The Most Important Thing, Part One

It was midnight, the time when the shadows that stalked street corners were at their strongest and most insidious. The beginning of the next day was heralded in some places with the brightness of revelry, in others in the obscurity of darkness. There were also those who were vulnerable to danger because they were unaware of its presence. Enveloped in sleep, they thought they were safe from their demons—much like Moira-Selene Thomas believed the night her world changed. But the demons were diligent in their craft and invaded her once-sacred dreams to antagonize her.

The dream had begun after she had dropped quickly off to an exhausted slumber and was a jolt from the dreamlessness that had descended upon her when she had rested her fatigued head on the pillow. She couldn’t clearly see what was happening. She could hear voices hardened by malicious intent and a different voice laden with fear and confusion. The hardened voices were asking questions, threatening to do harm. The second voice—heralded by a flash of blond hair—started to protest that she knew nothing when her breath was choked off by an unseen force. Moira-Selene jerked in her sleep as if she were trying to breathe for the innocent blonde. Help me… Oh God—somebody help—!

She sat up in bed feverishly, her mind still haunted by the nightmare she had barely escaped from. Her tank top and pajama pants stuck to her pale, clammy skin as her eyes adjusted to the darkness around her. The digital clock on her bedside table blazed with the current time: 12:05 a.m. Screams of anguish echoed in her mind, and her wheezing breaths filled the silence that seemed insidious, almost deafening, in her bedroom.

This would have sent a normal person to a medicinal dose of pills or a glass of hard liquor, but Moira-Selene was anything but normal. So she bypassed typical—in some cases dangerous—remedies and decided a good glass of water would help her set her mind back to rights and wet her arid, scratchy throat.

She lived in a two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Gracia all alone, so there was no one with whom she could share her nightmare, no one to soothe her jittery nerves and pounding heart. She hadn’t had a date in nearly two years, and her nights mostly consisted of perusing medical journals, watching TV if she had the time, and sleeping. Her twin sister would chastise her all the time for living listlessly, but her life’s work was the salvation of others. Who cared if she lived a pale facsimile of her own life?

As she passed through the living room decorated in black, white, and stolid blues, Moira-Selene passed by a picture of herself and her vivacious twin sister, taking notice at once the difference between them. The photo had been taken during a past family event, a dinner for Thanksgiving or Christmas. She could barely remember now why they had reunited or what circumstances had led to the picture, but she could tell that her sister was far more satisfied with the course of her life than Moira-Selene was with hers. The gleam in her twin’s violet eyes hinted at an inner flame that Moira-Selene never had while Moira-Selene herself appeared cool and serene. Moira-Selene’s raven hair had been longer then but pulled back into a ponytail that contrasted with her twin’s wavy ebony locks, and her pewter sweater against her twin’s orange-red vee-necked wraparound dress seemed uninteresting and sedate in comparison. At this point, Moira-Selene was merely resigned at the contrast. There was nothing that could be done about it.

She padded in barefeet to her kitchenette where she flicked on the light over the stove and was greeted by the sight of her clean, orderly kitchen as she had left it some hours ago in dim golden light. The orderliness consoled her slightly, and she took a glass from her pantry. She filled it with water from the tap and felt a little better with the first gulp.

“You know, I think warm milk would be better at a time like this. Works good for me.”

Moira-Selene whirled abruptly and jumped at the sight of the silhouette in her doorway. The necklace she wore around her neck began to warm, just enough to add to the enormity of the moment. Her fingers went loose in shock. After a brief moment suspended in air, the glass in her hand fell prey to gravity. The drinking glass shattered in the stainless steel sink. Liquid and shards went flying. One shard nicked her on the arm but she ignored the slight sting. It was quite trivial in comparison.

It had been nearly ten years since she had seen him, but she knew that he was always there, hovering in the air like a wisp of smoke. He had recently appeared in her too-vivid dreams, heralding a shift from the life she had built with her long stint in medical school to one with horrors she thought she’d escaped. She hadn’t wanted to face the fact that her past would come rising up to meet her like a tsunami, but her rational mind told her it would only sweep her away if she denied its existence.

“How did you get in here?” Moira-Selene asked, which was no surprise to him. Miss Practical, down to a fault. It didn’t matter why he was there but more how he got in. Or at least that was what she focused upon to keep her sanity. He hated to think what would happen if she were really robbed…but really for the burglar, because Moira-Selene would try to reason with him before having to maim him. And thanks to training with one of the best martial artists known to man, she could.

