I was in good shape, but it would be a medical nightmare if I lasted in fine form that entire time. Doctors frequently gave warnings about 'seeking help for erections lasting more than whatever hours'. Never mind the stamina of races outside of human. Mentally, the three hours were enjoyable. Far more than they should have been.

Candy gave me twelve whole minutes to recuperate in the middle of things. I know it was twelve minutes because there was a dashboard display blinking the time. She didn't take a break or stop and kept other parts of me busy. By that point, I was in no mood to argue with anything happening. I was probably drooling on myself in happiness.

Three other tidbits of information were true. One, she certainly wasn't the type to remain silent while riding. Two, she got her wish about me calling out her name, more than once. Three, fuck is a great word, far better than horse shit.

The three-hour mark hit and she collapsed forward with a satisfied smile. It was amazing, but she managed to time it right on the dot. Worn out didn't even begin to describe me. Even if I did heal as fast as Stacy thought, this was a different level of work. Maybe the whole dating thing was worth looking into again.

Though maybe not in a car on the side of a freeway. How we'd avoided law enforcement knocking on the window was beyond me. Being in the early hours of the morning just before any sort of rush hour probably helped.

"How many more hours would it take to tell me which one is your real addiction," I said.

She laughed. It was an excited and exhausted sound. I could tell part of her was absolutely wired while her body celebrated a flood of endorphins.

"You'll find out sooner or later." Candy sat up and smiled into the distance.

"I don't think I'd argue with more rounds later," I said.

"We'll see." Candy stretched and it was still fairly attractive. Fortunately, the spirit was willing but the flesh was tired.

"No, then?" I asked.

"Not right now. I'm good." She glanced down at the leftovers of our act in the car. There was a mess of sweat and other fluids.

"Hell," I said.

She reached behind the seat and pulled out some effective looking wipes and a hand towel.

"Prepared for it all." An eyebrow raised with my words.

"You bet." She said. I was thankful vampires were so diligent about communicable diseases. That meant the only worry was pregnancy, and that didn't happen between races. Candy was still grinning as she cleaned up. The remains were tucked into a little bag and she put her clothes back on. Her hair was short enough that it looked wonderful in its disheveled mess.

The only repercussions for our act would be if Kahina cared or not. Of course, the partial vampire had implied she was aware of my other excursions when I was traveling. Screw it, a statute had to apply somehow after four years. Guilt be damned.

"How about that Lord thing? Would I have to endure more of that for an explanation?" My excitement put me in a stupid frame of mind.

She paused and that serious face came back. The one that swung a complete one-eighty from where we had just been. Were all the women around me bipolar? Or did I just have a knack for saying the wrong things?

"The more people who know what you are, the worse it will be for everyone. If you don't know, you can't tell anyone. I will not be the one to try and change history again." She sounded sad.

"What does that mean?"

Candy kept the look plastered across her face and started the car up. I hadn't gotten my pants back up by the time she swung back onto the freeway. At least a few cars going the other direction got a good eyeful of my privates. Not how I wanted to leave an impression.

"Candy?" I tried her name. "Candy?" My mouth opened to ask a third time.

"Keep it shut or you'll never be able to ask me for anything in the future." She said.

That shut me up.

"Even if I enjoyed it." Candy gave a slightly warmer smile. There was something about those eyes that said she was still being serious.

For the rest of the trip, I didn't say anything. At this point, it seemed to be the wisest choice made all day. An hour later, well past the first rays of dawn, we met with the gaudy sign for Caesars Junction.

"I can't believe you know where this is," I said.

"You'd be surprised. I get around." Candy responded. I tried not to think of more than one meaning for that. Something about my pause must have set her off. "If a man sleeps with a ton of women, they call him a stud, but if a woman does it, she's a slut, right?"

"That's a question, and there's a price for that." I tried for a joke in response. It was either that or give her the locks and keys speech. A key that opens multiple locks is a good key, but a lock that opens for any key isn't a very good lock. The fact that I managed not to say anything should count in my favor.

"Cute." She didn't seem amused.

I sighed.

"Well, I don't know you well enough to call you a slut, and if it was just a physical thing, then believe it or not I get it."

"Sure. You're a guy after all." She waved my comment off.

"I should probably warn you that my Ex is rather possessive," I said. This ‘guy’ hadn't been with more than a dozen women in his life.

"How possessive?" Candy asked with a half smile. She seemed almost excited at the prospect.

"Well, she's a partial vampire," I answered.

