Under the Moon (Goddesses Rising)

Chapter Three

Fear and ignorance have always put Society members in danger. This reality spawned the Protectorate, an ancient organization of bodyguards, discrete from the Society, self-governed and autonomous and funded by a centuries-old wealth managed in trust. Any goddess away from the source of her power who may be a target of those who want to do harm will be assigned a protector.

—The Society for Goddess Education and Defense, New Member Brochure

…



Quinn tried, but despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep very long. There had never been any question that they would try to stop this guy. Nick hadn’t bothered to suggest they hole up so he could bar the door and keep her safe. Sam had automatically gone into investigative mode. She knew their priority was still keeping the leech away from her, but none of them wanted anyone else to be harmed.

Every time she started to doze, her brain woke her with a new angle, so finally she got up and returned to the computer. She spent hours doing research, both online and in some of the historical archives on the Society website, trying to figure out what “rogue” meant in the context of either goddesses or protectors. There wasn’t much about rogue goddesses. They documented the birth and progress of every known goddess and, since one was born an average of once every year and a half, it wasn’t difficult to do. Lineages made it unlikely that a new goddess would escape the notice of the Society. If a goddess was unable to pay her Society dues, a sustenance fund covered it.

Quinn knew a few goddesses who disdained the politics of the organization, and a few more who preferred a freer existence, but they all still maintained minimum levels of membership to stay part of the Society’s community. In the last hundred years, three goddesses who had problems with the Society had been labeled rogue. Only one had gone on to do things that went against their general moral code.

Quinn supposed that would be hard for regular people to believe. Goddesses were all about power, after all, and power corrupts. But as far back as goddess history went, the abilities that came with their heritage had been accompanied by compassion and wisdom. Goddesses were rare; goddesses doing harm even more so, and those that did were quickly taken care of. Gods were nonexistent. Some claimed men hadn’t learned the lessons of corruption and therefore eliminated their line of descent long ago. Quinn didn’t quite believe that. Goddesses were still human, and there were plenty of normal women who were corrupt.

Others thought one or more of the “original” goddesses, who’d had much greater abilities in a world unpolluted and not yet depleted of resources, had deliberately eliminated the gods’ ability to procreate. No one knew for sure.

Regardless, even in the information Quinn had found about the rogue goddesses, there’d been no mention of rogue protectors. Maybe the Protectorate archives contained something, but of course Quinn didn’t have access. She wasn’t sure if Nick did, but he was treating the whole thing so lightly, she didn’t trust him to check.

She needed to go to Boston.

…



“I don’t know why we can’t take the Charger, that’s all.” Nick slammed the driver’s door and unlocked the trunk. After handing Quinn her duffel, he unloaded his pockets into the trunk’s storage case. She counted two pistols and three knives.

“Because I don’t want to take three days to travel,” she said. Again.

“You wouldn’t be driving. It would be no more than twelve hours there, twelve back, tops. That’s barely a day.”

“I’m in a hurry.” She swung her bag over her shoulder and headed toward the terminal. “What’s your problem with flying, anyway?”

“It’s not the being-in-the-air part—”

“Let me guess. It’s takeoffs and landings.”

“Nope. It’s the lack of viable escape routes.” He held out a hand to stop a cab so they could cross to the terminal. “Kinda hard to protect you when there’s nowhere to go.”

Quinn smiled. “Great, you can relax. There won’t be anything to protect me from.”

“Never let down your guard.” He moved ahead of her to scope out the counters. Midafternoon, midweek, the crowd wasn’t too bad. Nick stood watch while Quinn used their e-tickets to check them in at the self-service kiosk, and he maintained his vigilance through security and down the concourse.

“Nick, please,” Quinn protested after he made yet another three-hundred-and-sixty-degree spin. “I feel like we’re on a stealth attack for the U.S. military.”

He glared at her but settled down. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I know. But I have to go.” She slowed as they approached their gate, noting the line of people stretching away from the boarding pass scanner and spilling out onto the main concourse. The gate attendant announced boarding for their flight, all rows, and they joined the line, slowly moving forward.

