Riley lifted his hand to her mouth and pressed her lips to his knuckles. What if, in her inexperience, she’d missed something, and his brain was swelling or bleeding? What if his electrical system was all messed up, or he had permanent psychological damage? Worse, what if the power he’d taken in had overwhelmed him, and he was lost forever?
Except Riley couldn’t find Marley’s power in him. Not a trace of it. And even more, not a trace of anything else. No residue from Tanda or Chloe, or even remnants from Beth. When Sam used his power back in the Numina apartment, he’d reduced it to a nearly unusable level. But Riley had still been able to see the residue, to know where Sam was at any given moment. Now, there was nothing. She could barely detect him at all.
The only thing keeping her from going off the deep end was that his signature was the same as Nick’s, the only other fully non-powerful human in the apartment.
“Riley, dinner’s ready.” Tanda hovered in the doorway. “We’re going to have a meeting. John’s here.”
She sighed. She didn’t want to leave Sam, but whatever they decided they were doing next, she would be part of. After everything that had happened, she had to be.
“I’m coming.” She stood and laid Sam’s arm across his abdomen. Tears pricked behind her eyelids and she blinked them back, suddenly angry. Sam could have told her he loved her, dammit. Instead of laying his guilt on her, apologizing for whatever he thought he’d done wrong. But she could have done the same. Could have put herself out there instead of protecting her heart, a stupid, immature hesitation that might have cost her what little comfort that sharing could have brought her.
She kissed him on the forehead and joined the others in the kitchen. They were already seated around the table, an oak rectangle inlaid with painted ceramic tiles that matched the ivy tiles on the backsplash and the pale green walls. She sat next to Marley and accepted the bowl of pasta Nick handed her.
“How is he?” Quinn asked.
“Same,” Riley managed.
“He’ll be okay,” Tanda tried to assure her, but the words were hollow. Riley nodded anyway. Marley passed a basket of garlic bread to Riley, her eyes lowered. She took it hesitantly, wondering what was wrong but not wanting to ask in front of everyone. Not that it was her place, anyway. Marley had been with Quinn all afternoon, and if she had any problems, she’d tell her sister, not Riley.
“We need to talk about Numina,” John said once all the food had been passed. “I had a pow-wow with Jeannine.” He ignored Nick’s snort of derision. “Her term is almost up, which has made her…reluctant to initiate any real action, even with the possibility that Numina, or Tournado’s snot-nosed group of them, anyway, might have infiltrated us.”
Riley watched Tanda’s hand tighten on her fork, her knuckles going white. Marley kept her head down while she toyed with her pasta, and Riley wasn’t sure she was even listening. Quinn carefully didn’t look at anyone, but Nick had stopped eating and stared at her.
“Um, what about the president elect?” Riley asked. “What’s her take?”
“We kind of don’t have one,” Tanda said. “But it’ll be Quinn.”
Quinn dropped her fork. Riley jumped, alarmed, but understood immediately that Quinn had done it on purpose. She stared back at Nick. Riley could almost see the words zipping back and forth between them.
“Aren’t you going to tell me I’m too weak?” Quinn asked him.
“Are you?” Nick smirked and glanced at Riley. “She’s stuck. She can’t use the excuse of being too sick, and then tell me to back off because she’s fine.”
“I wouldn’t tell you to back off. I’d tell you to take his job.” Quinn jerked her head at John, who grinned.
“Dinner and a show. How lucky are we?” He nudged Tanda, who laughed.
Marley stood and walked out of the room, a swirl of blackness following her that confused Riley. She automatically checked her as she had everyone else over the past several days. There was only Marley’s signature emptiness.
The bathroom door closed, and everyone sat awkwardly for a moment before continuing without comment.
“I’ll take his job if you take the one you were elected to,” Nick shot at Quinn.
“Wait, what?” Riley looked around the table. “You said there was no president elect.”
