by Chloe Garner
“So how long have you been traveling with these guys?” Carson asked Kelly.
“Eighty-two hours,” Kelly answered. Carson raised his eyebrows.
“Oh.”
Kelly nodded. Samantha shrugged.
“He’s not human,” she said.
“What are you then?” Tanner asked, sitting forward.
“I’m an angel,” Kelly said.
“And that is the last time you should ever say that if someone asks,” Jason said.
“What should I say?”
“I was just going to leave it at ‘Sam’s friend’,” Jason said.
“But Sam’s friends are demons,” Kelly answered. Carson jerked to look up at Samantha and she nodded at him.
“The world’s a big place,” she said.
“How can you be friends with demons?” Tanner asked.
“Some of them are kind of cool,” Samantha answered. “Look, I didn’t say it to start a fight. I just don’t like having secrets with you guys. I have too many secrets.”
“Sorry, Sam,” Jason said. “I didn’t think of it like that.”
“Your secrets are your thing. I just… These are the good guys, you know? You’ve met my good guys, and I’d rather hang out with your good guys, any day.”
“What does that mean?” Carson asked.
“She hangs out with creeps,” Sam said.
“Why?” Tanner asked.
“At the time, it was what there was,” Samantha answered.
“That’s sad,” Carson said. She shrugged again.
“You didn’t want me,” Kelly said.
“Can’t say I blame her,” Tanner said. “I expected angels would be bigger.”
“Be nice,” Jason said. “He’s doing his best.”
“I don’t take it back,” Samantha said. “I’ve got my hands full, kid, and you have too much to learn.” She turned to face him. “You need to learn how to glitch effectively in attack, and you need to learn how to bend time. Until you’ve done that, most of the demons I need you to be able to manage will put a knife through your stomach. Every time.”
Kelly put his hand over the spot.
“Regeneration, time control, power management, confrontation with dark and natural magics, confrontation with the gray, space management, and death. These are the things they do not train.”
“Death?” Jason asked.
Samantha sighed.
“Angelic non-existence is too big a thesis for tonight. It’s complicated. How have you guys been doing?”
With that, Samantha closed the door on any more conversation about everything. So much had happened, it was overwhelming to consider telling it all, or even summarizing it. Tanner and Carson swapped stories about normal hunts, and Jason threw in the one about the thirsty man. Carson asked about the wraiths, and Sam told that one, wishing Jason had been there just so he could have told the story - he would have done it better justice.
Samantha filled in a few details as he was talking, and Carson put his arm across her knees to watch her as she spoke. She smiled at him and laughed. She felt Sam’s jealousy and dismissed it, sending him a deep, serene confidence that would have made him tingle, it was so personal, except that Carson was touching her.
Dammit, she could sleep with Jason and it didn’t bother him; where was this coming from?
About an hour later, Doris announced that dinner was ready, and they filed into the kitchen. Arthur’s old rule about no weapons in the house was roundly ignored, Sam noted. Jason carried Anadidd’na, Samantha definitely had Lahn, and it looked like Sam wasn’t the only one carrying a gun.
“We need to find you some clothes,” Samantha said to Kelly as they sat. “You look silly in Jason’s shirts.”
“I could take him tomorrow, if you wanted,” Doris said.
“I don’t leave her side,” Kelly said. Samantha frowned at him.
“That will not be necessary.”
“What’s that about?” Tanner asked.
Kelly looked straight forward, like he was being interrogated.
“I’m carrying something he’s supposed to keep safe,” Samantha said.
“This one?” Tanner asked, looking the angel up and down.
“He’s tougher than he looks,” Sam said, feeling bad. Tanner shrugged.
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“How long are you staying?” Carson asked.
“Few days at least,” Jason said. Samantha nodded.
“I’ve got things I need to think through, and we’ve got plans to make. It’s at least a few days.”
Doris nodded.
“Good.”
“So we can train some more?” Carson asked. Samantha had started teaching him bits of natural magic when they had been here last; Sam had almost forgotten.
“Sure,” Samantha said. “Have you been practicing?”
Carson was like a little kid.
“Yeah. Just what you showed me, but… It’s cool.”
“It’s the same thing you do with any of your incantations,” she said. “I’m just teaching you how to control it better.”
Carson shrugged.
“It’s cool.”
Tanner looked like he wasn’t particularly happy about it, but he kept his mouth shut.
“He doesn’t eat?” Tanner asked of Kelly as they passed food.
“Or sleep,” Samantha said. “He can learn to eat, if he wants, but he won’t ever sleep.”
“Creepy,” Carson said.
“We think that sleeping is unnatural,” Kelly said.
“Why?”
“You close your eyes and your mind leaves your body. Where does it go? When I close my eyes, all I see is darkness. You see strange things that have never existed, and you then forget.”
“When you put it like that,” Jason said, shoveling food into his mouth.