Quinn handed over her boarding pass, waited for the attendant to run it through the scanner, and continued down the Jetway. She was on the plane before she realized Nick wasn’t right behind her. The attendant glared when she tried to go back, so she found her seat, stowed her carry-on bag, and settled in, feeling the seconds tick by into minutes before he appeared at the front of the plane.

“Problem?” she asked when Nick appeared, scowling, three disgruntled-looking passengers following him down the aisle.

“Damned pass wouldn’t scan.” He zipped his duffel, tossed a book onto his seat next to Quinn, and straightened. “I’m gonna do a quick walk-through. Stay here.”

“Will do.”

She picked up his book, surprised to see an old Dean Koontz horror novel. Nick wasn’t the reading-for-pleasure type. She tried to think of what he usually did during downtime, but there hadn’t been much. When he was with her he was always on alert, always engaged either with her or the people around them. The realization that after so many years there might still be things she didn’t know about Nick Jarrett was unnerving.

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she rejected it. Reading preferences aside, he was no stranger to her. She knew well his need to be in control, his surface amusement at everyone and everything around him, his snap judgments about people. She understood his compassion, the legacy he followed. He did the job he did because of a deep nobility, something he’d deny but that had been the foundation of the wall they’d set between them. A wall introduced by his words but bricked by her own distance.

A few moments later, he dropped into his seat and held out his hand for the book. “Full flight.”

“Anything suspicious?”

“Nope. Ninety percent business people, ten percent frazzled families.”

“Exactly what I would pretend to be, were I after me.” She handed him the book. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you read.”

“You’re gonna sleep most of the flight. I need something to do.” He tucked the book into the pocket in front of him, then tilted toward her to dig underneath him for his seat belt. His scent rushed through her, spiking her in place with his hard chest and broad shoulders only inches away. The burn faded slowly after he sank into his seat.

“So.” He turned his attention back to her. “Who are we seeing in Boston?”

Quinn had spent the day shopping, packing, and leaving instructions for her staff. “I thought Sam would have told you.”

Nick snorted. “Sam doesn’t tell me squat. What?” He shrugged at her disbelief. “I’m competition. Guys don’t help the competition.”

“You’re not,” Quinn said without thinking. Nick’s mouth quirked in his familiar half smile, but before he could say anything more on the topic, she changed it. “I need to see Alana in person. Something’s up, and she won’t tell me online or over the phone.”

“Aren’t you going to see her next week for the meeting?”

“We can’t wait until next week.” She didn’t tell him about her growing uneasiness. He’d think it was fear of the leech, and it wasn’t, really. The leech was frightening on the level of hurricanes and car crashes—he may never come after her. But Jennifer’s e-mail and Alana’s IM blow-off were more personal, the reasons more unknown, and that was scarier. Quinn was afraid waiting a week would allow the chasm the Society was building around her and Nick to be too deep to overcome.

The attendant began her demonstration while the plane backed from the gate and taxied to the runway. A few minutes later they were taking off. Quinn watched the world zip by, conscious of Nick’s tension. Sure, he wasn’t afraid. But teasing him about his reasons for hating flying didn’t seem fair at the moment.

As soon as they were airborne, Nick opened his book. “Nighty-night.”

Annoying as he was, he was right. She hated the boredom of travel and always fell asleep, no matter how hard she tried not to. The drone of the engine and general white noise of the cabin helped her doze until they approached Logan Airport two hours later. Her dreams were vague and jumbled, but all of them incorporated an awareness of Nick’s proximity. She knew when he stood to remove and stow his coat overhead, when he ordered orange juice from the attendant. She sensed when he watched her sleep, and she tightened her arms around herself when he got up to go to the restroom or do another walk-through.

She kept her eyes closed when she reached full awareness, not wanting to leave the state of comfort being near Nick gave her. A simple state that would disappear as soon as he knew she was awake, old barriers going up automatically.

He touched her arm. “Quinn. We’re about to land.”

She lifted her head and yawned. “You sleep at all?”

“Yeah, right.” He drew the blanket off her to fold it. “You drooled on my shirt, you know.”

“I did…not.” There was a wet spot on his shoulder. Her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

The captain announced preparation for landing, and they lapsed into silence. They didn’t say much until they were in the rental car, a Taurus Nick wrinkled his nose at.

