A Novella by Jory San-Corinth

Chapter One

Slayer was sitting on the curb when Fyshel Moriah pulled up. Blue smoke from a cigarette pinched lightly between two bony fingers breezed through the coppery strands of his longish hair and wove muddled picture in the air around his head. A black suitcase sat on the street, tilted slightly from the two legs that stood in the drainway, and the sunlight glinted off a heavy brass lock that held it shut.

Fyshel ran a hand through his hair and prayed undirectionally for Slayer to be in a good mood. He honked the horn once and the head covered in dark burgundy waves turned toward his car. Slayer rose gracefully, dropping his cigarette to the ground and gently stomping it out. It was only half smoked, but that didn't seem to matter. He would light another as soon as he got in the car.

"Hey," Fyshel greeted with false cheerfulness, and popped the trunk. The suitcase clunked like a muted death as it went in, and Fyshel watched in the rearview mirror as Slayer slammed the lid down. The passenger door flew open and he got in.

"Hi," Fyshel said again. Slayer nodded and buckled his seat belt. "How was the monastery?"

Waiting for a response, he wondered if this would be one of the trips when Slayer refused to speak except for the most basic and necessary replies. Fyshel hadn't wanted to interrupt his stay at the monastery, but when Eian had called there hadn't seemed to be any other decision.

"Good," Slayer said finally, his voice serene rather than hostile or curt. "It was good." He leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes, as if he was still inside meditating with the monks. "So what's happening?"

Fyshel pulled away from Saint Ursula's Monastery and turned onto the highway. The day was clear except for a few clouds at his back, still retreating from last night's storm. "Do you remember the Actor twins, Eian and Eilish? We met them in Toledo."

Slayer thought a moment and nodded. "The Romanian ones, I remember."

"Eian called me. He and Eilish are covering a town called St. Rarie's, out in Nebraska, and he thinks there's trouble."

"Why?"

"Weird things are happening. The town was captured by the Liafero sometime in the last twenty years or so, and probably the next generation of rebels are looking to dredge up old powers."

"Yes," Slayer said, a note of sarcasm clouding his voice. "It's always the younger generation who can't give up what their parents started."

Slayer's first name was Grant, but no one ever called him that. Below his mane of burnished amber hair was a hawkish nose and chin covered in bristles. A thick, rubbery scar ran from the center of his forehead across one temple, ending in a perfect circular knob.

His parents had been killed five years earlier during what the reporters had called, "An unusually vicious and violent robbery." Of course that wasn't the whole story, but the agency Slayer and Fyshel worked for, the Liafero, had kept the truth tightly under wrap.

Fyshel ignored Slayer and continued, "But aside from that, he said there have been things going on at the high school."

"What kinds of things?"

"Wouldn't tell me. He thinks we should enroll."

Slayer slammed a fist into the ceiling and said, "I didn't finish school two years early just so I could enroll again, goddammit."

"Eilish thinks it's a good idea."

"She didn't tell you why we have to take classes?"

"She wanted to, I think, but Eian said something and she hesitated."

"How long a drive is it?"

"Six, seven hours."

Slayer lay back again and hid behind his curtain of hair. His hand flicked a lighter idly and Fyshel sighed, knowing it was going to be a long ride.

* * *

Eilish Actor lay on the couch with her eyes closed, dreaming. Lush eyelashes made half moon shadows against her swarthy skin, and spare moisture from one eye rolled down her cheek. In her hand was a bettered copy of Cosmopolitan, the first magazine she bought when they got off the plane in America.

Eian smiled to see her still clutching it after all this time. How she'd pored over those pages, painstakingly deciphered every article, buried her head in it whenever homesickness struck. She'd probably learned more from that one issue than she had from every English dictionary they ever bought.

He glanced at the clock on the wall and wondered where the help was. Fyshel said they'd be to St. Rarie's by seven, and it was eight thirty now. Meanwhile, Riston was doing God knew what, getting ready perhaps for his final countdown...

Eian went into the kitchen and opened a black enamel cupboard, removing two mugs. He filled a tin pot with water and started it heating, then sat down at the card table to glance over his notes. The night was quiet outside, a little too quiet, and he wondered if Riston was parked up on Copper Sky Bluff with some poor girl from school. If the help hadn't been so late, he and Eilish would be laying in the bushes behind the car night now, passing the binoculars back and forth.

The TV came on in the living room and Eian lifted his dark head from the stack of papers on the table. "Eilish?" he called, but received no answer.

"Eilish?" He got up from the table and walked to the doorway. "Eilish?"

She was sitting on the couch with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, dark eyes focused on the television. Her firm jaw was set in an elegant arc from ear to ear, and the black curls around her face were in tangled disarrangement.

"What?" she finally growled, when Eian called her name a fourth time.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." The same low, miffed tone.

"Are you mad at me?"

"No. I'm tired, leave me alone."

The tea pot whistle started screaming. "Do you want coffee?"

Mutely, she nodded, and Eian retreated back into the kitchen. He thumbed mentally through the day's events but couldn't think of anything that would have gotten her angry, and she'd been in a fine mood when she fell asleep.

He carried two mugs of coffee into the living room, made from real beans from the old world, not American sewage water. Eilish accepted one wordlessly, her eyes still trained on the TV. She was watching a game show.

Darkness spilled in through the window, between the lace curtains and onto the carpeted floor. Riston had had all the street lamps turned off a month ago, as part of his Clean-Up-St.Rarie's Program. Eian had a half a mind to wonder if he'd done it so that people wouldn't see him skulking through the streets at night.

"What time are they getting here?" Eilish asked abruptly, startling him.

"They're two hours late now."

She put her mug down on the coffee table and disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door.

* * *

"That was the turn!" Slayer shouted, throwing his hands up in exasperation as the car passed it.

"No, it's the next one," Fyshel told him, grabbing back the map. Slayer pointed to a network of red and blue lines.

"Look, it's right there! Cally's Lane, we just passed it."

"No, we didn't. See the fountain? We still have a block or so."

Slayer folded the map so hard it almost crumpled. "Fine, I'm sure you're right," he snapped. "We'll just keep driving until we reach the damn ocean shore, and maybe then you'll admit we missed the turn."

Fyshel ran a stop sign and wondered why all the street lights were off. He cruised by the fountain he'd spoken of and got into the turning lane. Nearby, a movie theater parking lot was almost empty. He realized that tonight was only a Wednesday night, but somehow it seemed like there should be more than a dozen cars in front of the twenty four show cinaplex.

The town seemed all together too quiet.

There were no stray dogs, no teenagers smoking in parking lots, no water-logged and rotting yard sale signs tacked to sign posts. The shoulder of the road was free of litter or roadkill, every car was spotless, and Fyshel hadn't seen a single bumper sticker.

He turned on Cally's Lane, driving almost in total darkness, with only the sky line above the trees to keep him from going off the road. Slayer swore loudly and said, "What the hell's going on here? Is the power out or something?"

Fyshel could barely see the yellow lines marking the street edges, and turned his high beams on quickly. Dense trees crowed between the road and the houses. Most of the homes were dark, he noted, and wondered if Slayer was right about the power.

"I think we have about two miles go to on this road," he said. "The twins live way back in the woods."

Slayer's cigarette glowed like a ruby suspended in the air. "I've got a bad feeling," he said worriedly. He opened the glove compartment and removed a small handgun.

"Put that away," Fyshel scolded.

"There's something going on here, I can feel it. Nobody's around, all the lights are off...Something's wrong."

"If nothing were wrong, Eian wouldn't have called. Put the gun away. He would have told me if we needed to come armed."

Slayer ground out his half smoked cigarette in the car ashtray and put the gun back in the glove compartment. With a pair of finger nail scissors from his pocket knife, he snipped half the filter off a new cigarette and then lit it.

"I've got a bad feeling," he said again.

* * *

Eian watched his sister as she threw another sweater into the suitcase laying open on her bed.

"This is ridiculous," he told her. She slammed the drawer shut and opened another.

"No it's not. I'm going home, and I'm leaving now."

"We have work here to do."

"Forget work. Forget the Liafero. Forget Riston and Rarie. I'm getting out of here tonight."

"Where are you going to go? Back to Romania?"

"Yes, precisely! I'm going home to my family and the farm."

Eian watched her jerk a drawer out of the chest and dump its contents into the suitcase. "Things are a mess at home. There's no food and no work. You can't go back there." He shook his head. "And besides that, you know Mama will just throw you out again. You'll be the laughing stock of Lugreba."

"Eilish," Eian said firmly, but she ignored him. He yelled, commanding her attention. "Eilish!"

"What?!" she screamed, and threw the suitcase to the floor. The zipper wasn't pulled all the way and a pair of socks rolled out.

Her head dropped into her hands and Eian stepped around the bed. "Shh," he cooed, putting his arms gently around her. "What's wrong, really? Come on, you can tell me."

"Oh, oh," she said, crying hard. "We've got to get out of here, Eian. We have to leave St. Rarie's. Fyshel can take care of Riston, let's just get packed and get out."

"You're afraid of Riston?" he asked, surprised. One of the traits he'd always admired in Eilish was her refusal to be bullied.

"I think something awful is going to happen if we stay here," she whispered, drying her face with one sleeve. "I just know he'll hurt us and we'll never get out."

"That's crazy," he told her, knowing full well that it wasn't. If the Riston threat hadn't been so severe, he never would have called for help.

Eilish tightened her arms around his neck. "Don't patronize me, Eian, okay? I know what we're up against here. I just don't want to face it."

He felt a dark rush of warmth fill his chest and slither out, and the next thing he knew he was kissing her. The tension in her arms changed, pulling him closer, and if she was still worrying about Riston, it didn't show.

Eilish turned away to hit the light switch and they were bathed in darkness. Without hesitation, she tugged him onto the huge bed with its feather quilt that flared up around them like a pool they were drowning in. "Kiss me," she whispered hotly, and he did.

They squirmed against each other, flakes of moonlight coming in through high windows above the bed and sprinkling their restless bodies with milkiness. Eian released the buttons on her Irish sweater and it slipped over her shoulders with a sultry rustle. Her feverish lips clamped over his, a moan buried deep in her chest.

"I want-" he began, and then they both froze at the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway.

Eian leapt off the bed and hit the light switch. Eilish watched him reflectively, one hand fingering her sweater. "Tell them I'll be out in a moment," she said as he pulled his shoes on, jumping up and down to keep balance.

Eilish lay back on the pillows, still bare from the waist up. "It's going to be risky have people in the house," she mentioned, and Eian paused, looking at her. Her breasts were full and settled gracefully in the cloth, like Feberge eggs on display.

The doorbell rang but he ignored it and leaned on the edge of the bed. "Later," he said, and kissed her deeply.

"Mmmm." She put a hand on his chest. "You promise?"

"I promise." He lowered his mouth to hers again and somebody started beating on the door. With a groan, he pulled himself away.

Eilish gave him a coy smile as he went out the door.

Fyshel Moriah was better looking that Eian remembered. He had a short cap of livid brown hair and celadon eyes that blinked a kind of wisdom rarely found in seventeen year old boys. He licked his lips frequently; they were always moist, and when Eian extended his hand, Fyshel shook it absentmindedly and studied his face.

Slayer nodded gruffly and passed into the living room, no doubt surveying the place and wondering why such an expensive house was furnished with cheap garage sale furniture. Eian didn't bother explaining that Eilish went on a guilt trip when she bought nice things, always thinking of everything her family in Romania was doing without.

"Do you have luggage?" Eian asked, and Slayer turned quickly.

"We left it in the car. Why are there no street lights?"

Eian turned the television off, something he had forgotten to do when Eilish ran out. "Riston had them all disconnected."