The table fell silent for a while as everyone ate, and then Sam and Jason helped Doris clear the table while Samantha and Kelly went to sit in the living room again with Tanner and Carson. Sam heard shuffling cards and laughter. She was happy, leaving tomorrow’s burden for tomorrow. When they started for the living room, Jason grabbed Sam’s shoulder and pulled him up the front hallway, instead.
“Get her over here,” he said. Sam frowned.
“What?”
“Sam. Get her to come over here.”
“What’s going on?” Sam asked, tugging at Samantha. She sent him curiosity and he sent back confusion, tugging again. He heard her excuse herself, and Jason leaned over to look around him as she came to the front door. Kelly followed, and she sent him back into the living room.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You two are avoiding each other,” Jason said.
“What?” Sam asked. “No we’re not.”
“Anyone else, I’d say what you’ve had going on the last few weeks is the picture of a normal relationship, but not you two. You’re avoiding each other, and I don’t care why. You’re going upstairs and doing whatever you need to do to get over it, and I’m going to go play cards with Tanner and Carson.”
Samantha started to argue, and Jason held up a hand.
“Look, I can take care of myself, and you two went from being alone all day every day to never. Besides, it’ll send the message to Carson.”
Samantha made an exasperated noise, about to protest that Carson was innocent, but she felt Sam agree with Jason on that point, and she dropped it.
“What about Kelly?” Sam asked.
“I’ll worry about him,” Jason said.
They both resisted Jason pushing them around, but Sam quietly asked if he might be right, and she didn’t argue. There was a lot they had left unsaid. Sam nodded.
“Thanks, man.”
“You’re amazing,” Jason said. “Working together like that. I didn’t see it before, but whatever it is you’ve got going on, you need to keep the good parts. Figure it out.”
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Samant
ha said as Jason turned to walk down the hallway.
“What?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Being right.”
<><><>
Samantha dropped her shoes on the floor and crawled across the bed, pulling her knees up to her chin and hugging her arms around her legs. Up until the night before Jason had reappeared in their lives, she had spent most nights in Sam’s bed, only vaguely aware of what actually went on between them, high on anger and the chemicals her brain pumped into her bloodstream when he held her. The leopard-mark bruises across his shoulders and his chest - that she had left there - had only just finished fading.
Now, though, it felt strange to be alone with him, like at first, when touch was strange and awkward and wrong. Like starting all over again. Mentally, he was still the man that she loved, and her best friend, but she only just avoided cringing away when he sat down on the bed, and she knew he knew it.
“I don’t know where to start,” he said. She shook her head.
“Me neither.”
There was a long silence, and he settled against the headboard of the bed, resting his arms behind his head.
“What’s wrong with us?” he asked.
“It’s me,” she said. “I’m back where I was when I first met you two.”
He shook his head.
“That’s not it.”
She was startled.
“Oh?”
“Come here,” he said, putting an arm out to her. He felt her react and laughed. “Don’t think. Just come sit with me.”
She slid across the bed and nested her head under his collarbone. She kept her knees against her chest, but being close to him like that just felt right. The feeling echoed off of him. Like a ball rolling into a valley, this was where she was supposed to end up. How they were supposed to end up.
“You think too much,” he said after a minute. She shifted, playfully sullen.
“It’s that both of us know what comes next,” he said. “We were… like we were… for a long time.”
“We can’t do that,” she said.
“No, I get it,” he answered. “It sucks, but I get it. We weren’t us.”
She shook her head.
It was hard to pull apart the darkroot, the massive temper tantrum, and the physical indulgence, but they had grown more and more introverted, only talking to each other, only thinking about each other.
It was the bond that did it. She’d originally bonded Sam to keep him from exploding his brain as he was first becoming psychic, and she’d known at the time - even told him at the time - that it precluded a physical relationship. The fact that they experienced what the other was feeling made control difficult. At some point, it would become impossible.
And yet.
They’d spent more than six months in twisted, sweaty sheets when they weren’t hunting or training. Just inches from her face were the scars her teeth had left a few weeks before Jason had come back. They hadn’t realized she’d drawn blood until Sam found the stains on his pillow the next morning.
And she missed it.
Part of it was the darkness of it. The turning off her brain and being the animal that her body wanted her to be. She’d kept her physical virginity, but only because they would eventually exhaust themselves and fall asleep, where she would drag him into the house - her house - and finish it. None of it had been right, but nothing had. And she had liked it.
Part of it was just being close. Being touched. Being held. Being wanted.
“I don’t know how to be us anymore,” she said after a long time. He turned his face to rest his cheek on the top of her head.
“No. I guess I don’t either.”
“I thought it was because Jason was back.”
“That’s what started it, but…”
“Yeah.”
“What did we do?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Whatever we wanted to.”
“You think we can go back?”
“To what? What were we?”
Sam was quiet for a long time, thinking. She felt the churn of his thoughts, but not their direction.
“I don’t know. We were us.”
