she simply took everything in and asked probing questions. Her calm, clear rationality was as surprising as everything else about her, and just as confusing to him. They knew her signature was strong, but they didn’t know yet why, and Arthur had directed Ronan to figure it out. Because Cecily and Abasi would need to investigate the other signature she’d detected, he would be on his own, and he was having a hard time imagining what additional gift she might be blessed with that would make her mere touch affect him so much.

“This is a lot to take in,” Allison’s voice interrupted his thoughts as rubbed her forehead with her fingertips and asked, “can I have a minute to myself?”

Cecily nodded. Her face would never betray it, but Ronan suspected the Alfar was impatient to be gone. If Cecily seemed to enjoy anything, it was the hunt, and staying around to explain the basics of walking when there was another strong signature to investigate in an obscure part of the Eververse must be making her irritable.

As soon as Allison was safely seated in the second bedroom, Cecily said, “I would like to be off as soon as possible.”

Abasi nodded. “The longer it takes us to track that signal, the harder it will be to find the source.” He turned to Ronan and reminded him softly, “don’t forget to look into this woman’s gifts as you teach her the Laws. The Pendragon will want to know if she might be of use.”

Ronan controlled the adolescent urge to roll his eyes and nodded instead. He was older and more experienced than his companions by several orders of magnitude; he didn’t need to be reminded how to do his job. But he couldn’t blame Abasi, either. Ronan allowed people to make assumptions about his age. He appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties, and since Ventaore made it a general practice to avoid asking personal questions about each other’s pasts, the only people who had an inkling of his true age were his foster father and the Pendragon, himself. As far as Abasi, a man in his late fifties, was concerned, Ronan might as well have been a young boy. Besides that, he liked the good-natured man too much to be irritated with him for something he couldn’t help.

“The girl has been quiet for a rather extended period,” Cecily pointed out.

Aye, Ronan congratulated himself, so, Cecily does have a burr under her saddle to chase that signature. I knew she was feeling impatient. Alfar were impossible to read as a rule; their faces were practically immobile, and their voices never climbed beyond polite disinterest. It had been a point of pride with Ronan to study the woman during the time they worked together, though, and he thought he was beginning to be able to read her. If Cecily tried to hurry Allison along, she was likely to make the transition harder for the young woman. From Allison’s expressions, he suspected she didn’t much like emotionally reserved Alfar.

“Maybe I should go talk to her,” Ronan suggested.

“I do not think that would be the best idea, my friend,” Abasi said with an apologetic grin, “did you see the way the poor girl looked at you when you showed her what walking looked like?”

Oh, he’d seen. He’d also felt something of her power, but he didn’t say that. Abasi stood and unfolded his burly arms from the top of his surprisingly rounded belly. “Perhaps I would be the most suitable.”

No one disagreed, so Abasi waddled out of the room and across the narrow hall. As soon as he was out of earshot, Cecily said quietly, “this woman has the strongest signature of any Walker I have felt during my service with the Venatore. She could be very useful to the Concillium.”

Ronan kept his voice level when he said, “I realize that.”

“As the Eververse grows, it becomes more difficult for us to find a track Walkers.”

“What is your point, Cecily?” He was careful to keep the irritation from his voice.

“Depending on what her gift is, you may have the care of someone who will change the way Venatore hunt. If you can discover her gifts and the girl is amenable, she may work with us, or better, allow the Alfar to test her gift and begin looking for ways to replicate it.”

Ronan wondered what that would look like, and saw Allison’s fiery hair splayed on a cold metal table while unsmiling Alfar descended on her with instruments. “She’s not a science experiment, Cecily.”

“Of course,” Cecily waved his exasperated comment away, “any course of action would require the girl’s permission. With a power like that, perhaps we might gain the ability to extend our reach farther into the Eververse. Imagine how many new Walkers we might find and how many new Verses we may have access to were the Alfar able to figure out the source of such raw power and replicate it? In any case,” she leveled cold blue eyes at him, “finding out is your job. A duty the Pendragon has given you.”

They stared at each other in silence until Cecily relented and said, “I only remind you to be thorough. You are a capable Venatore, of course, and I know you always do your duty.”

Ronan’s expression didn’t change, but his stomach muscles tightened as if he’d just taken a punch. “Aye,” he growled as an image of Allison’s white-lipped face flashed across his memory, “I do.”

Allison tried to keep up with him, but Ronan’s strides were driven forward by a fit of anger he was having difficulty controlling. He’d suggested getting something to eat before taking her home as much to buy himself some time to get control of his emotions as to feed the woman hurrying next to him. She’d agreed to food, and they strode down the darkened streets in silence, but he was having a harder time than he expected reigning in his unease. Walking between Verses during periods of such strong emotion was dangerous. His self-control might have been stronger than most, but it wasn’t worth chancing Allison’s safety when his mind was such a mess.

That made him even more frustrated. It wasn’t as if he was planning on doing anything dishonest. If Allison was as powerful as Cecily thought, and if she was gifted to boot—and he suspected that she was—then she could be incredibly valuable. The Alfar were always looking for ways to increase progress, whether it was enhancing the Venatore’s ability to find Walkers, or to heal injuries more quickly, and Allison wouldn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. Hell, she’d probably be happy to help when she learned that the Alfar could heal even grievous wounds, and as a Walker, she would have access to their facilities. So why did he feel like hiding the woman somewhere rather than reporting back to Arthur? Ronan had served and trusted the man for several hundred years and was one of the most trusted Venatore aside from the small few who served Arthur personally. No, Ronan knew the cost of betraying one’s leader. He knew better than most that one didn’t always have to like his duty to do it.

“Where is your accent from?”

Allison’s voice interrupted his sour thoughts. His accent was usually hardly noticeable, which meant she’d been paying close attention. The thought irritated him, so his voice was abrupt when he answered, “Ireland.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll refrain from the Lucky Charms jokes.”

“You’d be the first.”

“You can’t really blame people, you know,” she said, “the temptation is almost unbearable.”

He grunted and picked up his stride. Maybe if she had to work a little harder to keep up, she wouldn’t have the breath to ask so many questions.

“So, how long have you, ah, been—you know—trapped in a Sci-Fi novel?” She was only mildly breathless, unfortunately.

“Science fiction? No, mine’s a bit more like a fairy tale.”

“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing. Don’t most people want their lives to be like fairy tales?”

“Maybe if they only know the Disney version,” he snorted, “true fairy tales are a bit more gruesome. Look, we’ve only got another block until we reach the diner. Can you hold your tongue until then?”

He risked a look back over his shoulder. Allison was glaring at him, her eyes reflecting the lamplight like a cat’s. Even in the dark, he could see her jaw clench stubbornly. Satisfied, he pushed on, wrestling with his irritation until he caught sight of the diner he’d seen from the van window on their way in. The place was old, a few broken windows away from being derelict, but the smell of sausage wafted into the street when he pulled the door open and the carpets were clean, though stained. Allison hesitated at the threshold, then walked inside and slid into an empty booth.

When their waitress appeared with two glasses of ice water, a flicker of amusement flashed in Allison’s eyes before she mastered herself and her face cleared. Ronan couldn’t blame her entirely. The woman looked like a bag of dirty laundry; soft and lumpy and smelling none too clean.

“Breakfast served all night,” the woman said, “what can I get you?”

“Can I get a menu?” Allison asked.

The waitress narrowed her eyes in irritation and then plodded off toward the front of the restaurant.

“Wow, great choice here, Ronan,” Allison congratulated him, “service with a smile.”

Her humor wasn’t quite tempting enough to batter back his irritation, so he said, “give her a break, it’s late, and she’s probably tired.” Which was both true and probably more complimentary than the woman deserved. After she returned with the menus, the waitress leaned over them like a bored vulture waiting for their last dying breaths as they scanned the fare. Every time air whistled through the woman’s broken nose, the air around Allison would quiver with suppressed amusement. He found himself watching her face rather than deciding what he wanted to eat.

After a few seconds of perusing, Allison cleared her throat and said, “I’ll just have two eggs over medium, sausage, hash browns, and wheat toast, please.”

The older woman snatched the menu and demanded, “you needed a menu for that? What about you?”

Ronan looked up, swallowed back his growing amusement, and said, “same.”

The woman grunted and stalked away. Allison raised a cinnamon-colored brow at him and cocked her head to the side with a challenging little curl to the corner of her mouth.

“Alright,” he conceded, “next time you can choose the place.”

She started to smile at him, an expression that almost made his breath catch, but her features froze.

“Next time?” She asked.

The fear was back in her voice, so Ronan leaned far enough away to give her plenty of space and draped one elbow over the back of the seat, making sure to keep his body language casual and comfortable. He wanted to soothe her fear and tell her as much of the truth as he thought she could handle. Most of the time, his size and temperament caused just enough unease in people that he had a comfortable amount of personal space, but he found that the same reaction in this young woman made him want to smile, to soothe, and that made him uncomfortable.

Instead of admitting that, he said, “we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other for a while, Allison. You have a good deal to learn before you’re safe on your own.”

She started fidgeting with the silverware. “Maybe you can explain that to me a little bit. I think I have the broader points, but I still don’t understand how you found me. If there are so many Verses, wouldn’t it be kind of hard to find just one person? I mean…kind of impossible, really, if Walkers are as rare as all that?”

Ronan took a moment to consider how to approach the subject. Most of the time the average new Walker was still in a delicate mental condition at this stage, so they were told as little as possible and given plenty of time to let things sink in. But the redhead across from him was gazing at him with penetrating hazel eyes, so he said, “how would you like to do this, Allie?”

She blinked, cleared her throat, and asked, “what do you mean?”

“I can either sit back and give you a proper history of Walkers through the ages, or you can just ask me what you want to know.”

Ronan could almost feel the force of her curiosity when she said, “let’s start with who you are. All of you.”

“Cecily, Abasi, and I are Venatore. It’s part of our job to find Walkers.”

“Venatore? That sounds Latin.”

“It is. It means hunter.”

“Isn’t it kind of strange that your group has a Latin name? I mean, they must speak all kinds of other languages in different Verses, languages we don’t have here.”

It was Ronan’s turn to blink. That subtle piece of information wasn’t something most people caught and rarely questioned. People tended to think through the lens of their own experiences, so it rarely surprised them that the Venatore who rescued them spoke their language, even though hundreds—if not thousands—of worlds developed languages entirely different from those on True Earth. That a group of people capable of traveling through the Eververse, speaking languages that didn’t exist in half the Verses, should use a language like Latin to name themselves, never even seemed strange to most new Walkers.

“They do,” he told her, “but the founder of the Concilium is from a part of True Earth that spoke both Latin and English. He knew that the relative safety of our kind wouldn’t be possible without some kind of law, so he created the Venatore, and tasked us with finding new Walkers and teaching the law to them, enforcing it when the need arose.”

“That seems like an impossible job.”

He grunted, “it isn’t easy.”

She considered that for a moment, twirling a butter knife so the light from the overhead lamp jumped off the polished metal in her hands and made shining reflections chase themselves across her cheeks. “If you have a job,” she said slowly, “I mean if the Venatore are employed—there must be a central government, right?”

He nodded. “There is, but it’s not like a proper government. The Concilium have a set of rules meant to keep everyone safe, and the Venatore make sure the rules get enforced. That’s about all there is to it. It’s hard to police a society like ours when someone can disappear to a thousand different Verses.”

“I bet. What are the rules?”

Here it was. This was the most important part of his job as a Venatore, so he leaned forward and tried to express the gravity of what he was about to tell her with his eyes. “This is important, girl, so pay close attention. Once I tell you these rules, you’re bound by them, you understand?”

She hesitated, then nodded. Just as he was about to tell her the rules, she held up one hand and almost shouted at him, “wait!”

Ronan leaned back, surprised. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Sure, he thought, nothing made you scream in my face in panic.

She sighed and her shoulders slumped. “It’s just that rules are a big deal,” she said.

Ronan tilted his head at her, intrigued. She couldn’t know how right she was.

“I guess it’s just that people are willing to make allowances for you when you don’t know any better,” she explained, “if you get into trouble, at least you can say that you didn’t realize you were doing anything wrong. But once you know the rules, there’s an expectation to live up to. All of this still doesn’t feel real. If it’s not real, it’s safer. But, if there are rules…”

She didn’t finish the sentence but he nodded, catching the drift of her thoughts. “Don’t worry. There aren’t many rules and, generally speaking, they’re easy enough to follow,” he shrugged, then added, “and only one or two are punishable by death. No pressure.”

Anyone else might have blanched at that, but Allison seemed to relax. He suspected that she used humor as a way to diffuse anxious situations, and it looked like he was right.

“Alright then,” she said, sitting up straighter, “lay it on me.”

“Pay attention, then, because I will ask you to repeat these back to me later.” He told her and then said very seriously, “The Laws of the Founding were set down by the leader and founder of the Concilium, and they are these: no Walker may transport artifacts, technology or magical weapons to another Verse, this is the First Law of the Founding. You shall not endanger another Walker's existence by revealing your gifts to mortal men; this is the Second Law. Your actions shall not deprive another Walker of freedom, property, health, or life; this is the Third Law. Justice shall be rendered by a vote of the Concilium and ratified by a body of peers. If any Walker should break these laws, the Venatore shall bring the transgressor to the justice of the Concilium. Did you understand all of that?”

More tension bled out of her posture and she smiled slightly. “Yep. Do unto others and keep your mouth shut. What I don’t understand is, if you’re the police force, why did you find me? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you didn’t. Like I said, part of what we do is find Walkers and train them how to use their abilities. If we teach you, then you’re less likely to break the rules, right? Which means it’s safer for the rest of us and for the Verses you visit. It’s better to find you now than wait till you’ve damaged a society or conquered a continent.”

Her cheeks paled at the idea. “How do you find them?”

Ronan sat back and ran his hands through the hair at the nape of his neck, thinking; this wasn’t a question he usually dealt with. While he enjoyed Allison’s quickness, her sharp mind was going to make it tricky for him not to accidentally tell her things she didn’t need to know, and this was something she definitely didn’t need to know. He looked up, caught her eyes roaming over his face, and couldn’t resist a curl of the lip. Ronan enjoyed having enough good looks to ensure that he wouldn’t have to spend the night alone when the loneliness became too much to bear, but rarely had he felt the warm surge of pleasure in his gut simply from being admired by a woman. She blushed prettily, and he tamped down the sensation before telling her, “that’s privileged information and not something I can share with you.”

Their waitress reappeared and plunked two plates down in front of them. Ronan was grateful for the distraction. He found himself enjoying Allison’s company, and that would be dangerous for her. Rather than think about the reasons why spending time with her would be dangerous, Ronan began shoveling food into his mouth. It was bland and overcooked but edible.

Allison made a little noise of disgust and he looked up to see her poking an egg with her fork, mouth twisted into an unhappy grimace.

He knew she was hungry, had heard her stomach preparing to eat other organs in desperation, so he acted on another hunch and said, “can’t handle it, eh?”

Her jaw thrust forward at his challenge, and she cut a neat slice of egg and crammed it into her mouth, chewing determinedly. It wasn’t long before she was mopping up egg yolk with her toast. After the last delicate bite, she dropped her fork and smiled winsomely at him before declaring, “done.”

He’d been right; his apprentice couldn’t turn away from a challenge. An unwilling smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Competitive, are you?”

She shrugged. “A bit.”

They stared at each other for a long time, companionable silence stretching between them, and Ronan was just beginning to be certain that there was a heart-shaped freckle on one of her cheeks when her hand strayed to the spot and her expression soured.

Bollocks, he thought angrily as her hand covered the small bruise that had formed as a result of his inattention, I should have taken more care to keep her head from hitting the pavement. Stupid ox.

“I am sorry about that,” he said, trying to explain himself and assuage at least some of the guilt that suddenly settled on his neck, “most people do run, and I couldn’t take the chance of letting you escape.”

She shrugged off his apology, took a deep breath, and said, “getting back to the rules: you brought a cup of cocoa back from wherever you disappeared to. Why is that okay, but moving technology around isn’t?”

“A cup of cocoa is a far cry from a computer,” he pointed out, only slightly disappointed that they were moving back into technical territory.

“Humor me.”

“What kind of impact do you think it would have if I showed up in the equivalent of Britain in 1492 with a television or a rocket launcher?”

She all but smacked her forehead with her hand. “I suppose this was one of those instances where I should have believed my sci-fi novels,” she admitted, “okay, one point for your side. My next question is, how can you do it? I understand that Walkers can affect their own atomic frequencies, though I don’t have the faintest idea how, but how does that ability extend to something like a cup of cocoa?”

He broke out the tried and true line of explanations. “Have you ever dodged something thrown at you, like a rock or a ball?”

“I have an older brother,” she laughed, “I’ve dodged a lot worse than that.”

“But have you ever dodged something you didn’t see coming?”

Ronan watched her face as she dug through memories, still enthralled at the way her features shifted unselfconsciously as she thought. He decided a practical example was in order, so she could understand how things worked. It was not because he wanted to be closer to her, but she would need to be physically comfortable with him if he was going to teach her to walk. Ronan slid out of his booth and gestured for her to move over. He managed not to flinch at the sudden unease on her face.

“Uncomfortable?” he asked once he was close enough to her.

“Yes, it is.”

He slid backward and gave her as much space as he could. He didn’t want her to be uneasy, but it was the most practical demonstration he could manage in a public place.

“I was inside your electromagnetic field,” he explained, “you could feel how close I was, and it triggered your fight or flight reflexes.”

“I could see you, though,” she disagreed, “and I hardly know you, so it makes sense that it would be uncomfortable to be that close to someone I don’t know. Just from an evolutionary standpoint, it would be dangerous for me to allow an unknown quantity close enough to do me harm.”

“A fair point,” he conceded, “but there’s more going on than that. Close your eyes, this time.”

Her eyes slid shut immediately, red-gold lashes lying gently against the upper swell of her pale cheek.

“Notice how the rest of your senses become sharper when you can’t see?” he asked quietly, then lifted his hand and brought it slowly toward her face. The warmth of her body pulsed against the skin of his palm, and for a second he imagined touching the skin, knowing how soft it would be.

Allison squeaked, and jerked her head away from his hands as her eyes flew open. He let his hand hang there for a second longer and then dropped it. “You see? Even with your eyes closed your body knew.”

“I could feel your warmth,” she objected.

“What is warmth?”

Understanding cleared her brow and she nodded. “So, somehow we’re able to affect the atomic frequencies of things that are inside our electromagnetic field?”

“Yes,” he told her, and slid reluctantly out of her seat, “we can affect the frequencies of objects that fit within our electromagnetic fields. It requires a good deal of concentration,” he warned, “and it’s even harder to bring a living thing, more dangerous, but still possible. This is why we don’t reveal ourselves to the Legless. To walk with one of them could damage them or kill both the Walker and the Legless, not to mention the fact that no one wants to be studied for the sake of science. You can see why the rules are in place.”

“Walkers have tried to bring other people?”

“Yes, unfortunately. It can be done, but it’s something we only try in extreme circumstances, and, even then, some Walkers aren’t strong enough or just never get the hang of it. Your field isn’t that large, in any case. Imagine trying to fit another person into it. What happens to the parts that get left out?”

A shudder shook her frame, then Allison took a deep breath and looked up at him. Her gaze stayed on his face long enough that he had to control the impulse to make sure his hair still covered his forehead.

“So,” she said finally, “now you’ve found me, and I know about the rules, what happens next?”

“Now we get you home. After that, I’ll check in on you and teach you a bit more about Walking between the Verses. It will take a while to teach you to do it purposefully so that you aren’t Walking on accident, or during a nightmare, or when you’re angry.”

“If you’re a cop—”

“Venatore,” Ronan interrupted.

“Okay, if you’re a Venatore, how will you have time to help me with all this? Won’t you be needed to catch bad guys or something?”

“I told you,” he said patiently, “hunting isn’t the only thing Venatore do, and there aren’t so many Walkers that we can’t take our time.”