Moira-Selene’s late-night visitor stepped into the dim light from the stove, coolly elegant to her practical. His privileged upbringing made him used to the Italian loafers he wore on his feet and the designer clothes in which he was currently clad, but Moira-Selene knew that was only a costume. The guise obscured what had been obvious to her for over ten years: he was not your average rich guy. However, there was nothing quite typical about a man who could call up fire at will, turn himself into an animal, or topple a brick building. In fact, sometimes, to Moira-Selene, Kaneshi Tsukimori—better known as Kane—seemed absolutely terrifying.

She had heard little about him since the Break—what others, outsiders, had nicknamed the disbanding of their tight little group. She knew that he was still at odds with his powerful father and had not spoken to his little sister in several years because of the deep-seated feud that had left one dead and nine others estranged. Well, actually, only seven of them were estranged; Kane and Miyori Arashi had been colleagues for several years due to Kane’s position in Arashi Corp, Father Tsukimori’s financial adversary and the Arashi family business.

The others had not been so lucky—or so open-minded. Three of the group had been Moira-Selene’s own sisters—one of which her twin—and one of them her cousin, and even though she was tied to them by blood, she had seen them sporadically over the past ten years, infrequently enough to have her mother worried. The other three had become close friends but had parted after the violent loss of their fellow member. The mystery and horror of Sakura Tsukimori’s death had broken their bonds, had them questioning their destiny and burying their gifts under layers of denial.

Now the door they had shut in destiny’s face was about to come open, whether they liked it or not.

“I let myself in,” he responded smoothly in a deep voice that was currently the consistency of buttercream. When Moira-Selene opened her mouth to speak, he added, “I could feel your discontent from several miles away, Moira-Selene.”

Moira-Selene crossed her arms over her chest, a little disturbed that her troubled state had been amplified enough for others—particularly him—to feel and that he still had the connection to her despite all these years. “Dammit, you came into my apartment without permission—”

“This is not the time to lecture me,” Kane interrupted her firmly, reminding her at once of his power. “There is something bigger going on, and I’d appreciate if we saved the chastisement for another time, preferably long enough for you to forget it.”

Moira-Selene’s mouth set in an irritated line as she shifted toward him, arms still crossed over her chest. “I don’t appreciate you barging into my apartment at an indecent hour, Kane. You could have called me first.”

“I’m sorry if I couldn’t find your phone number—oh wait,” he said ironically, “you never gave it to me because you were too busy running away.”

Moira-Selene’s eyes flicked toward the nearest clock and decided not to address her behavior during the Break. The gush of shame would be more than she could bear. “Perhaps we could talk about this at a different time, preferably one where the sun is shining.”

“I move best at night, Moira-Selene. Not to mention, I don’t want anyone to know I’ve come to see you at the moment. It would put you in considerably more danger than you are in already.”

As the meaning of this dawned on her, Moira-Selene’s face went blank and her arms dropped to her sides. She was not a mind-reader—she wasn’t the one with those talents but knew of a good one—but she knew without asking that Kane had something grave to tell her. All fatigue burned away and left concern in its place.

“How bad is it?” Moira-Selene wanted to know. When he didn’t say anything, she steeled herself. “Who else have you contacted?”

For the first time since she had discovered him, he looked uneasy. “Just you, so far,” he revealed. He gave her a long look before reaching out with his powers and healing the weeping scratch on her upper arm. The strange sensation of rapid healing had her looking in wonder at her arm even though that she had known such power was possible. When she turned back to him, her eyes were damp.

“So I suppose you expect me to help you bring the others around,” Moira-Selene surmised, her voice thick with emotion. “Well, I can’t help you if I don’t know what we’re up against.”

Kane held out a hand to her wordlessly. In her experience with him, it was when he simply acted and said nothing that he frightened her.

Moira-Selene looked down at his graceful, slender-fingered hand before raising her eyes to his. She could see turmoil swirling in those dark depths and realized that if she didn’t face it, it was only going to grow. With that she grazed his fingertips and kept her gaze locked on his face as the world around her shifted into a dizzying whirl of color, light, and sound.

* * *

Several miles away, in a crowded dance club on the Row, nearly a hundred and fifty of Gracia’s young and nubile piled onto the dance floor and into the bar to connect with one another or enjoy freedom from labor and loneliness. For Daniella Thomas, a foray into the depths of the Blue Rendezvous was anything but leisure. It was part of careful, exacting work that had taken years of training to finesse, and she was more widely known by her co-workers because of it. And in her business, any kind of exposure could make or break you.