"Why and who is Riston?" Slayer demanded.

"I'm going to run out and get our bags," Fyshel said, unconcerned with Slayer's dark tone. He was probably used to it, Eian reflected.

"I'll open the garage door for you," he offered.

"That's okay."

"No, it's really not safe to be walking around outside at night."

"I'm only going into the driveway."

Eian stepped into the kitchen and hit the garage door button. "Just the same," he called over his shoulder, "it's better if you're protected."

Slayer crept up on the window and inched the curtain aside. "How far are your neighbors?" he asked, poised on the balls of his feet.

"Two hundred yards, maybe."

He glanced over at Eian with his striking blue eyes. Eyes like those could give a girl a coronary, and Eian found himself worrying about Eilish.

"Maybe?" Slayer asked, as if he were making an accusation.

"I haven't really measured it," Eian replied irritably, turning back into the kitchen. He unlocked the door connecting to the garage and let Fyshel in.

"Thanks," he said pleasantly, the exact opposite of his partner. "Where should I put these?"

"You can bring them upstairs." Eian tugged open the stairwell door, the wood was warped and always stuck, and yanked a cord to turn on the light. "We have five bedrooms, but we don't really use the space," he told Fyshel as they entered the upstairs hall. "The front room is our office, feel free to look around. The computer has Internet and E-mail, and a couple different phone lines. The red phone will connect you directly with the Liafero office in Tuskgany. The bedroom next door is mine, and these two on the right are the spares. They have a connecting door in between. The bathroom's at the end of the hall."

Eian let him into the first bedroom and turned on the light. The walls were papered in dark blue with crimson lilies running in unnaturally straight lines. Red velvet drapes with thick leather backing overhung the windows on each side, and if Fyshel pushed one back he would see the reinforced steel bars.

"Slayer will be pleased to hear that there's a layer of bullet-proof glass inside each outer wall," Eian told him. "And it's soundproofed, naturally. There's bomb shelter in the basement that will hold half a dozen for a year, and we have a full range of weapons."

Fyshel tossed his duffle bag onto the bed, a battered iron arrangement Eilish had picked up at a second hand store. The mattress springs literally screamed and the whole contraption smelled like it had been rotting in somebody's attic for the last twenty years.

"Nice," he said, and probably would have made the same statement if he was shown to a prison cell. It was just the kind of guy he was. "Is your sister still living here?"

"She has the suite on the first floor, off the living room."

"The suite." Fyshel grinned when he said the word. "That's cute."

Eian didn't realize anyone was near by until he felt Slayer's breath on the back of his neck. He jumped, banging into a leather jacket and flesh like Arctic rock. "Don't sneak up on me," he snapped, but Slayer's face didn't change. Maybe it never changed, for all Eian knew or cared.

He showed Slayer to the second spare bedroom and spent twenty minutes being quizzed on the safety of the house, various escape routes, ect. Afterward, Slayer wanted a briefing on the situation, but Eian replied that he and Fyshel had already been enrolled at St. Rarie High school and would be expected the next morning.

"Everything you need to know is right there," he promised, feeling tired and annoyed with Slayer's inferior attitude and Fyshel's unintentional optimism.

After wishing them both goodnight, he started down the stairs to Eilish's room and caught himself. Better to wait until they were asleep, lest they start suspecting...

Chapter Two

Jonna Lishness looked up when she heard her name called. "467!" the principal cried, and she stood quickly.

"Yes, sir?"

The principal, a short man who's voluminous blubber jiggled when he jumped, which was frequently, knotted his hands together. Beside him was a tallish guy whose uniform shirt was several sizes too tight and didn't have the right shoes.

New, Jonna thought, and was caught but a glimmer of hope. He was attractive, not handsome really but with a friendly, appealing face.

"467," Principal Newhart said to her, "this is 499. Please show him around today."

"Yes, sir, thank you sir."

She bowed her head and turned around, hearing 499's footsteps fall behind her. She sat quickly down in her chair and motioned him into the one on her left. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Principal Newhart leave.

It was almost seven o'clock; they had two minutes.

Jonna glanced at him quickly and caught her breath. Yeah, he was definitely better looking than anything else in St. Rarie's.

"Can I talk now?" he whispered through his teeth.

"Yeah." The other students were speaking in low, soft voices, leaning their heads close together but poised to snap to attention the moment a teacher arrived.

"My name's Jonna Lishness," she told him.

"Great. I'm Fyshel Moriah."

"Fyshel? I've never heard that before."

"My parents were weird."

Jonna rubbed her head. "Were?"

Fyshel, she was having trouble connecting such a strange name to such a congenial face, shrugged. "They died a long time ago."

"I'm sorry."

"Forget it. What is going on here? Why did the teacher introduce me by number?"

Grimly, she explained. "It's part of the new reforms. They don't want our personalities connected to our parents' reputations. Frankly, I'm not sure they want us to have personalities at all."

"Are they actually going to call me by my number?"

"Sure are. Learn to answer to it."

"When did the new reforms begin?"

"Two months ago. Riston says he wants us to be an unbiased and equality based school by Christmas."

"Who's Riston?"

"The student body president. But he...."

"He what?" Jonna trailed off suddenly, unable to focus on anything except Fyshel's clear green eyes.

"He has a lot of pull," she finished lamely as a teacher entered.

Instantly, every student was silent. They sat around the table with their hands in their laps and their heads down. Jonna nudged Fyshel, her elbow tingling after the brush of contact, and he understood quickly.

"Good morning, class," the teacher, a woman said. "Welcome to Homeroom."

"Good morning, Ms. Sucrets."

"We have a new student today, class. His name is 499. If you get a chance at lunch, say hello. Now, who would like to begin? What did everyone do wrong last night?"

Fyshel did a double take but quickly resumed the position, his head down.

"Yes, 416?"

A girl in the front of the room stool up. "I didn't finish my history homework last night."

"Why not?"

"Because I was slow and lazy."

"How are you going to repair the damage?"

"I'm skipping lunch today so that I can finish the work and I'm writing a letters of apology to the teachers, the students, my parents, and myself."

"You may sit down, 416."

"Thank you, mam."

Jonna glanced over at Fyshel, wondered how he was taking this. The guy standing up was talking about admiring himself naked in the mirror, how he spent almost twenty whole minutes in the bathroom. He talked about it like it was a crime.

Fyshel's green eyes were burning holes in the desk top. One hand was clenched around the other as tightly as a tourniquet, but he didn't complain. Jonna wondered who he lived with if his parents were dead, and made a mental note to ask him later.

The confessions went on and on.

"I didn't finish my dinner..."

"I mouthed off to my parents..."

"I had a candy bar after I brushed my teeth..."

"I tried on three different outfits before school..."

"I had sexual thoughts..."

The confessions weren't mandatory, but almost everyone had something to say. Jonna didn't raise her hand, and neither did Fyshel.

The homeroom teacher finished, wished them a happy and productive day, and left. The students had five minutes to stretch.

"Do you do that every day?" Fyshel asked Jonna quietly.

"I don't," she replied.

He shook his head, making the short strands of hair wave like a corn field in the wind. "This is wrong," he told her frantically, the words just pouring out. He kept his voice down but talked fast.

"Do you realize how strange this is, how they're taking away your privacy and your self respect and your right to function as a human being?"

"I know," she said, but he didn't seem to hear.

"This is cruel and twisted and insane and it's violating the separation of church and state and-"

"Fyshel!" Jonna put her hand on his arm, relishing the warmth of his skin. "I know."

He shook his head. "Why are the students going along with this? And what about the parents?"

"Nobody objects anymore. They did at the beginning of the year, when Riston first introduced his new ideas, but if you disobey they punish you bad. Nobody tries that anymore."

"Riston? The student body president?"

"Yeah, that's him. He's a little crazy, but the school board listens to him."

Fyshel's expression was incredulous. "You mean a student arranged all this?"

Jonna nodded. "Yeah. He's St. Rarie's grandson. Rarie, Rachel, Riston."

And then Fyshel's face went utterly blank and he turned away.

* * *

"Who is that?" Slayer demanded of the kid next to him.

397 sighed loudly and said, "That's Riston Blossom. He's student president."

397 didn't like Slayer much, and Slayer didn't like 397. The kid was a short Mexican with a face straight out of a skin cream ad and a manner of polite aloofness. He was trying to sneak answers to the girl sitting across from him during their twenty minute lunch break and didn't appreciate Slayer's distractions.

Slayer wasn't having the best time himself. He'd woken up repeatedly the previous night, startled out of sleep by nightmares of fire and screaming. The smell of charred flesh was still deep in his nostrils, and even Eian's strange-shit coffee hadn't gotten rid of it.

Something was going on with the Actor twins. Eilish had not appeared the night before, and when Slayer asked Eian about her in the morning, her brother said she went running and would meet them at school.

He had the insane idea that Eian had eaten his sister.

But beyond that, the school situation wasn't good. Most of the students were brainwashed beyond belief, by Riston and his "reforms." Riston himself was pretty scary, viciously attractive and nicely built. Slayer figured it would only take one good punch to knock him out, but that one punch would need a lot of power behind it.

Slayer also wasn't pleased that he and Fyshel had been separated. Eian said there was absolutely nothing he could do, that school policy was obsessed with keeping friends apart. That it would help them concentrate on their work better.

"I concentrate better on my work with my partner around," Slayer had told Eian that morning in the kitchen. The dark head had simply shaken and replied, "There's nothing I can do."

So he was sitting in the cafeteria with 397, staring coldly into a bowl of chili that looked like his parents' intestines had after the "burglar" was done turning them into ground round, and wondering how the hell he could get out of this.

A hand touched his shoulder and he jumped, almost tipping over the whole bench as he tried to stand. "493?" a girl standing behind him asked softly, her voice accented in such a way as to pull the tones downward.

"Who are you?" Slayer demanded, and a smile touched her lips. She was very pretty, with dark skin and curling midnight hair that fell around her firm jaw bone. He realized that he should have known the instant he saw her who she was; she had her brother's dark, brooding eyes.

Apparently Eian hadn't eaten her.

"402," she replied, not at all offended by his rudeness. "Would you like to come sit with me? I thought I might show you around, since you don't seem to be getting along with 397."

"Yeah, great." He climbed over the bench and waited for her to guide him, but she only nodded her head minutely toward the table.

"Your lunch," she said simply.

"What about it?"

"You need to throw it out."

He grimaced and picked up the tray. When the still-breathing chili had been deposited in a trashcan the size of Arizona, he followed Eilish to a table on a broad patio. The wind had a biting chill to it, and all the other students had opted to stay indoors. "I'm sorry I wasn't able to greet you last night," she said, with the delicate tact of a true hostess. "I'd already fallen asleep when you arrived, and I always run before school. Is your room alright?"

He rolled his eyes. He wasn't capable of truly liking anyone, but if he had been he would have liked Eilish. "Yeah, the room's fine. Skip all that and just tell me what the hell's going on here, would you?"

She smiled again, apparently amused. "Watch your language. That word can get you detention for a month."

"I don't plan to be here for a month," he snapped, impatient. "Is Riston really doing this out of the good of his heart or what?"

She folded two small, strong hands with squarish nails in her lap and said, "We aren't sure. Eian and I came here because of unusual weather activity, that's what we specialize in. Understanding how the weather works and what the patterns mean."

"You're a meteorologist?" he asked, clueless as to what the job had to do with the Liafero.

"A psychic meteorologist. Eian and I both. We don't just study the weather, we communicate with it."

"What did you find here?"

"At the time, school was just starting, and there was quite a local uproar over Riston's reforms. It's possible that if many members of a town are upset, that can have an affect on weather patterns, but we soon learned that Riston was causing the storms himself."

"How?"