“Quinn refused to run,” Tanda told her. “We elected her anyway. Jeannine wouldn’t hold a special election or appoint anyone because we were all hoping she’d give in.”
“I was off politics,” Quinn said.
“Was?” Nick asked, his voice low, his gaze steady.
Quinn sighed. “I guess. It’s better timing now. Maybe.” She raised an eyebrow at Tanda. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine. Normal. The real normal.”
“I called Jennifer an hour ago,” Nick said. “Still fine.”
“And Chloe sent me an e-mail that she’s got another date with the new guy.” Tanda smiled. “Looks like everything’s fine there too. Like we keep telling you.”
“Yeah, well,” Quinn said wryly, “people—including me—have been saying that for three years without it being true. You can understand my skepticism.”
“So there you go,” Nick told John. “So what’s the plan?”
“We’ve met with a few of Numina’s legitimate leadership. We’ve proceeded cautiously, not knowing what they were up to, but after all this we need to formalize and expand.”
“We need to do research first,” Quinn cut in. “I want to know more before we launch a task force.” She went quiet suddenly and picked up her fork again. Nick’s eyes flicked to the hall, and Riley realized they were thinking about Sam. Their resident research geek.
The distraction the conversation had provided disappeared, and Riley tried to wash down the dry bread lodged in her throat.
John cleared his. “We know the faction going after goddesses has had another setback, with Anson disappearing.”
“Do we really know that though?” Riley asked. She wasn’t afraid of Anson anymore, not after seeing what he’d become. What the poison had done to him. What it was doing to Sam. She couldn’t sit here anymore. As important as all this stuff was, she wasn’t. They didn’t need her for planning.
“Where are you going?” John asked when she stood without paying attention. She’d probably interrupted someone mid-sentence.
“Sorry. I was going to check on Sam.”
“So does that mean you don’t want to be part of the task force?” Quinn asked.
Riley flushed. “No. I mean, well, sure. But why would you want me?”
“Well, let’s see,” Nick said sarcastically. “Why would we want a brave, smart, independent goddess who already knows more about Numina than anyone else in the goddess world, and oh, yeah, can physically detect them?”
She felt herself go a deeper red. “None of that really means anything. I have no idea what a task force does.”
“We’re not asking you to lead it,” Quinn said, not unkindly. “Just work with us.”
“Of course.” Riley shoved aside her insecurities and saw the value in what she could bring. “Thank you.”
“Planning without me, huh?”
Riley spun at the raspy, tired, but gorgeously deep voice behind her. Sam stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand on his stomach, a sheepish look on his face, and his hair a tousled mess.
“Sam!” Sweet, cathartic relief took Riley’s tension and despair so completely she could barely hold herself upright. Her heart thudded with joy.
“You okay, buddy?” Nick rose and took a few steps to stand, feet wide, close enough to Sam to help him if he needed it, but far enough away not to insult him.
“Yeah, actually, I feel surprisingly good.” His brows came together, a perplexed expression. “I don’t know why. But…it’s gone.”
“What is?” Quinn turned in her chair but didn’t get up. Riley had heard a soft hiss when she moved and knew her recovery was going to be much slower than Sam’s had apparen
tly been.
“Everything.” Sam waved his hand out and slapped it back to his abdomen. “There’s no power left. No residue, no abilities. I’m back the way I was.”
Quinn and Nick looked to Riley, and she did a quick check. He was the same awake as he’d been unconscious. “Still no trace,” she confirmed. Tanda murmured her agreement.
“H-how?” Quinn reached out a hand, as if having to touch Sam to make sure he was as okay as he claimed.
“I don’t know.”
“What happened?” Nick ushered Sam over to his chair and made him sit, then gathered the food toward his end of the table. “You hungry?”
“Yeah, starved, actually.”
“I’ll get you a plate.”