The hair rose on the back of his neck and Ronan went still, tilting his head toward windows that lined the opposite side of the aisle. It was late, and very few cars had passed the diner while they’d eaten, all of them speeding by. The sound of an approaching engine slowing, and the distinctive click of a charging handle being pulled into place had Ronan moving before he had time to think. He leaped the table and used his body to shield Allison as the windows exploded in a hail of gunfire.

Glass bounced off his back and Ronan couldn’t help but hold his breath, waiting for the impact of a bullet as diners screamed. As soon as the car passed the building, he jerked Allison to her feet and pushed her toward the back of the restaurant while scanning for danger and dodging panicked patrons. He dimly registered that Allison was asking him questions and he managed to reply, but the greater part of his mind was assessing the danger and deciding on the safest course of action. It would be natural to assume they’d been simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but Ronan had been dealing with the supernatural long enough to know that it was never safe to assume anything was a coincidence. He needed to get Allison out of the restaurant, and the front of the building was likely to be the most dangerous route, packed with fleeing people and, soon, police. The alley would be confined, but it would also be dark, and he wouldn’t need very long to walk Allison out of that verse.

Decision made, he pulled the concealed pistol from the harness inside his jacket and stepped to the side of the rear door.

“Why do you have a gun?” Allison asked, her voice faint.

He ignored her and leaned cautiously into the alley, scanning the shadows. It was impossible to hear anything over the commotion in the restaurant, but the alley seemed safe enough, so he ushered Allison into the darkness. He kept himself between her and the back door of the restaurant, his neck tight with the suspicion that someone would shoot him the back, but he told himself that he didn’t need to go far, just put a little distance between them and the danger so he would have enough time to walk her out of that verse. Allison leaned closer to him, grabbing a handful of his jacket as her head jerked toward a small sound. He knew all too well the overwhelm of adrenaline heightened senses, the feeling that every sound and movement meant danger. After so many years, he’d learned to control the feeling, even expected it. What he didn’t expect was Allison tripping and crying out as she fell.

The impact came at almost the same instant. He felt like someone had hit him in the left shoulder with a baseball bat; the same shoulder that had been behind Allison’s head before she’d tripped. Ronan grunted in pain and stumbled to the side. He dragged Allison with him into the shadows of a basement stairwell and kept the handgun trained on the approach to the stairwell as he leaned his back against the door for support. There was no sign of pursuit, and they’d be leaving in seconds, so he dropped the firearm into the wastebasket near the door and reached into his jacket. He knew the pain would set in soon, so he took advantage of the temporary numbness to check the wound; it felt like the shot had gone cleanly through the deltoid.

Allison gasped when he pulled bloody fingers from his jacket, then stiffened as he jerked her against his body. She would need to be close to him when they walked in case her first efforts weren’t sufficient, so he wrapped his arms around her and began the first steps, altering his frequency to bring himself into harmony with True Earth, but the burgeoning pain and adrenaline were distracting enough to make concentration difficult. If he had an octave to match, it would be easier to travel, so he old Allison, “hold on to me and think of home.”

His voice cracked like a whip, and he was grateful when she obeyed, wrapping both long arms around him, her cheek pressed to his chest. She fit against him perfectly, all soft curves and lemony scent. Allison began to vibrate, filling the air with a tone so strong that it all but dragged him along with it. Lord, but she smells good, he thought as the world went black.

When he opened his eyes, nausea, pain, and vertigo almost dropped him. Walking while injured was never ideal, and uncomfortable side-effects weren’t the worst thing that could happen. He’d seen people split into pieces when their stressed minds were unable to control their bodies. It took him a second to orient himself—at the edge of an empty alley next to a three-story brick building—and find Allison, who was lying on the ground near his feet, hair splayed on the pavement and glowing dully in the faint light of street lamps.

“Allison,” he said.

She didn’t respond, and he took a deep, shuddering breath. A wave of dizziness passed over him.

“Allison.”

She made a little mewling sound. His legs started to feel weak.

“Allison!” The damn woman needed to get up off the cold ground, and he felt certain that if he bent over to rouse her, he’d topple to the side. She groaned, rolled to her knees, and vomited. A pang of sympathetic nausea stabbed him, and Ronan had to brace his legs to remain standing. He could deal with the growing pain of the gunshot, but not with the side-effects of walking under too much stress.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” she said weakly.

Ronan fought back the encroaching darkness and said, “I’ve seen worse. Are we close to your flat?” He hoped they were, because he had a suspicion the pain in his shoulder hadn’t been intended for him, and he wanted Allison somewhere safe until he could decide whether he needed to be concerned.

She pushed herself away from the wet stain on the pavement and asked, “did we just…ah…walk?”

“We did.”

He took a deep breath and focused on the solid ground beneath his feet, but unconsciousness was swirling up around his legs. Allison looked up at the building next to them and her shoulders slumped.

“Yes,” she sighed, “we’re right behind my building.”

“That’s good,” he said, and the void overwhelmed him.

When Ronan opened his eyes again, Allison’s face hovered above him, her hair making a tent that blocked out the hazy light of the street lamp.

“Ronan! Wake up! Are you okay?”

“Gah,” he groaned, as the pain in his shoulder throbbed back to fiery life.

“Don’t move, okay? I’m going to find someone to call 911.”

The fingers of his good arm locked around Allison’s wrist before she could push herself to her feet. He ignored the sudden electric shock of her power and focused on his thoughts. The last thing he needed was footage of himself on hospital security cameras. “No,” he said, “we can’t involve the police.”

“But—”

“No.”

He let go of her arm, pushed himself into a sitting position, waited until the world stopped spinning, and regarded her mutinous glare with implacable resolve. “Just help me get to your flat,” he said around the pain, hoping he sounded firm and in control, “the wound isn’t so bad.”

She thought for a moment, then her jaw set as she nodded and reached for his forearm. “Alright, hero,” she pulled him to his feet and grunted under his weight, “let’s see how far you can walk.”

Ronan was able to take most of his own weight, but Allison was stronger than he’d suspected, so he let her help him as much as his conscience would allow. She paused at the stoop to key in a code, checked to make sure the lobby was empty, then hauled him through the front double doors and toward an elevator. He took the time to consider what had just happened.

Was it possible that they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time? He’d cataloged the faces of the diner’s few patrons—an old drunk, a few teenagers enjoying the thrill of staying out too late (even if the only place to go was a rundown diner) a homeless woman asleep in a booth, and a few middle-aged men with the black coffee, stubble and rumpled suits of traveling salesmen—no one likely to be the target of a drive-by shooting. A random shooting, then? He might have been able to brush it off as such if not for the pain in his shoulder; and the silenced gun that put it there.

The elevator door slid open and Allison dragged him inside, pressing the 3rd-floor button with trembling fingers.

“You really should be going to the hospital,” she grumbled.

He didn’t have any enemies in that verse, having only been there three or four times, and most of the people who wanted him dead either had no way to track him or were too deliberate for the imprecise spray of bullets from a moving car. That meant that his first suspicion was the most likely: the bullet hadn’t been meant for his shoulder, but for Allison’s head.

When the door slid open, he followed Allison to the flat at the end of the hall, then winced as she kicked the door with the toe of her boot. The motion caused little knives of pain to slice across his shoulder. He dropped his head and clenched his jaw.

“Ronan? Hang in there, okay? Are you awake?”

He lifted his head at the concern in her voice and said, “I’m good.”

She considered him for a second, then raised her foot to kick the door again but it swung open to reveal an angelic blonde in pajamas, whose expression quickly changed from exasperation to shock as Allison pushed past her, towing Ronan.

“Allie, what? Is he okay? What’s going on!? Should I call 911?”

Ronan braced himself and slid onto an old brown couch, grunting and cursing the pain that flared as he settled into the cushions.

“No,” Allison panted, “you don’t need to call the cops, but I do need towels, rubbing alcohol, and boiled water. Hurry up!”

There was a long pause as he caught his breath, and the other woman said reluctantly, “okay, but you’re going to tell me what happened to this guy.”

Allison reached down and began pulling at his jacket, jostling him in her efforts to get his shoulder out of the leather coat. After a particularly sharp stab of pain he gritted, “damn girl, could ye hurt my shoulder any more than you have done?”

She raised a brow in a half-amused, half-exasperated expression, but didn’t stop her efforts to peel him out of the jacket with all the finesse of skinning a fish. “Got your Irish up, eh? You’re the one that told me not to call 911, remember? If I remember correctly, you ordered me not to. So, you’re just going to have to deal with my help whether it hurts or not, aren’t you?”

Ronan narrowed his eyes at her, unsure whether to be amused or irritated; she suddenly looked like a ward nurse dealing with a difficult patient. He sucked in a steadying breath as she peeled the leather away from the wound with a sucking sound that made the blood drain from her cheeks.

“Oh God, Ronan,” she breathed, “you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

He glanced down at the red staining the left side of his shirt and grunted. “Thanks for pointin’ that out.” His accent was noticeable even to his ears. He sighed, shifted his weight, and closed his eyes. The Irish always seemed to appear when he was least in control of his emotions. Pain rarely caused him to slip back into his native brogue, though. Too much of his mind was focused on listening for the sound of footsteps in the hall to control his voice.

Hurried clatter came from the kitchen behind him as his nurse rummaged through cupboards and cabinets. He’d left his pistol in the other verse because even Venatore weren’t supposed to walk with modern weapons unless it was explicitly necessary, and he didn’t have enough evidence to support breaking that law, even if his gut told him something was wrong; lack of a weapon would make protecting her a lot more dangerous, though, if someone showed up to finish the job.

Ronan considered his options as Allison cut up the sleeve of his shirt and down across the shoulder to the chest, carefully peeling back the material to reveal the small entrance wound.

“Just flesh,” she said with a relieved sigh, but her eyes lingered on the drying stain that covered most of the fabric, and her mouth thinned into an unhappy line. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had been honestly concerned about him.

He swallowed and said, “don’t worry. It’s not as much as it seems.”

“It was enough to make you pass out,” she countered.

“I did that, but part of it was the—” he hesitated, listening to make sure her roommate wasn’t close enough to hear, “traveling.”

The young woman in question appeared seconds later with an armful of medical supplies and asked, “will this be okay?”

“I think so,” Allison said as she examined the stockpile and began pulling out bandages.

“Do we still need boiling water?” the other woman asked.

Allison dug through the haul and pulled out a clear bag full of water. “I don’t think so,” she said, “but you should check the jacket to make sure that the hole in the shoulder closes all the way. Tell me if it looks like there’s a piece missing.”

“Why?”

“I need to make sure the bullet didn’t drag a piece of the jacket into his arm,” Allison said distractedly as she began cleaning the wound.

Let the pain happen, he told himself, don’t fight it. Relax. It’s just something happening to your body, not to you.

“Bullet?” the other woman asked.

“If a piece did get stuck in his arm,” Allison paused, then said firmly, “then we’ll have to call 911.”

She glared down at him like an avenging angel, daring him to contradict her, but he had no reason to. If it came to that, he’d walk back to the Valetudinorium and save her the guilt. He could deal with some nausea, and the Alfar would have him healed and pain free in no time, anyway. Despite the temptation of pain relief, he refused to risk leaving her alone while she might still be in danger, so he closed his eyes and focused on breathing while she dressed the wound.

“It looks good,” the roommate said, “it doesn’t look like anything is missing. The little hole closes all the way.”

The rest of the sound faded away as Ronan tried to calm his mind, to let the pain exist while he considered all the possibilities. Only a few Walkers had the kind of gifts that would allow them to track the movement of other Walkers in the Eververse, and the Concillium had pressed most of those into service…at least, the ones they knew about. So it was unlikely that the shooter would be able to follow them to True Earth, but not impossible. He couldn’t leave the wound sitting too long without help, but he also couldn’t chance leaving Allison unprotected just yet.

“Are you okay?”

Her voice was low and gentle. He took another slow breath and then opened his eyes to look at the young woman crouching before him. The sudden urge to rub away the worry line between her eyebrows almost overwhelmed him, so he said, “I’m all right. I’ve had worse than this and still lived to fight another day.”

Eyes the color of evening sun filtered through leaves regarded him solemnly for another moment before she returned to work finishing the pressure dressing.

When she tightened the bandage he winced and she paused, giving him a moment to recover before reaching around his torso to tie a sling in place. The cold silk of her hair slid across the hot skin of his bare shoulder, and the scent of lemons and rosemary, tinged with the sharp after bite of fear, filled his nostrils. He took an involuntary breath.

“Okay,” she straightened and looked down at him apologetically, “now we just need to get your arm into the sling, and that’s about as good as I can make it.”

His meditative breathing wasn’t enough to staunch the burn of lifting his arm to settle it into the sling, and with no adrenaline left to dull the fire and no fight to force him to ignore it, the pain left Ronan exhausted.

“Are you okay?” She asked again.

“I’ll do,” he said, adjusting the fit of the sling with his free hand. “Thank you, Allison.”

“You’re welcome.”

Reluctant to break their gaze, he held her eyes for a moment longer and then shifted gingerly to turn toward Allison’s roommate. “And you, Rayne. Thank you,” but wondered, when did I hear her name?

Apparently, it had been the right name, because she didn’t correct him, only blushed prettily and nodded. She was the opposite of his new apprentice in many ways. Delicately built, pretty, managing to look put-together even in pajamas. Allison was athletic, striking if not conventionally pretty, and somehow seemed both confident and uncomfortable in her own skin all at the same time.

He found the latter much more compelling. When he looked at her face, her haggard expression make it clear she was about to pass out where she stood.

“You need sleep,” he said.

The corners of her eyes crinkled. “If anyone needs sleep, it’s you.”

“I’ll sleep here if you two don’t mind?”

“Your huge body on that sofa?” she laughed, “your legs would hang off from the knees down. No, you can sleep in my bed, and I’ll sleep out here.”

“I’m not going to take your bed from you,” he said flatly.

“You were shot, and you need sleep a lot more than I do. How is your arm going to feel if you roll off that couch in the middle of the night?”

His stomach squirmed at the idea, but he said, “it’s already the middle of the night.”

“It’s the middle of the morning,” Rayne said from the back of the room, “see?”

With a heavy sigh, Ronan pushed himself to his feet, careful not to jar his arm, and waited while the dizziness passed.

“Lead the way,” he said.

Allison’s room was nondescript, neither masculine nor feminine in appearance, with blankets a neutral shade of blue and books strewn on every flat surface. He walked carefully toward the bed as she asked, “why don’t you just walk back to…whatever verse the Venatore are in? Couldn’t they have doctored you up there?”

He sat gingerly and used his toes to try and work his boots off. “They could have, but I needed to make sure you were home safe. And then, well, I just didn’t have the energy. It takes a fair bit of strength and concentration. Hard to do, when you’re in pain, and maybe dangerous. Right now, I’m just too tired. We had a long day before we found you.”

Allison snorted as if she didn’t believe him, and bent to push his fumbling foot out of the way, taking hold of his boot by toe and heel.

“You don’t have to do that,” he protested.

She scowled at him. “Point your foot.”

“I can sleep with my boots on.”

“You are a stubborn man, aren’t you? Ronan, you saved my life from a drive-by shooting tonight, not to mention getting me out of the psych ward in a world I don’t belong to. I think I can help you take off your boots so you can sleep comfortably.”

Not arguing seemed like the best course of action, so he clenched his jaw and tried to help as she worked the boots free. The first boot came off without too much effort, but Allison struggled with the second until it came off all in a rush, sending her sprawling on her ass with an “oof” and a surprised expression so adorable that he couldn’t stop himself from laughing. No one had ever helped him take off his boots. Ever.

“Is life as a Venatore always this much fun?” she asked with a self-deprecating smirk.

“No,” he said, “sometimes it’s much more exciting, and sometimes it hurts more. But,” he raised one dark brow, and couldn’t stop himself from glancing at her recently bruised rear end, “it’s not always so funny.”

After she closed the door, Ronan lay awake and listened; murmured conversation, occasional traffic that never slowed, a siren in the distance, and then silence. When the house was quiet for twenty minutes, he climbed out of the bed and checked each room, making sure doors and windows were locked, and rooms were empty save for the two sleeping women.

Allison lay on the couch, her face half smooshed into a pillow, red hair spilling off the cushion in a fiery waterfall. She looked young and innocent, and yet she’d bravely taken care of him, doctoring a wound despite her reservations, maintained her sense of humor, and bullied him like a protective mamma.

A crack appeared in the centuries-old wall Ronan had built, brick by brick, around his heart. It hurt worse than the bullet wound.

 Sleep was elusive that night, and Ronan only managed to catch a few hours in between prowling the dark apartment to double-check locks, listening for suspicious noises, and pretending to be asleep when Allison snuck into the room. The first time she’d opened the door, he’d tensed and wondered just what she was doing until she’d stepped close and held the back of her hand a couple of inches away from his mouth to make sure he was still breathing. She’d crept in twice more that night, checking on him like cat with only one kitten, and each time he’d felt a sense of warmth mixed with amusement. It had been a long time since anyone had been concerned enough about him to make any sacrifices that duty didn’t demand; even ones as small as lost sleep.

He managed a stretch of uninterrupted sleep near early morning when pain and fatigue could no longer be ignored in the face of a warm bed and the lack of happenings even mildly suspicious. When he woke, it was to the sound of the shower across the hallway. The pain in his shoulder was a constant, dull burn, but not quite serious enough to stop the image of Allison in the shower from flashing across his mind, trails of bubbles white against her skin. He’d already seen her bare legs, athletic and graceful, and felt the shape and strength of her body against him at least twice. He wondered idly whether the golden freckles high on her cheeks could be found on other parts of her body, and the thought made all the blood he had left find its way to his crotch in an aching rush.

Ronan growled, adjusted the fit of his jeans, and rolled carefully out of bed. He fought with his boots, jaw clenched against the burning in his arm as he thought about how quickly he could get himself to the Valetudinorium. Nothing he’d seen yet was urgent enough to require a direct report to Arthur, so he could wait to fulfill that duty until after the wound had been healed, and since no one had shown up last night to finish the attempt on Allison’s life, he thought she’d be safe enough for him to make the trip to Alfar, conduct his report in Avalon, and check into Allison’s past a bit. He’d seen enough of her in unexpected moments to feel secure teaching her how to use her gifts, but a bit of snooping might also give him enough information to make guesses about why someone might want her dead.

When Ronan stepped into the hallway the shower was off, but pale tendrils of lemon-scented steam rose like ghosts from beneath the bathroom door. He paused for a heartbeat, then walked toward the kitchen where Rayne was already making tea. She wore a tank top and a pair of pajama shorts that exposed long limbs, and her golden hair was piled high on her head.

“Good morning,” he said.

She made a little squeaking noise and jumped, then turned toward him with one hand on her chest and a sheepish smile. “Good morning. How are you feeling?”

“I’m alright. I’m going to have a doctor take a look at this today,” he tilted his head toward the wound, and Rayne followed his gesture but her eyes drifted downward, going soft and wide. Ronan recognized the look and realized that he hadn’t been able to replace the shirt Allison had cut off him the night before. The lack of sleep had addled his brains.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and grabbed the jacket that still lay across the back of the couch. He tried to drape it over his shoulder, but the sling was cumbersome, so he cursed quietly and untied the fabric, going a bit pale as he forced his arm into the sleeve before zipping up the jacket.

“No,” she said, and held out one arm as if to stop him, “you don’t have to do that. I know it must hurt to move your arm.”

He shrugged with one shoulder and sat while the worst of the pain passed. “It’s alright. I imagine the last thing a woman wants is a wounded stranger showing up half-naked in her kitchen.”

She gave a light-hearted laugh, but her cheeks turned pink and she turned back to the counter to pour tea. “Hey, it sounds like the first chapter of a romance novel, so there probably are plenty of women who wouldn’t mind.”

Ronan wasn’t sure he wanted to reply to that.

“Good morning.” It was his turn to make a noise and jump, but the movement caused another lance of pain to stab through his shoulder, so when he turned to see Allison walking into the living room, his face wasn’t as welcoming as it had been. She took in his expression and her smile faltered, but then she rallied and said, “How do you feel? Did you sleep okay?

“I’ll do,” he told her, then made a conscious effort not to sound like an ungrateful jerk, “thanks again for your help.”