With her mane of raven hair stuffed into a red bobbed wig, Danie wove her way through the inebriated, gyrating throng of people, sleek and stone-cold sober. She didn’t care much for most of these people, but she knew they didn’t care that much for her either. She didn’t mind. At the end of the day, she knew that she herself was the only one that mattered really. Everyone else would just leave you alone. Or end up on the wrong side of on a death order.

Tonight, her mark was Nicholas Groaden, the eldest son and heir to the Groaden family fortune. From what Danie knew about him from the dossier she’d received from her employer and the rumors that circulated on the street, he was a smarmy bastard with less-than-reputable intentions. Snobbery covered actions of a devious sort—actions so devious that Nicholas’s father had to settle out of court several times with many traumatized young women and their families just to keep the media at bay. In the view of the public, Nicholas’s nefariousness was up there with the likes of Alex Kelly and Andrew Luster (thanks to Lifetime, Danie figured, which wasn’t entirely a bad thing). He just hadn’t gotten caught yet.

And that was where Danie came in. Delivering Death in her cunning, callous way.

It would seem strange to some that a former beauty queen with a college degree in mathematics would end up working as a contract killer, but for Danie the occupation was a perfect fit. She barely believed in the justice system and its winding checks and balances; she had seen enough heartache from its futility, some of it firsthand and at too young. Her family, with whom she had little contact over the past ten years, knew nothing of her dangerous job, and she wanted it to remain that way. Her mother was a prosecuting attorney, one that set out to put law-breaking people like her in jail, and her twin sister was a doctor, one who tried to preserve life rather than take it. It was a dichotomy that Danie found amusing at times, and at others miserably ironic.

She stopped at the bar, as it was her custom. It gave her a chance to sum up her surroundings, plot out the best method of attack and variables that could send her plans off-track. At the moment, dear, oblivious Nicholas was chatting up a prospect.

Wait. No. Danie frowned a touch, watching the body language of exchange. It seemed…this wasn’t your usual discothèque hook-up. This was business. The bartender wandered over to offer his services, and Danie curtly ordered a soda water. She never drank liquor while fulfilling a contract. It invited trouble that she had skirted deftly over the past several years.

Like clockwork, one of the inebriated masses swaggered over to her bar stool to offer Danie an indecent proposal. He was only moderately good-looking; most of Danie’s ex-boyfriends could boast attractiveness of the gay porn variety. As she had heard many proposals of this sort during her nearly three decades in existence, her reaction was brief and effortless. She merely looked at him with a little bit of heat in her stare without saying a word. After a humming moment, he stumbled off to his friends, perplexed and perspiring. She turned back to watch Nicholas and his companion to find that they were gone.

“Shit,” she cursed under her breath and slapped a ten-dollar bill on top of the bar next to her empty glass.

She slid off of the stool so she could get lost in the crowd again, knowing that they couldn’t have gotten too far. Unfortunately, a firm hand on her arm kept her rooted in place, half on the bar stool. Danie whipped her head around and found a petite girl glaring at her.

“What did you do to him?” she demanded shrilly. She looked mildly intimidated by Danie when she spoke, but loyalty to her friend had spurned her onto this daunting task. After all, Danie was over six feet tall—nearing six-four in her high-heeled boots—and the girl barely cleared her chin, even in her spiked stiletto heels. This was a stand-off of David-vs.-Goliath proportions.

Danie raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. She really didn’t need this distraction at the moment. She resisted the urge to plow her fist in the annoying girl’s face and said with a bit of bemusement, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Like hell you don’t know what I’m talking about,” the girl rushed on, indignation tinting her cheeks pink. “I saw what you did to him. You put some spell on him to make him sick because you didn’t feel like talking to him.” Danie glanced over the girl’s shoulder to find that the guy, now leaning on his friends, was barely conscious. Goddammit, Danie swore silently. This is what I get for using that stupid power. She didn’t really believe that she had any influence on his sudden turn in health, but it was hard not to kick herself for being irresponsible.

“What the hell is this supposed to be, Charmed or something? Believe me, I am not a witch,” Danie assured the girl tightly. I’m something far stranger, Danie thought silently. But she kept that to herself. Aloud she said, gesturing to the girl’s friend, “Besides, if I were, I wouldn’t have to do jack shit to your friend, considering that it seems he has drunken the better part of this club’s alcohol supply within a few hours’ time. I doubt he could pee in a straight line at this point.” With that, Danie rolled her eyes and stalked away, throwing the girl off stride when Danie shook off her grasp. She had much better things to do. Like find Nicholas Groaden.