“Where to?” he asked, starting the engine.

Quinn rolled down her window an inch to let in the crisp evening breeze. “Sam booked us rooms at—”

“Rooms? Plural? No.” He shook his head. “We’ll have to change that.”

“Fine.” She wasn’t going to argue with him, plus it would be cheaper. “We’ll get a suite. Turn up here.” Half an hour later, Nick left the car with the hotel valet and followed Quinn inside. She signed for the new room and handed Nick his key card.

Once they were alone in the elevator, she said, “I want to freshen up and then head over to the Society to see if I can catch Alana.”

Nick glanced at his watch. “It’s after seven.”

“She might still be there. If not, we can try her at home.”

“You could call first.”

“I don’t want to alert her.” The way she’d acted, she was likely to run and hide if she knew Quinn was coming.

When they arrived at the brick building housing the Society office, Quinn used her officer ID card to activate the elevator. When they got upstairs and emerged in the main reception area, she turned off the alarm with the code given to all board members and staff. The light flashed green.

“They haven’t locked you out yet.”

She shrugged to hide her relief. “I guess they didn’t expect me to fly here.” She surveyed the dark reception area and looked down the hall. With the exception of a small lamp behind the front desk, no lights were visible, not even cracks under doors.

“Doesn’t look like she’s here.” Nick opened the door to leave. “How far’s her house?”

“Hang on.” Quinn went to the wide white desk and sat down at the computer.

“What are you doing?”

“They leave the computers on for backup. Or they did the last time I was here.” She flipped on the monitor, which faded into a desktop image of a white-robed ancient goddess with dark hair down to her ankles.

“She’s hot.” Nick leaned over her shoulder.

Quinn ignored him. She accessed the hard drive and skimmed through the contents until she found the main database and opened it. With a few clicks, she sorted for the information she needed, hit print, and exited out of the server.

“Sweet.” Nick pulled the first pages off the printer. “You don’t think she’d give you this if you asked in person?”

Quinn didn’t want to find out. “Just a precaution.” She glanced through the files and folders again but found nothing with a label as obvious as “leech” or “Quinn Caldwell.” She closed all the open windows onscreen, found an empty file folder on the shelf beneath the printer, and took the sheets Nick had gathered.

Nick checked his watch as they exited the building. “Still want to go to Alana’s now? It’s getting late.”

“She’s not far, and we won’t stay long. She should be home, at least.”

They drove in silence the few miles to Cambridge. It was nearly nine o’clock, but when they pulled up in front of Alana’s condo, lights shone in the front window.

Nick parked at the curb, his gaze on the house. “One car in the driveway, garage closed. Company?”

“Maybe. I don’t know anything about her social life, except she’s not married.”

“Okay.” He pulled the keys from the ignition and opened his door. “I’ll let you do the talking.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The neighborhood was quiet. No traffic, no movement. Most windows had lights shining behind drapes or sheers, some flickering with changing TV imagery. A dog barked somewhere down the block. It was the type of idyllic scene Quinn hadn’t been a part of since her parents died and she moved in to the bar. A pulse of longing took her by surprise. Sam could have given you this.

She banished the insidious whisper as Nick’s strong hand rested on the small of her back. They went up the short walkway together, and Quinn’s longing twisted into something deeper, more intense, and less attainable.

Quinn skipped the bell and used the knocker on the red-painted door. Less than a minute later, Alana yanked it open. When she saw Quinn, her eyes widened, and she backed up a few steps before she caught herself.

“Do you know what time it is?” she barked, but Quinn wasn’t fooled.

“Why are you afraid of me?” Quinn stayed on the step, not wanting to provoke her. But anger quickly overshadowed hurt feelings.

“I’m— I’m not afraid of you.”

“Yeah, that’s why you’re stuttering,” Nick scoffed from behind Quinn, who shushed him.

Alana shifted sideways and angled the door in front of her. “You flew seven hundred miles and are knocking on my door at nine o’clock at night. Why wouldn’t I be afraid?”

Quinn sighed. “I have no idea. Can I come in? I just want to talk to you.”