She shrugged it off. 

“I hate to ask, but would you mind?” He held up the untied sling and looked meaningfully at his arm. 

“Sure.” Allison stepped close, wrapped the fabric around him, and tied it off quickly behind his neck. Her body heat radiated through even the leather jacket. Her hair hung in wet waves past her shoulders and stuck to the skin of her neck and chest. The V of the t-shirt she wore showed that the freckles did, indeed, reside in places other than just her cheeks.

He swallowed and said, “I think I’ll be heading out if that’s alright. I want to have this looked at.”

“Oh! Of course, yeah, give me a second to grab my jacket and I’ll walk you out.”

They took the elevator in silence and when they stepped out of the building, Allison stopped unexpectedly to turn her face up to the sun. She made a little moaning sound as the sun warmed her cheeks, and the sound went right to his groin. He hurried past her and across the street and into the neighboring park, hoping to give his libido a moment to calm down before the front of his jeans made things embarrassing. 

“Geez, are you always in a hurry?” she asked, jogging to catch up.

“Just a bit,” he admitted, “I’d like to get this looked at, and I’ve already left it too long as it is.”

He stopped next to a bench that was in the far corner of the park, deeply shaded and screened from view by rhododendron bushes. The area wouldn’t be easily seen from the street and was as good a place as any to say his goodbyes. 

“Thank you for tending this,” he said, gesturing toward his shoulder.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you. You saved me more than once already, and I’ve only known you for two days. It’s the least I could do.”

“No thanks necessary, Allison. It is my job, after all, isn’t it?”

Her mouth thinned, she stuffed her hands in her pockets, looked up at the canopy, and said, “I guess it is.”

Ronan didn’t like the change in her expression, so he changed the subject. “As soon as this heals enough, we’ll start training. It shouldn’t take too long for you to get the hang of Walking and learn how to control it so that you only travel when you mean to.”

“How long do you think it will take? For you to heal, I mean.”

“No more than a couple of days. The Venatore have very…advanced medicine. We can talk about that later,” he said, “until then I want you to go about your normal routine as well as you can. You’re in school?”

He’d seen several textbooks in her room during his sleepless night. She nodded.

“Good,” he said, “focus on that. Until I see you again, try not to do anything too out of the ordinary. If you lose control of yourself and end up somewhere else, I might not be able to find you.”

Allison swallowed, and her cheeks paled. “Is that…is that likely to happen?”

“Probably not. You’ve made it this long, right? It’s only that very strong emotion can trigger your abilities.” A thought sprang up and Ronan clenched his jaw, considering whether to ask her. When he finally decided, he told himself that he was asking strictly for her safety, and not to satisfy his own curiosity. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked finally.

She blushed and asked, “What does that have to do with anything?” 

“Because,” he said slowly, reaching up with his good arm to break a dead twig off the branch just above his head, “sex can trigger strong emotion. So, if you’ve got a bloke you fancy, now would not be the time to climb into bed with him.” He wanted to slap himself. A simple warning would have been fine, he didn’t need to add that last part.

She snorted, and her brows lowered in irritation. “I’m pretty sure that’s none of your business.”

He looked her in the eye, letting their gaze lock for the first time. Despite his misgivings, this was important, and he wanted to communicate that to her, but the color of her eyes made him feel like a little boy, spinning in circles in a summer field until the whole world became a swirl of green and gold. The dizziness passed almost as quickly as it had appeared, but the sense of dislocation stayed with him. Allison raised one trembling hand to her chest, which was rising and falling as if she’d just sprinted up a hill.

He opened his mouth to ask her what had just happened, then shut it, and blinked. How would she know? She looked just as shocked as he felt.

He grabbed the reins of his emotions and reminded himself that she needed him to guide her through this until she could handle everything safely on her own. He was going to press the issue because it related to her safety, not because some part of him hoped her emotions weren’t tied to some other man.

“It is my business,” he said and snapped the twig between his fingers to release a bit of the tension. “It’s my business because I don’t want to have to go searching for you with no idea where to look. I need to know where I can find you, so I can keep you safe, at least until you can manage it yourself. Unless you’d like to Walk somewhere unfamiliar on your own?”

“Don’t worry,” she said with an artificially bright smile, “I don’t have a boyfriend and I don’t make a habit of one-night stands, so I won’t be orgasming my way into another dimension.”

He laughed once, hard and surprised. Her humor took him off balance, but it was enough to put him back in his place.

“I’ll have to remember that line,” he said.

Her brows raised with a sudden thought and she asked, “If I meet another Walker, will I know it? I mean, is there any way to tell?”

Does she know? The panicked thought rushed through his mind, followed by reassurance. Of course, she doesn’t know. How could she? She only learned what she is yesterday. 

“It’s not likely,” he told her, completely uncertain whether that was true for her or not. “A very few of us can feel one another, a kind of reckoning, I’m told. The Venatore call the people who can feel magic Augurs, and they’re damn rare. I can’t feel it, though I’ve heard it described.” That was true enough. The only Augur he’d ever met in person was a leathery old man with white hair who was fond of snapping people with a cane made of reeds.

A chill breeze pulled at his hair, but the locks still covered his forehead safely. Allison shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. She looked suddenly desolate.

“I doubt you’ll see any in the next couple of days, though,” he said, hoping that was, at least, consoling, “we are rather rare, too.”

“When will I see you, then?”

“Within the next few days.”

“Here at the apartment?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” she said and covered her hair with the hood of her sweater.

Ronan glanced around to make sure no one else was near, then nodded at Allison and left for the Valetudinorium before he was tempted to say anything else.

He felt the pull of the place of power before he ever materialized in Alfar. The familiar tug of gravity grabbed him and swept him along without any effort. When he opened his eyes, he stood in the domed room next to the ancient stone that had been used to mark the place. The Alfar built the Valetudinorium—what amounted to a hospital and research center—around the stone knowing that it would be the easiest place for Walkers to appear when they were sick or injured. Walking to a place of power required much less effort, and Ronan himself had taken advantage of that on more than one occasion, even showing up barely conscious, once; that time he’d been carried in by nurses who regularly checked the room, but this time he was able to move under his own power, so he did.

The Valetudinorium had been built by one of the most advanced races in the Eververse, and the place looked like it; simple, clean, ergonomic designs created with materials that were both light and sturdy. There wasn’t a line out of place, no gratuitous flourishes, just function, conservation of space, and elegance. He ignored the fact that the place displayed a decided lack of warmth—he’d never been in a hospital that felt welcoming, anyway—and strode down the hallway until reaching the triage room. 

“Venatore,” one of the nurses said, “with what may I assist you, today?”

“Gunshot,” he said.

The man stood and picked up a shiny grey tablet, like the Multidiv Abasi and Cecily used while hunting, and led him to an open room down the hall. 

“Name?” the man asked.

“Ronan. And yours?”

Ronan always hoped that the question would register a look of surprise on the face the Alfar, but he was out of luck. The nurse simply said, in his calm voice, “Erlinger.”

“Nice to meet you, Erlinger.”

“When did you receive the injury?”

“Last night.”

And that was as far as introductions would go, he knew. Erlinger would be as formal and removed as Cecily was. He asked Ronan all the pertinent questions, taking notes on his tablet as Ronan answered. The answers didn’t really matter, since the Alfar would be able to heal him in any case, but they kept records of everything for the research that made them such effective healers.

Erlinger cleaned the wound, spread gel around the area, and then, when it dried, injected another gel into the entrance and exit wounds before wrapping a light bandage around the exposed skin.

“The anesthetic should wear off in twenty minutes. You can move after that, but I would recommend you not lift anything heavy until tomorrow.”

Ronan nodded and leaned back against the wall. Being free from pain made him tired, and his eyelids felt like someone had tied cinder blocks to them.

“How were you injured?”

Ronan sighed. “Hello, Cecily.” He fought his eyelids open to see his team member standing in the doorway, looking like a beneficent queen, her aquiline features remote.

“Gunshot,” he repeated.

“Ah, then you will be healed shortly.”

He shifted and closed his eyes again. “That’s what Erlinger says.”

“Will you be reporting to Arthur afterward?”

“I will.”

Her shoes make a soft clicking noise as she stepped into the room. “Were you able to discover more about the girl’s power? Is she gifted?”

He took a deep, steadying breath before opening his eyes. “I didn’t have time for much besides teaching her the Laws and getting her home after this happened,” he nodded at his shoulder.

“I’m sure there will be time during her training.”

Ronan changed the subject. “And your mission?”

“A very young boy,” she said, “only ten years old. He split his father in a fit of rage. We suspect the father was abusive, as he said his mother was dead. The boy is here now.”

Ronan shuddered. He hadn’t been lying to Allison when he told her about the dangers of Walking with Legless. It was too easy to imagine a scared, angry little boy who wanted his father to stop hitting his mother. The gift would be activated by that rage, and anyone with body parts inside his electromagnetic field when he walked would be…he supposed split was the perfect word.

“Poor little sod. How is he?”

“Fine. They’ve put him to sleep.”

“Is that what brought you here,” he asked.

“No. Abasi rolled his ankle. As it turns out, the verse is rarely trafficked for a reason. Abasi was negatively impacted by the increased gravity there.”

Ronan could picture the round man fighting the force of his own increased weight. “Glad to hear it was nothing serious.”

“It is of no moment. Can we expect to see the girl in Avalon?”

Ronan hesitated before answering that. Under other circumstances, he would have said yes, but this was the first time he’d had a new Walker under his care who might be the target of violence.

“At some point, I’m sure,” he said casually.

“I look forward to it. You’ll remain with her until her training is complete, I assume.

“I will.”

“Then I will ask Arthur for a replacement in the meantime.” She nodded, making her silky white-gold hair shimmer, and then she turned and walked out the door.

Ronan closed his eyes again, but he didn’t sleep. He thought about Allison and wondered how quickly he could report to Arthur and get himself back to True Earth.

Stones, altars, temples, statues, and other man-made signs proved that humans had been marking places of power from antiquity. Even some of the Legless were capable of feeling the significance of such places, making them holy with ceremonies and sacrifices. Was a place of power significant on its own, or was it made so by the belief of the people who venerated—or feared—it? When he appeared in the meadow after leaving the Valetudinorium, he laid his hand on the moss-covered stone and felt, for a moment, a connection with those people who had braved the Eververse before him, not knowing what their powers were, but taking the chance to explore the unknown, anyway. Ronan often wondered if the first markers were set up by Walkers as a warning, or maybe as signposts to point their way home.

With an affectionate pat on the rough surface, he turned away from the stone and looked down at the valley. Ronan made Avalon his home, but no matter how many times he walked to the meadow from another Verse, the sight of the castle city sitting at the head of the dale below, decked in a robe of evening light, gave him a sense of awe.

He stood at the edge of the cliff, admiring for a moment the silver river that burned in the sunset as it twisted toward the glowing city of Avalon and disappeared into the foothills of the mountains behind the castle. In his mind, he saw another river, smaller, running through a bed of mossy stone, shaded by the quivering leaves of alder and birch. The scar on his abdomen burned with remembered pain. To banish the thought, he set off down the path that would take him to the heart of Avalon, and to Arthur, the Pendragon.

“And you’re certain the girl is substantially gifted?”

Ronan pulled out the wooden chair and slid into the seat across from his leader. Arthur’s face was illuminated by several candles set in a bronze tray in the center of the table; the light threw shadows across the lines of concern that marked his forehead and the space between his dark brows.

“I haven’t seen any signs of a gift directly,” Ronan said, “but I’ve felt her power firsthand. Walking with her is like getting kicked in the chest.”

The head of the Concillium folded his hands on the table and looked down at his interlaced fingers for a long moment before raising his eyes and asking, “no sign yet whether the shooting was aimed at you or the girl?”

“No, sir. I wouldn’t have left her alone, though, if I suspected she was in immediate danger.”

“Of course, you wouldn’t,” Arthur agreed and leaned back in his chair with a sigh. The man carried the weight of uncountable Verses on his shoulders, and while he usually managed to look confident and wise, the strain showed tonight. His mouth thinned above his short beard, and he said, “there is some time, yet. If the girl does have a gift that may be useful to us, it shouldn’t be long before it manifests, and you must still finish her training. We can wait.”

Having made the decision, Arthur stood and nodded, resuming his confidence like a cloak that had only been draped, waiting, over the back of a chair. “I’ll see to it that your other duties are covered by another Venatore until this matter is resolved. You know I’ll not take the girl into service against her will, but if she is gifted and you can manage to persuade her…”

Ronan swallowed, then stood and said, “understood.”

Arthur dismissed him with a grave nod, and Ronan pushed the carved doors open, turning his back on the round table and the man who managed to make him feel like a loyal vassal every time they were alone together.

It was no small thing to be considered for service with the Venatore. Just meeting Arthur in person was often enough to make a Walker hungry to join, but Ronan also knew that service came with a hefty sacrifice; namely being forced to walk away from one’s home and family for an extended time. It wasn’t something he wanted to push on Allison, but he did have a duty to fulfill and that would require making certain she was fit for such a service if she was interested. He didn’t relish the idea of poking around in her life without her permission, but it wouldn’t be the first time he’d performed the duty, either.

Not everyone can be trusted with those kinds of secrets, he reminded himself, or the responsibility that comes with it.

The thought didn’t make him feel much better.

After a bath and a few hours of sleep in his room, Ronan changed, grabbed a bite to eat in the kitchens, and brought himself back into harmony with True Earth. Mid-day sun fought valiantly with the cloud cover but didn’t make much headway against the damp November air. He pulled up the hood of his jacket and jogged across the street from the park toward Allison’s apartment. Once outside the door, he stopped and listened long enough to verify that the room was empty before pulling a couple of slender rods out of his pocket and unlocking the door with a few deft motions.

The flat was just as he’d remembered; a hodge-podge of mismatched furniture that somehow managed to feel cozy. Allison’s door was unlocked, so he stepped through and began his search. Clearly, the clean community areas weren’t maintained by his young Walker; t-shirts and bras were flung over the back of her chair, papers and books were piled in untidy stacks on her desk, and the bed looked like she’d rolled out of it five minutes ago.

He resisted the urge to picture Allison in those rumpled sheets and began looking through the desk. Books, school papers written in a slashing, hurried hand, ticket stubs from school events and a few snapshots of friends; one with a handsome, dark-haired man who had his arm around Allison’s waist.

Ronan tried to leave as much of her privacy intact as possible, but it was difficult when his job was to be sure that she could be trusted with the kind of knowledge that might get people killed. He purposefully ignored a journal in the drawer next to her bed, discovered that she performed moderately well in her classes, had only a small group of friends, and the pay stub that had fallen between the dresser and wall revealed that she worked part-time at a local grocery store. He picked up the framed photo next to her bed, the only one in the room, and couldn’t help but smile. She was hugging a tall, good-looking man with sandy brown hair in front of a Christmas tree. They were both wearing holiday pajamas, their hair was tousled from sleep, and they grinned madly while holding up stockings with names embroidered them.

Allison and Benjamin.

The love in the photo made his throat feel thick. He swallowed, placed the frame gently back on the bedside table, and closed the door behind himself.

“Can I help you?”

Ronan smiled at the well-dressed woman and held out his hand. “I hope so. My name is Ronan, and I’m in town to surprise my friend Allison. Maybe you can tell me where I can find her?”

The professor blinked at him, and Ronan waited while she came to her senses. He’d made sure his forehead was safely covered before he came on campus, so he was sure the woman was protected from the spell, which meant her delayed response was likely from being taken off guard. He’d found her office after following the address he’d seen on one of the letters in Allison’s desk, and asking passing students for directions.

“Allison,” she said, ignoring his outstretched hand, “Allison Chapter? Red hair?”

“That’s her,” he let his hand drop, “she thinks I won’t be arriving in town for a couple of days, but I caught an earlier flight and I wanted to surprise her. She’s mentioned your class, so I thought you might know where I could find her on campus.”

She sat down behind her desk and rubbed the fingers of one hand across her brow. “She mentioned my class, did she? That’s surprising since I’m constantly nagging her about working harder. She’s an incredibly bright young woman, but not very motivated.” She organized the files on her desk, then paused and gave him a frank look. “It always irritates me when my students show so much promise and have no direction. Maybe you can encourage her a bit. God knows she’s not listening to me. Anyway,” she waggled her fingers, “you’ve already missed her. I don’t know what class she has next and, to be quite honest, I wouldn’t tell you if I did know. If you know Allison, you’ll just have to call her or find another way to surprise her.”

“I understand,” he said, “you can’t be too careful, especially nowadays. Thanks for your time, anyways,” and he reached out to shake her hand. She looked at him for a moment, gave his hand a brief shake, and then dismissed him entirely.

The other professors he’d managed to track down gave him similar information, additional pieces of the puzzle that reinforced his impression of Allison. Impulsive, sarcastic, and stubborn, she’d also proved herself cool-headed, compassionate, and clever in the short time he’d been in her company. He hadn’t learned anything that gave him qualms about teaching her more about her gifts. Nothing in her behavior made him suspect she might be the kind of person who would damage another Verse for personal gain, but that was a touchy thing to assume no matter what. There was no way to know what she would become with time, but he felt he’d done his due diligence, and he wanted to go back to her apartment to make sure she was still safe; he’d already left Allison alone longer than he would have liked.

When Ronan stepped outside, he discovered the sun had lost the battle and iron-grey clouds blanketed the sky. The first raindrops of a fall storm pattered the ground, so he pulled up the collar of his jacket and broke into a brisk walk across campus. He needed to find someplace with enough privacy that he could walk back to the park near her flat without anyone seeing him disappear. Students hurried past him, fleeing from the darkening sky and discarded leaves tossed by the wind, making the thought of Allison’s homey apartment even more appealing. By the time he appeared in the park across from her building, Ronan was soaking wet and impatient. He dodged an oncoming car and took the stairs two at a time, managing to squeeze into the elevator with a surprised-looking young couple who stood as far away from him as possible. Ronan couldn’t blame them. When the elevator stopped to let them out, the young man ushered his girlfriend out with one hand on the small of her back. She clung to his arm and looked up at him with naïve adoration, her long blonde hair hanging in bedraggled ringlets down her back. The doors closed on the vision, leaving him remembering another young woman, blonde, naïve, trusting, and desperately in love. Those memories should have been old enough to be worn smoothed by the long current of his life, but one or two edges remained sharp enough to draw blood.

When the doors opened the second time, his first sight was Allison in the arms of the handsome, dark-haired man he’d seen in her photographs. He was kissing her neck with wet smacking sounds and she was laughing, and the sudden tide of possessive jealousy that crashed against the inside of his ribs surprised Ronan enough to make him angry at himself.

She pushed the man off and wiped at her neck, still shaking with laughter as he leered. The obvious ease and comfort they shared only made the unexpected jealousy even more disconcerting.

“I hope I’m not interrupting something,” he said. His voice sounded flat and unfriendly, even to his ears.

Allison spun toward him, her face going through lightning-fast changes from surprise, to pleasure, and finally, embarrassment. “Ronan,” she said, brushing hair out of her face and trying to compose herself, “ah, no. It’s fine. This is my friend, Mateo. Um, Mat, this is Ronan. He’s…my tutor.”

Mateo’s expression had changed as well; instead of amused teasing, he looked suspicious. His weight had shifted subtly, and Ronan could tell he was at least a marginally experienced fighter. Mateo jerked his chin in an unwilling greeting and said, “Hey,” before turning back to Allie and raising his brows. Ronan was somewhat mollified by his obvious concern for Allison, but that didn’t stop the black tide of jealousy from creeping higher.

“Rayne’s in her room, meditating,” she told her friend in a longsuffering tone.

That must have communicated something, because the man grinned and said, “not for long,” before he walked into the flat, whispering something to Allison on the way.

“So…” she turned toward him and put her hands on her hips, “you just going to stand there and try to intimidate everyone in the hallway, or what?”

“Are you sure you’re not busy? You looked a bit distracted when I opened the door.”

“Mat likes to tease me. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

His jaw clenched. “I see.”

“Are we going to, uh, you know,” she wiggled her fingers, “practice?”