"Hasn't completed the change?"

"No."

"Then you may have as many opportunities as you want in the future. Opportunities to ask me for all sorts of things." The way she tossed it out there so casually sent a chill down the back of my spine. If Kahina didn't make it then there would be no issues with jealousy. What a frightening thought.

"I guess," I said.

"Which way from here?" She asked. We had made a deal for her to talk to Evan first.

I fumbled around in my jacket that had been disrobed in the shuffle and found the lipstick tube. Inside was the hair from Evan’s head. Candy seemed to watch intently as I closed my eyes for a moment and connected.

"Woods are west from here. Then once we're inside the local pack should find us." I hoped someone would be roaming around to find me. Stacy and Julianne wouldn’t just let me wander around without some help, right?

"Sounds like a plan." She turned the car west and headed for the woods at the edge of town.

"Not sure how far north he is. I had some problems tracking last time." I said.

"What sort of problems?" Candy asked.

"Not sure. Thought I was getting closer, then he seemed to slip away."

"Really? That's interesting."

"It's frustrating." I had wasted days trying to catch up to Evan.

"I thought I took care of all those frustrations." Somehow everything I said turned into some innuendo with Candy. She had certainly reduced my frustration level. I felt great, but even more tired than I did after leaving Kahina’s. Was that just last night? Had I slept since then? My internal clock was all kinds of messed up.

Candy found us a place to park the car. We got out and she put the car alarm back on.

"Hold on." She took off both shoes and set them on the ground. Then stepped up to the side of the woods.

"What are you doing?" I raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure you want to ask that?"

"Don't I have some left over positive karma? I thought I did a pretty good job there." Better than that other elf at least. That should score me some points.

"You'll owe me.” Candy laughed. “It's simple enough. I'm just following the traditions. These aren't my woods, but it belonged to someone once. They're weak, but there are signs if you know how to look."

I scanned the area trying to figure out what signs she was talking about. Nothing showed itself to my untrained eyes. Maybe it wasn't an issue of being trained or not. Elves could see things that the rest of us only guessed at. It was almost like trying to see in infrared without the aid of technology.

Candy stood up and didn't put her shoes back on. She showed no signs of discomfort. If anything the elf looked excited by the prospect of going to play in the woods. My shoes stayed firmly where they belonged.

"I think there's a place to drive up somewhere around here. Like an old logger's path of some sort." I remembered the path from the last trip.

She looked disgusted but nodded. "They'd be for trade supplies too."

"What?" I asked.

"If this is an older colony, then the same path would have been used for horses and carts to bring in trade goods from other clans." She was talking about some old practice that didn't make any sense to me. It was likely something tied to hundreds of years ago when we first migrated over to the Western sector.

"Not sure where it comes out. I was tied up last time." I shrugged.

"I didn't know you enjoyed that sort of thing." It was her turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Electricity running through me is a big turn on too." Being tied up was alright in limited amounts. Typically when I was blissfully drunk after a job and Kahina was dragging me back for some victory sex. She had joked that it kept me from getting lost on the way home. I had never been sure if Kahina meant the being tied up, or the idea of victory sex.

"I'll keep that in mind." Great. I had given her fuel for some crazy daydream.

"Any idea where this path is? I think he's on the other side." I said.

"I'll look. It'll be easier on us if you wait here a bit." Candy wagged a finger at me and then turned around.

"I.." Then she ran off into the woods. "...uhh...sure." Not that I had a clue if she heard me or not. "I'll just stand here and guard the car then."

The car was locked with its alarm already turned on. Candy didn't even do me the courtesy of leaving the keys so I could crawl into the back seat and sleep. The dirt on the side of the road was tempting, though. I settled myself down near one of the trees, careful not to touch her car. Setting off the security system would do nothing but annoy the daylights out of me.

I fiddled with the lipstick container and tried to figure it out. There was no room for secret compartments or hidden messages. This wasn’t anything rare or special. It was important to Evan somehow or the item would never function as a link. Then there was the hair and picture.

Why had Evan been allowed to provide a lipstick tube and a picture? These items were personal which meant Evan had nothing else to let go, or he had hoped that Julianne had a true tracker. Trackers were rare, how had he known? I had been gone for years.

This Lord thing felt familiar too. The more I tried to puzzle it out the more my wrist itched. Each attempt at concentrating felt like being on the verge of a revelation. Then fluttering birds or bugs would distract me and I would forget the whole line of thinking.