She nodded. She thought of him hanging upside down from a hotel ceiling, dead, as she drained his blood. How she had felt losing him had defined much of how she felt about him since. She didn’t remember what it was like to be on her own. Thinking about it made her afraid, remembering the two years she had spent wandering by herself, feeling like an orphan from an entire race… the empty years before that with Carter, consumed with industry to avoid the downtime that reminded her of the lack of people in her life. She huddled against Sam and he held her tighter.
“We’re going to be okay,” he said. “You know that, right?”
It hadn’t occurred to her that they could not be okay.
“Yeah.”
He wrapped his other arm around her and she closed her eyes.
“I’ve missed you,” he said.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
He nodded. It was good.
And then he sighed.
“What is it?”
“My phone is on the desk.”
“So?”
“Carter is calling you.”
The phone rang and he sat up, crawling across the bed to get the phone and hand it to her. Phones and psychics were a thing.
“We’re having a council meeting,” Carter said without greeting.
“I don’t care,” she said, sitting up.
“We’re meeting in Nashville at Bane’s. You can make it that far.”
“We’re staying here,” Samantha said. Sam frowned at her, and she rolled her eyes.
“You have a responsibility to be there,” Carter said. “I don’t want to bring it up, but it’s probably your fault they opened that gate.”
“If it is my fault, I’ll deal with it. If it isn’t, you’re a prick, and I don’t want to spend my days off with you.”
She heard his smile.
“Who says you get days off?”
“You did,” she said, twisting an old knife. “When you sent me away.”
“Oooh,” Carter said mockingly. “This is your last chance. Come to Nashville or else.”
“Or else what?” she menaced back.
The doorbell rang.
<><><>
“How did he do that?” Sam asked as they came down the stairs.
“Abby gave me a script,” Carter said.
“Friends of yours, Sam?” Doris asked.
“This raises serious questions about predestination verses freewill,” Samantha said. “You’re skating awfully close, Carter.”
“That’s why I came with, so you could complain to my face,” Abby said, stepping around Carter.
“Abby,” Samantha said, hugging her “What’s wrong with you?”
Sam turned to look down the front hallway, finding Jason, Tanner, Carson, and Kelly peering toward the door.
“The Carter?” Kelly asked.
“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Jason told him. Kelly looked at him.
“How would you put it?”
“That Carter,” Jason said. Sam grinned. Carter was looking up the stairs.
“How many rooms have you got here?”
Doris frowned.
“You’re not staying,” Samantha said.
“I’ve got a full house, just now,” Doris said. “And we’re not in the business of putting up strangers.”
Carter cocked his head.
“I’m not a stranger. I’m Sam’s father.”
“He is not,” Samantha said.
“Wow,” Jason said. Sam made a mental offer to push Carter back out the door, and Samantha shrugged it off, amused.
“You aren’t staying,” Samantha said. “I don’t want them mixed up with you.”
“I told you to come to Nashville,” he said.
“I’ve kind of got my hands full,” she said.
“Like that’s ever made any d
ifference to me.” He turned and Samantha groaned. Sam stuck his head around the doorway to find three more people sitting on cars out in the front yard.
“Doris, can you bring us a pot of coffee on the back porch?” Samantha asked. “I’m going to have to talk to them.”
“I can have the boys throw them out if you like, darlin.”
“Sam already offered,” Samantha said, then sighed. “No, I’ll do what I have to do.”
“The rest of them will be here in the morning,” Carter said.
“I hope you find a nice hotel for them all,” Samantha answered, motioning for the three outside to go around the house and leading Carter through the living room and out the back door. Doris was the only one who didn’t follow. Sam found himself fitting most naturally with the protective pack of men, so he sat with them along the edge of the deck as Samantha and Carter sat down at the table.
“Oh, do you have tea?” Sam heard Abby ask as the back door closed. He smiled. Abby and Doris would like each other, at least.
Samantha turned in her chair as the three strangers started up the deck stairs.
“Guys, this is Ian, Mitch, and Peter.”
“Argo is still getting settled, Lindsay says she’s busy and she’ll get here when she gets here, Bane will put it off until the last second, and… Well, you know Spake,” Carter said.
Samantha nodded. Chairs scraped and men sat. The youngest one, Ian, gave the boys sitting along the railing a cold look.
“They shouldn’t be here.”
“It’s you who shouldn’t be here,” Samantha said.
“I agree,” Peter said, folding his hands over his knee. “We should be at Bane’s house. The rest of them would be here if they thought you were serious,” he said to Carter.
Mitch cocked his head to the side, owl-like.
“Which of them are the relevant ones?”
“The tall one and the one carrying Kha’Shing,” Carter answered.
Ian snorted.
“Did you really have to ask?” He stood. “Let me see that sword.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Samantha said.
“If you listened every time anyone said that to you, you’d never do anything,” he said. “You got it for him. I want to see it.”
Sam braced for a confrontation. Samantha was feeling out of control. Jason didn’t move from where he sat between Carson and Kelly.
“What have you got for hardware?” Jason asked as Ian approached.