He walked down the hallway until he was only feet from her and let his eyes roam over her face. Her cheeks were pink, and black eyeliner ringed her hazel eyes, making them look too large, too dark. He leaned closer and said, “We’re going to need somewhere private.”

Ronan hadn’t known what he intended to say until the words came out, he simply felt an irresistible urge to be near her. He silently thanked the Dagda he hadn’t said something stupid.

Her chin thrust out and she met his eyes for an instant, showing him she refused to be intimidated. “Could we just use the apartment? I mean, we aren’t…walking anywhere yet, are we?”

Get control of yourself, you bloody idiot, he thought angrily, then mastered himself and said, “No. Not yet. But your roommate has already seen me in less than favorable circumstances. I don’t want to make her any more suspicious by talking about things where she might overhear.”

“I’ve told her you’re tutoring me in theoretical physics,” she said with a smug little smile, “so I think we’re pretty free to talk about things, at least from a mechanical standpoint.”

“Clever. All right. I’d rather not walk around in the rain anyway. Lead on.”

He followed her into the apartment he’d crept through mere hours ago and fought down the guilt of having violated her privacy.

“We’ve got a car,” she was saying, “so we wouldn’t have to walk. But this is easier. Plus, I think if I left anywhere with you right now, Mateo might blow up my phone.”

“He’d blow your phone up?” Ronan asked, shocked, “how?”

“No,” she said, giggling, “no, no, it’s just slang. I mean he’d constantly be calling or texting me to make sure I’m safe.”

“Ah. He’s protective of you.”

“Yeah, he’s one of my very best friends. Besides,” she turned around at the kitchen counter and gave him a thorough once over with appreciative eyes, “you don’t exactly look…safe.”

Warmth rushed in, smothering the last of the jealousy, and he couldn’t help but smile a bit. Her eyes widened as she looked at him, then she swallowed and turned back to the kitchen, asking, “Coffee or tea? Mateo gets us a gourmet coffee from Red Bean, downtown. Rayne has Earl Grey, but green tea is her favorite, so we have both.”

Ah, a safe topic, he thought gratefully. “Tea, please. Earl gray, if you don’t mind. You have cream?”

“I live with a habitual tea drinker. Yeah, we have cream. Fake stuff for Rayne and good old-fashioned heavy cream for me. It’s even fresh from the farmer’s market. I have to bribe her with foot rubs to pick it up for me.”

He slid onto a barstool and watched her prepare the tea with the graceful economy of long practice. Her clothes were fitted and showed the outline of lithe, athletic curves. Freckles, like the ones on her cheeks, ran along the tops of her shoulders, and he caught sight of them as her hair slid out of the way. Once the preparation was complete, she pulled out a barstool and sat across from him, hopping up almost immediately. “Oh geez,” she said, and hurried off down the hall, calling back, “hang on a sec.”

He looked down at himself, realized his wet hair was making a puddle on her counter and cursed silently beneath his breath. So much for my professionalism, he thought with a deep sense of irony.

She reappeared holding a hand towel out to him while dropping something into the garbage and saying, “here,” breathlessly.

Ronan took the towel with a muttered “thank you” and peeled off his jacket before toweling himself off and making an effort at cleaning up his mess.

“Real stuff or fake stuff?” she asked.

He looked up at the two cartons she held, eyeing both with confusion. “Is that even a question? Why eat fake food?”

Her mouth quirked in amusement. “Why indeed.”

Change of subject, he thought. “Do you mind if I ask how a couple of college students manage to afford a flat like this?”

“Rayne’s uncle owns the building.” She shrugged. “He’s nice. If we keep our grades up, we get to live here rent-free—or, at least, cheap enough that I only need a part-time job. That’s why all the furniture is such a hodge-podge. We find most of it at garage sales. Sugar?” she asked with the spoon hovering over the cup.

“No, thanks.”

He took the proffered cup and breathed in the homey scent, rumbling in pleasure.

“Should we talk in my room or? I mean, no one would believe us even if they did hear anything, so we could always sit on the couch,” she suggested.

Since her couch looked like it might buckle under his weight and her friends could walk out of Rayne’s room at any time, he gestured to the hall and said, “Maybe we should. Remember, not everyone who might overhear us is legless.”

“Legless?”

“Non-Walkers.”

“Ah. Would that be a problem? It’s not like they wouldn’t already know, after all.”

He set the empty cup down gingerly. “It’s best to keep your hand close, Allison. Just because someone is a Walker, that doesn’t make them your friend. Choose who and when to tell. It’s safer that way.”

He couldn’t tell her that it was too late, and that he already knew too much about her. Whether that would make her safer, or put her in more danger, he couldn’t say.

Ronan settled onto Allison’s bed and drained his last few drops of tea while she pulled out a chair on the other side of the room and sat cross-legged.

She rubbed her hands together, took a deep breath, and said, “Where do we start?”

“Cecily gave you the basics, did she?”

“She did, yeah. The very basics, I think. She talked about how atoms vibrate and how each person has a unique frequency.”

He set the teacup down on her bedside table. “Not only every person but everything. The same is true for every Verse. Each has its own set of vibrations that form a unique harmony. When you bring your frequency into harmony with it, you become a part of the song. It draws you, a bit like a magnet.”

“The way you talk about walking makes it sound more like singing with your whole body than actually walking.”

Ronan blinked. “That’s as good an analogy as any I’ve heard.”

“How do you know what the harmony is, though? And how could a person possibly change the frequency of their atoms? That seems like changing a pretty fundamental aspect of what they are. I mean, if a fish gives itself the ability to breathe air, is it still even a fish?”

“Walkers aren’t human, strictly speaking. In keeping with your animal analogy, I suppose it would be similar to the difference between a wolf and a lap dog.”

She reacted less to that statement than most people had. They often sat before him, glassy-eyed while they tried to make themselves believe something that couldn’t possibly be true. People didn’t react well to having their beliefs and biases challenged in general, often becoming more stubborn about hanging onto them, so it was natural that someone should be skeptical about being told they weren’t human. Allison just scowled, but her lips together, and nodded.

“As far as how a person could do it,” he continued, “well that’s the mystery, isn’t it? We just know that we can do it. To be honest, the science of why is elusive because there are several working theories, and none of them completely falsifiable. The how is easier, though, and makes more sense in practice. Here’s a good example.”

He began to hum a song he’d heard on the radio several times while working in True Earth over the past few months.

Allison’s eyes brightened in recognition. “That’s Miss Mary Jane, by Deaf Needle.”

He nodded, stripped away the embellishments and altered timing before humming the piece of music that had inspired the current, irritating pop song.

“Mozart,” she said, with a triumphant little smile.

Ronan spread his hands, and said, “that is True Earth. A piece of classical music that spawned a million covers and remakes. While each realm has a different twist on the original, they can all be traced carefully back to True Earth. Thousands and thousands of songs, too many to count. That’s why we call it the Eververse.”

“Do you know them all?” she asked, as wide-eyed as a little girl. He couldn’t help but smile a bit.

“No, never me. But I do know a fair few.”

“You said before that it was hard—to walk, I mean. So how was I able to do it in my sleep?”

“Ah,” he said, “that has to do with your subconscious. Your mind is a lot more creative when you sleep, and less restricted by inhibitions or the boundaries of what you think is possible. In a dream, you might fly out your window, yeah?”

“Sure.”

“But if I told you right now to jump out that window and fly into the city, you’d think I was mad, wouldn’t you?”

“That or homicidal.”

“Why?”

“Because humans can’t fly.”

Ronan raised both eyebrows and asked, “can’t they?”

She leaned forward and lowered her brows before demanding, “Are you saying there are Verses where people fly?”

“None I’ve been to, but there’s a fair chance of it. After some of the things I’ve seen, I wouldn’t count it out. The physics that governs this place doesn't apply to every Verse. The farther you get from the original song, the more different the music. You see,” he gestured toward his forehead, “as soon as you wake, your brain immediately starts telling you what’s possible and what isn’t. You’re affecting your frequency with every thought, chaining yourself firmly to True Earth by unconsciously repeating the laws you know: gravity, and all that. You’re singing the song over and over in your head. But,” he raised a finger, “your unconscious mind isn’t chained that way. It can sing any song. So, in sleep, you can change your frequency much easier. You bring yourself into harmony with the Realm most closely associated with your dream. For most people, it’s a Verse that’s very like True Earth and similar to the life they live.”

She sat back and bit her lower lip. Her eyes were troubled, so he gave her a moment to think. Ronan had spent countless hours explaining the simple mechanics of walking, but he’d never enjoyed it quite so much. Allison seemed to latch on to every piece of information she could find, and he could almost see her fitting them together inside her head. Something must have clicked because the liveliness drained from her face as her cheeks paled.

“Ronan,” she began, and swallowed, “we know there are verses where my Dad didn’t die in the car accident, right?”

Uh oh, he thought. This is a dangerous line of questioning. He made a sound of affirmation.

“So… there are verses where he lived and I…died?”

Tread carefully.

Many Walkers who had suffered personal tragedy couldn’t resist the temptation to find verses where the plane never crashed, or the illness had been curable, or the divorce never happened. The idea of seeing the face of the beloved one, or speaking to them, or touching them one last time was too potent to ignore. In many cases, the Walker would fall into depression while looking at a reality they couldn’t have. In some unfortunate circumstances, the Walker had inserted themselves into the lives of these strangers who looked and behaved so much like their own families. It never ended well. He knew that better than most.

She could be asking because the idea of some version of herself passing away in a distant reality was disconcerting, but she could also be asking because the idea of taking the place of her dead double sounded tempting.

Best to tell the truth, even if it was hard. He wished someone had been able to convince him, but Ronan knew that he probably wouldn’t have listened, anyway. “Allison, there are verses for almost every possibility. In some of them—in most of them—you were never even born.”

The bedroom door swung open and Allison’s roommate walked in with her friend, their arms comfortably entwined.

“I am stealing Rayne,” the dark-haired man—Mateo—said, “and she’s going to be my wingman. We figured we’d head to the Atrium since Maggie is tending bar tonight. Do you two want to join?”

He looked at Allison and she opened her mouth as if to reply, but no sound came out. She glanced at her roommate, then down at herself, and her face dropped as if the comparison hadn’t been pleasing. Rayne was a lovely girl, tall and slender and almost angelic. She was a pleasure to look at, true but, as far as Ronan was concerned, she was also forgettable.

“Come on, you two,” Rayne said, “how much studying can you do on a Friday night?”

The byplay between these friends was fascinating for him to watch. Subliminal communication bounced around the room like a mad ping pong ball. Mateo didn’t trust him—as evidenced by the quick, sidelong glances—and he didn’t want to leave Allison alone with Ronan if she was uncomfortable. Allie was hesitant but, he was pleased to see as her forehead relaxed, comfortable. Rayne looked at both her friends, eager to make some arrangement that would make everyone happy, but she was careful to keep her eyes from his side of the room. Ronan considered the consequences of that interesting piece of body language when Allison said, “I don’t think so, Mat. If I take that one,” she jerked her head toward him, “to the Atrium we might never get him out of there.”

Mateo eyed him, amusement in the curve of his mouth. “You’re probably right,” he said, “we’d need a baseball bat to rescue him.”

Ronan couldn’t help but laugh and the mental picture that created. “Thank you for the invitation,” he said, then calculated his next words to put Allison’s friends—particularly the protective Mateo—at ease, “but we do have a lot of ground to cover before we begin our experiments. Can’t have Allie taking any unnecessary risks, now can we? Safety first and all that.”

Mateo laughed, and his shoulders relaxed visibly at the unspoken promise. Ronan nodded, and Mateo winked at him.

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Rayne asked Allison, having missed the understanding that had passed quietly between Mateo and himself, “I can stay.”

“No, it’s okay. I think I had enough fun the last time I drank with Mat to tide me over for a while,” she smiled and rolled her eyes, “Go find hot dates.”

After a brief hug, the pair left the room followed shortly by the sound of the apartment door clicking shut. Ronan tried not to think about the fact that he was in the apartment with Allison, alone, while sitting on the bed in her room. He tried not to remember the times she had reacted to his proximity on a purely physical level, her breath speeding up, her pupils dilating as she looked at him.

It wouldn’t be fair, he told himself, she’s still off-balance in circumstances that are hard to understand, and you’re the only authority figure she has.

He tried to distract himself from the mental picture of her hair spilling across his chest by diving back into the details of walking, and it worked for a while as he repeated oft-used explanations with all the gusto of a tour guide on their sixth round of introductions.

“When can I try this, myself?” she asked, finally.

“You shouldn’t try it by yourself, at least not at first. It’s customary for your guide to take you to a few places first so that you get used to walking without putting yourself in any danger.”

“Why, is it dangerous? Could I end up in lava world or something?”

Her tone was only half-joking, but he remembered the first time he had learned that walking between verses wasn’t exactly safe. Thinking it might be a lesson worth sharing, he said, “I began learning to walk the Eververse when I was 14. I was a smart lad, but stubborn, and…well, I didn’t always have the best judgment. We didn’t know as much about walking then, so it all felt more like magic. Anyway,” he shrugged, “my teacher, he had a bit more faith in my patience than he should have. We’d walked less than half a dozen times, but I learned quickly and was confident I could do it on my own. Angus warned me not to walk without him, so I snuck away one night after he’d fallen asleep and walked out of my Verse and right into a bloody battle.”

The scent of mud and pine came back to him with such force that he could see the outline of bodies, silhouetted by the moon against the dark earth. “I was so shocked I nearly pissed myself. It’s one thing to fight when you’re prepared to do it. It’s another when you intend to walk yourself to someplace peaceful and end up with some bloke trying to take your head off with a broadsword.”

“Wait,” she “did you say it was a sword fight?”

He hesitated. It was so easy to talk to Allison, he found himself telling her more than he should. When she watched him with curious hazel eyes, it was difficult not to open his mouth and let his heart out. Ronan had friends, people he would risk his life for, people he knew would risk their lives for him in return, but that was a vulnerability of the body; every time he found himself wanting to share things with Allison without realizing it, he risked a vulnerability of the soul, and that scared him.

So, he said curtly, “I did.”

She opened her mouth, then shook her head and closed it.

“I managed to dodge the blow by falling backward onto my arse in the mud,” he continued, “the bugger must have thought he’d gotten me—seeing me fall in the dark—because he spun around screaming and began hacking at some other poor bloke. I crawled out of there on my hands and knees. By the time I got control of myself enough to walk back home, I was covered in mud and blood, shaking and cold and reeking something awful.”

“Ronan,” she leaned forward, “are you from here? True Earth, I mean.”

Shit. He’d given away too much. His past was his own, and it was a weight he wasn’t prepared to share with anyone.

“No,” he said, and stood up under the compulsion to move rather than think. Telling the story about his past had seemed like a good way to illustrate the danger of walking without experience, but he’d rather not field any more questions about his past. It was best if he could turn the conversation back to his young apprentice.

“When we found you,” he asked, “was that the first time you walked?”

Her face blanched and she shook her head.

“How old were you?” He pressed, “Was it in your sleep?”

Allison swallowed, obviously reluctant, and then admitted, “I was sixteen.”

“That sounds about right. How did you get back?”

When she didn’t answer, he softened the question by telling her, “not everyone does, you know.”

“If that’s what happens to people, how were you able to find me in the hospital?” She skirted the question, but he let it slide.

“There are a few areas where Walkers tend to end up. The psychiatric ward is one of them.”

“What are some others?”

“Places of power, usually. Places where people know there is some kind of force, but they don’t always know what it is. Humans seem inclined to mark places of power with things: pyramids, henges, great monoliths, things like that. It also tends to happen more often when the Verses pass close to each other, and the barriers are thin. That makes travel easier. We always find more Walkers near the equinoxes and the changes of the seasons than any other time.”

“So that means the seasons are the same for each realm, then?”

He could have smiled. The way her mind latched on to thoughts was one of the more intriguing aspects of talking with Allison. He explained some of the broader points about the differences between worlds in the Eververse, watching her expression change as she took in the information and weighed it. Often during conversations, Ronan watched the face of his companion and saw their eyes shift upward, as if they weren’t really listening but formulating their own responses. Allison’s eyes could be uncomfortable as she listened because they rarely shifted or broke contact; she was listening and watching and thinking; having that kind of focus leveled at him was a novel experience.

She leaped out of her chair and spun, pressing one hand against her hip. The motion was so unexpected that he found himself standing before realizing what she was doing. She pulled a slim smartphone out of her pocket and said breathlessly, “Hello?”

She listened for a moment, the muscles between her shoulders growing tense. Something was wrong.

“Yeah,” she said, and snatched her jacket off the back of a chair to dig car keys out of the pocket, “yeah, I’ll be there in a minute. Are you okay, you don’t sound good, how much have you had to drink?”

Ah, that was Rayne or Mateo, then. Rayne, he suspected, as Mateo seemed the kind to take care of himself.

“You’re still at the Atrium, right?” she listened, then said, “I’m on my way.”

He followed as she hurried out of the room. Concern had made her movements quick and jumpy, and the energy had his pulse rising. Just outside the doorway, she stopped and he ran into her from behind with enough force to send her stumbling toward the opposite wall. He reached out to stop her before she could hit her head, but she’d already planted her feet, which sent Allison backward into his chest hard enough to elicit a surprised “oof.”

When she turned around, her cheeks were stained pink beneath the freckles, “I’m sorry. This appears to be habit-forming.”

“You’ve got a solid skull on you, Allie,” he said ruefully, “we’ve got to stop running into each other this way.”

“Maybe if you’d quit sneaking around.”

“You sure you’re not just a bit hard of hearing?”

Her eyes crinkled at the corners as a smile tugged at her lips, but then she looked up at him, and her expression sort of locked up, then melted away into the kind of speculative appreciation that made him want to fidget. That, or kiss her. Then worry replaced the warmth in her eyes and she said, “I need to go pick up Rayne, she didn’t sound good.”

“I’ll come with you,” he decided.

She checked the time on her phone. “Are you sure? You don’t have to. I know it’s late, you can head home if you want.”

But he was already locking the door. Picking up a drunk friend wasn’t exactly a world-altering affair, but he hadn’t liked seeing the worry on her face, and just because nothing threatening had happened since he’d left her the other night, that didn’t mean they were in the clear. Sure, there was a fair chance that what had happened at the diner was only coincidental, but Ronan still remembered the impact of the bullet, and the thought of something like that happening to Allison twisted his guts into knots. He hadn’t lived for as long as he had by ignoring his instincts, even if they were vague ones, and he didn’t want her going to rescue her friend alone.

He gestured to the door and said, “after you.”

Allison was too distracted for conversation during the car ride, and Ronan didn’t want to push her. It was a good opportunity to observe her under pressure, he told himself as he watched her hands tighten on the steering wheel. Concern drew her cinnamon-colored brows down over her eyes, making a little crease appear above the bridge of her nose.

He’d already seen Allison handle herself in a dangerous situation, and she was cooler under pressure than many he’d seen, but most people weren’t thrown into those kinds of situations on a regular basis, so they weren’t the best example of character. Worry for a friend and the daily stresses of normal life were a much better gauge for what kind of person one was, and his new trainee was blowing past traffic with single-minded focus that told him if she ever turned all her attention toward one thing, the world would be in trouble.

The ancient station wagon was more agile than he would have suspected, but he supposed any vehicle would be, with an impatient redhead behind the wheel. It was tempting to wonder what she would be like–but no. He stopped that thought cold and focused on the city outside the window.

Allison parallel parked in a spot too small for the station wagon, and was out of the car before the engine stopped clicking, tapping a message into her cell phone before hurrying toward the three-story brick building down the street. Nervous energy hummed in the air around her, but her movements were quick and efficient. He followed her down the hill, not minding the view. He’d known women whose Walk alone was almost sexual; the roll of their hips suggestive and inviting. He’d known women who moved with consummate grace that was nearly magical by itself. But there was an athletic grace to Allison’s movements that caught his attention at a far deeper level than just aesthetic enjoyment. Her stride was decided and purposeful as if she subconsciously expected the world to part so she could walk through it.