Sam watched Nick quizzically as he collected a plate, glass, and flatware, and raised one eyebrow at Quinn, who shrugged. But Riley could have told him why Nick was being so solicitous. He might hold a lot inside, but Nick cared deeply for his friends. He’d been as afraid for Sam as he’d been for Quinn, though he’d probably threaten to shoot Riley to keep her from telling Sam.
She returned to her seat, letting her knee press against Sam’s under the table. He squeezed her leg for a second. His hand was warm and possessive, and the impression of it lingered even after he removed it.
“So?” she asked him. “What happened when Quinn sent you Marley’s power?”
Sam looked up. “Where is Marley?”
“Down the hall.” Quinn frowned, then smoothed her expression. “You were screaming so horribly, when you stopped, I thought it had killed you.”
He shook his head. “I have no idea. One minute it was invading me, taking over, and the next it was gone.”
“Gone where?” Quinn leaned forward. “It can’t just disappear. Energy changes or moves; it can’t be destroyed.”
“I don’t know,” Sam insisted, “but it’s gone. No trace. You know it. You can feel it.”
“Well, not right now I can’t.” Quinn gestured outside. “Moon’s off. But Riley and Tanda say you’re right, so what the hell?”
Sam shrugged and loaded pasta onto his plate, covering it with a healthy serving of meat sauce. “I’m not complaining.” He definitely wasn’t acting like a guy who’d just come out of a coma. Maybe he really was going to be okay.
“No.” Quinn shook her head. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come back to haunt us.”
They spent the next half hour discussing approaches to the Numina problem. Sam had enthusiastically agreed to join the task force, alongside Riley. When they finished eating and cleaning up, Sam took Riley’s hand.
“Would you come outside with me?”
Her heart began pounding the moment he looked at her and only picked up speed as they stepped out onto the balcony and he carefully closed the door behind them. He leaned against the concrete wall, facing her, but crossed his arms and legs. Defensive, closed posture. She tried not to assign reasons for it, but folded her own arms, pretending the breeze was chilly.
“How are you really?” Riley asked him. “I don’t mean physically. But with the power all gone?”
Sam studied her, his mouth curling up on one side. “Of course you’d ask me that.”
“Well, nobody else did.”
“Exactly.” He drew in a deep breath and looked out over Portland for a few seconds. “I’m okay. I don’t think there’s an addiction issue. I’m just…normal.”
“Good. But you know that’s not what I meant. Do you miss it?” A person didn’t have to be addicted to something to become obsessive about it when it was gone.
“Maybe.” His brow puckered. “I mostly miss seeing you.”
Riley blushed.
“Your power, I mean. All the other stuff…I didn’t have it long enough to get acclimated to it. And, yeah, it felt good to have a weapon against Anson when I needed it, but…” His mouth turned down, and he shook his head. “Nah. I don’t need that. I have other weapons at my disposal.”
“Good,” she said again. The lengthening silence shifted toward awkwardness.
Sam sighed. “I have so much to say,” he said, “and no idea where to begin.”
Riley took a deep breath. “Then let me start.” Encouraged by Sam’s smile, she decided to just go for it. Lay it all out. Self-protection meant nothing compared to everything that had happened even today.
“I know we’ve only known each other for a week.”
Sam blew out a breath. “Seriously? That’s all?” He stared at the wall above Riley’s head while he counted. She waited impatiently until he said, “Wow. You’re right.”
“Can I continue?”
He smiled again, wide enough to show the dimples that sent a zing through her entire body.
“You just made my point,” she said. “A psychologist would probably say my feelings are intense because of the intense circumstances, but my mother would say these circumstances meant we showed each other our true selves. And Sam…” She swallowed hard. Okay, this wasn’t so easy. What if he didn’t feel the same way? Didn’t need more than the woman who’d balanced him against power he wasn’t supposed to have?
He didn’t move, and his eyes never left her face. Their golden brown had deepened, despite the watery evening sunlight that followed the rain. He didn’t look wary or dismayed, but anticipatory. Riley’s anxiety faded.
