“I—” She looked at him in surprise. “That is kind of you, St. Croix.”
“I’m healing and vulnerable. It probably won’t happen often.”
Taylor laughed, and Nicholas bore the pang against his heart, the longing for the laugh he most wanted to hear. God, he missed Ash.
“Any third theories?” Anything to get him back to Earth more quickly.
“Two more, and both of them a bit more mental than physical.” When he frowned at her, she said, “It matters, you know—the way a person perceives himself. Like, I’ve heard there were some novices who literally fell apart when they tried to shape-shift, because they couldn’t hold an image of themselves in their mind. Then there’s someone like Drifter, who can barely hold any shape other than his own, because his image of himself is so fixed. The funny thing about Drifter, though, is that last year, he had his leg bitten off by a dragon. Gulp! and everything from the thigh down was gone. That should have taken him a month to regenerate. He was walking around in two weeks.”
Nicholas had to laugh. “So you think I’m not sure of myself? That I don’t know myself? I should introduce you to my therapist.” A thought occurred to him. “Where, by the way, you might find Khavi.”
“But she’d know we were coming and skip her appointment that day.”
“That’s . . .” Nicholas trailed off, frowning. He didn’t know what to call it. Difficult didn’t seem to cover it.
Taylor nodded, as if reading his expression. “Now try a year of that.”
“I will be, apparently.”
“Yeah.” Taylor abruptly sobered, and looked out over the city. “Which brings me to the fourth and final theory: You don’t give a shit about being a Guardian.”
“I don’t give a shit about a lot of things.”
“I know. You don’t let anything get in your way when you want something. Death almost put a big fucking obstacle in there, but it just so happened that the one thing in the world you care about needed saving, and so you got another chance. You lucked out.”
Nicholas had nothing to say. He couldn’t argue that.
“I know you have Ash. That’s a pretty damn good reason to want to come back, to want to live. But it has nothing to do with being a Guardian. And I know what it’s like not to want the transformation, but taking it anyway, because someone’s counting on you, or you just don’t want to die. Those are all good reasons for saying yes to the transformation. But to keep going? It’s not enough. Take it from someone who has a Godknows-how-many-thousand-year-old guy hanging out in her head—it’s simply not enough to serve as a Guardian just so that you can do something else, so that you can keep hanging in there until the world falls into the sun. You have to make being a Guardian serve you.”
Like his money had always served him, giving him the ability to keep pursuing his revenge. He didn’t have that now. The money, yes, but no Madelyn to keep hunting down—and no amount of money in the world would make him heal faster.
But he’d never been afraid to ask for help when he needed it. “How? What do I have to find?”
“We all have something. We all have some reason that being a Guardian matters. The woman who’s leading us right now, Irena, she pretty much lives to smash demon heads in. Rosalia cares about everyone, so as a Guardian, she can help everyone in ways they can’t help themselves. Jake likes to fly around and blow shit up, but he’s also making certain that nothing like a demon can ever touch his family, or anyone else’s family.”
Nicholas had that. He had his parents, and Rachel, and the Boyles. Newer, and different than his need for revenge—the determination to see it never happen again. To anyone.
“I have something,” he said.
“Good. Then cultivate the hell out of it. Make it matter.”
Strange. For two weeks, he’d only been thinking about Ash. About getting back to her. But now, realizing what he’d be able to do, the demons he’d be able to stop . . . God. And his eyes were stinging again.
“St. Croix?”
Make it matter. “I think it already does,” he said.
Taylor had been right about the colors, but she hadn’t mentioned the sounds. Within a few seconds after she teleported him to his grandfather’s cabin, Nicholas was on his knees with his eyes closed, covering his ears, certain that he was on the verge of vomiting a rainbow. He could hear the snow melting beneath his knees. He’d begged for her to leave him alone, and she had.
Jesus. So certain that he’d be able to go straight from Caelum to Ash, to a warehouse in the middle of a city. Now he was glad Taylor had suggested a test run at the isolated cabin, instead.
At the end of the week, when he could walk outside without flinching when a twig snapped under the weight of an icicle, he thought taking that trip might be possible. All of his lingering scars and new pink skin looked like his own; his left hand was strong and finally the same size as his right.
But rather than using the satellite phone Taylor had left for him and telling her to come, he began chopping wood, instead. Later, she brought in a load of books for him to read, but didn’t mention going to San Francisco. He let her leave without mentioning it, too.
He didn’t know what the hell he was thinking. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. But despite the ache that was a constant companion, the desperate desire to see Ash, he wasn’t ready yet.
And he didn’t even know what he was getting ready for.
Another week passed, and Nicholas felt he was finally getting there—wherever there was. He’d read through all of the books on birds and flight, and started on his grandfather’s collection—the collection that Ash had read through in her week here, though he preferred to read reclining on the bed rather than the stiff rocking chair. He wished she’d left notes in the margins. What had she felt and thought, reading these? Probably nothing like she’d feel and think now. She’d changed so quickly that week, but so had he, and—
The forest had quieted.
Nicholas sat up in the bed. The twittering and chirping of the returning springtime birds had become easily ignored background noise in the past few weeks, but the sudden hush seemed as loud as an alarm. He grabbed his shotgun—he still hadn’t figured out his cache yet—and waited at the door, listening.
Nothing unusual.
Except . . . he tilted his head, focused on the odd, rhythmic sound coming from above him. Almost a gallop, but muffled. Almost like his own heartbeat.
Someone was on the roof.
His heart pounding now, too, he edged backward out of the door, backed away from the porch. The height and pitch of the A-frame made it difficult to get an immediate look at the top. When he did, his heart stopped.
Ash.
Leathery wings spread wide, she perched on the ridge, crouching like a gargoyle. Horns curled away from her forehead; crimson scales covered her body. She gripped the forward projecting edge of the roof with a taloned claw.
Her eyes began to glow. “Hello, Nicholas. You look well.”
He hadn’t been well. Not until this moment. “You look beautiful.”
Fangs glinted in her smile, and his heart tightened, a painfully sweet ache. God, how he’d missed her.
“I thought I’d try to scare you,” she said. “The birds gave me away. It makes me wish that I liked to eat chicken.”
“You probably scared them.”
“But not you.” She rose and stepped off the roof. Her wings caught the air, and she glided to Nicholas, landing easily just in front of him. The glowing crimson faded to human blue. Scales slid back into tattoos and a tan; her horns vanished. Jeans and her hoodie formed over naked skin. “I’ve missed you. But is it too early yet?”
He knew exactly what she meant, but still didn’t know how to answer it. So he gave her what he had to give. “I missed you, too. So damn much.”
The joy in her smile slipped into him, through him. “It took me two years just to remember part of my name, Nicholas. If you need me to go, I can—”
“No.” He’d missed her, he’d wanted her in his arms and to see her smile, but he hadn’t known how much he needed to see her. And now that she was here—“I need you to stay.”