Alana stared at the floor a minute. The muscle in her forearm stood out as her grip on the doorknob tightened. But finally she nodded. “For a minute.”

“That’s all I want.”

Alana backed up a few inches and Quinn stepped into the ceramic-tiled foyer, but when Nick made to follow, Alana blocked him.

“Not you.”

“She doesn’t leave my sight.” His voice was a low growl, his amusement gone.

But Alana had recovered herself and held firm. “And you don’t come in my house.”

“It’s all right,” Quinn told him. “If I’m not out in three minutes or signal that I’m okay, you can bust in.”

He compressed his lips and narrowed his eyes but gave a short nod. “Three minutes.” He took his cell phone out of his pocket and held it up. Quinn nodded, and Alana shut the door.

“What do you want, Quinn?”

“Can we sit?” She looked down to set her watch timer, and when she looked up, Alana had folded her arms and leaned against the simple white wall.

“Why bother? We might as well stay by the door your watchdog is itching to break down.” Her animosity was palpable. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Okay. You said the board was taking care of the leech. But I’m on the board.”

“So?”

“So why did I have to hear about this from Nick?”

Alana’s chin came up, and her mouth stayed closed.

“Is Barbara upset with me about something?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well then what, exactly?”

No response.

Dammit. Quinn loosened her jaw and tried a different angle. “Has anyone checked on Jennifer Hollinger?”

Alana’s eyebrows rose. “Checked on her for what?”

“She sent a message to the loop and said she was going to follow up directly with me and didn’t.”

Alana shook her head. “So?”

“The leech has gone after two goddesses who draw from water. Jennifer draws from water. Now she’s not answering her phone or checking messages.”

“It’s only been four days…” Alana trailed off. Quinn knew she didn’t need to point out that it had only been four days between Tanda and Chloe.

There was a subtle shift in the air. “I’ll call Barbara in the morning,” Alana said, her tone softer. “The security team may already be down there. I don’t know what they’re doing. But thanks for pointing it out.”

That wasn’t the reason Quinn was here, though. “I don’t know what everyone thinks, but the goddesses are as important to me as they are to anyone.”

“It’s not that.” Alana’s demeanor was more sympathetic than antagonistic now, but she wasn’t any more forthcoming.

“Then what? Why do I feel ostracized?”

Alana looked torn. “I can’t—”

“Can’t what?” Quinn ground her teeth in frustration. “What is going on?”

Her watch beeped. She crossed the few feet to the door and opened it. Nick faced her, leaning one arm against the jamb, his jaw tight and his eyes blazing.

“I’m fine,” she told him.

“I’m not. I don’t like this, Quinn.”

“I know. A few more minutes, I promise.”

“Hurry.”

Quinn smiled. Nick waited a few beats, then smiled back. “Get outta here.”

She closed the door and turned back to Alana.

“I think we’re done,” the other woman said.

“No, we’re not. Not until you tell me why the board is marginalizing me.”

“Quinn, I can’t. I’m not even supposed to talk to you or Nick. Please stop pushing me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not polite?”

“Tell me something. With all I’ve given to this organization, I deserve a little consideration.”

Alana bit her lip.

Encouraged, Quinn pushed a little harder. “I’ve sacrificed a lot and never asked for anything. And with the meeting next week—”

“Stop it!” Alana launched herself away from the wall. “I know it’s not fair, but they have to protect the Society. Family ties are always stronger than—” She stopped, looking stricken.

Quinn leaned toward her, almost holding her breath. “Family ties? What family ties?”

“Nothing. Please go. I’ll check on Jennifer tomorrow.” She turned Quinn and pushed her toward the door. “We’ll see you at the meeting next week, if you decide to come. No one will blame you if you don’t.” She yanked open the door and shoved Quinn hard.

“Oof.” Nick caught her. The door slammed behind them. They stood, Nick looking wry, Quinn stunned. Family? She had no family. Her parents had been only children and…

Oh my god. The thought struck her hard enough to leave her breathless again. But the implications were too complicated to consider, and her brain pulled up another, even more wrenching possibility.

“What happened?”

“I have no idea,” Quinn managed to answer.