“I’m falling in love with you.” She tempered it at the last second—it sounded more believable this way than I love you. More of an acknowledgment of the extreme circumstances. More realistic considering it might not last in a normal, mundane life.
Except she didn’t know what normal and mundane were anymore.
“I don’t want you to settle,” he said.
Riley’s heart stopped racing. It stopped completely at his first words, and even with the qualifier it didn’t seem to resume—though it had to or she wouldn’t be enduring this tearing pain in her chest. This was the goddess-world version of it’s not you, it’s me.
“Settle for what?” she demanded.
Sam sighed, long and painfully. “I thought when this was all over, when Quinn finished the transfers and she and Nick could focus on themselves, that we could do the same. Get to know each other. See what can happen between us.”
“And now you don’t want that,” she guessed miserably.
“No, I’m saying we can’t have that. Numina’s splinter group is still out there, still desperate to take goddess power to augment their own. I want to say I can walk away from that and just be with you, but I can’t. I could never do that.”
Angry, Riley dropped her arms and stepped toward him. “Of course you couldn’t. Neither could I, not if I believed I could really help.” That sounded like she still didn’t believe… “I can help. So I can’t walk away.” She forced herself to face her deepest fear about his feelings. “Do… do you not want me anymore now that we’re not connected by the energy? Now that moon lust doesn’t drive you, you don’t—”
“No!” He lurched off the wall. Since the balcony was only about two feet deep, that put them toe-to-toe, practically face-to-face. “I’m saying the opposite! But I don’t know why you’d believe me.”
“Believe what?” Riley spread her arms. Her heart pounded again, throbbed in her neck and ears, muffling his voice and narrowing her vision. “Stop beating around the bush and tell me what you feel!”
“I love you, dammit!” He shoved his hand through his hair and shook his head at the sky. “I started to fall in love with you, God, I don’t know. That first day, when you charged out there and confronted Vern and Sharla.”
It seemed a decade ago. Riley’s joy at his confession couldn’t get past her confusion. “So what’s the problem? I don’t understand why you’re holding back now. Quinn is fine, the power is all transferred, and you’re you. The guy I started falling for when I saw that video on the Society website.”
“That’s the problem. You needed help, and I was able to provide it. I brought you to the Society, where—”
/>
“Where I learned my family lied to me my whole life, and your vaunted Society kicked us out. They never bothered to find out why my grandmother and aunt had no power, or to determine if their descendants did. They just forgot about us.”
Sam dropped his head. “I know. I’m sorry. I wanted it to be—”
“That’s not the point!” she yelled at him. “What I feel for you is not fucking gratitude!”
Movement beyond the glass caught her eye. Nick watched them from the living room. His feet were braced wide, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a beer, but his expression told Riley he’d be through that door like a shot if he thought either one of them needed his protection. She was surprised to realize it didn’t matter which one.
She blinked back warm tears, overwhelmed, and nodded at Nick to reassure him they were okay. She turned back to Sam in time to see him give a dismissive, placating hand movement. Nick moved back, out of their view, but Riley would bet he was still watching. She hadn’t had friends like that, ever.
“I’m not grateful,” she said again in a much lower voice. “I don’t care that we don’t have a magical connection anymore. I can’t prove to you that things wouldn’t be different if we went on to live quiet, boring lives together, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? We can live exciting, dangerous lives together and be happy. Can’t we?”
“Oh, Riley.” He finally pulled her into his arms. She laid her head on his chest and hugged him hard, squeezing her eyes closed. He sighed and held her for a few long moments before she leaned back to look up at him.
“What do you want?” she asked.
One side of his mouth quirked. “I want you to be happy.”
She shook her head hard, annoyed. “No, what do you want for you? The truth.”
He sobered and moved back so they could see each other better. “Okay. Full, blunt honesty. No more searching for the words that will work. Just the right ones.”
She nodded and held her breath.
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