She glanced around, as if checking for approaching clouds. "His grandmother was the Rarie this town is named after. She wasn't a Catholic saint but a local one. Her daughter, Rachel, is Riston's mother."

"Is Rarie still alive?"

"No, the Liafero had her executed two years before Riston was born."

Good for them, Slayer thought. He liked executions. "What was the charge?"

"The usual. She was living on a hot spot and couldn't resist using its power to get some revenge."

"What do you know about her?"

"Not much more than that. That's why you were supposed to come, because you and Fyshel could find out what is happening. No one fights Riston at all anymore, but even when he started, they didn't fuss much. He has a way of making everyone do what he tells them to do."

Slayer nodded. "You think Riston has taken up his grandmother's hobby?"

"I think it's a likely possibility."

* * *

Fyshel did not think it was a good idea to fall for this girl. He wasn't going to be in St. Rarie's for more than a week or two at most, it would interfere with his work, Slayer wouldn't like it at all...

She was sitting across the isle from him, blond hair falling wispily around her delicate face. They'd eaten lunch together and he'd pressed her for knowledge about Riston.

"Why are you so interested?" she asked, with mild suspicion.

"I have to go to school here," he'd replied, as if offended. "I'd like to know what's going on and who to avoid."

She hadn't fallen for it, her smooth gray eyes said so. "I've never really been friends with Riston," she told him flatly, and he hadn't brought it up again.

Fyshel snuck another glance at her, bored by the unending history lesson. "Get out your assignment books," the teacher ordered. "It's time for homework assignments."

There was some shuffling around, and notebooks were flipped open. "Tonight, I want you to read pages 570 through 615, and write a page long summary of each of the six sections. Then copy and label the maps on pages..."

There was a snap to Fyshel's left as Jonna's pen broke. She winced, unable to ask for a new pen because the teacher was speaking, and Fyshel dug around his backpack quietly. He handed her the first pen he found, his silver-plated one with the ribbon of flowers on the clip. It had been a gift from the Liafero at his last promotion.

"Thanks," Jonna hissed, the word barely audible.

Class was dismissed a few minutes later. "Where are you living?" she asked, still keeping her voice low. She hadn't raised it once all day.

"Radcliff subdivision. You know where that is?"

She nodded. "I meant to ask who you were living with."

"Oh. I'm staying with friends, Eian and Eilish Actor."

"Right, the Romanian kids. How do you know them?"

Fyshel tried to avoid another bad answer. "My parents were friends of their's."

She had enough tact to know when a topic was heading in the wrong direction. "Well, look, if you need help with any of the homework, just give me a call. You can get my number from information."

"Okay, thanks."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back, rather weakly. She gave him a real smile about as often as she hollered, and it was unsettling. He wanted to tickle her until the air rang with peals of laughter and her face broke because the smile stretched so wide.

Stupid, he told himself as he walked toward the courtyard where he was meeting Slayer. Don't get involved with this girl, no matter how pretty she is. You'll just be breaking your own heart.

* * *

Eian managed to refrain from kissing Eilish hello, as he usually did in the afternoon when no one was around. Today, Fyshel and Slayer were both three feet away, and it was already dangerous enough having them in the house. Eian had broken his promise and spent the previous night in his own room.

"Hi," Fyshel said pleasantly. Slayer didn't say anything, just scowled at the ground like it had tried to steel his wallet.

"The car's parked out back," Eian told them.

"I remember," Slayer snapped.

"Relax, okay?" Fyshel said to him.

"I don't need to be reminded of where we parked the car, it was only six hours ago."

Fyshel rolled his eyes and smiled apologetically at Eian. "How well do you know Riston?" he asked, eager to change the subject.

"We don't need to know him, we just need to kill him," Slayer said.

Eilish laughed softly. "We need a warrant."

"Do you have proof?"

"Proof of what?" Eian asked. "We aren't even sure what he's doing."

"Then what the hell have you two been doing for the last three months?" Slayer demanded, the skin along his prominent scar darkening. Eian had wanted to ask where it had come from, but had decided not to risk gaining one of his own.

"Waiting for you to show up and save us," Eilish said, smiling slightly. "What do you think we should be doing?"

"Didn't the company fax you?" He pulled a pack of cigarettes that looked like it had been buried and dug up again, removed one, and lit it with a chipped Bic. "For crying out loud, they should have told you what to set up for our arrival."

Eian sighed. "Just tell us what you want already."

"I want his phone tapped, I want his locker combination, I want to know where he is whenever he's out of my sight. I want all the information available on Riston's family, then I want the information that isn't available. And I want out of this school."

"If we pull you now, he'll know something's up."

"I really don't care, I'm not coming back so that I can be called by a three digit number and bossed around. And I promise, I'm going to get that death warrant, and when I do, you're all going to help me carry it out."

* * *

"-and when I do, you're all going to help me carry it out."

Jonna froze at the corner of the building. She didn't recognize the voice as any of her classmates, and it sounded too feral to be a teacher.

"We aren't trained for this," replied another voice. It took Jonna a few seconds to match it with Eian Actor, and she wouldn't have at all except for the accent. "We're here to watch and see that nothing unusual has happened, and contact the Liafero when it does, not so that we can help you execute people. That's not our job."

"Well, it's not exactly ours either," said a third voice, softer and more congenial. Jonna winced as she connected it to the adorable guy she'd met in class that morning. "We aren't supposed to do it ourselves unless immediate action is called for."

"Or unless we really, really want to," the first voice said.

It sounded like Fyshel sighed. "We can't just come to town, kill Riston, and then leave. People will put it together."

"Not if they're too busy recovering from the aftermath," a girl said. Eilish, Eian's twin. How many people were over there? she wondered. She'd only followed Fyshel so that she could give him back his pen; it was such a nice one, silver plated and everything.

Eilish was continuing. "Once Riston is dead, the town will be in an uproar. I doubt anyone will even notice that you've left."

"So you're siding with Slayer? Kill the bastard and let's get out of here?" Fyshel asked.

"I think that we shouldn't rule it out as a course of action," Eilish replied.

"I do," Eian said. "We don't need to use more violence than is necessary. We frame Riston and get him thrown in jail, and then there can be an accident and we won't have to worry about him any more."

"I agree," Fyshel added. "But first we have to concentrate on finding the base of his power. Once we know where it's coming from, then we'll know how we can get to him. Come on, let's get back to the house and Slayer and I can log on to the Liafero database."

Slayer grumbled something Jonna couldn't hear as they walked away. She leaned back against the brick building and clenched Fyshel's pen in her hand. Great, she finally finds one other person in the whole town who isn't completely brainwashed and he turns out to be an assassin. And what about the Actor twins? Who would have thought that those two dark, quiet kids were part of an underground resistance?

A spark of panic lit in her chest. It was impossible to overthrow Riston. They were going to get themselves killed trying it. She shook her head. Fyshel could get himself a new pen, and stay the hell away from her.

She tucked the pen in her shirt pocket and started walking home.

* * *

Slayer checked every door and window twice once they were all inside the house. Eian watched him grimly, wondering why the guy thought he was so inept. There was a difference between not being a killer and not knowing to lock the doors and cover the windows.

"If the phone rings," Slayer told him, "let me answer it. Same thing with the door. Do you have an arsenal?"

"There's a hand gun hidden in the vanilla ice cream box in the freezer. That's all."

Slayer glanced at the ceiling in exasperation. "Then it's a good thing I brought my kit when I went to the monastery," he mumbled as he went up the stairs.

Eian poured himself a mug of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. He had not anticipated having guests so difficult. In Romania they were glad if you had a slice of bread they could eat, here they were offended if you didn't offer at least a couple oozies and a hand grenade. Fyshel wasn't so bad, at least he had a head on his shoulders that wasn't focused solely on destruction, but Slayer's mentality was going to be more of a hinderance than a help.

"Hey," Eilish whispered, wrapping her arms around his neck from behind. Her soft lips pressed against his throat.

"Don't," he said quickly, pushing her away. Her dark eyes widened a little.

"What's wrong?" she asked in Romanian.

"I just don't think we should act like this while they're here."

"Is that why you didn't come downstairs last night?" She slid into a chair beside him. "I missed you."

He stopped himself from brushing the raven hair out of her eyes. She was wearing a battered gray sweater from home, coarse and thick, and she looked just like one of the girls from the old country for a moment. It made Eian a little homesick, which was pointless because they'd been kicked out by their parents when Father caught them together in the field.

"I wanted to come down, but I was pretty sure Slayer would hear me and want to know what I was doing. I heard him moving around all night."

"Tonight then?"

"I doubt he'll sleep tonight, either. I want you, Eilish, but we can't take any chances."

"Why don't we tell them we have to go out?" Her fingers tiptoed over the back of his hand. "We could take the car..."

"The patrols would catch us. Then we'd be in even deeper shit."

Eilish's eyes were inky black pools, boring into him with a fire like that of the Black Sea. "Are you sure you don't want to take a chance?" Her free hand opened one of the buttons on her sweater and Eian had a first-rate view of her canyon-like cleavage.

"Not tonight," he told her painfully, extracting his hand from her grip. "We've got to wait until they're gone."

She sighed and stood up, rebuttoning her sweater. Switching back to English, she said, "Alright. I'm going out for a little while, to do some shopping. That Slayer will eat anything in sight."

The door banged loudly as she left. The kitchen was dark and quiet, except for the gentle tap of typing that came from the office. Eian stared at the oil patterns on the surface of his coffee until his erection eased.

* * *

"I'm not finding anything," Fyshel said, leaning back in the black upholstered chair behind Eian's massive folding table.

"Try Rarie of Saint Rarie." Slayer was standing by the door was a cigarette pinched between his fingers, a halo of smoke floating around his head like the ghost of a snowball. "I'm not going back to that school tomorrow."

Fyshel sighed. "Okay, if that's what you really want to do. I'll keep going, try to figure out what the master plan for the school is. What's Riston's last name?"

"Blossom. That's with two S's." Slayer kicked the door shut. "I think there's something going on with the twins."

Fyshel sighed and started a search on Rarie Blossom. "Like what?"

"Eilish was asleep when we got home, left early this morning, and now she's leaving again. I just saw her car pull out. She keeps going places without telling us where or why."

"Maybe she just wanted to take a drive."

"She should have reported it first." Slayer took a long drag on his cigarette, feeling the smoke slid through his lungs like pure energy. He smelled blood and burning flesh again, even though there was none in sight. He knew it was his imagination but the thought wouldn't go away. Blood on the carpet, blood on the walls. Hey, look, there's Mom's hand in the salad bowl.

He shook his head and continued. "When she gets back, I'm going to tell her not to leave without clearing it with me first."

"Slayer." Fyshel twirled his chair to see him clearly. That direct, honest face was the same as always, no boils or erupting pockets of skin bursting into sizzling pools of tomato sauce. There was something true about Fyshel; he had no secrets, and that was why Slayer worked with him. He could trust the guy because Fyshel was incapable of being untrustworthy.

"Look, she and Eian are used to running things around her. We can't just walk in a take charge."

"Sure we can. Why do you think they called us? They don't know what the hell they're doing and they need somebody to boss them around."

The computer beeped at Fyshel opened his mouth to respond.

"What?" Slayer asked, and Fyshel made the signal to wait a moment while he read.

"Nothing. It just says that Rarie Blossom was born on August 10, 1941, in Maliu, Nebraska."

"Where's Maliu?"

"I don't know, let me look it up." He started typing again and Slayer leaned back against the walls, closing his eyes.

The screams pierced through his thoughts like hot knives cutting through a Jell-O mold. Pain flared in his eyes, in his throat. If the sound was coming from him it was unconscious; if it was coming from somewhere else he couldn't stop it. Rough hands gripped his ankles and he felt the grass tumbling beneath his back as they dragged him, closer and closer to the fire...

