“Ignore her, Jericho,” said Jessie, as she nudged herself up into a sitting position. “She thinks she’s being funny.”

That seemed to spark some real annoyance in Annie because she turned to Jessie. “For your information, I was always the funny one. You’re just mad because you didn’t make your move fast enough.”

Jessie snorted. The distraction had given me a moment to get my equilibrium. I figured there was a simple enough way to bring the whole game to an end. I reached out and grabbed Annie’s ass. It was surprisingly firm. Instead of the response I expected, which was a dirty look or maybe a slap, Annie beamed at me over her shoulder.

“That’s the spirit,” she said.

I think my mouth just sort of dropped open as I realized that maybe she was being serious. Jessie seemed to come to the same conclusion because she got a deadly serious look on her face.

“Annie, no. He’s got enough troubles. Last thing he needs is to be saddled with our family.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Annie. “Jericho said I should take you away from here before whoever left you in that state arrives. Do you want to go?”

Jessie shot a look at me. “Carter is coming here?”

“That’s what Gran says,” I answered around the side of Annie’s head as she leaned back against me.

“He’s very warm,” said Annie to Jessie.

Jessie shot Annie a look. “Less focus on your libido, more on the force of destruction heading this way.”

“I can multitask just fine,” said Annie, and followed it up with a little shimmy against me that made it difficult to be wearing pants.

“Jericho can’t,” observed Jessie.

“He might as well start learning now.”

Jessie looked at me. “She’ll stop if you ask her to.”

Annie laughed. “He doesn’t really want me to, you know.”

The blood racing away from my brain, along with all the hormones cascading through me, seemed to agree with Annie. I reminded myself that it wasn’t real. Whatever Annie’s agenda, it almost certainly had nothing to do with me. She was playing with me for her own amusement, the way a cat might play with an unfortunate bug, and maybe to irritate Jessie, but it wasn’t real. On the other hand, whatever her reason, it felt good. I didn’t owe it to anyone to tell her to stop. I wasn’t in a relationship. I didn’t have enough free time for a relationship. If Annie wanted to use me to prove some kind of point, what harm was there in enjoying it for a little while? I flashed on the overwhelming presence and power of Pierce Carter. Then, remembered the sickening thud when Jessie had hit the concrete after Carter threw her out of the hotel. I closed my eyes, took a steadying breath, and did something my glands might never forgive me for.

“Annie,” I said.

“Yes dear,” she cooed at me, doing another little shimmy that sent all kinds of delightful signals through my nervous system.

“Please stop.”

Annie and Jessie twitched in unison. Jessie looked at me in stunned shock. Annie whirled around and, if I hadn’t known better, I’d have said she looked a little hurt.

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“What?” Annie asked.

“Jessie’s right. We need to focus on Carter because he is one scary, powerful bastard. If we don’t prepare, he’s going to kill us all.”

Annie’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not scared just because he got in a lucky shot against Jessie.”

“He didn’t get in a lucky shot,” said Jessie, her voice a little shaky. “He beat me, Annie. He just flat-out beat me. I’m the one who got lucky.”

Annie didn’t look at Jessie, but I could see the words had shaken the healer. She stared past me for a moment, like she was looking for something on the horizon, and she offered the distant sight a pensive frown. She shook her head.

“I need to go make a call. I’ve been away too much recently.”

“I’m pretty sure they’ll get by fine without you for a few days,” said Jessie, content to leave me out of the loop.

Annie walked over to the door and looked back at me. “Once this Carter business is over, I want my ring.”

Annie walked out of the room. I looked over at Jessie, who was staring after her sister with a perplexed look.

“I thought she was just screwing with me,” I said.

Jessie gave a little snort. “Me too. Hell, maybe she still is. Annie never did know when a joke was played out.”

“Great.”

Jessie pressed a hand to one temple and grimaced. “I’ll be lucky if this headache ever goes away.”

“That from the healing?” I asked in genuine curiosity.

I’d been so banged up after my run-in with the Raven’s Council, I’d been shocked anytime something didn’t hurt. There’d been no way to distinguish why any particular body part hurt. Jessie shook her head and gave me a pained expression.

“Man, they really did hamstring your education, didn’t they?”

I might have said something, but she waved me off before I could formulate a sentence.

She rubbed at her temple a little harder while she spoke. “Whatever I did there at the end was spectacularly stupid, magically speaking. At least based on how much my head hurts.”

I wasn’t sure where to start, so I started with the obvious. “You don’t remember?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember much after the lobby. I have dim recollections of an elevator and trading mystical drop kicks in a hallway. That is one spectacularly powerful dude, by the way. After that, though, there’s nothing until I woke up here. Why? What happened?”

I shook my head and tried to think of a good way to explain something I’d have thought was impossible. “Well, whatever the two of you were doing damn near brought the building down. Blew out all the windows, cracked concrete in at least three buildings.”

“I’d be a little proud of that if I hadn’t been getting my ass kicked so badly. What happened then?”

“Well, he either threw you out a fifteenth-story window or you jumped.”

Jessie jerked at that. “What?”

“Yeah, that was my response too. You were still flinging fire and death at the window. Then, you did,” I didn’t think there was a word in the language to explain it. “I don’t know what you did. You bent reality somehow, slowed your fall enough that it didn’t kill you.”

Jessie was quiet for a long time before she spoke in an eerily neutral voice. “I bent reality.”

“It’s the only way I can think to explain it. The world didn’t seem to appreciate it very much. Made me sick to my stomach to even be near whatever you did.” I shuddered a little at the memory. “Felt like my internal organs wanted to be on the outside.”

“God, no wonder I feel I’ve been doing shots with Sven again.”

“Why? I don’t understand.”

“We can get away with bending a lot of the rules of nature and physics, but the critical term there is bend. The less natural an act, the bigger the strain on reality and the bigger the backlash. Suspending freefall that much is about as unnatural as it gets. I’m lucky it didn’t kill me.”

“There’s a cheerful thought.”

“No kidding. Idle curiosity, how did we get away?”

I gave her a half-shrug. “I erased us from existence. Well, if was only for a day or two.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I cast a spell that erased us from the world. No memory of our passing, deleted us from electronic surveillance, databases, and whatnot, at least while the magic lasted.”

“All that, for a full day?”

I shrugged, “Or two. I was in a bit of a hurry at the time.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “And how did you feel after?”

“The same as I did before. Maybe a little tired, but stress does that too.”

“No headaches?”

“No. Why?”

“No nosebleeds or seizures?”

“No,” I said, exasperated. “Why?”

“How far did this magic reach?”

“How far? Well, everywhere we went, and anyone we interacted with while we did it. Is this coming to a point?”

“Yes, Jericho, it is coming to a point. You should be dead.”

It was my turn to be quiet for a long moment before I said, “Say what?”