History was clear on one point. There had been other races nearly two thousand years ago. They were long gone. The big four races had banded together and engaged in a worldwide Purge. Genocide. Here I was. Not fitting into any specific box.

Vampires, even partially exposed ones, got groggy during the day. Not me. I healed quickly. Elves didn't heal any faster than a normal human. Wolves shared some bonds but couldn't track aside from following scents. Daniel had said the Sector Trackers would all use dreams.

Once again, I didn't fit.

Constant confusion was getting exhausting. The last two days had worn me down from nearly every angle. Before I really understood what was happening my eyes closed and stopped opening back up. The silence prevented circling thoughts from going any further.

Waking up was almost gentle compared to the last few times. There was a tap at my shoulder and someone kept saying my name lightly.

"Jay. Wake up." I must have snorted or something in response. "Jay."

It was bright outside, closer to noon. The person waking me up wasn't Candy, it was Julianne. She leaned over in a rather frightening reversal of our normal height differences. At least she wasn't wearing something low cut this time. It was a light green shirt over tan rolled up shorts.

"Hi." I was confused. "You're not an elf," I said. Probably not the best choice of words to start our conversation with.

"What does that mean?" She asked. Julianne backed off to let me stand up. A yawn and a stretch later things felt a lot better. Still tired, but not as sore as I had been.

"Candy was here a moment ago." I looked around slowly trying to figure out what had happened.

"Why was she here?" Julianne held a motorcycle helmet in one hand. Her arms crossed as she glared at me.

"She gave me a ride." I wasn’t about to mention the return ride.

"Uh huh. What about Kahina?"

"Kahina kind of kicked me out." I scratched my head.

"Uh huh. Kahina kicked you out, you ran to Candy, and now she's," The way she said it made me feel like I was in trouble already. Maybe it was a guilty conscious. "here for what reason?"

"Part of the deal. She gives me a ride north and keeps quiet about it, then she meets Evan." I tried not to wince.

Julianne stared at me then sighed. "Why were you sleeping?"

"Tired." Worn. No clue what to do. Three fights in the last two days. A nagging sensation of forgetting important facts.

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Julianne shook her head back and forth slowly then sighed. "You're a moron."

"Can we find Evan and clear this up?" I couldn't argue with her. My idiocy with regards to females was quickly becoming the stuff of legend. Dealing with women wasn’t some magic skill that got easier as time went on. Not for me.

"Fine by me, the weed eater completely buttoned up after you were out of sight," Julianne said.

"Weird." I responded. Evan had been perfectly fine talking to others, hadn’t he?

"You're telling me, he's got some sort of fixation on helping you, but anyone else isn't worth notice." She shot me a questioning look. My hands came up in defense.

"No clue." I said.

"This is tied to that Lord shit you were babbling about back at my house?" Julianne asked.

I didn't answer. Julianne was tapping her foot in irritation. Her facial expression seemed to indicate she was seconds away from hitting me repeatedly with her helmet.

"Not going to tell me?" She said.

"No." Given my way no one would hear that title applied to me ever again.

"This better be a once off sort of thing, Jay, or I may have to fire you."

I groaned in response. It was hard to tell if it was a joke or not with Julianne. "What will I do with my stuff?"

"Move. You'll be lucky if you get the deposit back." She waved the helmet around. Sometimes I forgot Julianne was also technically my landlord. A brief memory of the weight bench melding into the kitchen counter told me that I would be lucky if I wasn't charged for reconstruction. It was yet another thing to thank Kahina for.

"So, do you want to wait for Candy?" Julianne’s tone of voice told me what I should answer.

"I could check, see if she's lost."

"You got something of hers?"

"A car?" A few love bites, hours of memories. Never tried that before but maybe it'd work. Never tried a lot of stuff that seemed to be working anyway, maybe it was time to expand my tricks. Of course, the car had an alarm so maybe I'd just pretend to touch it.

"You could just leave her a note and head off."

"No, I made a deal," I said.

"Like that's stopped you from breaking promises in the past."

I looked at her and tried to figure out what the hell that meant. Was this about the jobs I didn't quite complete right? Sometimes I failed in the past, but I hadn't deliberately screwed anything up since my return.

"Never mind, do your thing and let’s go." She looked mad but turned away to a motorcycle I hadn't seen. I hope she didn't expect us both to fit on that.