"Got it?" he asked, opening his eyes. The scream faded away to an echo in the back of his mind.

"Yeah, but it says the town name was changed in the sixties, so hold on...Here it is. Yup, Maliu was changed to Saint Rarie, apparently in her honor. A couple of months after she died."

"What did she die of?"

Fyshel's green eyes scanned the screen as he typed. "The doctor's report is incomplete, but it says that she stabbed herself in the stomach and died from loss of blood and internal hemorrhaging."

"She stabbed herself to death?"

"It's listed as a suicide, but there's a reference to a police report. Wait, I can't access it. I'll call the Liafero and see if they can break into the file for us."

Fyshel picked up the phone and Slayer brought his cigarette up to his lips. That was the other thing he liked about Fyshel, he could get the job done.

Two days later, Riston Blossom was standing in the school's private library waiting for Eilish to show up when his sister's ghost appeared in the corner. They looked a lot alike, having been twins in life. Dark-haired and light-skinned, with the same hot blue eyes. Raeshel was prettier, especially now that she was dead and never had bad hair days.

"What do you want?" Riston demanded, idly opening and closing a huge dictionary.

Rae tossed her hair. "Eilish is coming, isn't she?"

The bad part of having Rae dead, and there were actually lots of bad parts when Riston stopped to think about it, was what she could read his mind. "That's the plan."

"Tell her to call it off."

"No." He boosted himself up onto a conference table and drummed his fingers on his knees.

"Do it, Riston."

"Bite me, Raeshel." He tilted his head to the side. "Oh, sorry, I forgot you're just ectoplasm. What a dreadful faux pas." He laughed gaily. Rae drilled her transparent eyes at him until they began to waver. "Give it up, sis, you've lost."

"You're going to regret this, you don't know how much."

"Oh, what, and you do? Face the facts, we don't know what the hell's going to happen."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"Nah." He waved a hand and heard the library door opened.

"Riston?" Eilish called.

"In here."

She appeared dressed her in usual dead corduroy pants and burly sweater, but the gross clothes didn't hide her tiny waist and huge breasts. Sweeping a curtain of black curls off her face, she noted Rae and nodded. "Morning."

"I'll open the vault," Riston offered, and began taking books off the shelves. The secret passage that lead to the hidden room wasn't hard to open, if you knew what you were looking for, which he did. A pushed panel here, a twisted knob there, and soon he was leading Eilish into the lab.

It was a long, low room filled with red light that waved inside glass containers. At the center of the room was a steel-topped operating table, and the cupboards underneath were full of medical equipment. A counter top carried a display case, which showed off five glass jars and a huge marquis crystal. Each jar held a baby, suspended in a mixture of blood and formaldehyde, a shriveled, dried up baby with stooped shoulders and hollow eyes sockets. Dead babies. Old babies. Raisin babies.

The quarts crystal was two feet high, and inside sat the sixth baby, this one almost as shriveled and rotten as the others. It still had its eyes, blue like Riston's, but bits of flesh were starting to flake off and float about the water which was slowly turning yellow. At they walked in, the baby moved its arm upward slightly as if waving hello.

"Morning, Robby," Riston greeted, smiling at the little fellow. It had been too creepy seeing the bugger every day and knowing he was seeing back and watching, always watching. To ease his conscious, Riston had made him a friend.

"Well," he said, giving the operating table a bang with the palm of his hand, "hop up. I've got to be at class in an hour."

Eilish didn't moved, only stood near the door with her hand wrapped her around the strap of her battered canvas tote.

"What are you waiting for?" Riston asked, and he noticed that Rae was smiling smugly.

"It's not done," she said.

"What? Why not?"

Eilish dropped her bag on the floor and approached Rob's crystal slowly. "I tried, I really did. But with guests in the house, Eian is getting all cautious on me. I suppose he's right on some level, if Fyshel or Slayer find out it will be the end of everything."

"Did you tell him you wanted sex? In those words?"

"Did I tell him anything else?" Eilish snapped. "You don't understand, I was actually stripping for him, and he was still worrying about the guests."

"But look at Robby!" Riston cried, pointing at the crystal. "He's not looking so good, is he? He's running out of energy, and I can't let things fall apart when I've come so far. The whole town is practically under my thumb, and if I loose it now it will take years to build up again. I need a new baby, and I need it today."

Her dark eyes turned raven black. "I'm working on it, I told you. I will get my brother into bed the first chance I get."

He sighed. That would have to do. "Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow then?"

"I'll try."

"Okay, thanks." He kissed her forehead as she started toward the door.

Rae looked toward the ceiling in exasperation. "Incest begets incest."

"Shut the hell up, sis."

* * *

Fyshel bumped into Jonna while he was returning a library book. He'd been surprised the day before when he arrived at school and found that Jonna had asked to be transfered to another class, and he had a new "buddy" to show him around. He wondered if something had slipped out of his mouth while he wasn't watching it.

"467," he said, catching her arm. She glanced worriedly at the patrol beside the desk. "Come here for a second," Fyshel hissed.

"I can't," she whispered, tugging her arm. "Fyshel, let go."

"Just come here for a second."

She jaw clenched, but she allowed him to pull her into an isle of art books. "What?" she demanded, her voice hot and low.

"Are you mad at me?"

"No."

"Then why are you avoiding me?"

"I'm not, I just wanted to change classes."

"Why?"

"It's not your business, Fyshel. Leave me alone."

"Jonna!"

"Shhh!" Her eyes flared. "This isn't the time or place, okay? Just stay away from me."

"No, I'm not leaving. Come here."

He grasped her hand firmly and pulled her further in to the maze of books until they were standing at a dead end where no one could see them. He didn't let go of her hands, and actually found himself pulling her closer. It had been a long time since he'd fallen this hard, this fast for a girl who could get him into this much trouble. But he'd been sitting up the night before with Slayer, continuing the hunt for Rarie's power, thinking of Jonna and wishing he had a chance to spend more time with her.

"Jonna," he said, "please tell me what's wrong, okay? I'm gonna be brutally honest here, I spent all of yesterday thinking about you, wondering what I had done that made you run from me like that. I mean, sure, I only hung out with you for a couple of hours, but I don't meet a lot of girls who are as smart as you are, and I know I sound like an idiot saying this, but I really like you, and I'd like to know what I did to piss you off."

Her head was turned away, eyes trained on the massive art books. "I know," she said.

"That I like you? Good, that-"

"No." She looked him square in the eyes. "I was bringing back your pen on Monday and I heard you and Slayer and the Actor twins talking about Riston, and your death warrant."

It felt like the floor had dropped out from under Fyshel's feet, but he knew it was just his jaw. "Oh god," he said.

"Yeah." She ran a hand through her hair. "There was a girl who tried to organize a rebellion, and she died two days later. I don't think it was really because of a car crash. There have been four lobotomies preformed on students since this whole thing began. I don't want that to happen to me, and I don't want it to happen to you. This is a crazy suicide mission you're on, Fyshel, all of you. Riston has the town, the parents, the cops, anyone he wants, and he'll hurt you, understand? Please, stop whatever you're doing before you get yourself killed. Because if you don't, I'll turn you in now myself before you get in any deeper."

It was a bad situation, but Fyshel felt pretty happy. Jonna's distancing from him had nothing to do with him personally, she was just worried about getting mixed up in this mess with Riston. That was cool. Had it been up to Fyshel, he would have kept her out, too.

"Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but everything going on in this town is crazy, so just go with me here for a second. I'm not trying to stir things up. I work with a group called the Liafero, and Slayer and I were specially sent here to find out what Riston's up to. This isn't just the work of a student body president, you know that. You appear to be about the only one here who knows it, which probably means you have a witch in your family or something, but never mind. Riston is involved in some serious paranormal magic, and he's using it to control all of St. Rarie's."

The look on her face hurt.

"Don't disbelieve me. You're already too close to the water to back out now, you may as well get your shirt wet." He stopped. "Sorry, I meant your feet."

Jonna smiled, gave a little silent laugh. "I can prove all of this," Fyshel told her. "Come over to the Actors' tonight, okay? The four of us can prove it to you."

"I can't," she said, shaking her head. The bell rang as her smile faded away.

"You have to," Fyshel replied, grabbing her hand and starting toward the door. She shook him off quickly and nodded her head toward the sentry. He had forgotten about the no-fraternization rule in affect.

"You have to," he said again, just before slipping into his class.

* * *

"I can't believe you were so stupid," Slayer snapped, seething. His skin was on fire, he could see the flames, smell the crackle of singed hair. There was an ice pick sticking out of his forehead, but he was running, running towards the house with his Tommy Gun.

Fyshel sat down on the couch, his hands on his knees. "She was threatening to turn us in, what was I supposed to do? I'm making an ally out of a possible enemy."

"You're hitting on her." Slayer flicked his lighter and the spark jumped three feet high, scorching his nostrils and sending burning waves of heat into his brain. He lit his cigarette and blew the flame out, tasting his tobacco breath.

"It's not a date," Fyshel replied, "I'm just trying to keep her from going to Riston and telling him what we're up to. I'm not saying we should tell her everything about the Liafero, but she knows we're going after Riston. Whatever it is that he's using to keep the rest of the school hostage, it doesn't work on her."

"She's a sensitive," Eian suggested, standing in the doorway. "With an ability to block. That's the reason Eilish and I haven't been affected."

"Maybe, but that doesn't change the facts." Slayer blew a smoke ring and watched a dragon twist out of the ectoplasm. "She's an outsider, I don't trust her."

Fyshel rubbed his head. "We don't have much of a choice here. If she turns us in, it's over. Simple as that."

"And she may be able to help us," Eian added. "I always thought Jonna was smart."

Slayer noticed Fyshel beaming like the idiot he was. Always his heart before his head, that was Fyshel. A pathetic romantic who was just asking to get himself killed.

"Let's just take her out," he said, knowing the idea was absurd and that he would never even consider it in a serious fashion.

"Slayer!" Fyshel cried.

Eilish was sitting on the couch staring into a cup of that strange black coffee she drank. She had been quiet since they got back to the house, but now she chuckled and said, "My my, Grant, someone's out for blood, isn't he?"

Slayer glanced at her again, at the cool expression she wore behind her dark hair. "Don't call me Grant," he growled at her, and she stood up, rolling her eyes. He watched her swaying hips as she walked into the kitchen.

"The point," Fyshel was saying, "is that she's coming over, she knows a lot about the town, and as Eian pointed out, she may be able to help us. Don't get all defensive and stupid."

Slayer stared at the windows. The glass had melted and was dripping onto the carpet in pearl droplets. He found himself mesmerized by those droplets, their perfect symmetry, their limpidity. If only his mind could become as clean and pure as those drops of melting glass, bathed in fire...

He barely heard the door connecting the garage and the kitchen open and then close.

* * *

Jonna parked and then sat in her car for several minutes, staring at the house. It was larger than she had expected, and set far away from any other residence. The windows were all dark, making her wonder if she had gotten the address wrong. Fyshel had said he was staying with the Actors, hadn't he?

She ran a hand through her hair, flustered. This was insane. This was suicide. She had never come close to getting into this much trouble. Her parents were hopeless, as under Riston's spell as the rest of the town, her friends agreed that socialization would only cause them to neglect their studies. There was really no one left to turn to.

She thought of Fyshel, the light brown hair, the clear green eyes, the smile that was always so painfully earnest. She'd almost kissed him that morning in the library, and would have if she hadn't been so aware of what it might cost her if caught. True, she'd only know him for three days, but that didn't seem to matter. She had once thought that friendships were based less on the time spent together and more on time apart, when reflection was possible. Sometime in those seventy two hours she had come to an understanding of who he was, found a sense of him in herself. Purity, that was what he had, an honest, forthright purity that shook her at times. He'd been standing there in the back of the library with is hand on her arm and she'd wondered what would happen if they both died in this mess, if it would be worth it. Somehow she got the strange feeling that it would.