She was here in the role of protector, and it clearly suited her. He curled his hands into fists at his sides and forced himself to look anywhere else but the woman in front of him. She was here to help a friend, he was here to help her because it was his duty. That was it.

The Atlas Club was packed, full of swirling slight and reeking of hunger. Ronan had seen two primary exits on the main floor, plus windows that could become exits in a pinch. The bouncer was a rather large man, but he had the kind of muscles that would impede his movement and held himself like a brawler, not a real fighter. He didn’t spot any weapons, but that didn’t mean the bartender didn’t have access. He felt comfortable with the odds of getting Allison out of there if something went wrong.

She turned toward him and shouted to be heard over the thumping beat of the music, “Keep looking, I’m going to check the bathrooms.”

He nodded, took note of where she was going, then decided the bar was the most likely place for good information. Bartenders always saw more than anyone else. He squeezed into an empty spot and leaned over until the less busy of the three bartenders noticed him. The man had large brown eyes framed by thick lashes, like a doe, and flashed him a warm, dimpled smile.

“What can I get for you?”

“I’m looking for a young woman with blonde hair.”

The bartender gestured to the sea of masculine bodies. “You can to the wrong place to find a woman, honey.”

“She was here with a man named Mateo, about five-foot-eight, fit, dark hair.”

“Mat? Oh right! He ordered a couple of drinks and then chatted with…” he scanned the room with quick efficiency, then pointed to two men standing on the edge of the dance floor, “those two, over there. Blue shirt and neck tattoos.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Any time. Come back if you want something to cool you off.”

He jerked his chin at the man and turned to maneuver through the crowd. Allison had disappeared into the bathrooms, and no one had followed her, so he had a moment to talk without keeping half an eye on her.

“Excuse me,” he said, as soon as he was close enough to be heard, and two sets of eyes turned toward him.

The shorter of the two men gave Ronan an appreciative once over, cocking one hip to the side, and said with a cheeky grin, “I never need an excuse.”

His companion, a bit taller and broad across the shoulders, rolled his eyes and said, “Ignore her.”

Ronan made sure his expression was open and friendly, and added a bit of apology to his voice. “The bartender told me you talked to Mateo? I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Dammit,” the shorter of the two said, “Mat always finds the best looking ones. But he already left, doll. We don’t mind taking on a third wheel, though.”

He said the last as if in sympathy, and rested one hand on Ronan’s forearm. He didn’t rise to the bait, though. If Mateo already left, then he likely took Rayne with him, and the girl hadn’t called Allison.

“Do you happen to know where he went? He had another friend of mine with him, a blonde woman named Rayne.”

“Yeah,” the taller man said, “they left together. Met a couple of guys at the bar and they left with Mateo out the back.”

He sensed her presence before he saw her. Ronan had kept his body turned so the path from the bathroom door was visible in his peripheral vision, and part of his brain had been keeping track of the traffic in that area. No Rayne and no Mateo. Something was wrong. He grabbed her hand and pulled her through the throng toward the back door he’d spotted earlier. He had seen the friend’s connection, their concern for one another. If Rayne called Allie to come pick her up and then left, then she might be too drunk to make good decisions. And Mateo didn’t seem the type to let his friends stay in dangerous situations. He pushed the double doors open and got slapped in the face with the cool, wet air. No sign of anyone in the alley.

Allie pulled the phone out of her pocket with her free hand, thumbed in a number, and held the device hard against her ear.

“Hi, this is Rayne. Sorry, but I can’t—” the electronic approximation of Rayne’s voice said into the night.

The alley was two-directional for a hundred feet, but there was more light and a parking garage at the end of the next street. That made sense as an exit, so he pulled Allison in that direction as she tried redialing her friend’s number. Her anxiety was strong enough that felt it from their joined hands all the way up his arm to his shoulder. Ronan realized, suddenly, that he didn’t like her anxiety and fear. Not just didn’t like it, but wanted to end it, or stop whatever was worrying her, enough that it translated to manic energy in his own body.

He was so distracted by the thought that he almost didn’t hear the faint ringing echoing off the brick buildings. That was a cell phone ring. He froze to quiet their footfalls and listened intently. It could be hard to judge direction from echoing sounds at night. Allie seemed to catch his intention because she stopped next to him and pressed her phone against her leg to quiet even that faint noise. A car passed on the other side of the buildings, and it was the doppler effect of the moving vehicle that convinced him where the sound was coming from.

He tightened his grip on Allison’s hand and took off running toward the parking garage. The ringing became louder as they ran, then cut off as Rayne’s voicemail must have taken over. Angry voices replaced the ringing, confirming Ronan’s fears. As they neared the parking garage, a second alley opened up, separating the garage on the right from the warehouse on the left. Ronan scanned the scene and let the information put itself together in his head. The fluorescent light showed him four people. Rayne was on the ground, limp, with one man leaning over her. He had the stocky build and lean hips of a wrestler, and he was completely distracted by the woman beneath his hands.

Mateo was squared off against another man, taller than him, but that perfect boxer’s balance Ronan had seen earlier was gone. Mat had too much to drink, and he was unsteady on his feet. The taller man was sober enough to be dangerous, and he gave Mateo a two-handed shove that sent him stumbling backward to crack his head against the wall.

“Mateo,” Allison whispered in horror.

The taller man tried to take advantage of Mateo’s stumble and threw a wild punch, further proof that he was no fighter, and Mateo ducked under it, darting to the side toward Rayne and the shorter man. Mateo reached them and jerked the attacker away from his friend by the neck, knocking the shorter man to the ground with a sharp jab before the taller man floored him with a kick to the gut and a sucker-punch he couldn’t have seen coming.

Everything happened within a matter of seconds, and Ronan put together the likely scenario in his head. He recognized scavengers when he saw them. A zing of power shot up his arm from Allison’s hand as she tensed herself to run forward. He was going to kick the holy hell out of those pieces of shit, but he couldn’t do that and keep his eyes on his charge at the same time, so he kept his voice calm and said, “Call the police, Allison.”

Then he turned and stalked down the alley with long, silent strides. By the time they noticed him, he was already too close.

The taller man looked up, saw Ronan, called out a challenge, and threw a punch. It was slow, awkward, and it only pissed Ronan off. If Mateo had been only half sober, he likely would have clobbered this piece of shit. Ronan slipped to the side of the clumsy jab, let the arm pass, then grabbed his wrist and pulled. Caught off balance, the man stumbled toward the front kick Ronan aimed at his gut. His foot sank into the man’s midsection with a satisfyingly pained grunt, and the man curled around his stomach, trying to breathe. He grabbed the man’s head by his hair, and released some of his aggression with a knee to the face. It wasn’t necessary, but great Dagda it felt good.

The shorter man had managed to push himself to his feet and squared off against Ronan with the ease of practice. Ronan smiled. His center of gravity was low, knees bent, hands up. The kid had probably wrestled in high school or college, probably won a few matches, and now he used his ground skills to rape unresisting women in alleys. He wanted to kill the man. He wanted to feel the bones snapping beneath his hands, feel the vital energy of life drain from the man’s limp body, and know that he would never hurt another woman again. But that would terrify Allison, and he didn’t want Rayne or Mateo to live with knowing what had happened. So he circled the man, body relaxed, and waited for him to shoot.

He did. Like all wrestlers do. Because for an average opponent, the legs are the weak spot and they had no experience defending themselves. The average opponent hadn’t spent better than fifteen hundred years fighting for their lives. Ronan waited till the man had covered half the distance, then sprawled, pushing his legs out behind him out of reach of the man’s arms. He dropped his hips so that the full weight of his upper body landed on the man’s shoulders, caught him by the wrist, and spun. The result was that Ronan leaned over the shorter man with his forearm pressing the man’s head down toward chest, just short of breaking, while keeping him locked in place with his other arm.

He whimpered, like the coward he was, and Ronan had to restrain himself from pushing just a little bit harder. There was still too much energy, too much of a desire to mete out justice to a deserving target. It hand’t been enough of a fight to rid him of the adrenaline and anger. Hell, he wasn’t even breathing hard. But Allison had just called the first responders, and she was checking on her friends, her face white with fear. The last thing she needed was a dead body to deal with.

“Rayne?” Allison asked, bent over her friend, “Rayne? Are you okay? Did they hurt you? Rayne, look at me.”

He turned his head enough to see his apprentice Walker, and the expression on her face wrenched at his heart. She was white with fear, her eyes wide, her fingers shaking as she tried to get her friend to respond to her voice.

“Rayne!” she shouted, but the girl didn’t answer.

She needed to calm down. She had some medical training, she just needed to be shaken out of her panic enough to rely on it. He said, in as comforting a tone as he could manage, “How is she?”

She blinked at him, then her shaking stilled and she started checking her friend for vital signs. Good girl, he thought, then increased the pressure on the rapist beneath his hands. The man gasped.

Ronan demanded, “What did you do to the lass?”

He didn’t answer, so Ronan pressed harder, pushing the man’s bones right up against the breaking point. He squealed and stretched out his legs, trying to ease the pressure and the pain, but Ronan held him tight.

“Just a roofie!” the man choked, “that’s it, I swear!”

A roofie? That was a term he’d never heard. He raised a brow at Allison and the tension in her features relaxed.

“It’s a drug,” she said as tears of relief spilled down her cheeks, “but people are usually okay afterward.”

The man had drugged Rayne so she couldn’t fight back. He would have stolen her dignity, her sense of personal safety, and her autonomy. She wouldn’t even have had the comfort of knowing she’d fought to turn to when the guilt and shame and memories overtook her.

He leaned down and said in a dreadfully cold voice, “If the lass is hurt, I’ll see that you pay for it, personally.”

Then he leaned back and struck the man on the back of the head with clinical precision. He crumpled to the ground and began snoring, his body too limp to even hold proper muscle tension in his throat. The second man was rocking up to a sitting position, his eyes dazed, so Ronan rolled him over, held him on the ground with a knee between his shoulders, ripped a strip of cloth off the bottom of his shirt, and tied his hands together with a few deft motions. Then he turned to Mateo.

Allison’s friend leaned against the wall, the heel of one hand pressed against his head, his dazed eyes filled with tears as he watched his two friends on the pavement. Sympathy rolled over Ronan, but he was still too geared up for much of it to show in his voice.

“What happened,” he asked.

Mateo blinked and tried to get his eyes to focus. He looked up at Ronan, swallowed, and closed his eyes. He was still drunk, but not enough to be insensible.

“Those guys started talking to us at the bar. Everything seemed fine at first, but I didn’t like the way they were looking at her, so I got Josh to call us a cab..”

He opened his eyes and tears clung to the long lashes. “Those guys were getting pushy and I didn’t want to wait or cause a fight, and Ray said she didn’t feel good, so we just left. I thought she needed some fresh air. I didn’t realize they followed us. I never saw–” he swallowed, sounding sick, “I never saw them put anything in her drink.”

Ronan put a hand on Mateo’s shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault, mate. Those pricks are vultures. They wait and watch and find the right time to swarm. You fought for her long enough to get help. She’s going to be okay.”

He hoped that was true. Mateo started shaking but turned away. He didn’t want the comfort, and that was something Ronan could understand. It wouldn’t matter to him how many people told him it wasn’t his fault until he believed it.

The police arrived shortly after and bundled the attackers into the back seats of their cars. They took statements from everyone, shook Ronan’s hand, offered to have the paramedics take a look at him, and then focused their attention on Rayne and Allie. Rayne was loaded into an ambulance while an officer took Allison’s statement. Ronan watched the whole thing with the facade of calm detachment. He’d learned early on that it wasn’t the fight that was the bad part of a confrontation. It was after the fight was over, the adrenaline crash, the realization of how many bad things could have happened, and how many bad things you had done.

It was a natural reaction to stress, but it looked like weakness from the outside, so Ronan had become a master at masking the feeling. He focused on his surroundings instead of what might have happened if they’d been a few minutes later, or if either of the men had attacked Allison, too, while his back was turned.

“Looks like we have you to thank,” an officer said.

Ronan read the name tag and scanned the man–he was below six feet, solid but not overly muscled, competent, with clever eyes. “Not at all,” Ronan said, “just glad we were here. And it was Allison, there, who called you.”

“We’re glad she did. We’ve been looking for these two for a while now.”

“They’ve been attacking women? Using the drug?”

“Yeah, that seems to be these guys’ M.O. to be these guys’ M.O.,” the police officer was saying to Ronan, “This is the third time this month we’ve been called out for date rape. If your friend hadn’t followed them outside and fought back long enough for you to get here, things might have ended very differently.”

“Will Rayne be okay?” Allison asked.

“Probably,” the officer said, making a notation on the metal clipboard he held, “most people recover from the symptoms of the drug by the next morning. She might not remember much of what happened, though,” he gestured toward the ambulance with his pen, “they’ll probably keep her overnight, just to be sure.”

Allison nodded and shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, more for comfort, he thought than cold. Still, he pulled off his jacket and swung it over her shoulders. Sometimes just the weight and warmth helped the anxiety more than anything. He wanted to get her home, or someplace safe, where she could decompress.

“Do you need anything else from us, officer?” he asked.

Officer O’Goll lifted the papers on his clipboard and flipped through them with a professional eye. “Nope,” he said, “I’ve got your statements and your contact information.”

Then he looked up at Ronan and asked, “Are you sure you don’t want the medics to take a look at you?”

“Nah, I’m all right. Nothing worth bothering about.”

“And Miss…Chapter, was it?” the officer asked.

She nodded.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” she lied. She had circles under her eyes, lines at the corners of her mouth, and her eyes were bloodshot. She was certainly not okay.

“You live close by, are you in school here?” he asked.

“Yeah, at UW.”

He nodded and narrowed his eyes at Allison. There was an intensity in the expression Ronan didn’t like. He wanted to bundle Allie away from the man, but that intensity was common with law enforcement–and Ronan was still riding the edge of adrenaline and looking for targets–so he controlled the urge to step between them.

“This kind of thing isn’t uncommon Miss Chapter. If you’re going to be hanging out in places like the Atlas Club, it’s safer to go in groups.”

He reached out and gripped her shoulder, and Ronan had to stop himself from wanting to break the man’s fingers. Walkers were careful about touching one another because even though Augurs were extremely rare, there were still things one might be able to tell by skin-to-skin contact. Such as the fact that Allison was uniquely powerful. That knowledge was dangerous. But the officer only gave her a reassuring smile and dropped his hand.

“Concentrate on your studies,” the man told her, “and keep yourself out of trouble, all right?”

She wrapped herself tighter in Ronan’s coat and said, “I will.”

When they reached the station wagon, Allison was shaking hard enough to make her teeth rattle, but she refused to give him the keys. He wanted to object and snatch them from her, but he hadn’t let her help fight the men hurting her friends, and she needed to feel like she was still in control of something, so he watched her fumble with the lock and gritted his teeth. He’d never felt the need to protect someone from themselves so much, and yet he knew, on some instinctual level, that she would resent it. Or, maybe it was the death stare she’d leveled at him when he’d held out his hand in a silent offer to drive.

She managed to get the car started and pulled out onto the road. For a while, she drove without seeming to have any direction in mind. Her eyes looked far away, and he guessed she might be slipping into the shock that sometimes followed traumatic events, so he said,“Do you want to go to the hospital?”

He had to catch himself on the dash with both hands to stop himself from hitting the seatbelt when she smashed the brake pedal, then glared at him as if it were his fault. Such a fierce little thing.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, “I called her parents, and they’ll be there. I want to be there for her, though. I just feel…” she shook her head, and her face went through several emotions. It was like watching lightning illuminate different parts of the sky, so quickly the impressions were gone before you could examine them. “I don’t know how I feel.”

No, he thought, she knew. She knew what she wanted, but she wasn’t able to talk herself into doing it. If he had to guess, she felt guilty about not having gone with her friends, about not having been able to stop what happened, and she didn’t feel she had the right to be at Rayne’s bedside, next to her family. But she also couldn’t stay away. Maybe all she needed was a gentle push in the direction she already wanted to go.

So, he said, “Tired?”

“Exhausted.”

“You should probably go home and get some sleep.”

“I probably should,” she agreed. Then turned at the next light. He had been right. Suggest one route, and she was sure to choose the other.

He hid a smile and asked, “Hospital?”

“Hospital.”

Ronan spent most of his time in the hospital trying to go unnoticed. The worried expression on the faces of Rayne’s parents had cut straight into him, and he could tell that if he stayed around them very long, they’d be thanking him for something he didn’t deserve any thanks for, so he headed downstairs to the cafeteria and picked up a couple of coffees instead. Her parents looked like they could use it. So did Allison, for that matter. She’d been too pale and her mouth was drawn into a tight line as she worried over her friend.

“I’m so sorry I wasn’t with her,” she’d said to Rayne’s mother, “I’m sorry I let this happen.”

That’s when he’d made his escape. He couldn’t listen to her try and take responsibility for something she didn’t have anything to do with and getting the coffees had been a good excuse. When he returned, Mateo had fallen asleep in a chair by the girl’s bed, and Allison was having a quiet conversation with Rayne’s mother in the corner of the room.

“I thought this might take a bit of the edge off,” Ronan said, holding the steaming paper cup out to Rayne’s father.

He took the cut with a tight-lipped smile and nod of the head. A moment later, he said, “I don’t know what to say. How to put into words–”

Ronan held up a hand. “There’s no need. Those men deserved more than they got.”

The smaller man’s face hardened, and a fierce light came into his eyes. He held out one hand and Ronan took it. Rayne was a kind person, and seeing her lying in that bed only made him angry. His job had taken him to some of the most violent places in the Eververse. He’d seen horrors and done terrible things that still gave him nightmares. Now and then, after bad stretches, he thought he’d become immune to the injustice of it all. It was as if his ability to feel had been burned so many times that there were layers and layers of scar tissue between him and the emotions that should have been tied to seeing such things.

And then something unexpected would happen and become a catalyst that dredged up every memory and paraded them in front of him in a kind of unending grotesquerie. What happened to Rayne and Mateo was probably the least of the crimes he’d seen in the last few years, and yet…

Allison turned to him, her shoulders slumped, and said, “Are you ready to go?”

After saying goodbye, he’d followed her out of the hospital to the dumpy little station wagon and tried for the entire drive not to remember anything. He concentrated so hard that everything between closing the car door and opening the apartment door blurred together like a kaleidoscope.

There was something homey about Allison’s little apartment. It smelled like oatmeal and some kind of sweet candle, and the ragtag assembly of furniture was well worn. He was glad to be back there, and there were only a few places in the Eververse that made him feel that way.

Allison stopped just inside the door and leaned back against the door frame, running a hand through her hair with a long sigh. She was done in. He turned into the kitchen and started fishing for tea. She needed sleep, and tea would be just the ticket.

“I’m sorry for all the excitement,” she murmured, “It would be nice to go a few weeks without some new catastrophe.”

As if she had anything to apologize for. He found an herbal tea, grunted something dismissive, and started heating the water while she dragged herself into the room and propped herself up on the counter.

“Hey.”

He stiffened and turned, locking eyes with her. She looked like a wilted flower, red hair tousled and hazel eyes the color of spring buds. She was tired, both physically and emotionally, and he found that he didn’t like seeing her that way. She was normally such a vibrant force, her quick mind constantly working and her expressions changing moment to moment.

“Thank you,” she said, simply.

Before he could think better of it, he left the kitchenette and scooped her up. She was heavier than she looked, a solid, warm weight in his arms that felt better than it should have. He laid her on the couch, covered her with a throw blanket, and watched her sink into the cushions like they were rising to swallow her. She groaned and shifted to get comfortable, and the sound went straight to his crotch.

Tea.

He needed to steep the tea.

A moment later he was sitting next to her with a cup of chamomile tea, watching with satisfaction as she sipped the brew and closed her eyes, a bit of color back in her cheeks.

“Thanks.”

“Welcome.”

He could have sat there, but the depth of his unexpected emotions was approaching discomfort, so he moved to the end of the couch instead and leaned back, closing his eyes. As soon as he did, though, a hundred memories assaulted him.