Okay, maybe not better—but certainly more important.

The girl righted herself and went after Danie. The deejay spun “Maneater” and it shook the walls as Danie wove herself through the crowd. She searched the grinding bodies for Nicholas and his current playmate, angry that the girl who thought she was a witch had taken up so much of her time.

“Where did the hell did he go?” Danie asked herself aloud. Danie wandered around for two minutes before she spotted the back of Nicholas’s blond head heading up to the second floor.

Danie skulked up the stairs that led to the Rendezvous’ second level, which included the private VIP section. Murder trumped Annoyance for the position at the forefront of her mind, and she began her assessment of this scenario. She knew from experience with the club—and others like it—that most of the heavy hitters came in on the weekend nights where attendance was at its peak, and with it being Tuesday they were either at another club or had abandoned the clubbing scene altogether. Therefore Nicholas and his gal pal would have the room all to themselves. A side of Danie’s mouth curled up. Perfect.

The only problem was the bouncer they had on the door.

Danie had limited success with bouncers and members of their ilk; either they shot a perfectly good plan to hell or unwittingly helped it along. After taking a look at the man who was at least six-seven and a solid wall of muscle, Danie decided attempting to elbow past him would be a practice in futility—and would probably garner her some unneeded, unwanted bumps and bruises. Distracting him however…

No way around it, she admitted silently. You gotta pull out that old-fashioned Danie heat.

Mouth set, Danie searched the room for an adequate distraction. Her eyebrows quirked when she spotted her “friend” from downstairs. She listened as the girl, whose name was Lacey, tried to convince her male friends that Danie was a witch and that she was going to put a curse on them. One of them held a shot glass of tequila and attempted to coerce her to drink it. “Here goes nothing,” Danie muttered and concentrated on the liquid.

Even when she was younger and didn’t understand her powers very well, she discovered that the end result was always dangerous. Fire and/or heat in any quantity usually had an unfavorable outcome. Danie found that she as more prone to anger and passion because of her ability. She had learned over the years to remain cool-headed in stressful situations or deal with dire consequences. She started fires, but that didn’t mean she had to like it.

Still, when, after a few beats of intense concentration, the shot glass erupted with a burst of flame as it was passing from hand to hand, Danie couldn’t help feeling a grim sort of glee.

Lacey jumped back with a cry as the glass shattered in the air from the heat. The peculiar event was met with shouts of surprise and horror, and no one bore any injuries. When Lacey began insisting that there were supernatural forces in the club that were going to kill them all, the bouncer drifted over to keep the peace.

That was all she needed. Undetected, Danie slipped into the room and the door slipped silently back into its frame.

Much to Danie’s relief, only Nicholas and his sophisticated companion were in the room. The music still shook the walls slightly which was probably why Danie could have slipped inside without notice, but the noise level was drastically lower. The bar on the far side of the room was unmanned but Nicholas was drinking scotch. The plush furniture was otherwise unoccupied except for the woman lounging in the armchair at the head of the room.

Danie blended into the darkness the blown light bulb in the corner of the room left and crouched behind a couch. She was at a bad angle to see the woman’s face, but her other physical attributes were clear. Her wavy mane was a honeyed strawberry blonde, that kind that women spent hours in a hair salon trying to achieve. Her black cowl-necked ensemble showcased her lush curves to perfection, and diamonds glittered from her throat, ears, and wrists. In Danie’s opinion, that sort of twinkle was better suited for the end of the week.

“How you did find me?” Nicholas asked, snapping Danie from her thoughts. For a brief moment, she thought Nicholas was talking to her, but the woman spoke instead.

The woman uncrossed her shapely legs. “It’s simple really, dear Nicholas. You have the tendency to want to drown out the weight of your transgressions with large quantities of liquor and brainless women, and what better place to indulge yourself than among people who don’t know who you really are?”

Nicholas chuckled sardonically as he mentally sent a gust of air into his drink to slosh the ice cubes around in the brown liquid. Danie frowned. This particular piece of information had not been in his dossier… “Oh darling. You know me so well.”

“And it’s a wonder I can stand you at all, knowing you so well,” the woman remarked dryly. “Especially once I realized you had probably bungled your little assignment.”

The glass froze halfway to Nicholas’s mouth and his gray eyes went to smoke. “What do you mean? I did what you told me to. How could I have bungled it?”