With one hand carefully placed just above the car, I tried to switch my mind around to tracking Candy. I flipped through everything I knew about her. Her as a person. In addition to our conversations which constantly seemed to be about two different topics. In addition, she had a little birthmark on her lower left back. My senses unfurled and almost leapt towards the woods.

It was easy to think of her as mine, however briefly, after this morning. Possessiveness was almost a given for any guy right after sex.

Trees went by, they almost vibrated with the after image of life energy. Why the hell had she gone so far into the woods? This was like twenty miles. How long had I been asleep? How fast could she go in the forest? My mind swung over the woods and got closer. Then closer. I could see her body dashing at a breakneck speed through the trees.

One moment it would look like she slipped then her foot would slam down and launch her even further. She found purchase that I could never hope to in the dense wilderness. I followed, but she kept running. Her gaze would look backward every so often then focus on the journey.

The entire time she was headed away.

Around me, the same pressure that had been present when I was viewing Candy in her bedroom seemed to suffuse the area. It made it hard to catch up. Traveling along in her wake felt like swimming through syrup. Even seeing her face was difficult.

She stopped, spun and slashed at the air as if attacking an unseen foe. There was no one following her that I knew of. Really the only person other than wilderness was me.

"No!" Candy yelled, there was more, but that was all I made out in the jumble of tactile sensation. A moment later my concentration shattered and I slumped forward. It felt like I was suddenly forced to switch my focus to an object less than two inches away from my face. Dull thumping started in both ears.

I fell right onto the car which naturally triggered the alarm. It only served to make the headache worse as my mind retreated into the rest of my body. The noise bounced off of every solid object in the area, causing my back to twitch with irritation. My palm pressed into an eyeball to try and relieve pressure. Julianne was yelling behind me.

"What?!" I tried to yell past a headache and car alarm that ganged up to attack me.

Julianne said something again.

"What?!"

"What the hell did you do?" She was a lot closer, with a helmet in her hands.

"I don't know." I don't think she heard my response over the alarm. Julianne pulled at an arm and I followed the tug.

She got us situated awkwardly on her motorcycle. I limply hung on as we drove us away from the car’s whine. The motorcycle was just as loud, but nowhere near as piercing. A few minutes later Julianne had us at the edge of a tiny road framed by dozens of warning signs.

She pulled off and stopped the motorcycle. I was thankful. The idea of going down the bumpy back road with a two-wheeler was more than I could take. Both feet firmly planted themselves on the ground, but my knees didn't give the same effort. I knelt to the ground, relieved that my first motorcycle ride in years didn't end poorly.

"What happened back there?" Julianne didn't even give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts and figure it out myself.

"Connection broke," I said.

"That's not normal, right?" She responded. I hadn't told her how it works, but she had seen it enough to get a feel for it.

"No."

"If I'd known you moving back to town would turn into such a clusterfuck I would have evicted you."

"You like me too much for that." I weakly joked.

She didn't joke back.

"Sit tight, I'll make a call and get a truck up here. We'll take it in from here and see if we can find Evan and solve this. I don't want Daniel in my business anymore. And Charlie has made it pretty clear that all my extra business activities have come under heavy fire."  She said while tapping a foot angrily.

"Who?" I asked.

"Charlie? My accountant?" Julianne looked at me with a confused expression.

"Oh. Yeah. I got a similar sort of message." I said.

"What kind?"

"If I go home, everything goes up in a fire."

"What?" The skin around her eyes twitched in anger. She flung out a foot at me but was too short to make it the entire distance. A moment later she had a cell phone out and started yelling at someone on the other end.

Julianne’s order of concerns went from her income, to pack, to friends. Maybe Stacy was above that, maybe Kahina too from the way they staged an intervention at her house before letting me deal with Evan. No wonder she was mad at me, here I was screwing up all of them.

I couldn't hear the car alarm any more, but any chance I had of linking to Candy using the car’s presence was gone. Not that I wanted to have her swing a knife at me again. Was she the same as Evan in that regard? Could she feel me as I closed in? Evan had done it and knelt to wait for me.

Evan wasn't a full Speaker, and Candy had implied she was the real deal. Was that the difference?

She certainly wasn't trying to find the logging road. If she had then it would have been fairly quick. Julianne had driven there in maybe ten minutes from where the car had been parked. Was Candy trying to get to Evan first? To prevent him from telling me what I was? Was that why she made me promise to let her meet him?

It had to be.

I got up and started jogging down the logging path.

"Jay!" Julianne yelled at me while alternating from her phone conversation. "Jay, what the hell are you doing?"