A cairn, big enough for the body of a mother and a child. A little girl with brown curls who had burned to death in the riots of a starving city. A stray dog who’d been tortured and left crying in an alley. A young soldier who’d had…parts of himself cut away by the enemy. He surged to his feet, heart pounding, and began pacing back and forth down the hallway, letting the movement dull some of the adrenaline. Once he’d walked off the worst of it, he sat on the floor and tried to clear his mind, counting breaths, letting the memories pass like storm clouds across a summer sky. When he finally opened his eyes, he couldn’t tell how long later, his mind was calmer but sweat had dried to a fine salt on his skin.

Allison was still sleeping, her mouth open just a bit, hair a tangled mess around her face. He had more than enough time to shower before they got to work for the day. And they needed to get to work. Something about that woman made him feel too much, and it would be best if he could get her trained and get back to hunting. It was boring, but it was safer. For him, anyway.

He didn’t close the door all the way–he wanted to hear if she woke up–and turned the shower on to as hot as he could handle it. The water scoured his skin, but felt something like a cleansing fire. It hurt, but just enough to be distracting. He didn’t think either woman would mind if he borrowed a bit of shampoo, so he lathered his hair, dragging his fingers across his scalp as thick foam fell onto his chest. For a moment, he wondered what it would feel like to have her hands in his hair, then shuddered away from that thought. He’d had relationships with women over the years, but he could never make himself that vulnerable, could never be comfortable, because that was inevitably when his curse would strike.

For a long time he’d tried to hide his forehead with hats, headbands, helmets, and even makeup, but nothing ever worked for long. The more he tried to hide the curse, the more people would question him. What was it with the hat? Was something wrong with his head? In the end, he’d realized that the best answer was simply to keep his hair long enough to cover the mark and be vigilant. It had been years since someone had seen it, and that had been a stranger on the street. The man’s eyes had gone wide for a moment, then softened. He opened his mouth as if to call out, but Ronan had hurried around the next corner and disappeared, hoping the stranger would write it off as one of those serendipitous moments of connection. He didn’t like the idea of leaving any poor soul in love with him with no recourse, but that was his burden to bear. It always had been.

And here was Allison, making him feel things he’d rather not feel. It was too easy to be around her, too easy to lower his guard, and that was a mistake he couldn’t make.

The sound of breaking glass brought him hurtling back into the present. He was out of the shower before he had time to think and running down the hallway to see a man crouched over Allison, flattening her struggling form beneath his body. The teacups were broken on the floor and the window behind them was open. He surged forward, wrapping a forearm around the man’s throat and wrenching him off her with a powerful twist of his body. They landed in a heap on the floor, but the man hand’t been expecting a fight from a real opponent and every bit of fury Ronan had felt over the past twenty-four hours came burning forward.

He splayed his legs for leverage and rolled into a mount on the man’s back. The man got ahold of Ronan’s leg and tried to roll, pulling the limb beneath him, but Ronan braced himself with one arm and snaked the second around the man’s throat. As the choke sunk in, the man panicked and tried to Walk. His changing vibration lit up the air around him, so Ronan twisted and put painful pressure on the man’s neck, instead. The pain didn’t seem to stop him, so Ronan flexed his torso and twisted the man’s head back and to the side. There was a satisfying crunch, and the body beneath him went still.

He extricated himself from the tangle of limbs and stood up, breathing heavily, to stare down at the body of the man who’d been trying to kill Allison. Leather gloves, bald head…his mind flicked back over the last couple of days and landed on the grey-eyed officer. Something had felt off about the man. He should have trusted his instincts.

”Is he…” Allie began.

“He is,” Ronan growled, glaring at the body, “the wretched bastard.”

He looked up to see her standing, eyes wide, cheeks redded, and finger marks around her neck. Great Dagda, if he hand’t heard the teacups break the man might have strangled her to death.

“Are ye alright, lass?” he said, feeling as if he choking on the words.

She nodded, but it wasn’t a confident nod. He needed to deal with the body and get her out of here. The officer might not be the only one.

“Change your clothes,” he told her, and set off toward the bathroom to get dressed.

“But the officer,” she said, then stopped. He turned to see her staring at the body, face white. Damn, the lass had been through more in the past few days than most people went through in a lifetime. But her life might not last much longer if he didn’t get her somewhere safe.

“Allison,” he said, keeping his voice calm and soothing, “do you trust me?”

She swallowed, and her shoulders straightened.

“Yes.”

He watched, bemused, as his arm stretched out to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger, holding her gaze. He hadn’t intended to touch her. It was a bad idea to touch her. And yet there was his hand on the soft skin of her face.

“I need to get you out of here,” he said slowly, gently, “I need to take you somewhere safe. Change your clothes and get ready to leave, okay? I’ll do the same.”

She nodded, and he strode back to the bathroom. He’d need to dispose of the body and take Allison somewhere she would be out of the reach of whoever was trying to kill her. And someone was, he was sure of that now. He considered several locations in the Eververse, then discarded them. He couldn’t hide her properly, not while her signature was still so strong. The best thing he could do was give her protection that extended beyond him.

He had to take her to Avalon.

Ronan didn’t have time to appreciate the scenery or allow himself to relax. When they opened their eyes on Avalon, his only thoughts were of learning whatever he needed to know to keep Allison safe. Bringing her to the seat of power of the Concilium wouldn’t have been his preference. She was powerful, that much he knew, so people would want to use her for their own purposes. Allison wasn’t old enough, or savvy enough yet, to navigate those political waters for her own benefit. He didn’t want to lock her into service if he could help it, but if he didn’t give her more protection she wouldn’t live long enough to decide what she wanted.

When he turned to face her, her eyes were dreamy and there was a contented smile on her face. The sun lit up her skin and glowed in her hair as if it were living fire. If he’d been only a few seconds later, Officer O’Goll would have put that fire out. The thought of seeing her pale and cold made unreasonable anger rise up to accompany all of the other frustrations, so his voice was harder than he intended when he said, “What happened?”

Her expression became wary. “What do you mean?”

“With the police officer, tell me what happened, all of it.”

“Why?”

“Why?” he asked, incredulous. Could she have chosen a worse moment to be contrary? “Because an officer of the law was doing his best to toss you from a window, Allie, and I killed him for it. You’ll be telling me what happened and you’ll be telling me now.”

Her face paled, all the previous peace draining away, and he hated himself for causing it. But Allison swallowed, set her shoulders, and said, “I woke up to him knocking on the door. He said he had a few more questions, but I was still pretty fuzzy from sleep so I let him in. Everything seemed fine at first, then he asked me why I was still alive.”

She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself. He had to clamp down on the impulse to pull her into his arms until she stopped shivering and the light returned to her eyes.

“He told me that they–him and someone else–were responsible for the car wreck that killed my father. He said he had checked me himself and I had no pulse. And they lit the car on fire. Then he said…’that’s not important as long as I finish it.’ He was so fast. His hands were around my throat before I even realized that he had moved. I dropped to the ground, just let all my weight fall to my knees. He wasn’t expecting me to do that, so it gave me enough leverage to twist to the side some and get a bit of air. He tried to knee me in the face, and when that didn’t work he started dragging me toward the–the window. And then you must have heard something because, the next thing I knew, the two of you were on the floor.”

Control, he ordered himself, battling down the bone-deep rage as her words conjured images of O’Goll as he tried to murder Allison. Information first, emotion later.

“Think hard,” he said, “because every little detail may mean something; is that everything that happened?”

She shook her head and rubbed her palms on her jeans, as if trying to wipe away the memory of touching the man who had died on her living room carpet. She didn’t deserve that memory, and it was likely she’d have plenty more if he couldn’t figure out who was trying to kill her and why.

He started pacing, trying to piece together all of the information. Allison was powerful, but she hand’t manifested any gifts he’d been able to see, and there was nothing about her that should have put her on anyone’s hit list, especially at such a young age. And they had found now in two separate verses with no connection other than the fact that she was in them. Someone with the right gift could have tracked her signature, following the echo her power made when she walked, but they would have had to track her, and he was certain they’d never been followed. He needed some space to track down leads, but he had to be certain she’d be safe in the meantime. So, he was going to have to tell her everything he suspected, and the thought of making her worry even more, after what she’d experienced, made him sick. So, he sat on an old stump and rolled his shoulders, and forced himself to speak.

“Look, something is going on that I don’t understand, and I don’t know what it is beyond the fact that someone is trying to kill you.”

“Yes, well, you took care of that problem.”

“No, Allie, I don’t think I did. Someone tried to kill you the first night we met, as well, and I don’t think it was that officer.”

“What? Do you mean that drive-by shooting? That could have happened to anyone.”

“Maybe, but random shootings don’t usually include someone who follows victims into the alley and takes shots at them with silenced guns.”

Her eyes widened and then flitted back and forth as if remembering that night. “But…when I tripped, that’s when you got shot, wasn’t it? Not when the windows broke.”

“That’s why I stayed with you that night,” he agreed. “I suspected something was wrong, so I didn’t want to leave you alone. But nothing had happened by that next morning, and I needed to have the wound healed, so—”

“Wait a minute,” she narrowed her eyes at him, “you were so tired and weak you barely made it to my bed.”

Seeing some life back in her face made him smile. “Allison, I’ve been injured worse than that and continued to fight for hours. Don’t get me wrong, it bloody hurt, but that’s not why I stayed.”

She blew out an exasperated breath and folded her arms, like a mother whose little boy has been misbehaving. “Did you have to let me struggle to take off your boots if you were so tough?”

“I rather enjoyed it, actually. It would have been painful to do it on my own. Besides, you were so bossy about it…”

Her scowl was positively ferocious. “If I had known you were faking it, I would have made you do it yourself, you jerk. You scared the crap out of me, Ronan, and I had to lie to my best friend. There was a lot of blood.”

His face sobered. If she knew how many times he’d showed up at the Valetudinorium half alive, covered in more blood than any human had a right to lose…

“Even a little bit of blood looks like a lot, Allison. It would have scared you worse if I had told you my suspicions on top of everything. I didn’t want to worry you like that if it was nothing but a random act of violence, and the wound gave me enough reason to stay close to you for the night. After all, I only had unfounded suspicions then. That’s why I felt safe enough leaving you the next day when nothing else happened. But after this afternoon, I’m sure of it; especially after what you’ve told me.”

“But how can we know that it wasn’t a coincidence? Maybe you looked like someone else or—I mean, don’t we need more proof before making that assumption?”

“Hard proof would be nice, but difficult to come by in a situation like this. And look,” he held his hand out to show her that the placement of the bullet wound in his shoulder was exactly where her head had been, “the shot happened when you tripped. People who shoot with silenced guns in dark allies don’t choose random targets. If you hadn’t stumbled…”

She swallowed. “There’s no chance it was a coincidence?”

His life would have been a whole lot simpler if it had been. “A chance, sure, but do I think it’s likely that someone would experience this many attempts on their life with no connection, one of those attempts by someone who can Walk between verses? I doubt it. It’s safer for you if we assume they’re connected.”

“Officer O’Goll was a Walker? How do you know that?”

“He tried to Walk while we were fighting. That’s why I had to kill him. He was strong enough to leave while fighting, and I couldn’t risk him coming back with reinforcements.”

“That’s…three times,” she whispered.

Great Dadga, the poor woman had been through too much. Maybe it would help her to talk it out, and he had a better chance of finding patterns if he knew what had happened each time, so he said in a gentle voice, “It happened when you were sixteen?”

She nodded mutely, looking as if she didn’t want to speak, but a moment later the words came pouring out as if she’d been holding them back for years and they finally broke the dam. “It was so fast. One instant we were singing and laughing and the next…everything hurt, Ronan. When I woke up, I was on the roof of the car and my dad was hanging upside down from his seatbelt. It took me a second to realize that the car was upside down, everything looked so strange. His blood was dripping from the top of his head onto the ceiling, and I was laying in it. Both of his hands were hanging down and…” she shivered and closed her eyes, “I was able to get his seatbelt to unlatch. When his body landed next to me, I got sick. I couldn’t help it. He was still warm, but he wasn’t breathing. I was woozy, and it was hard to stay awake, but I tried everything my mom taught my brother and me. I did the rescue breathing, but there was no space for CPR. His lips were wet though, I think it was my blood, and I couldn’t get the air to go through. It kept leaking out the sides and making these little squishing noises. I didn’t think about trying to dry his face; I just kept trying to force air into his lungs and pounding on his chest until I couldn’t feel my hands. I…think I started screaming at him.”

He could imagine the whole scene; twisted metal, the smell of gasoline mixed with the coppery tang of blood, and Allie’s body, limp and broken.

“I don’t remember climbing away from the car,” she said in a dead voice.

“I’m sorry, lass.”

And he was. God, how he was sorry for her. And yet to still be so vital and considerate after everything she’d been through was a small miracle. She might not have realized how many people would have been broken by the things she’d been through, but he did.

“He said I had no pulse,” she said slowly, as if deep in thought, “and he also said ‘we.’ That means there was someone else. So, I’m not safe even though he’s dead—am I?”

He shook his head.

“Why would someone want to kill me? I was a 16-year-old nobody living in a small town in Washington.”

“I don’t know, lass,” Ronan said, and pulled her to her feet. “But I mean to find out.”

He could have let go of her hand then, but it was cold with worry. He’d hold it a while longer, just to help her warm up. Her fingers tightened on his, but she didn’t seem to notice and he didn’t bother pointing it out. This was the first time, he realized, he’d ever held the hand of a woman tall enough that he didn’t have to bend a bit to accommodate her.

He didn’t want to give her to Arthur, didn’t want to be part of taking her freedom away from her, but heeded to be certain she could protect herself, even when he wasn’t around.

“My father is dead because someone wanted me dead,” she said.

Ronan hesitated. He could either make her feel better, or tell her the truth. He chose truth. “It seems that way.”

Allison took a deep breath, let it out, and then looked up at him. A fire was alight in her eyes. “They’re still out there somewhere then. And I can’t—I mean I don’t know…” she ran her hands through her hair. “I wouldn’t know how to find them or what to do to stop them. If they could find me in two separate verses, where would I be safe? Damn it! I just want to hit someone!”

They were agreed, then. He smiled wolfishly, and told her, “No worries, Lass. I’m going to make sure you do it properly.”

***

The forest was quiet in the way only forests can be, full of the background hum of bugs and birds and the songs of the trees. Ronan led Allison down the path that brought them to the valley floor, enjoying the feeling of being enveloped in unspoiled life that didn’t give a damn whether he was there or not. There was something comforting in that.

More comforting was the warm weight of Allison’s hand in his. The cold had slowly retreated from her fingertips as they’d walked, and she was absorbed either in thought or by the beauty of the woodland. Either way, he didn’t mind. Walking hand-in-hand through the forest was something he hadn’t done since he was a boy and more full of hormones than he was of sense. It was nice. Nicer than he wanted to admit to himself.

Allison jerked him to a stop and spun as the cry of a phoenix split the air. Phoenix calls sounded like someone stepped on a crow the size of an ostrich, and Allison reacted just the way he had the first time he’d heard one, letting go of his hand to cover both ears.

“What is that?”

“Ah, that’s a phoenix.”

“Seriously? You’re not teasing me?”

He smiled. “No, that’s a real phoenix.”

She stood there for a moment with her mouth open, eyes cataloging every feather and movement. The bird sat on a low branch of the nearest tree, displaying feathers the color of gold and blood. It gave her a cursory glance, then dismissed her and turned its long, elegant neck around to resume cleaning itself.

“It’s so pretty,” she said.

“It is that.”

“Does it die in fire and come back from the ashes?”

“It does, but not the way you’d think. It’s hard to explain. Come on.”

He turned and motioned her back down the path. He could have told her the way Phoenix reproduced, but the worry and fear had finally left her face, replaced by awe and something that looked a bit like peace. If he had told her that Phoenix only lay a single egg, and that egg did not hatch unless heated by fire, and that hatchlings were essentially born in the ashes of their suicidal parents…well, it wouldn’t be peace or awe he saw in her eyes, especially not after just reliving the day her father died.

So he kept his mouth shut and let the forest do its good work, and contented himself with walking next to her until they reached an opening in the trees some five hundred feet above the valley floor. The capital city of Avalon rose in white splendor against the foothills of the mountains, glowing like a jewel in the late morning light. Allison froze, eyes wide as the full moon, and stared at a place right out of mythology.

“It’s as big as a city,” she breathed.

“It is a city.”

“It’s amazing.” She said, then peered over the edge of the cliff at the river below with a sick look on her face. “How do we get down?”

“There’s a path off that way,” he gestured toward the path with his chin but didn’t take his eyes off the river. The Bludwyne river ran in a series of curves up the valley, splitting it roughly in two. It was the source of irrigation and drinking water for villages and cities all along this side of the mountains. It was also the same size as the river Boyne in his verse, but faster and deeper. In memories he could still hear the sound of the Boyne the night Finn had let him die, only dozens of feet from its banks. It had whispered and gurgled as he lay on the grass with his guts exposed, close enough to touch, but he’d never seen it.

“Do we have to cross the river?” she asked.

“We do.”

“We don’t have to swim, do we?”

He blinked and raised his brows, banishing the memories. “Why would we do that? There’s a bridge.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, visibly relaxing, “will it take long to get there?”

He turned toward the river, trying to banish the grief that stabbed him in the guts, right where the boar’s tusks had ripped a hole. The rest of the Fiana had thought him dead. Finn let the healing water slip through his fingers before Ronan could drink it, and he’d slipped away into unconsciousness and shock while his “family” looked on. In a very real way, Ronan had died that night. The trust he bore for his fellow man, and what idealism he’d had left, had pumped out of him along with the blood that had stained the earth around him.

“Ronan?”

A warm hand settled on his shoulder and he jerked, spinning toward Allison, who leaned back in surprise. It had been a long time since he’d thought of that night anywhere other than in half-remembered nightmares. He stuffed the memories firmly back into a box and shoved it into the dark recesses of his mind.

“Let’s go,” he said, “the path is just that way, on the other side of the Rhododendron bushes.”

By the time they reached the valley floor, the sun had reached its full strength, and even the bumblebees looked hot as they lumbered from flower to flower.

“This is kind of miserable,” Allison said from behind him.

He glanced back over his shoulder and said, “Seasons are a bit funny, here.”

“It looks like it. Why?”

“Altitude, I think. The capital city is among the higher elevations of this continent.”

“It felt a lot cooler in the meadow. It’s kind of strange.”

“That’s not the strangest thing you’ll see, Allie. Remember, some of the verses are very different from True Earth. Plant and animal life evolved in interesting ways.”

“Well, things here seem more or less familiar.”

He grinned and hoped she’d get the chance to see some of the wonders of other verses. “So far.”

Before long they were surrounded by farmers and merchants heading into the city for market. People walked rode, and guided teams of moxen pulling loaded wagons behind them. He looked at every face, noting clothing, expressions, the way people held their hands, and what they stared at. No weapons, no shifty eyes, no clothing worn just wrong enough to signal someone trying to fit in. He kept his ears open to the conversations around him, listening to farmers complain about the lack of rain, merchants haggle over who would set up their stalls on which corners, and hired hands tell stories about former employers. No signs of danger. It was a normal market day.

In front of them, a little girl with brown curls rode like a queen in the back of her father’s wagon. She spoke animatedly to the rag doll in her hands, pointing out important landmarks with the charming gravity of childhood. The cart passed them as people shifted out of the way. No one wanted to get in the way of a team of working moxen. The beasts were big, hairy, and particularly odorous. They also had a distinct disregard for public sanitation.

“Watch it,” Ronan said, and grabbed Allison’s arm to pull her out of the way before she planted a foot deep in fresh moxen dung. The crowd behind them parted, holding their noses and laughing.

“This is worse than rush hour in Seattle,” Allison said.

When he turned back to answer her, she was watching him, eyes lighting on his hands, his chest, his shoulders. Was that curiosity or appraisal? With a strange feeling in his stomach, he raised an eyebrow in question, but she dropped her eyes and started braiding her hair.

Okay, he thought, moment over.

“So…” she said to deflect any reply he might have made, “are you going to explain what we’re doing here? I mean, this place is beautiful and all but...”