Nicholas cursed violently when his free hand moved without his control. Danie, not quite understanding what she saw, could only watch in an enraptured state. It pulled back his collar to reveal four scratches along his sternum. Danie guessed from the tortured look in his eyes that something other than the four thin tears of his pale skin was supposed to be there.

“The necklace, Nicholas,” the woman pressed harshly. “I have this feeling you have misplaced it. And someone helped you along.” She rose to her feet housed in killer red heels. The hand that clutched one side of the silk shirt was trembling, and Danie’s eyes widened as she could almost scent the impending death in the air. She dimly felt disappointed that this woman was going to cause her to default on a contract, but she wondered about what they were talking…

“I probably lost it in the car,” Nicholas supposed shakily. “The clasp was loose and—”

The woman tilted her head and shook her head at him as if he were a naughty child. Honestly, he could be no more than that sometimes. “Nicholas, really. Don’t speak to me as if I am a simpleton.” She gestured to his chest. “You didn’t get those while fucking one of your asinine sex partners.” She sighed like a parent about to deliver a reluctant punishment. “It’s a shame that I have to do this. But you’re nothing but a liability to me now.”

Nicholas shook his head sadly. He knew what was coming next. “You don’t have to do this. I can make things right. I—”

Danie’s mouth fell open in astonishment as Nicholas’s sentence died in a choked-off grunt. She could hear him struggling to breathe and pounding his chest. His face was red, his gray eyes bulging. Danie, despite the fact that she was ordered to kill him, had to close her eyes as he collapsed to the ground flailing against whatever force that was taking his life.

She couldn’t help the relief she felt when Nicholas finally stopped moving but the relative silence in the room was deafening. Danie shifted so that she was back to back with the couch. Her mind was racing with a myriad of questions. Nicholas was gifted? Well, ain’t that a bitch. Did they take that into account when they marked him for death? If so, why didn’t they tell me that? Whoever “they” are, she added silently. And who is this woman? What did she make him do that required discretion?

Danie felt the woman behind her an instant before pain bloomed at the back of her skull. Face tilted up to the sky, Danie saw a quick flash of the woman’s face before she lost her hold on consciousness. It would take a long time for the image to clear enough in her brain for her to recognize the woman. A shame, really.

* * *

The scenery had stopped whirling to reveal their destination: Esperanza Park. Moira-Selene felt a chilly breeze from the north and expected to shiver in her nightclothes that didn’t quite soak up the gritty sheen of sweat on her skin. When she didn’t, she looked down to discover she was now wearing a black blouse and slacks.

“You would have been more conspicuous in your bed clothes,” Kane said in way of explanation as he appeared beside her. “This wouldn’t be a good time for us to be sticking out in a crowd.”

Moira-Selene gazed at him with her eyebrows arched, taking in his black pants with a smoke gray shirt underneath a black henley. In it, he appeared stylish and masculine, and his long mane of black hair pulled back from his face heightened his unusual appearance. “I don’t think we have to worry about me being a distraction here.”

Kane shook his head in slight amusement before gesturing to the scene before them. Moira-Selene followed his hand with her eyes and felt her breath catch. It was not a mere scene—it was a crime scene.

Crime scene tape was wound around trees to outline a space a few yards wide. Wide-eyed, inquisitive onlookers tried to peer around the barricades and the crime scene technicians to glean some information about the sight before them. Moira-Selene could hear the crackling of one of the radios of one of the three cruisers that surrounded the perimeter of the area. As she stepped closer to the crime scene tape, she was assaulted by a flare of blinding pain and fear.

Oh God—somebody help—!

“Dammit—” Kane stepped up to catch Moira-Selene under her arms as her legs buckled out from underneath her. He gripped her as she trembled with the sensory onslaught that no one could feel but her. He kicked himself for forgetting that Moira-Selene could sense whatever had happened at this spot. It was entirely possible that she had not used her gift in several years to try to flee from what had happened nearly a decade ago.

“Oh…oh God…Kane…” she managed. “Someone…she…” She started shivering violently. “She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even breathe. Just like in my dream.” Taking in a deep breath and trying to steel herself, she turned to him. “Why did I dream about this?” When he didn’t speak fast enough, she disentangled herself from him and ventured right into the heart of the scene so she could find some answers on her own.

Kane scrambled up after her and felt a slight twinge of whatever had brought Moira-Selene to her knees. A dead woman’s voice screamed in his head, but he pushed it into a dark corner. That wasn’t to say that he would forget; he was not the forgetting type. He kept moving, even when a crime scene tech protested his breaching of the perimeter.