She hadn't realized how wretchedly lonely she was until he came along.

But suddenly all her conviction was falling away, taking that sense of closeness with it. She sat in her mother's car with the engine off and watched the house like a burglar might, trying to detect any sign of occupation. Her heart pounded, but she opened the door and stepped hesitantly out. A strong wind blew strands of hair around her face as she walked up the front porch, admiring the well-tended flower garden and dove-tail keystones, and rang the bell.

There was a struggle going on as the storm door swung inward. Fyshel was trying to allow Jonna inside and Slayer was trying to point a gun at her. "Put that away," Fyshel hissed, elbowing his friend in the ribs. He smiled broadly at Jonna with a forced curtesy and opened the door.

"I want to pat her down," Slayer said as Jonna stepped inside.

The living room was painted a dull orange with green carpeting, not the most attractive decor. The windows had been covered with leather curtains, and each edge was Velcroed to the wall, affectively cutting off all light from outside. A television was propped up on a rolling cart which would no longer roll, and across from it was a couch giving birth to its springs. This was an expensive, beautiful house; Jonna couldn't understand why it had been furnished so cheaply.

"You aren't going to search her," Fyshel said firmly, tugging on Slayer's gun. "Don't be absurd."

Jonna stepped aside in time to avoid be closed in the door as Slayer slammed it shut. The locks rattled and clanked as he rolled and chained them. Eian was standing in the kitchen doorway, a lock of dark hair tumbling over his forehead. She'd had him in a few classes the year before, and found him to be a polite if somewhat reclusive guy, which was understandable. Jonna probably wouldn't have been too social if she'd been plucked out of her native land and dropped into the middle of a bizarre society with no support except that of his sister.

Speaking of sisters, she didn't seen Eilish around.

Slayer was peering at Jonna in a way she wasn't totally comfortable with, but at least he wasn't still insisting on patting her down. She glanced at Fyshel, who smiled apologetically and shrugged, as if to say, "Sorry, I've tried but there's nothing I can do."

She smiled back, suddenly glad she had come. Not only was she in the presence of the first guy she'd met in the last three months who was in possession of his own mind, but she was free to speak. She could say anything, she could swear, she watch television again. Hell, most people in Saint Rarie's didn't even own televisions any longer. Riston had convinced them to throw their's out.

Yes, this was freedom, she could sense it. In this strangely uncared for interior, they were all people again. Shocking bursts of electric adrenalin raced through her arms just at the thought, and suddenly she smiled.

"Glad you could make it," Fyshel said pleasantly, and Eian nodded a silent greeting. Slayer stared at her like she was something to be hunted down and tranquilized.

"Jonna, this is my partner, Slayer," Fyshel introduced, and Jonna stuck out her hand, then glanced up in surprise. Had Fyshel said "partner"?

Oh God, she thought, please don't let him be gay.

"Slayer, this is Jonna from St. Rarie High." Slayer finally gave a gruff nod and turned away, following Eian into the kitchen.

"Coffee?" Eian asked Jonna as Fyshel pulled out a chair for her.

"Sure," she said, although she didn't usually drink it.

Fyshel passed her a pitcher as he sat down on her left. "Milk, you'll want it."

The coffee smelled musty and tinged with fruit or nuts. Jonna took a small sip and pinched her lips to keep from spitting it out. Fyshel gave her a tiny hidden smile and pushed the milk further toward her.

"What kind of coffee is this?" she asked, coughing.

Eian glanced at her in surprise. "This is what Eilish and I drink. It comes from home."

"Romania?"

He nodded. Jonna took the milk and poured almost two cups into her mug.

"So," Fyshel said. "You came."

She nodded, noting Slayer as he banged into a chair across from her and slammed the gun down onto the table between them. "I came," she agreed, wondering if she would have a chance to leave.

"Slayer, I'm sick of this," Fyshel announced, angry but only half as upset as Jonna would have been. "Stop it with the guns and the searches, you know she's not dangerous, you're just trying to get back at me for doing this without asking your sacred permission." He rose briefly from his chair to give the gun a shove which sending it spinning onto the floor.

Slayer brought his fist down on the table so hard the coffee mugs jumped. "Where's Eilish?" he cried. "Did she go out again? How many times have I told her not to go out without clearing it with me?"

"Stop it!" Fyshel was almost shouting. "Just stop right now! She can go out whenever she wants, it's her house. Good grief." He rubbed his head. "I'm sorry, Jonna, Slayer is stressed. I don't know why, but he appears to be stressed. And before he has time to throw another tantrum," those green eyes could become surprisingly dark, Jonna noted, "I'm going to jump right in and explain what's going on."

"With the town?" she asked hopefully.

"Well, we haven't quite figured that out yet, but we're working on it." He ran a hand through his hair. "Slayer, the Actors, and I work for an agency called the Liafero. It deals with a lot of the things the Police won't, namely, the supernatural. I know this probably comes as a surprise, but chances are everything you've ever heard of in a horror movie or a comic book exists."

Jonna wasn't surprised. She should have been, but she wasn't. "After everything I've seen in the last three months, I would believe you if you told me I was a guy."

"Don't press your luck," Slayer growled.

Fyshel ignored him. "Through various incidents, we each were involved in something supernatural, and this became our livelihood. We work for the Liafero and they support us."

"Exactly what kind of work do you do for them?"

"We come to towns like this one where things have stopped making sense and put it right. St. Rarie's is what's known as a hot spot, a place where psychic energy has a habit of erupting. Eian and Eilish were sent here to watch it, and when things started getting weird they called me and Slayer. Whatever's happening, we're here to stop it."

"Riston?"

Fyshel paused. "Is that who you think is causing this?"

"Well, everybody knows his grandmother was psychic, it makes sense that Riston might be. Maybe the town isn't so much a hot spot as the Blossom family is."

Fyshel stared at her for a long time, saying nothing. Finally he broke into a wide smile and turned to Slayer. "I told you she'd be cool."

* * *

Eian poured himself a third mug of coffee. He was alone in the kitchen now, Fyshel and Jonna had gone upstairs to do some research via the Internet, and Slayer had gone up to keep an eye on them. Eian was tired, worn down, but he hummed softly to himself as he added a pinch of sugar to his drink. Somehow taking it black seemed like more of an ordeal than he could handle at that moment.

The door that connected to the garage opened and he turned. Eilish slipped inside, pulling her thread-bare jacket off in the process. "Hi," she said, smiling beautifully at him.

"Hello." He put his mug down and stared at her, unable to decide what he was feeling. There was guilt in this, they both knew what they were doing was absolutely wrong, but somehow there was also a desperate inevitability he couldn't fight.

"Are you waiting up for me?" she asked.

"Jonna's here," he said somewhat illogically. "She's upstairs with Fyshel and Slayer."

"Good for her," Eilish replied, switching to Romanian. She took a few steps toward him and her red lips pursed. "She's keeping them busy, isn't she?"

He glanced at the door leading to the stairwell. Eilish put her hands on his chest and leaned close. "This is crazy," he whispered, and she stepped back, hurt.

"It isn't crazy. It would be crazy for me to love anyone else, that would be crazy."

His eyes kept darting to the door. "You can't love me."

"I always have. When we were little children who didn't know any better, when we were outcasts running away, when we were immigrants living double lives." Her voice was hard but melodic. "After all of this, how can you expect me to love anyone besides the one who has kept me alive?"

Eian put his hand to his head. "I'm sorry, Eilish, I'm confused. I just keep remembering what happened when they caught us at home. I don't want to go through that again."

"Of course not," she said, softening. She walked toward him again with a sympathetic expression. "Neither do I. But it's making me crazy being without you."

She kissed him lightly. Their bodies were inches apart, but only her lips brushed his. "I've been thinking about this for a while. If we go down to the shelter, they won't catch us. Even if they come looking for us, they'll never think to check in the bomb shelter."

Eian stiffened as her arms wrapped around his back, but his pulse was speeding up. The bomb shelter? Of course, why hadn't he thought of it? Fyshel would never think, Hey, maybe Eian's hanging in the shelter.

"There are beds," she whispered, pressing her cheek to his, and he couldn't resist the faint scent of lilac floating up from her skin.

"Alright," he agreed, and she grabbed his hand.

He threw open the trap door in the living room closet floor and jumped down without touching the ladder. Eilish lowered herself more carefully, and Eian picked her up off the ladder and carried her into the shelter. A bare bulb burst to light as Eilish kicked the door behind them. The steel walls were so close together as to be claustrophobic, painted a heartless white and curved into the ceiling. Three tiny bedrooms, each holding two sets of bunk beds, a bathroom, and a kitchen that was the size of a carpet sample.

Eian pulled Eilish to him and kissed her as hard as he dared. Her hands raked his hair like those of an angry gardener and she whimpered in a way that was both alarming and exhilarating. He felt her skin, hot under his hands, and was caught up by all the tension and worry of late. Forget that, he threw caution to the wind and Eilish onto the nearest bunk.

The mattress was cheap and lumpy, without sheets. A pillow smashed into the corner did little good, and Eilish balled her sweatshirt under her head. Eian paused a moment, feeling almost physical pain from the throbbing between his legs, and stared at her breasts. They were perfect, they were real, two utterly astounding orbs of dark, warm flesh. He realized Eilish was looking at him with a faintly nostalgic expression and knew he had been a fool to stay away.

He buried his face in her breasts, panting wet air onto her nipples. She tugged on his shirt, popping a button off in her hurry, and yanked it over his head. Eian lost himself in the strange rhythm of kissing her and touching her and helping her out of her clothes.

"I love you," she whispered, as he rolled her onto her stomach. "I love you, Eian."

He kissed her neck and ran his hands along the indentions of her spine, brushing the hair off her turned cheek. With the pillow from the corner he propped her hips up and opened her legs to feel the otherworldly fabrication of skin inside. His eyes were closed against the sheer light but he didn't need to see. He knew every inch of his sister's body as he mounted it.

* * *

"Nothing," Fyshel said, and shrugged. "Any other ideas?"

Jonna was sitting across from him in a yard-sale quality desk chair, feeling giddy or drunk or both. This was too much, not only was he adorable, sweet, and honest, but he was also really smart and he had a steady job. There wasn't much more you could ask for in a seventeen year old guy.

"I don't suppose you can crack security codes," she replied hopefully.

"Depends. Whose do you want to crack?"

"Saint Rarie Medical Center. Then the courthouse. Some place has to have a copy of the birth certificates."

"Sure, I can do that."

She watched as his eyes focused on the screen again and sighed. This really was way too much.

* * *

Slayer was starting to feel nauseous. Not that he wasn't usually sick to his stomach, either from the scent of decay or from the sight of flaming bodies, but this was different. Fyshel was actually flirting with her, with this little nothing sitting in what was the equivalent of the Saint Rarie's District of the Liafero's Oval Office. Such audacity, to let her inside and tell her all their secrets. Fyshel was good, but he was also an idiot. That was what he needed Slayer around for.

A line of blood appeared at the apex of the wall and the ceiling and trickled downward. What the hell is that coming from? Slayer wondered, but he was too tired to bother playing tag with his hallucinations. The monks at Saint Ursula's said it would be better if he tried to ignore them anyway, and lately the images hadn't been quite so intense. Aside from Fyshel, holy men were the only people Slayer got along with.

"I'm going downstairs to see what Eian's doing," he said, and Fyshel nodded.