He could tell her. But it would be a lot more fun if he waited. She was studying mythologies and had a fantasy book by her bedside table. There were myths of Avalon in many verses, and he was willing to bet that if he told her now, she wouldn’t believe him anyway. Besides, he preferred Allison when she was feeling feisty, not when she was unsure and out of her element, so he said, “No.”

She glared at him. “Care to explain your reason for not sharing?”

“Can’t you just trust that your teacher knows best?”

“Whatever you say, Obi-Wan.”

That was better.

Just then a little cloth doll rolled to a stop between the feet of the travelers in front of him. It was the doll the brown-haired girl had been holding as she rode on the wagon. When stopped to pick it up, Allison rammed into his back with an oof that nearly sent him sprawling before he could save the doll from the uncaring feet behind them.

“Sorry,” she murmured as he scanned the crowd.

That wagon was too big to disappear, where had they gone? He let his eyes roam over the milling throng until he spotted the moxen, then grabbed Allison’s hand and hauled her behind him. He didn’t want to lose the man and little girl if they left the wagon before he could get close.

“You’d be handy on the football field,” Allison shouted at him as they wove between travelers.

“American football? Never say so,” he scoffed, “I’ll take rugby any day.”

“Rugby, eh? You’d have to say goodbye to that pretty face.”

She thought he had a pretty face, eh? He’d heard the same words before, but for some reason, it mattered more when she said them. Ronan smiled, spotted the father and daughter, and picked up his speed.

They didn't catch up to the family until they’d entered the city and stopped inside Market Square. The father was holding his distraught daughter on his knee and whispering comfort as he wiped the tears from her plump little cheeks. They were still on the wagon, and people split around the obstruction like a stream around a boulder, hurrying off toward their stalls or shops to do business or visit friends.

Ronan stopped a few feet away from the tableau and waited for the father to catch his eye. When the man looked up a moment later, he noticed the doll in Ronan’s hand and smiled as he leaned down to whisper in the girl’s ear.

She gaped at her father, then her eyes flashed toward Ronan’s free hand and her feathery little eyebrows raised.

“That’s mine,” she said, pointing at the doll.

Ronan lifted it and looked carefully at the little thing. It was wearing a blue dress and had dark hair made of yarn tied into two braids. It was threadbare, stained, and clearly well-loved.

“Is it now?” he said, “I found her on the stones. Saved her just before a great bird could snatch her up and carry her off.”

The little girl’s mouth popped open. “You did?”

“Mmhmm. The bird said that he wanted her to come up to the mountain and be the queen of the birds.”

“But he can’t have her; she’s mine! My mummy gived me to her,” she insisted. Her face was panicked, and her whole body vibrated with desire.

“Well, that’s what I told the bird,” he said, embellishing the story a bit for effect, “but he said he loved her and that he would care for her. I said that somebody else loved her more, and would be heartbroken without her.”

She nodded her head violently, brown curls bouncing, and shouted “I do!”

“He didn’t believe me at first. He said that he would only let me have her if I could promise that she would be well taken care of. I gave my word of honor that she would be, and I never lie.”

Hope flashed in her dark eyes and she said with the fervor only little girls possess, “I will take care of her! I will, I promise! Della’s my bestest friend.”

“Alright then, Della?” he asked the doll.

Then he lifted the little figure to his ear and cocked his head. “Mmm,” he murmured, “I see. Della says she would never want to go home with anyone but you.”

When he lifted the doll the girl snatched it and held it to her small chest with great tears rolling down her face. He smiled at the father. The man was lucky to have such a passionate, imaginative daughter. She’d likely grow up and manage everyone around her, and love them all until she wore them out.

Then he thought of Grainne and the babe who had been buried with her. He would never hold his own child, but he could pretend every now and then.

He nodded goodbye to the father and pulled Allison deeper into the city. She was silent as they passed the busiest districts, craning her neck and staring with her mouth hanging open. Something about the honesty of her reaction reminded him of his first time visiting a new verse. He had only been fourteen years old, but he still remembered it with striking clarity.

“You look like a tourist in New York City,” he said.

“I feel like a tourist in New York City,” she said. Her eyes were trying to be everywhere at once, on the shops and buntings, on the signs, on the people. It was as if her brain was hungry and her eyes couldn’t eat fast enough. But it wasn’t long before she started fidgeting with her hair and casting sidelong glances at the other pedestrians.

“They’re not staring at your hair,” he told her.

She flinched and dropped her braid with a guilty expression. “Oh yeah? Well, this has happened to me my whole life, it’s nothing new.”

“Why don’t you dye it, if it bothers you?”

“Because it’s the only noticeable trait I got from my dad besides height. Besides, I like my hair.”

“Good. I like it, too. It’s not a color one sees often. Be a shame to dye it.” Should he have said that?

“Then why did you ask?”

Ronan looked at her and let his eyes linger but she didn’t look away, even though color burned in her cheeks. Great Dagda she was such a vibrant woman. She wasn’t a flower or a painting or anything poets often compared to women. Allison was a mountain stream in autumn, quiet and deep one minute, rushing and dangerous the next, always reflecting the fire of the trees.

And he was a fool for thinking of her that way. He shook his head and led her toward the walls of the inner city, where the castle proper and Bastion stood sentinel over the city.

She must have regained her courage, because a moment later she asked, “Why do they keep looking at me then, if it’s not this beacon?” and grabbed a handful of her braid.

“You’re a Walker,” he told her, “and people always notice a new Walker here.”

She hesitated long enough to make her jog to catch back up. “People here know? I mean, they know what we are?”

“They know. It’s part of their lives.”

“How can they tell? I thought–isn’t this kind of a secret? I thought you said there were only a few Walkers who could tell when there was another of us nearby.”

“We aren’t supposed to reveal what we are to people who would endanger Walkers, so it is a secret in a way,” he said, nodding back to the guards as they passed beneath the portcullis and entered castle grounds, “but not here. This is the one place you don’t have to hide what you are. Besides,” he stopped walking and turned to face her. He wanted to see her expression when she realized what made her so interesting to the people of Avalon.

“Have you noticed what you’re wearing? Blue jeans, a cotton Aerosmith tee shirt, and a pair of...are those Converse?”

“Vans,” she said as color stained her cheeks again.

“You are very clearly not from around here.”

“Why isn’t it a secret here, then?” she demanded, “if someone showed up in Seattle wearing something crazy people wouldn’t assume—” she stopped, seemed to think better, and said, “my point is, strange clothing doesn’t automatically make people think you’re some kind of, I don’t know, time-traveling Jedi from another world, Ronan. Why do people here know about us when no one else does?”

“Jedi don’t exist in any Verse that I know of.”

“For real? Gah, that’s a bummer. I was kind of hoping to get my hands on a lightsaber.”

“Not going to happen, I’m afraid.”

“You could have broken it to me a bit easier than that.”

One corner of his mouth crooked up. “There’s no easy way to tell someone that they’ll never get to have an epic duel with the dark side.”

“True,” she said, smiling wryly, “but there is an easy way to distract apprentices from completely valid questions by using Star Wars references, isn’t there?”

He shrugged. “It has worked in the past.”

“You were this close,” she said with her thumb and forefinger raised.

“Not close enough, though, eh?”

“Spill the beans, Obi-Wan,” she said, crossing her arms.

He gestured toward the tower and said, “C’mon, I’ll tell you about it as we walk.”

With one hand on the small of her back, he ushered her toward the one place in Avalon he didn’t want to take her, and the only place he could guarantee she’d learn enough to keep herself safe. But feeling her supple muscles move beneath his hand was…distracting. So he said, “For the people of this Verse, Walkers are a bit like celebrities in your Verse; people you grow up knowing about, but who live in the background. In the rest of this world, people know about Walkers in a vague sort of way, like you might be aware of the celebrities in another country. But here in the capital,” he made a gesture that encompassed the castle, the city, and the surrounding woodland, “Walkers are more an everyday fact of life.”

“Why?”

The way her hips moved made the muscles at the small of her back flex and stretch and he couldn’t stop a mental picture from intruding on his thoughts, of Allison–she stopped and nearly pulled him over. He had gotten distracted and didn’t answer her question. Touching her wasn’t going to be a good idea.

“You know,” he observed to stymie the direction of his thoughts, “you may be the most irritating young Walker I’ve ever taught.”

“Kudos to me. I’m not going into that building until you answer my question, Ronan. Why do people here know?”

He sighed but her expression was challenging, her jaw thrust forward, and something about it made him want to test her and see how she would react.

“I could just pick you up and carry you in, you know.”

“You probably could,” she agreed, then growled, “but you wouldn’t walk away without regretting doing it.”

He laughed. He couldn’t help it. She didn’t know the first thing about any form of martial combat but the woman had more spirit than a boatful of soldiers. “Lord, but you are a feisty baggage, aren’t you? You know, your eyes turn the color of spring grass when you’re angry.”

She froze, her eyes on his face, brows drawn together as if she was either confused or conflicted.

“Allison,” he began and then shook his head. She didn’t know anything about combat right now, but that was exactly what he was hoping to change. She couldn’t Walk with weapons, so she would need to become one if she was going to keep herself safe when he was gone. And he fully intended to be gone, so he said, “maybe someday we will turn that into a true threat. Look, people here know about us because this is the center of what you’d call our government. You remember when I told you about the Concillium?”

She nodded.

“This is where the Concillium is located. The headquarters of the Venatore is here, as well. Whatever there is of a central government for our people, it’s here in Avalon.”

He had the distinct pleasure of watching realization make her face go slack in surprise

They had stopped in front of the doors to the Bastion, the megalithic stone structure that housed the training Venatore, guards of Avalon, and the person they were here to see. People who had been going about their business had stopped to watch the argument, so Ronan didn’t want to leave her hanging for long, but her expression was just too priceless to end the discussion so quickly.

“Yes, it’s that Avalon,” he said after a moment, “why do you think I didn’t just tell you straight out? You’d have scoffed at me and not taken any of this seriously.”

“No, I…okay maybe I would. I mean,” she put her hands on her hips and eyed him suspiciously. “How would you know whether I would believe you or not? For that matter, how would you have guessed I would know what Avalon was?”

Uh-oh. That was going to require a bit of explaining that would certainly bring him down a peg in her eyes. But if he was going to be honest, there was no way around it. She’d learn about their methods soon enough, anyway. Best to have it over with.

He sighed and said, “Do you think I’d be teaching you and not know anything about you? That I’d tell you I was Venatore and not look into your life at all? I’d not be teaching an unstable person, nor yet someone I thought would use their ability to hurt or dominate others. Yes,” he said as her eyes turned a dangerous shade of green, “I spied on you. Of course, I did. Or do you want me to be teaching people of questionable character how to disappear at will?”

She opened her mouth as if she were about to curse him soundly, then stopped and tilted her head to the side as she thought.

“Okay, maybe not,” she admitted, “but I didn’t expect you be spying on me, Ronan. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“But you don’t regret it.”

“Not a bit of it.”

His lack of regret shocked her…at least until it made her angry. She clenched her jaw and pushed past him to pull open the carved front door. Each of the double doors was more than ten feet high, made of oak, and weighed hundreds of pounds. That was all Allison would see. What she wouldn’t know was that the doors were so skillfully hung that, unless they were barred, it didn’t take much effort to open them. So when she wrapped her hand around the metal ring and pulled with all her weight, she went stumbling backward with enough force to knock her backside into the stone dragons that guarded the entrance to the tower.

After a shocked squeak at the impact, she righted herself, squared her shoulders, motioned at the open door, and said with all the aplomb of a courtier, “After you.”

He was not going to laugh. She’d never forgive him if he did. So Ronan, Senior Venatore and warrior with hundreds of years of experience and self-control, took a deep breath, held it for long enough to be certain he wouldn’t burst into wild guffaws, sighed forcefully through his nose, and strode through the door.

He led her down corridors and through chambers that were so familiar to him he’d ceased to notice them, but would look like something from a fairytale to his apprentice.

People from other verses, Venatore and visitors, ambled through the halls to chat or eat or accomplish whatever business brought them to Avalon. Allison stared at the alien anatomy and wildly differing skin color of the residents of other verses with undisguised wonder.

When Ronan had first experienced people from verses wildly different from his own, it had been like watching stories come to life. Figures so tall and slim they resembled trees more than people had glided through their gravity-deprived world like dandelion puffs on a breeze. More than any other experience, that had cemented in his mind the true vastness of reality. Allison was dealing with that same confrontation of thought right now.

One of the rarest Venatore, a Bearkin from Hwrawrf, was headed toward the dining hall. To her, he wouldn’t look any different from a grizzly bear. He half expected her to shriek, as other apprentices often did, but her eyes merely widened and he could almost hear her thinking.

He needed to give her a moment to come to grips with everything before he gave her the option to promise her freedom away, so he turned and led her toward the visitor’s rooms. All senior Venatore carried a master key, so when they finally stopped in front of the plain wood door to an empty room, he pulled the key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

The room was simply furnished with a bed, a table and chair, a large armoire, and a dresser with a ceramic pitcher and bowl on it. The single window at the end of the room opened on the courtyard.

Allison didn’t hesitate. She hurried toward the bed, said, “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed,” and curled into a ball on the center of the matress.

“I’m not sorry I spied on you,” Ronan said, hoping to change the direction of her thoughts. Better she be mad at him for a few moments that slip into mental shock at everything she had seen that morning. “But,” he continued, “I am sorry that it bothers you that I did it. It wasn’t my intention to make you feel vulnerable.”

She sighed, a long release of tension, and said, “I don’t think that’s what bothered me. I think it’s that I am vulnerable, and now I know it. I mean, last week my world was pretty mundane. My biggest worries were finals and making it home to visit with my mom. This kind of stuff,” she made a broad gesture that encompassed everything, “was only in books and movies. And really, accidents aside, I was safe. Now I’m effectively on the run from some supernatural stranger who wants me dead, and you’re telling me that I’m in a place right out of leg-end that isn’t just a figment of the imagination but a whole universe of its own. That is what you’re telling me, right? This is the Avalon where King Arthur is supposed to be buried?”

“It is.”

“Yeah. So here I am, and none of this seems real except the fact that the way I see my life, the way I see other people, has completely changed. I’m questioning everything, and I haven’t even had the time to think any of it through. When you said that you had sp— researched me,” she amended when she saw my brows draw together, “well, it just reminded me that I don’t know you, and that there’s a whole reality beyond the one that I thought I knew, and that I can’t trust anything—or anyone—to be what I think they are.”

She was taking this better than he’d expected. She was in danger, that much was true, but she didn’t need to feel psychologically vulnerable to the reality of the Eververse. He grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat.

“Allie,” he said slowly, “let me ask you a question. Do you know who you are? Not your name or where you come from, but do you know who you are?” She stared at him, so he continued, “You’re still you, aren’t you? So, nothing has actually changed, only the way you see things has changed.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know, but it’s the truth. It happens to you all the time, only in smaller ways, so you don’t think about it. See, your ideas about things always get changed when you encounter them for the first time. Take New York City; I bet you have an idea in your head of what it’s like.”

She nodded, eyes thoughtful.

“If you go there, some things will be the way you imagined, and some things will be so different that your ideas about New York will alter to fit the reality. New York didn’t change, only the way you perceived it did. The reality of a thing is always different than our notions of it are, it’s just that not everyone gets confronted with the reality of so many things, all at once. And those things haven’t changed, just like New York didn’t change.”

“I don’t think knowing that makes this any easier to handle, Ronan.”

“Maybe not right now, but it will.”

She sat for a moment, cross-legged on the bed as she grappled with her new reality in a way even more profound than when she’d first seen him disappear.

“I don’t even know where to start,” she admitted.

Luckily, he had an answer for that one. Allison was smart, and smart people too often got caught up in their own heads, trying to think everything through and answer every question before they acted. But there was too much to know for anyone to feel entirely prepared in the Eververse, so he said, “Quit trying to figure everything out. Just do what you need to do, and tackle things as they come at you. Don’t think about it so much, just do it.”

“Well aren’t you just a walking Nike advertisement.” She scowled at him for a moment, then her expression cleared and she scooted to the edge of the bed and said, “Alright, I will be just like Scarlett O’Hara and worry about it tomorrow.”

His lass was no quitter. “Well done.”

“So why are we here and when can we eat?”

Sooner begun, sooner finished, he reminded himself, then took a deep breath and said, “I brought you here to introduce you to the Leader of the Concilium. Arthur, the Pendragon”

Her face paled enough to make the golden freckles on the bridge of her nose stand out starkly. “King Arthur? From the stories?”

“Aye.”

She wobbled, as if dizzy, and for a moment he thought he’d lost her, but she mastered herself and said, in a small voice, “Can we eat, first?”

He explained his plan on the way to the dining hall and Allison listened without replying. That made it hard to judge her reaction, but he was grateful to get everything out without having to stop and explain himself. If Arthur agreed to let Allison start training as an initiate Venatore, she would have the protection of the Concilium and begin learning martial arts from the most experienced fighters they had to offer. She would be able to protect herself and he would be free from any obligation to tell anyone about the strength of her power. Plus, he could get back to his duty of finding and training Walkers.

The longer he was around Allison, the more he found himself wanting to be around her. That put them both in greater danger. If they remained as close as they were now, it would only be a matter of time before she saw his birthmark. He was careful, but he couldn’t plan for every eventuality, and once she saw the cursed mark, he would truly have stolen her freedom, in a way deeper and more damaging than promising a few years of service to the Concilium. The best thing he could do was ensure her safety by giving her access to training and backup, then remove himself from the equation.

The dining hall was as busy as he’d seen it in ages, but he managed to secure them a seat at one of the long wooden tables. Food was presented on trenchers and in bowls down the length of the table, free for anyone to eat as much as they liked. Allison piled her plate with cheese, ham, grapes, potatoes, and everything else within easy reach, her face glowing with anticipation. He’d rarely seen anyone take as much delight in eating.

“What are these made of?” She asked, holding up a cup as she examined it in the light.

“Horn,” he said around a mouthful of turkey.

“Ronan!” a deep voice called before he felt a slap on his back that was roughly equivalent to getting hit with a baseball bat, “When were you getting back?”

He turned around, rolling his shoulders to see Molfus standing near his chair with a broad smile beneath his shaggy black beard. Allison’s brows raised, and he couldn’t blame her. Molfus was a large, barrel-chested man with great slabs of flat muscle and skin nearly the color of cooked lobster. He was also covered in healthy mats of curling black hair, and remained one of the most dangerous fighters Ronan had ever known. He was the Master-at-Arms of Avalon, and one of the very few people Ronan would consider a friend.

“Just today, Molfus. I’m not staying, though.”

Molfus’ face fell, then he caught sight of Allison and the smile returned. Time for introductions.

“This is Allison,” Ronan said, “a new Walker from True Earth.”

“Really? It is being quite a while since we are having a new female from True Earth. Welcoming to Avalon, Allison,” he said, and then said, “If Ronan starts to boring you with his moody silences, come finding me, and I will be taking over your training,” just loud enough to be overheard.

Allison smiled at his conspiratorial grin and said, “Thanks, but I’ve made it my mission to irritate him as much as possible until my training is over. Maybe by the time I’m done with him, he won’t be so boring.”

Molfus snorted in amusement, and Ronan leveled a glare at the both of them.

“I am liking this one,” Molfus said, undeterred, as he jerked a thumb at Allison, “be bringing her by the armory sometimes.”

Ronan lifted a hand in acknowledgment and turned back to his food. Everyone was a comedian.

“He’s a fun guy,” Allison said, “when I can make it through his accent.”

“That’s what everyone thinks until they get in the ring with him. He might sound slow, but his mind is as quick as a bear trap, and his hands are faster. You done?”

She looked down at her plate, eyes wistful. “I may be able to stuff a few more mouthfuls in, but then we’d be getting into dangerous gastronomic territory.”

“Leave it, then,” he said, ”the servants will clean it and feed the leftovers to the stray animals.”

“What did he mean,” she asked as they left the hall, “we haven’t had any females from True Earth in a while?”