"We're losing ground!" Candy had too much of a lead. She couldn't get to Evan first. I had to know why there was so much pressure around what I was.

Kahina had started something years ago during that first blood draw. It caused her to go crazy, like some sort of thick red ambrosia. Candy and Evan, both elves, knew something. Something that no other elf I had tracked knew or felt. Then Daniel’s armed escort saying I needed to be tested.

Julianne was yelling after me, then cursed and started down the path.

Everything was related. Evan had the answers. Arnold Regious no longer mattered to me. If I knew what I was then perhaps some of my own problems would be solved. If I got there first she couldn't stop me from getting my answers.

Ten minutes later and my energy reserves were already gone. I'd been run ragged by so many things back to back. Damn Candy, she probably wore me out on purpose. Sneaky.

"You know it'll be just as fast to wait right?" She huffed.

"Beats waiting. Your bike okay?" I had to feel like something useful was being done.

"I rolled it behind a tree, one of the guys will take it to my grandfather's."

"How long you been dealing with Evan?" I asked.

Julianne shoved both hands into her pockets and shrugged. "Two years?"

"Good client?" I asked while doing my best to walk a straight line. My head was still fuzzy and trying to work through too many different problems.

"Until a few months ago, sure." She said. That timing made no sense.

"Why the picture and lipstick? Why not the usual?" I asked.

"He seemed so desperate. Evan claimed he didn't have anything else to repay me with except the shirt off his back, and I didn't want that." She said. The elf's shirt had been rather ratty looking. Being dragged around by Julianne and Daniel probably didn't help.

"But those items don't work for whoever was doing my old job, would they?" I asked.

"Not really. The scent was solid but doesn't stick like hair does. Then again hair doesn't exactly last long, tends to give me a time limit on my good graces." How long before she made you pay up, or sent someone out to find you.

"I was glad you came back, figured I could finally stop paying second rate people, but..." But I had shut myself indoors for a few weeks and crawled into drinks.

"Sorry." I was too.

"The upside is after Francis, I'm sure I can find some use for you." She smiled briefly. Julianne wasn’t looking up at me and instead seemed focused on the distance.

"I thought I was the bad guy here?" I said. Julianne had been pissed off at me a moment ago.

"If you blow up my apartments, then you're fired." She paused. "Or if you hit Stacy again."

"Look I'm..."

"Sorry, I'm sure. Both of us should've known better, you're like a wolf in that regard, if pushed too far when someone nips at you, you give the same treatment back. It's not pleasant, but it's true anyway. I knew that slap wouldn't break you." She was so factual about it.

"Rung for a while," I said.

"That's what you get for being such an arrogant jerk."

"I thought I'd always been one." Maybe I shouldn't be joking about this. The arrogant jerk factor must have been part of my whole self-possessed mentality that had given me an edge.

"No. Confident perhaps, easy to rile up, eager to prove yourself." Julianne itched her chin briefly and seemed uncomfortable.

"Really?"

There was a honk of noise in the distance. Julianne turned and saw a run-down pickup slowly traversing the broken path towards us. She waved and ran back leaving me to try and figure out exactly what I'd been like back then. I stepped back out of the way as a truck, loaded with Julianne in the back, wheeled up.

"Someone order a round trip?" The voice sounded familiar.

"Me?" I questioned. This must be the ride that Julianne had called in for us.

"Alright, this time you get a deluxe ride. No tie downs, no blindfolds, no electric shocks! The whole package I tell you." The male driving the truck was shouting out the passenger window at me.

"Probably not a good breakfast on the other side either," Julianne said from her perch in the truck's bed. I just looked at her, then loaded myself into the back. It sunk a moment under the weight before the suspension caught up.

"How much did they tell you?" I asked Julianne, pointedly ignoring the other man in the front.

"Oh, bits and pieces. Wait until I tell Kahina how good a woodsman you are." She was smiling now.

I ignored the commentary and focused on important topics.

"You don't have those blindfolds still do you? I could use a nap." And reprieve from Julianne taunting me. She was clearly in a mood. Either because she was with some wolf pack member, or because she was enjoying harassing me.

"Missing them already?" The joker from the driver's seat had a grin in his voice.

"I want sleep," I said.

"Alright. It'll take a few hours to get out there." Julianne patted me like some five-year-old and then turned to chat through a little window into the cab of the truck. I grunted and rolled up my jacket in hopes that it would serve as a pillow.