"Take your time," he called, and Slayer rolled his eyes as he slammed the office door shut.

There were bits of a dog scattered over the stairs, a twitching leg here, clamping jaws there. Slayer carefully stepped over them and went into the kitchen.

The coffee pot was still on, a full mug resting beside it. Slayer dunked his finger in the black oil to test the temperature. Something bit him, but not before he noted that the drink was still mostly warm.

Never one to give away a location to an enemy, he skulked into the empty living room, then opened the door to Eilish's suite without knocking. A lamp in the corner lighted at his touch and he glanced around at the furnishings, taking it all in. A simple room, mostly bare, faded wall paper and thick curtains. Why the hell had they let such a nice house fall into such disrepair? Slayer wondered. Even he understood that selling value went down if a place was neglected.

On his way to check for Eian in the garage, he noticed that the closet door had been left hanging wide open. He swore under his breath and went to close it.

Don't they realize what could happen if we were trapped in here with Riston and he cut the power? he thought angrily. It's so easy to run smack into a door hanging open like that and knock yourself out...

There was something wrong in the closet.

Slayer ignored the smashed dog tail, which was trying to wag, and leaned down. Peering into the open trap door, he saw a bead of light coming from the bomb shelter. What was Eian doing in the bomb shelter? Looking for more coffee beans? Hell, maybe he grew them down there and that was why his coffee always tasted fresh from a cow's ass.

He heard a distinctly female squeal.

Silently, as stealthily as he could, he eased into the hole and down the ladder. He turned carefully in the tiny space and pressed his face close to the crack where the door wasn't all the way closed.

All he could see was the endlessly white wall of the bomb shelter, broken by the support of a bunk bed. But he could hear much more than he needed to, grunts and moans that could only mean one thing:

Eian and Eilish were having sex.

The grunts were distinctly his, the moans decidedly hers. The bunk support was swaying and the screws holding the whole contraption together were screaming. Slayer dug his nails into his palms until he felt blood running over his fingers, and he wished it was her blood, Eilish's blood. He wished her could tear the little whore apart bit by bit and watch her die for the rest of eternity, every time he turned around and saw another chunk of her flesh laying in the bathroom sink, or on his desk, or in the passenger seat of his car. He wanted it to never end.

It was ending. He didn't know what he felt when Eilish suddenly cried so loudly it was almost a scream, her Romanian words slurred and blurry. Slayer felt his throat close off and he reached for the ladder, Eian's outcry right behind him.

He left the closet door open and went upstairs, ignoring the giant eel that was climbing out of the coffee mug. He went into the bathroom to wash the cuts on his hands and then returned to the office, standing near the door.

"Hey," Fyshel said, smiling. He was obviously enjoying himself. "Came across something interesting. Jonna says Riston has a private library owned by the Blossom family inside the school. You feel like checking it out?"

Work, work would be good. Whatever the hell was going on downstairs, Slayer didn't want to know about it. "Yes, let's go now."

"Now?" Fyshel's green eyes opened wide. "I thought you could take a look at it tomorrow during school when we know Riston would be at class."

"Now is better, I want you two to come."

"Me?" Jonna asked.

"Yes, you're valuable. You know more about Riston than we do. Come on, get your jacket."

Jonna looked at Fyshel and he shrugged. "It's your choice. Feel like a doing a little breaking and entering tonight?"

Slayer watched a smile ease into her expression. "Sure, why not? I've got nothing better to do but go home and study. At least this is something I can confess tomorrow."

"I'll go get Eian," Fyshel said, starting out the door. Slayer grabbed his arm.

"No," he said firmly.

"No? What do you mean?"

"I don't want him to come along."

"We should at least tell him we're going, then."

"Did you hear me? No, we're just going to leave. Come on."

Fyshel threw his hands up but didn't complain.

Slayer sat in the back seat, and Fyshel got the feeling something was wrong. He was too quiet and unprotesting, and even his normally belligerent face was strained. "Are you okay?" Fyshel asked, eyeing his partner in the mirror.

"I'm fine."

He wondered if the hallucinations were worse today. That could explain why Slayer had been so hard on Jonna when she arrived. But usually they died down for a few weeks after his trips to Saint Ursula's.

He noticed Jonna smiling at him and smiled back. It was almost the smile he'd dreamed of the day he met her. Almost, but not quite. She was a little nervous with Slayer around, and she was more than a little nervous about breaking into the school. He reached out and took her hand, and the smiled softened.

"Don't worry about this," he told her. "We've done it a hundred times, on places much more heavily guarded than the school. Never been caught."

She nodded but didn't look reassured. "That's good to know," she told him.

The break-in was a piece of cake, compared to other jobs Fyshel had worked. Everybody in the town was brain-washed into good behavior, so security systems were non-existent. All they had to do was pick the lock on the front door, and then head for the library.

Jonna was taut with fear, clutching Fyshel's arm hard enough to rip it off. "Calm down," he whispered to her, chuckling. If we haven't gotten caught yet, we're pretty much home free."

She nodded again but still didn't look convinced. It took Slayer all of fifteen seconds to get the library door open, and then another two minutes to tap the combination lock on the Blossoms' private books room.

It was a low ceilinged room with stacks of rotting, hand-bound volumes on all sorts of tables and shelves. "Wow," Fyshel said, taking a look around. "This is some collection."

"Smells great, too," Jonna told him, wrinkling her nose adorably.

"What am I looking for?" Slayer asked as he picked up a book and flipped it open.

"Beats me. Something to do with genealogy, if they have anything. Family tree, traditions, diaries."

"So you're assuming Riston is the power source and not the area?"

"Or else he's a conduit. Obviously he's tapped into something if he can control all these people."

Slayer nodded wordlessly and opened another book.

They worked steadily for an hour before Jonna found what they were looking for. "Look at this," she said, walking over to the table where Fyshel was sitting. "It's a book on the Blossom paper mill, but there are blank pages in the middle that have been hand written."

"What do they say?"

"It's mostly illustrations. There's a big three-dimensional diamond made of glass, and then a bunch of pictures of babies. But...well, the babies don't look right."

"What's wrong with them?"

Jonna handed him the book and he started. "They look like little demon babies. That one has fangs." He barely had the courage to touch the page. He'd seen a lot of disturbing things in his life, but this was truly perverse.

Jonna leaned over his shoulder so close he could feel her breath on his neck. He closed his eyes and listened to her read. "'If the harvest does not take place within the first twenty four hours of conception, the power dissipates into two forms, which will be born nine months later as twins.'"

She stopped. "What do you think that means?"

He met her eyes, which were not a handspan away, and shrugged. "I don't know. Keep going, maybe it will explain."

"'The original clash is still unexplained. Ryder has suggested that our grandparents were simply very powerful personally and their union created this unusual line.' Let's go back a page and see what they said before this."

"Alright."

"'The union of twins, with their connection already established, leads to the inevitable surge of power which is large enough to conjure storms and cause earthquakes. Rebecca stumbled upon the harvesting method by accident, in a feeble attempt to abort her second pregnancy. Although my grandmother refused to ever speak of what happened, there are scars on her legs that look as if they came from very small, sharp teeth.'"

Jonna stopped again. "Am I reading this right? Did she just say her grandma cut out her baby and it tried to eat her?"

"That would explain the drawings," Slayer noted, unusually docile. "Did that imply that twins having sex could create power sources?"

"If that's what 'union' means, and I'm pretty sure it does." Jonna straightened suddenly, and Fyshel turned in time to see the color drop out of her face. "Oh god, you know what? Riston had a twin sister named Raeshel. We just called her Rae. She killed herself."

"How long ago?" Slayer asked.

"About a year, I guess."

"How?"

"OD'ed on pills. And she didn't just take twenty aspirin, she was really sure about this. According to the newspaper she swallowed four bottles of aspirin, two jars of sleeping pills, and then drank eight bottles of cough syrup. She was making sure nobody could wake her up."

"Why did she do it?"

Jonna shrugged. "No one knows. She didn't have any of the classic signs, she wasn't depressed, nothing really bad had happened recently. One day she was just dead."

Fyshel took her hand. "Was she a friend of yours?"

"Sort of." He noticed a tear in her eyes, which she quickly wiped away. "Yeah, we were friends."

Slayer pushed himself off the wall. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"But we're just getting started."

"We have the book. You two can finish reading it at the house, there's something I need to check on right away."

Fyshel shook his head and got up, watching Slayer walk back into the main library. "This was kind of fun," Jonna said, slipping her arm around his waist. A forced smile seemed to lighten her mood a little. "I could get use to this burglar thing."

He smiled, enjoying the feel of having her close. "I'm sorry about Rae."

"It was awhile ago, I'm not usually this over-sensitive about it. It's just...What if she did it because Riston was coming on to her or something? What if he was trying to do whatever this book is talking about?"

He leaned down to kiss her forehead. "Then she must have had an incredibly strong sense of right and wrong."

* * *

Eian had gone to bed by the time the first cramp hit. Eilish was standing in the kitchen splashing cold water on her face, hoping no one would notice the heavy flush in her cheeks when pain slashed through her guts. With a muffled cry she fell to the floor and curled into a ball. Her limbs froze as the pain expanded into her chest and she was already praying to pass out. It had only just started and she wasn't sure she could live through this.

The cramp was gone as quickly as it had come. She lay on the floor panting, trying to steady herself for when the next one might hit. A fission ran up her spine and she climbed slowly to her feet, willing them to take her to her room.

The second one came right after she shut the door and locked it. There was no time to moan before all motion in her body ceased and she collapsed like a cripple trying to pray. This pain was unreal, it had fingers, it was alive. Her uterus had been removed, freeze-dried, and replace to shock the other organs into submission.

Die for me, the pain hissed, and I'll make it stop. Keel over and die for me, Eilish.

"What?" Just speaking sent new waves of cold through her chest.

I want to take a bite of you.

It wasn't the pain, it was the voice inside her. Literal, present, using her vagina as a bullhorn to scream through.

Let me out, Mommy.

Its voice held the cruelty she'd seen in the watery eyes of Robby, of those shriveled creatures in Riston's private museum. For a moment she witnessed herself from above, sprawled out on the bedroom floor and covered in cold sweat, and superimposed over her belly was one of those monstrous little creatures with their talon-like finger nails and baby fangs.

"Oh please no," she whispered, but this time the cramp wasn't lessening. Her eyes opened through the gray haze that dotted the room and she saw Rae standing in the corner, one hand pressed to her temple.

"You can stop this," Rae told her. "It's in there trying to get out, and when it does Riston will do whatever he wants. He'll probably imprison you and make you do it again, so that the line can continue. One pregnancy after another, sometimes with nine months of this, sometimes the knife. You can stop it now. There are guns in the bomb shelter, one shot and it will all be over."

Eilish turned her head away, giving in to the pain as much as she could. If her muscles clenched it only made things worse, as if her stomach had been stitched to her liver.

She reached for the phone on the bed stand, and managed to yank it to the floor by its cord. The boards under the cheap carpet cried out and Eilish picked up the receiver.

"Don't call, please," Rae said.

I'm bored, Mommy. Let's play a game.

"Hello?" Riston said.

"It's Eilish. I did it."

His voice sharpened. "Where are you?"

"At HHHHOOOOHHHHHH!" She tried to stifle a scream as something inside her tore. Blood began to leak into her pants, with a demonic giggle.

"What's wrong?"

"It's trying to kill you," Rae said.

"It's trying to kill me," Eilish told Riston.

"Alright, can you get to the school?"

"Maybe. I'll try."

"Okay, I'll be there as fast as I can."

He hung up and Eilish began hauling herself off the floor. Her bones were grinding together like slabs of concrete and she noticed a dark stain forming in her pants.