He held the door for her and motioned her through, watching to see if anyone was paying attention to their departure. No eyes or heads turned in their direction, so he said, “Female Walkers are statistically rare. Maybe only one in twenty, but we get less from True Earth for some reason.”

“Really? Why?”

“We don’t know for sure, though the scientists think it has something to do with genetics. It seems harder to pass on the gene, or whatever it is that gives us this ability, to female children.”

She was silent for a moment, and he could tell she’d only been half listening to him. Something else was bothering her. A moment later she said, “So, um…are we going to see him?”

“Don’t worry,” he began, but she said, “I’m not worried, just…anxious.”

Sure. She wasn’t worried at all as she pulled at her braid while her eyes darted around the hallway. He stopped and turned to her, using the same voice he’d use on a scared horse, low and reassuring.

“I think this is a good idea, Allie. It’s the best way I can think of to protect you while we try to figure out who’s trying to kill you. If he says yes, you can start training.”

“Couldn’t you just teach me what I need to know?”

“I could, but I don’t have the time, and I’m still responsible for my job, remember? I thought about hiding you in some rarely visited Verse, but they’ve already found you in two places.”

That, and he was afraid that staying around him would only add a different level of danger to her life, a danger he didn’t want to be responsible for.

They turned down the main corridor toward the wide double-doors with dragons carved in relief with precise detail. Beyond those doors sat Arthur, the Pendragon, and hopefully, safety for them both. But Allie pulled him to a stop by his sleeve, her face pinched with worry.

“But, I don’t know if this is what I want to do, Ronan. I didn’t think I was going to have to make this kind of decision right now!”

He put his hands on her shoulders, felt the tension thrumming through her veins and the now familiar shock of her power, like touching an electric fence, and said, “Breathe, Allie. No oaths are required to train. You only swear when you graduate to the second strata, and we will have this mess sorted by then. When you’re training here, you’ll be as safe as any-where in the Eververse, and when you’re not training, I’ll be with you. Okay?”

She searched his eyes, and he felt somehow that she could see all the way inside him, through the darkness and beyond. What she saw must have comforted her, because her shoulders relaxed a bit and she gave him a jerky nod.

With a deep breath, he led her into Arthur’s study. It was a circular room with a wooden staircase on one side and several large windows on the other. The floor was covered in several rich rugs, and in the center of the largest rug at the exact middle of the room, sat the round table.

It was a masterpiece of craftsmanship made with a loving hand, and it glowed in the window light despite its scars and the long history it carried. Allison made a soft sound and touched the table with reverent fingers. Just as she did, Arthur appeared on the staircase. He hesitated, watching Allison, now also wreathed in window light, with a curious expression on his face. He was too far away for the window light to catch in his iron-grey hair, but Ronan could see his dark brows lower as he watched her. Ronan tensed but didn’t move.

“Do you like the table?” Arthur asked.

She spun and watched him descend the stairs, and Ronan was surprised to see her so self-possessed after the way she’d nearly run and hid. That ember of pride and respect that had been growing in him since he’d first met her flamed a little brighter.

“Yes, sir, I do,” she said.

Arthur smiled gently. “I have seen it for so long that sometimes I fail to remember how extraordinary it is. It is good to see it with fresh eyes.”

“Sir,” Ronan said, stepping forward, “may I present Allison Erin Chapter of True Earth? She would like your permission to begin training in the first strata as a Venatore.”

“Allison, I am pleased to meet you,” he said, taking her hand, “I am Arthur Pendragon.”

If Arthur felt the shock of Allison’s power, he didn’t show it. He simply held her hand in a firm grip as they measured one another. Ronan thought she would lose her composure there, but she held on and only gave him a respectful nod. Arthur patted their joined hands once, then stepped back and folded his hands in front of him. He was the most commanding person Ronan had ever met, and no matter how many times they spoke, he was never able to forget he was speaking to a true legend.

Of course, there were also legends about Ronan, but those were significantly less favorable and…well, truthfully less noble. Arthur really had united a country, formed a kingdom, and been betrayed. Stories about him were sprinkled throughout the Eververse, and meeting the man had only strengthened the power of the legends. Allison was clearly feeling the pull as she fidgeted, waiting for him to speak.

“You wish to be initiated into the first strata of the Venatore?” He said at last.

“Yes.”

“And this of your own free will?”

“Yes.”

“And you understand this requires you to train at the Bastion for at least half of every year for three years’ time?”

She swallowed but nodded.

Arthur searched her face for a moment, a thoughtful expression drawing his dark brows together. “Might I ask why?”

She hesitated and looked down at her hands, but Ronan caught his breath. Arthur had never asked a Venatore recruit that question before, and Allie hadn’t expected it.

“Because,” she said after a moment, “I’ve realized that the Eververse is a dangerous place. It’s full of wonder–I’ve seen things just today that honestly make my head spin–but it’s also not safe. If Venatore hadn’t saved me, I’d probably still be in a mental institution in the wrong world. It makes me wonder how many Walkers never make it home. That shouldn’t happen to people just because of who they were born to be.”

“That,” Arthur said, “is a noble reason.” Then he turned to Ronan and inclined his head slightly. “She has my full permission to be inducted into training. See to it, Venatore, and please see me here, afterward.”

A little chip of ice slid down Ronan’s spine, but he inclined his head in return and gestured to Allison to follow him. She gave Arthur one last nod of the head, then turned and left the tower room without looking back. In fact, she was silent all the way to the armory, and silent when he chose a silver cuff of the proper size and fastened it to her wrist with the Elven equivalent of a soldering iron. The cuff bore the head of a wolf, the symbol of the Venatore, and thanks to the near-magical tool used to connect the two sides of the cuff, it couldn’t be removed by any normal means.

He was stripping her freedom away a bit at a time, and the little silver bracelet that winked at him as he walked her back to the temporary room reminded him of what this life was going to cost her.

“I thought you might need a break before we head back to True Earth,” he told her as he unlocked the door.

She gave him a grateful smile, and said, “Yeah, I think I need it. Thanks.”

He left her lying on the bed with her arms folded behind her head, staring at the ceiling, and hurried to his own room to change before beginning the long walk back to the Tower. Arthur was waiting for him when he arrived, sitting in a wooden chair by the window and staring pensively at the gardens, looking even more regal in the gold light.

If he didn’t know the man, he would have suspected the whole scene was carefully arranged for effect. As it was, he simply saw a compelling man with an unimaginable weight of responsibility on his shoulders.

Ronan broke the silence and said, “My Lord.”

“Ronan,” Arthur said, gesturing to chair nearest him. “Please. It is done?”

“Aye, she is sworn in and wears the sigil.”

“Good. And where is she now?”

“Resting. It has been a long day for her.”

Arthur smiled wryly. “I can imagine. The transition period is always difficult. And she is uniquely powerful, is she not.”

Ronan’s heart beat harder at the question, but he tried to sound nonchalant. “She appears to be so.”

“No manifestations of a gift?”

He was grateful he could answer that without any guilt. “Nothing I’ve seen.”

Arthur nodded and his eyes drifted back toward the window and the garden beyond. It was nearing the end of November in True Earth, but here summer hadn’t fully given up it’s grip on the world and the gardens were still worth staring at. But Ronan didn’t think Arthur was actually seeing the hedges or flowers.

“There is something in the air, do you feel it? A promise of some doom on the wind. I felt it before Camelot fell, and I felt it before your mission to stop that warlord…what was his name?”

“Sumanguru.”

Arthur raised a finger and touched the side of his nose absently. “I felt it then, and I feel it now. Something is changing, some great shift is coming, and I do not know why but I have a feeling we will need Miss Chapter before it is over.”

“Sir–” Ronan began, concern coloring his voice, but Arthur blinked and turned toward him with a self-deprecating smile on his face. “Don’t take me too seriously, Venatore. It’s purely selfish. The stronger we are, the more easily we will weather any storms that come our way. But most likely,” he said as he stood up, “I ate too much fish at luncheon and it’s made me maudlin.”

Ronan stood as well, saying, “Remind me to avoid the fish, then, sir,” but watched his leader with concern. He didn’t usually see the man so contemplative, and Arthur rarely revealed his thoughts so openly.

The man who had once been the king of the Britons pulled his cloak around his shoulders and said, “Keep the young woman safe. Watch for any manifestation of gifts. If my intuition is correct–well, let us be prepared.”

Ronan nodded at the dismissal and left the study at a pace just short of a jog. If Arthur had a premonition of how valuable Allison might be, then it was likely other people would, as well. A chill gathered at the small of his back. He reached her door in record time, but no one was nearby and there was no sign of forced entry. He knocked.

“Yes?”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open to see Allison sitting on the bed, cross-legged, her hair in a lose wavy cloud around her face and shoulders. Her eyes looked more green than hazel next to all of that red hair, and they roamed up his body before landing on his face. She was just fine. No need to have rushed back fast enough to make him breathe hard.

“You look like you just walked out of Grease,” she said with a smile, “all you need is some pomade for your hair and a T-birds logo for your jacket.”

“I—what?”

“Judging by your expression I’m going to guess that you’ve never seen Grease.”

“You’d guess right.”

“Well then, you’ve never really lived.”

He shrugged and said, “I think I’ll be all right.”

She fidgeted with her bracelet and bit her lower lip as some thought must have superseded his lack of pop-culture knowledge.

“Ronan?” She asked.

“Hmm?”

“Did I really just meet King Arthur? The King Arthur?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

She threw herself back on the bed and covered her face with her hands. “I still can’t believe I just met a real-life myth. Well, I guess he’s not really a myth after all, is he?”

“I suppose not.”

“I wish I could have talked to him longer; I wanted to ask him so many questions.”

Ronan grunted. “You and everyone else who knows who he is.”

“Is he always so intense?”

He thought about that for a moment before answering, “I don’t know if intense is the right word, but every time I speak to him I get the feeling that, if he still needed knights for the roundtable, I’d drop to one knee and do something stupid.”

“I felt the same way. It’s probably a good thing he only looked me over and gave permission before you hurried me out of there. I would have been asking for a quest or something if we’d spent any more time with him.”

“He is certainly a man who lives up to his myth.” Ronan couldn’t say the same thing for himself or many of the other people who had inspired mythologies.

“Holy crap, does this ever get easier?”

“Nope. You just learn new ways to deal with it.”

That was clearly not the answer she was looking for, because her expression shifted as if she were wondering how best to skin him. “You are a supremely frustrating human being, did you know that?”

“Yep. You ready to go?”

She snatched the pillow next to her and flung it at him. It was only the poor aerodynamics of the pillow that gave him time to catch it. If it had been a baseball or a knife, she might have taken him off guard.

“What did you do that for?”

She stood up and took the pillow from him, snapping, “Because you make me crazy,” before she stalked into the hallway and turned to the right. In the wrong direction.

“Allison,” he said.

“What?”

“We need to go this way to get out of the Castle.”

She considered that, then spun and motioned him to lead the way with her lips pinched together in irritation. It made him want to laugh, but he manfully controlled himself.

She said, “Lead the way then, James Dean.”

So, he did.

In the empty corridor, he could swear he felt her eyes on him, and he was too aware of her presence. Aware enough that he almost didn’t notice when Cecily and Abasi turned the corner just in front of them. What were they doing back in the Bastion so soon?

Cecily gave him a formal nod of recognition, but Abasi smiled warmly and patted Ronan on the shoulder before he pressed forward to take Allison by the hand.

“Hello again, my dear,” the smaller man said.

“Abasi!” Allison gasped, then pulled him into an embrace that took him entirely by surprise. He looked back over his shoulder for help, but Allison released him before Ronan was forced to interfere on behalf of his friend’s delicate sensibilities.

“Welcome to Avalon,” Abasi said, smiling at Allison, “you are looking much better than the last time I saw you. You remember Cecily.”

“Miss Chapter,” Cecily said, “I have been told that you are going to begin training for admittance to the Venatore.”

Allison raised her wrist to let the wolf head cuff catch the light and said with a sigh, “Looks like it,”

“Let me be the first to welcome you to our ranks, assuming you are accepted into the second strata.”

Her smile looked a bit sickly but she said, “Um, thanks.”

“Will she be staying at the Bastion?” Abasi asked Ronan.

That was a normal enough question, but something told Ronan not to answer it, at least not fully. He trusted Abasi as much as he trusted anyone, but Allison had now been found in at least two separate verses and he didn’t want to make her location common knowledge.

“No,” he said shortly, “at least not for now. We’ll be moving about a lot as she gets the hang of Walking, so she could come in out of anywhere.”

Abasi’s smile widened as he turned back to Allison. Ronan had seen that look before. He was hungry for knowledge. Abasi was fascinated with the way the ability to Walk between verses manifested differently in different people. He had some theories he’d shared in the past, but they had always been difficult to grasp and Ronan wasn’t nearly as curious as his friend. He was more comfortable simply accepting that was the way things worked and saving his energy for more practical matters.

Abasi asked Allison, “And how is your progress? What do you think of your newly discovered ability?”

“It’s a bit of a trip, honestly. Half the time it doesn’t feel real, and the other half of the time just thinking about it makes me nauseous.”

“Yes, yes, the nausea is common. Your body is doing something quite extraordinary, after all. But it passes with time. Tell me, how would you describe the first step?”

“First step?”

Before Ronan could answer, Cecily said, “The first step is what we call the beginning of the process, when one brings their body into harmony with the Verse to which they intend to Walk. While the action is physically the same for each of us, it seems that not every Walker activates their ability in quite the same way. Abasi has a pronounced interest in the mechanics of the process.”

Abasi’s round face was practically glowing with curiosity; his cheeks squeezed up so close to his eyes that they almost disappeared behind the corners of his smile.

“Indeed, I do. It is a fascinating phenomenon, after all. Can you tell me—”

Ronan took a step forward and put a hand on the small of Allison’s back, interrupting Abasi with an apologetic throat clearing.

“Maybe Allison can explain it to you another time, Abasi? We’re already behind schedule.”

Cecily let out a long breath through her nose and folded her arms, but Abasi seemed abashed.

“Oh of course, please don’t let me keep you, my dear. I look forward to our next talk! Take care of yourself, now, and keep some candy or chewing gum on you, if you can.”

He laughed at Allison’s confused expression and said in a conspiratorial tone, “It helps with the nausea,” and winked.

Cecily said simply, “Good luck, Miss Chapter. Until next we meet.”

Ronan ushered her away, keeping his hand on the small of her back for as long as he dared before they were safely in the out of doors. He couldn’t place why the encounter had made him uncomfortable, but something told him to get Allison out of there before she revealed too much about what Walking felt like to her.

Despite Arthur’s warning, Ronan didn’t want to hunt for any signs his apprentice might be gifted and he didn’t want any other Venatore doing it, either. Walkers were rare, magically gifted Walkers even more so, and rare gifts were valuable things.

If Allison did manifest some gift, he wanted the decision on whether to reveal that to be hers, alone. He had already taken one woman’s freedom, and that had cost him a wife and a child…but it had cost her her life. He wouldn’t do it, again.

“Ronan,” Allie called from behind him, jogging to catch up “do you mind? Where are we going in such a hurry?”

He didn’t answer until they were beyond the inner castle wall on the far side of the city, shrouded in the shadow of the trees, and he’d had a chance to walk off a bit of steam.

“What was that all about?” Allison huffed as she caught up with him.

He turned to face her, ignoring the way the moon bleached her hair to a soft, dark mass that framed her pale face. “Let me ask you a question, Allison. Who knew where you were, the night we took you from the hospital?”

She gasped. “You don’t think…but they’re Venatore! Don’t you trust them?”

She’d caught the implication of his question. He didn’t want to ruin her trust in people, but she was going to need a healthy suspicion if she was going to stay alive.

“Under most circumstances, I would say yes. Right now, I think it’s safer for you if I’m suspicious of the only other people who knew where you were the first time you were attacked.”

“Mmm. What would we do if it was them?”

“You remember the rules I taught you?”

“Um…mostly?”

“Your actions shall not deprive another Walker of freedom, property, health or life; this is the Third Law,” he said with a voice like iron. “Repeat it to me.”

She did.

“Breaking one of the Laws of Founding means they’d be brought up on charges before the Concillium and sentenced.”

“Sentenced to what?”

“That depends on the circumstances. For self-defense, maybe nothing. For cold-blooded murder? Death.”

Her face paled even farther, if that was possible. “Ronan, what about Officer O’Goll? You said he was a Walker…”

“He was trying to kill you. I reported to Arthur after you went back to your room. I’ve already been cleared of any charges. I’m not making any accusations yet, Allie.” He took her hands, they were cold, again. “We don’t know nearly enough. For now, I want you to keep a healthy suspicion in the front of your mind. Until we nail down whoever is behind this, you can’t fully trust anyone. You’re probably safer here in Avalon than anywhere else, so I’m not saying you need to live in fear, just be aware. I’m not jumping to any conclusions,” he assured her, glancing back at the building, “but I’d rather not take any chances with your life, either.”

She swallowed, nodded, and then stepped into his arms as he Walked them back to the park just outside her apartment building. Rain sifted through the nearly bare branches in a silvery blanket and made his hair stick to his forehead and cheeks. Every now and then a gust of wind would drag its fingers across his back, wiggling through his shirt and wrapping him in a chill embrace. But Allison was in his arms still, shaking from the aftereffects of Walking, and her body was warm. He allowed himself to hold her for a moment longer, then released his grip and stepped carefully backward.

“You’re home, lass,” he said, “and I’ll walk you up to see you’re safe inside.”

Her mouth worked for a moment as she chewed over whatever she wanted to say, but decided better of it, nodded instead, and turned to cross the street. Wind dragged at his clothes and pushed his wet shirt against his body. It was blowing hard enough to pick up Allison’s heavy hair and drag it out like a flag. He was glad she walked in front of him because it was also lifting his own soggy hair off his forehead.

She pulled a key from her pocket, worked the front door, and pulled it open. Rayne stood there in a thick sweater with her hair braided and tucked beneath a knitted cap, hand outstretched toward the door handle. Her eyes cataloged Allison first, then flicked up to Ronan…and stayed there. For a moment she looked transfixed, as if all coherent thought had fled, and then her blue eyes went soft and color stained her cheeks. In the watery fluorescent light of the entry, he recognized the expression of love, and his stomach twisted on itself until it became a hard knot.

He hadn’t been careful enough. He had been thinking about protecting Allison, not whoever might be leaving the building. Though it was too late, he reached up and pushed his hair back into place until it covered the damned birthmark.

Allison took Rayne by the shoulders and shook her gently. “Rayne? Do you feel alright?”

Rayne leaned to the side and smiled at him, and the tender expression was a knife to the heart.

“I wanted to say thank you for what you did for Mat and me,” she said.

He pulled up the hood of his jacket and tried to respond, say something kind, but all that came out was a noncommittal grunt.

Allison and Rayne spoke for a moment, exchanged a hug, and then he and Allison were climbing the stairs in silence. He checked her apartment carefully, ensuring there was no one inside, trying to focus on what he could do instead of what he suspected he’d just done. The apartment was empty, and no sign remained of the fight with Officer O’Goll.

“Everything is safe,” he told Allison at last.

She rubbed her arms absently, as if to hold on to her own body heat, and said, “And you’re leaving?”

He couldn’t stay. His curse had caught up to him again, and all three of them would suffer for it. Great Dagda he hoped he was wrong, that he’d mistaken the look, that Rayne hadn’t seen his damned birthmark and fallen in love with him…but he was terribly afraid that she had. He needed to get away from Allison, get a bit of distance, and get his emotions under control. He needed to figure out how he could keep Allison safe while not putting her in more danger from himself.

She said, “When will you be back?”

“Before long. Maybe a week.”

“A week,” she said, thoughtfully, “that’s Thanksgiving. You’re welcome to come with me to my mom’s place, if you want. If you even celebrate, that is.”

“I–what?”

“Thanksgiving,” she said slowly, raising an eyebrow. “You know, turkey and stuffing and all that? I promised my mom I would go, and you’re welcome to come.”

Before he fully realized what he was saying or what he’d agreed to, he found himself walking back down the stairs having made a commitment to spend a holiday with Allison and her family.

What had he done?