Moira-Selene had frozen over the prone form of a petite blonde whose blue eyes still stared sightlessly up at the starry sky above them. Kane stopped beside her and took in her expression of sorrow. He knew the look in her eyes, the sight of a loss of someone you knew. It seemed Moira-Selene was not the forgetting type either.

The primary on scene spied Moira-Selene and Kane standing over the victim and broke away from the uniformed officer to whom he had been speaking. He walked over briskly, intending to admonish them for being on his crime scene, but when he caught the grief-stricken look on Moira-Selene’s pale visage, he paused and reevaluated.

“Excuse me,” he said to Moira-Selene. She didn’t look up. “Did you know this woman?”

Moira-Selene didn’t speak. She knelt slowly next to the body. She firmed her lips to keep them from trembling and focused on the twinkle from underneath the woman’s collar. She could not explain why she was drawn to finding out what the fabric hid from her view; some unknown voice spurred her on to the movement as if the discovery would have some meaning…

Frowning, the police detective watched Moira-Selene in silent disbelief. Moira-Selene reached out gingerly and folded the collar away from the woman’s sternum.

Later Kane would tell himself that he merely felt the jolt due to his connection with Moira-Selene at the time. But the truth was, he knew at what they were looking before Moira-Selene did. And that so-called jolt had come from him.

Moira-Selene pulled the woman’s collar back and revealed a charm hanging from a silver chain with a broken clasp. The charm, fashioned in the shape of the Japanese character for the number nine, was adorned with stones; the stones on the curve of the character were amethysts. Moira-Selene moved her fingertips closer to it.

The flashes came at once. A girl’s laughter. The whoosh and ting of a sword slicing the air and hitting another sword. The smell of fresh watercolors and turpentine. The comfort of a loving sibling. Lethargy from a strong dose of medication. Then a lance of fear and helplessness. And lastly, pain. Fierce, buckling pain, tinged with confusion, hurt, and betrayal.

“Whoa.” The detective steadied Moira-Selene as she swayed and nearly tipped backwards. He helped her to her feet and turned her away from the body. “What happened to you?”

“How did she get that?” Moira-Selene found herself asking idly. It was like she didn’t hear the detective’s question or even acknowledge he was there. “That…charm doesn’t belong to her.” For confirmation, Moira-Selene turned and looked at Kane who was still standing. Judging by the anguish in his eyes, she knew to whom the necklace actually belonged. And Moira-Selene’s idle question had been an apt one.

“So who does it belong to?” the detective asked.

Stepping forward, Kane responded in an even tone that had Moira-Selene baffled. “To be honest, we are not completely sure who the exact recipient is, Detective—”

“O’Lara,” the detective supplied, looking skeptical. “Mick O’Lara.”

“O’Lara,” Kane finished smoothly, “but we know she is not the one. This was…” He met Moira-Selene’s gaze briefly. “The necklace was specially made for a specific group of people, rather small.”

Mick’s eyebrows arched at the information this guy he had never met before was supplying him. The detective in him became quite dubious, wondering how he was related to his new case. “And you would know because…?”

Moira-Selene placed her hand on Kane’s arm before he could speak. She spoke instead. “Perhaps, Detective, we could talk about this at a later time. I don’t want us to impede you from getting her where she…can be looked after appropriately.”

“And how do I know this isn’t just a load of flaming bullshit”—Moira-Selene tilted her head slightly at the phrase but he didn’t apologize—“and you won’t end up sipping mai tais on some remote island if I let you go right this moment, Miss…?”

“Eleanor,” Moira-Selene revealed firmly, prompting a raised eyebrow from Kane at the use of her middle name. “Eleanor Marshall.”

“All right, Ms. Marshall,” Mick began, “how can I take you at your word?”

Moira-Selene peered down at the corpse of an old friend while she reached under her own collar. When she revealed a necklace identical to the one at which they had been looking except for the presence of sapphires in place of the amethysts, Kane had to bite his tongue to keep from swearing aloud. Mick’s mouth parted a touch but he said nothing as Moira-Selene’s necklace fell into his open palm. Using both of her hands, she closed his fingers over it. When she did, something appeared in her mind.

“We will meet again, Detective O’Lara, and when we do, I’d advise you not to offer me anything,” Moira-Selene told him with a certainty that was almost alarming. “It wouldn’t bode well for your new white shirt.”

Mick looked at her with doubt. “I haven’t got a new white shirt.”

Moira-Selene didn’t even blink. “Yet.”

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