"I'll stop you," Rae warned. "Whatever it takes, I'll stop you."

Eilish reached for the door knob and turned to glance at the ghost. "Go rot, bitch," she said, and the cramp loosened slightly.

* * *

Jonna decided Slayer was the type who had mood swings and this was nothing unusual for him, despite the fact that the moment he got home he locked himself in the office and left her and Fyshel to their own devices.

"What time is it?" she asked, opening the refrigerator.

"Almost one. Christ, should you get home?"

She shrugged, taking out a can of Sprite. "The damage is pretty well done. My parents expected me back by seven."

Fyshel looked at her and laughed. "You're incredible, you know that? No one else could have handled all this the way you have."

She sat down beside him and he took a sip of her Sprite. "How long have you been doing this?"

"The Liafero took me after my parents died."

"How long ago was that?"

"Fourteen years. I don't remember it, which is probably good. They were eaten by werewolves."

Jonna lowered her head and heard herself reply, "Gosh, how many guys do you think can say that?"

Her head snapped up and her jaw went slack. "Oh, did I just say that aloud? I'm so sorry, Fyshel, I don't know-"

He waved his hand, laughing at her again. "It doesn't matter, don't worry about it. They say bluntness is a virtue."

"Then do you mind if I ask what's Slayer's deal?"

Fyshel stopped smiling rather abruptly, and Jonna got the feeling she had gone too far. "Look," he told her in a low voice, "Slayer never talks about this, so if he walks in just pretend we're talking about something else, okay?"

She nodded.

"His parents worked for the Liafero, they were really respected and all that, but Slayer wasn't planning to follow in their footsteps. He wanted to build furniture, be a carpenter. But when he was twelve, the case his mom and dad were working on blew up in their faces, and they were murdered. Really gorily, cut into pieces and set on fire. Slayer saw the whole thing, watched his parents and his two brothers get killed and burned, and then the murders went after him. One of them shoved an ice pick into his temple, that's where that scar came from. They left him to burn up with the rest of the house, but for some reason he came to and stumbled outside. The doctors were able to stitch his brain back together."

"Oh," Jonna whispered, horrified. "No wonder he's so mad all the time."

"But that's not the worst part of it. Slayer's strong, he could get over something like that. But when the ice pick went into his brain, it destroyed something and now he hallucinates constantly. Everywhere he goes he sees corpses and bodies and dead things. We were eating outside once at a McDonald's, and he turned to me and said, 'You know, this is the first time in five years I haven't been able to smell burnt flesh.' I almost screamed."

"I don't want to sound heartless or anything, but why are you still working with him if he's so unstable?"

Fyshel shrugged. "He isn't really unstable, considering everything. He handles it all pretty well, and he's good at his job. A couple times a year he goes to stay with some monks at a monastery, and that seems to help him."

"When was the last time he was there?" Jonna asked, wondering if it wasn't time for another visit.

Fyshel smiled drily. "Last week. You should see him two months from now."

"Well." She put down her Sprite, wishing she hadn't asked. "Are you just staying here temporarily?"

"Only until we're done with Riston. Then we'll move on to our next case."

Jonna wanted to say something mushy and stupid, like, "I'll miss you when you leave," but didn't have the sap in her.

"Show me your room, would you?" she said instead.

He nodded and wet his lips.

The room had dark blue paper with red flowers and a huge iron bed. "This is nice," Jonna said, plopping onto the mattress.

"Bulletproof, too," Fyshel told her, and she tilted her head.

"What?"

He closed the door and sat down beside her. "The whole house is bulletproof. There are bars on the windows and we have a bomb shelter, too."

She finally came up with, "Nifty," and he smiled that genuine smile again.

Suddenly the room seemed much smaller and darker. Only a small lamp on the dresser was lit. "Fyshel?" she said. "Kiss me."

His green eyes shifted from the window to her face. "All right," he agreed simply, and pressed his lips to hers.

It was one of those kisses frozen in time. Neither one of them moved for long seconds, and Jonna would have been content to sit like that for the rest of the night, just knowing that there was someone near her who still knew how the real world worked. But her lips opened and closed on his, ever so slowly, and he put his arms around her waist and then they were moving. Not quickly, not with a fiery passion, but just touching each other with open and trusting caresses. His fingers traced the line of her jaw, she massaged the pulse in his wrist, his lips tasted wickedly of Sprite as she ventured out to lick them.

Fyshel pulled away. "Maybe we shouldn't be doing this," he said, face serious. "I mean, I find myself extremely attracted to you, but I'm probably going to be leaving the area in a couple of days and I don't like to start projects I can't finish."

"You already started this one." She smiled at the corner of her mouth. "You may as well finish me."

His eyes didn't waver from hers as he thought. "What exactly are you saying you want me to do?"

Her face flushed and she turned away, feeling filthy. She started to get up but he grabbed her hand. "Can I say something? I didn't mean to embarrass you just now, really. I don't how know to say this without sounding like a bad movie, but I want you. I think that, given a little more time and a better situation, I could fall in love with you. And I just want to make sure we both know what we're getting into."

Her heart was pounding and her mouth had gone dry. This was honesty, this pouring out of the heart. It enthralled her, it intoxicated her, it made her want to be as close to him as she could. No one had made her feel like this since her boyfriend told her three months ago that sex was dirty and would make them both grow hair on their palms. The world had gone crazy but she hadn't. This connection was rare but not absurd, and she knew that need could press people together.

She turned, standing between his legs beside the bed. Her shirt was one of her brother's old dress shirts, dark lavender with buttons down the front, and it had grown soft from so many washings. She looked straight into his eyes, which with filled with a gentle green spring, and started unbuttoning her shirt. One, two, three, she pushed the fabric away to expose her simple cotton bra.

Fyshel wetted his lips again, a habit that appeared to be more nervous than preparatory. She took his right hand in hers and pressed it gently to the exposed skin just below her throat. Her eyes slipped closed as the warmth from his palm sank into her, and she moved his hand up like a cloth she was bathing with. His finger tips got caught up in her hair and she nestled the side of her face in his hold, using her free hand to continue unbuttoning her shirt.

The fabric slipped down over her shoulders and she felt the cool air race across her skin. Sighing deeply as Fyshel's hands sculpted her stomach, she unsnapped her bra and let it slide forward. Fyshel chuckled and tossed it onto the dresser. Jonna's eyes were still closed but she knew he was smiling. She eased forward onto her knees, straddling his legs, and his arms closed around her. There was another long time of contentment, as Fyshel buried his face in her bare shoulder and caressed her back and Jonna rubbed his hair and kissed his forehead.

Fyshel could never hide anything from her and she decided that she owed him the same. Her kisses were persuasive, slow, and they took their sweet time, moving from one piece of clothing to the next, tenderizing each inch of flesh uncovered. Jonna had never experienced anything like his painstakingly gentle movements. No one had ever watched her the way Fyshel did, sighting each shiver and exhaled breath. She moaned without feeling embarrassed and heard herself telling him how she felt and what to do in a clear, steady voice. They stretched out in the warm light from the lamp and their eyes roamed over each other without fearing the intimacy of pleasure and want. Their minds mated long before their bodies did.

* * *

Slayer had been waiting for two hours when the fax finally came in. He snatched it out of the machine and stood up with the page in his hand.

Grant Slayer/:/Kessy Worton/re/Eian Actor/?:/Liafero

He glanced over the Actor family tree and started swearing.

* * *

Fyshel didn't wake up until the screaming got really bad. He was contently asleep, one arm tucked under Jonna's neck and the other hand cupping the back of her thigh. Such a perfect curve, firm but soft, how did she do it?

He'd turned off the light when the debate over whether Jonna should go home was finished. It hadn't take long, since as she pointed out once again, "The damage is pretty well done." So she slipped back into her shirt and turned down the comforter, and then held out her arms for Fyshel to fill. It hadn't taken either one of them very long to fall asleep.

"Fyshel?" she whispered now, groggy. "What is that?"

"Hmm." He forced his eyes open and glanced around the pitch black room. There was shouting coming from the bedroom across the hall and one of the voices belonged to Slayer. The bedroom door slammed and heavy footsteps thundered down the stairs.

"Is he always like this?" Jonna asked, burying her face in Fyshel's shoulder.

"Sometimes he has trouble sleeping," he told her idly, wondering if something serious was going on. "I think I should go check on him. Even when he has insomnia he doesn't wake other people up like this."

"Do you have to?"

"Yeah, I should." He kissed her cheek, fumbling in the blackness for her mouth, and then climbed out of bed.

"Fyshel?" she asked again as he dressed.

"Yes?"

"I don't know, I just wanted to say your name."

He smiled and opened the bedroom door. "Leave it open a crack," Jonna said, "so I can see."

"I'll be back in just a minute," he promised, and at the end of the hall the stairwell door flew inward and Slayer pounded toward him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, but Slayer ignored him and threw open Eian's door.

"Where the hell is she?"

Eian was sitting on his bed in a pair of sweat pants, deathly pale. "What?" he asked weakly.

"Where is your sister?"

"I don't know. I thought she was going to bed."

"What's wrong?" Fyshel asked again.

"Eilish has disappeared," Slayer told him, "and I think Eian knows a lot more than he's telling us."

Fyshel thought of Jonna and his nice, warm bed and groaned. "Slayer, don't start with that thing about him eating her again, okay?"

"Eating her out maybe!" Slayer hollered. "Look at this." He thrust a printout into Fyshel's hand. "They're goddamn cousins, him and Riston. You were right about the twin sex, but since his sister killed herself, he had to find another outlet."

"Eian is Riston's cousin?" Fyshel asked, starring at the tree.

"No I'm not," Eian said. "My family's from Romania."

"Your father, not your mother. Rowena Blossom married Nickola Actor after she fled the United States. Her sisters, Rachel and Rianna, stayed, and Rachel was impregnated by her father, Ryder, and that's where Riston and Raeshel came from."

Fyshel rubbed his head. Eian had broken out in a sweat and appeared to he shaking. "I don't know anything about this."

"Does Eilish?"

"Of course not, we had no idea."

"Then where is she?"

Jonna appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a bed sheet. "What's going on?" she asked, and Fyshel beckoned her to him. Slayer barely noted her presence.

"Are you saying that Riston is using Eilish to create another one of these monster babies? I thought the monster babies were bad."

"He isn't using Eilish because Eian already has dibs."

Eian's face paled even further, making his eyes into black holes. Fyshel put his arm around Jonna's shoulders and pulled her close. "It has to be twins in order to create the power source," Slayer said, "so Riston found another set of twins from his family. And earlier this evening, I stumbled onto them screwing like minks in the bomb shelter."

Fyshel felt his jaw drop and he licked his lips. "Oh, man," Jonna whispered.

* * *

Rae banged on the wall in frustration with her ectoplasm hand, leaving a green smudge on the dingy paper. Eian knew they were related, any second he should be able to see her. The news just had to sink in.

Eilish was almost to the school. She'd crashed her car into a ditch once but managed to pull it out again. The bleeding was getting worse.

"Eian!" Rae hollered and he turned his head in her direction but stared right through her. That brute of a guy so aptly named Slayer was yelling again.

"Eian, man, are you listening to me? I'm right here! I'm a ghost, okay? But you've got to listen to me if you want to save your sister."

Eian's eyes were trying to focus on her, and Jonna was following his movements. "Yeah, that's right, listen to me. I'm standing right over here by the closet."

"What is that?" he asked.

"What's what?" Fyshel replied.

"It looks like a person..."

"My name is Rae Blossom," Rae told him. "Tell them that."

"I think I'm hallucinating," Eian said. "I'm hearing voices and seeing people."

"I'm Rae Blossom, I'm Riston's ex-sister, and Eilish is at the school with him."

"What's it saying?" Fyshel wanted to know.

"It's saying Eilish is at the school with Riston."

"She's pregnant with a mutant baby, and you have to stop Riston before he cuts it out of her."

Eian scrambled back on the bed, his face twisting horribly. "No."

"He's going to put the baby in a crystal tank and feed of its power. She's bleeding really badly, Eian, you have to go get her."

"What's it saying!" Slayer yelled.

In a pathetic, quivering, heavily accented voice, Eian said, "It's saying that Riston wants to cut Eilish's baby out and put it in a tank."

"She's pregnant?" Fyshel asked.

"She is now," Rae muttered.

"She is now," Eian repeated.

"He and Eilish created one of the monster babies," Slayer explained, "and now Riston wants to harvest it to feed off its power. That must be how he's controlling the town, there's another baby."

"If he's already got one, why does he need another?"

Slayer shrugged. "Power greedy, I guess."

"The old one is dying," Rae told them through Eian. "He needs a fresh one if he's going to keep controlling the town."

"What are you and how do you know this?" Fyshel asked.

Eian translated for her. "I'm the ghost of Rae Blossom,-" Jonna gasped and her knees buckled. Fyshel expertly caught her. "-and I'm here to make sure this ends. It's been going on five generations already, you have to stop Riston before he finishes the harvest."

"Rae?" Jonna asked weakly.

"Hey, hon. Sorry we couldn't sit down and have a Coke like we used to, but I'm on a bit of a mission. Just in case you're worried, everything's cool and I'm having a great afterlife. Now look, you have to go to the school and stop Riston. Now!"

Slayer was already heading for the stairs. Jonna ducked into Fyshel's room and pulled her pants on, and Rae noted the gentle way Fyshel ushered her to the car. That guy was perfect for her, really.

* * *

Slayer didn't bother picking either lock this time. He just brought a sledge hammer from the car and knocked the knobs off, then kicked the doors open. Eian's skin was translucent as he followed behind.

"Where are they?" Jonna asked the air, and a moment later Eian responded, "In a secret lab behind the private reading room."

Slayer had a photographic memory, also as a result of the screwdriver thing, and could recall the combination on the Blossom library. "Where now?" he asked, hands opening and closing around the sledgehammer.

Eian gave a complex series of instructions, which wall panels needed to be pushed and which wood knots should be twisted. Fyshel felt worried tension worming through his back, and he held onto Jonna's hand while they waited. Finally a set of shelves released and swung forward.

Fyshel could barely bring himself to look inside.

It was a lab filled with red light and twinkling glass. At the center of the room was a metal table over which hung a set of blindingly bright lights. Riston looked up in alarm, and Fyshel saw his blood-soaked hands. That was Eilish laying on the table covered in protective papers. Blood ran down her calves like streams of tears.

On the counters were jars with babies inside, the demonic little creatures Fyshel had seen in the book earlier. They were rotten and moldy, like ancient bread left to sit in the rain. One was inside a crystal jar, squirming hungrily.

"Eilish!" Eian screamed, and stumbled toward her. Riston jumped to block him and they skidded on a patch of blood on the floor, then crashed into the row of baby jars...

Slayer lifted his sledgehammer above his head, just waiting for something to hit. Jonna's maternal instincts kicked in and she ran to Eilish's side, and Fyshel saw something small and bloody fly into the air with a piercing scream.

The marquis crystal teetered, and the baby inside threw its weight to send it crashing onto the floor. An explosion of glass rained over Eian and Riston as the tank broke open and Riston scrambled away. The baby threw its head back, jumped to its feet like a cartoon, and took a deep breath. Eian was sitting up a few feet away, dazed, and Fyshel realized what was going to happen almost before it did, almost before he saw the baby leap onto the dark-haired boy on the floor with its claws and talons outstretched.

There were literally sprays of blood. They covered the walls and Fyshel felt a fine stream cover his cheeks. He couldn't tear his eyes away as Eian rent a blood curdling scream and fell back, trying to pull the monster off his throat. The sound abruptly stopped as Eian's windpipe hit the floor, but his body continued to writhe as the baby had its fill. Ten feet away, Eilish moaned horribly, now dripping with her brother's blood as well as her own.

A spasm wrenched Eian's body as half the baby's torso vanished into his head. Abruptly, he went limp, and the spawn of Satan climbed out of his skull. It was dripping with blood and gray streaks of brain matter, and licked its lips hungrily.

Fyshel heard an unfamiliar voice and somehow knew it was Rae's. "Kill it quickly!"

From behind, the sledgehammer came down on its wretchedly petite body and there was a crunch like a fortune cookie being cracked open. The baby deflated into a mass of red meat, tendons and limbs snapping, its itty bitty eyes bursting from the pressure.

Fyshel watched as a cloud of gray smoke rose out of the mess and into the air, beginning to dissipate. He'd seen spirits rise a hundred times, but this was different. The smoke began blowing away and then suddenly stopped and pulled together. It stretched into a simple female form and solidified. The girl standing there looked remarkably like Riston, only naked and damp.

"Rae?" he asked, and Jonna looked up with a stifled cry.

"There's another one," she said. "It jumped out of Eilish and went over that way."

"How the hell did you do that?" Riston demanded, staring at his sister.

She punched him and he flew back into the wall, shattering the jars for two more babies. Even though Fyshel was pretty sure they were dead, Slayer smashed them each.

His feet were unfrozen and he grabbed a large shard of glass, wrapping it in part of his shirt. "Where?" Slayer shouted, and the baby dropped from the rafters onto his back.

This one was stronger, younger and fresh from the womb. Slayer didn't scream, simply threw himself into the air and then onto his back, smashing the creature beneath him.

"Don't kill it!" Riston cried, waving his hands. "I need that baby!"

Rae picked a chair up one of the baby jars and brought it down over his head, which cracked open and spilled another baby on the floor. Fyshel nearly tripped over it as he scrambled to Slayer.

The sledgehammer was at his feet, and blood was pouring off his scalp as razor-edge teeth tore his hair out in great fleshy chunks. Fyshel brought his piece of glass down on the baby, severing one of its arms, and the beast turned on him, flying to his leg. Fyshel couldn't help screaming when he felt his Achilles tendon snap and saw the baby spit part of Slayer's scar onto the floor. His leg turned bright red and bones crumpled under the baby's crunching hands. He kicked it with his free foot but it had a vise grip with its over-sized jaws.

"Rae!" he cried, but she was struggling with her brother, who was attacking her unprotected skin with a scalpel. "Jonna!"

"What do I do?" she asked, and Fyshel saw her eyes goes luminously wide at the sight of his exposed bones.

"Hit it with the hammer! Hurry!"

She picked up the hammer in trembling arms, shaking her head as if subconsciously protesting this, and brought the metal head down with little more than the weight of gravity. It landed almost a foot away from the baby, and Fyshel lost all feeling in his lower leg. "Again!" he shouted.

Gaining confidence, Jonna lifted the hammer a little lower this time and beat down on the creature's knees. With that piercing screech again, it dug its fangs further into Fyshel's leg and he gasped. All the air went out of his lungs.

This time she didn't even swing the hammer, just lifted it a few inches up and began to pummel the baby like a mad woman beating dust from the rug. Each hit came a little closer to the baby's head, affectively cutting it apart bit by bit. Fyshel's vision started to waver and he thought he might pass out at any second, but just as the baby bit all the way through his bone, he saw from the corner of his eye Rae rip Riston's throat open. The already filthy floor was washed with a fresh wave of blood.

Jonna stopped bashing and the creature went limp. She collapsed onto the floor, half crying and half laughing, and started unlacing her shoes. "I don't believe this," she kept muttering, "I just don't believe this."

Fyshel reached out and took Slayer's hand as Jonna tied her laces around his leg as a tourniquet. There was a pulse under Slayer's skin, although it was thready. "Rae?" he called weakly, and heard her shuffle over. "What happened to you?"

She shrugged, her nude body drenched in ripe, red blood and swirls of ectoplasm. She looked like Ted Bundy's Christmas gift. "I took what was left of Robby's power. It was enough to bring me back, especially since it had just killed Eian."

Fyshel nodded, knowing she would explain it more fully later. "Go call an ambulance, would you? Tell him we have two seriously wounded."

Rae shook her head and gestured to Eilish. "Three seriously wounded," she said, and started limping toward the hall.

Jonna lay her face on Fyshel's chest and started crying. "Sorry," he said. "I guess you should have gone back to your house after all."

She kissed his bloodly chin and dried her eyes. "I wouldn't have missed this for the world," she said, and Fyshel felt himself beginning to loose consciousness.

Epilogue

Rae and Jonna were sitting on the steps waiting for him when Fyshel came out of the hospital, limping miserably on his crutches. Every move hurt, but at least he got to keep the foot. That was something.

Rae looked remarkably like her brother, only prettier. She was apparently a lot saner as well. Jonna was smiling but tired; she hadn't gotten much sleep on the hospital waiting room couch.

The morning sun was bright and clear, and a fresh, biting wind nipped their faces. "They're letting you out?" Jonna asked in surprise. "Already?"

"No, but they said I could walk around out here for a couple of minutes."

"We were going to come inside."

"That's okay, I need the air." He eased carefully down beside Jonna and kissed her for the first time since their first time.

"How's Slayer?" Rae asked.

"Regained consciousness last night. Funny thing, he told me he's stopped hallucinating. I guess whatever part of his brain that was messed up was the part the monster baby ripped out."

"And Eilish?"

"Hanging on. Still in a coma, but they're expecting her to wake up any time. She's stabilized."

"What will happen to her when she does wake up?" Jonna asked, frowning. "We called her family but apparently they disowned her a couple years back, and with Eian dead she's all alone."

"Nah, the Liafero will take care of her. Obviously, she'll be going into counseling for a while, but even if she never recovers from this, they'll find something for her to do."

Rae nodded, glancing off into space. "So it's really over, huh? Just me and Eilish, and we can't have kids. So I just have to keep an eye on the Actor's, and makes sure they don't have any more twins, and then it's all done."

Fyshel liked Rae, liked her dedication to work and mission. "What about you?" Jonna asked her.

"Me? I don't know. My mom died a couple years ago, my father/grandfather/great uncle is safely tucked away in a nursing home, and I have all the money Riston made when he bought the town." She shrugged. "I guess I'll take over his chair as student body president, start fixing things, and then see about finishing high school. I take it you won't be back to work for a couple of months."

"Try weeks. They promised to give me a desk job I can do from home. I know I'll go crazy if I can't work."

"Where's home?" Jonna asked softly, and he met her eyes. He'd asked her if they both knew what they were getting into, but they hadn't, not really. She especially, hadn't realized what the aftermath of showing herself to him completely would be like.

"I don't have one. I guess I'll have to housesit for Eilish until she wakes up. Could be a long time you know, even if she regains consciousness. Between rehab and counseling, she's going to need somebody around to help out for a while. And what about Slayer? He may have to relearn all his motor skills again, and he can't do that on the road. Yeah, I think I may have to stay in town for a long time."

Jonna smiled and kissed him again. "You ever thought about an internship?" Fyshel asked her.

"Doing what?"

"Working with me. You've got a knack for it, brainstorming, researching, smashing mutants with sledgehammers."

"She can't work with you," Rae said, "she has to work with me. I need somebody who still has control of her mind to help put Maliu back together."

"Where's Maliu?" Jonna asked.

"Oh, we're changing the name of the town back to Maliu. That's what it was before Saint Rarie. Anyway, I need you to help me organize everything."

"And I need you to help me get up the stairs," Fyshel added.

Jonna just smiled again and leaned against him. "It's nice to feel needed," she said dreamily, and he put his arm around her.

The End

Finished March 2, 1998