Nick hooked her elbow with his hand and strode them to the car. “That whole thing was weird. She was scared of me.”

“Yeah.”

“No one’s been scared of me before.” He half shrugged. “You know, who wasn’t supposed to be.”

“She wasn’t scared of me.” Quinn slipped into her seat and closed the car door. Nick roared away from the curb before she even had her seat belt on. “But she was scared of something that has to do with me.”

“Like what?” He braked at the stop sign but didn’t stop. She wanted to tell him to slow down, but she shared his desperation, the need to get away. It didn’t make sense—no one was chasing them, and it was a sharp contrast to her eagerness when Alana had first mentioned family—but she felt it nonetheless. She’d assume Alana’s fear was infectious, but the last person Quinn would ever be afraid of was Nick.

“Could we be related?” she blurted.

Nick slammed on the brakes. The tires screeched.

Quinn flew forward and caught herself on the dash. “What the hell?”

“What makes you think we’re related?” Nick’s eyes blazed.

Had she just thought she’d never be afraid of him? “Nothing.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, but—” She took a deep breath. This was what she was trying to run from. It threatened to skew their entire relationship. “Let’s get back to the hotel, okay? I want to be inside. Then we’ll talk. Don’t worry, I don’t keep secrets from you.”

“Damn right, you don’t.” He accelerated again, his speed and abrupt movements telegraphing his impatience.

As soon as they were inside the hotel room, Nick cornered her.

“What makes you think we’re related?”

Quinn didn’t intend to stall, exactly, but his reaction gave her the excuse. She circled him and backed toward the sitting area. “Why does it bother you so much that we might be?”

He hesitated. Then his shoulders relaxed. He tossed the keys into a thick glass dish on the spindly table behind the couch. “It doesn’t.”

“Nick.”

“C’mon, Quinn, tell me what’s going on.”

Quinn removed her jacket and dropped it onto a narrow stuffed chair, then dropped herself onto the hard cushions of the ultra-modern couch. Muscles all over her body protested, then eased out their knots and tension. “Alana said something about family ties. That seems to be the reason the board is keeping me out of the loop on the leech. Since there’s the whole thing about you going rogue…” God, what if he was her brother? She pressed a hand to her stomach as nausea churned.

“It’s logical they wouldn’t trust the goddess related to the rogue protector.” Nick pulled two beers from the minibar next to the particleboard dresser, popped the tops, and sat on the couch with her, handing her one. “But I guarantee you, we aren’t related.”

Quinn took a pull of the ice-cold beer. “How do you know?”

Pink flared across his cheekbones, subtle but there. “I checked.”

“You checked?” she repeated, incredulous. “What, you hired a PI to make sure we weren’t secretly brother and sister?”

“Not exactly.” The flush faded and he grinned with his usual cockiness. “I had an aunt into genealogy. She made this big book that goes back, like, twelve generations. I looked for your name.”

That didn’t ease her mind, the reason for her shock rolling over her again. “I’m adopted, Nick. Caldwell is my adoptive name.”

His expression didn’t change. “I know.”

“You know my original name?”

“I do.”

She stared at him, caught in that numb state when something so surprises you, your emotional center can’t react. He didn’t seem to notice.

“And I looked for both. By the time we met I had nephews in the book. Aunt Phyllis was thorough. There’s no one in there who could have been you or your blood family.” He drank, and Quinn watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. After he wiped the sleeve of his flannel shirt across his mouth, he continued. “I memorized six pages of the damned book, okay?”

“How did you know who my birth family was?”

Nick leaned forward and set his bottle onto the glass coffee table. “It was part of my training.”

She raised one eyebrow. “To investigate me?”

“Of course not. It was investigation in general. You were one of my study assignments.”

Now that Nick had put to rest the horrifying possibility that they were related, she needed to accept that Alana had to have meant her birth family. But Quinn had decided, long before her adoptive parents died, that she wouldn’t dishonor them by seeking her birth parents. After they died, being alone was less painful than being rejected. She lived her life as if they didn’t exist, but now she was being forced to acknowledge them, and maybe more.

It was far easier to talk about Nick.

“What did you learn?” Almost out of habit, she swallowed some more beer before setting her bottle down, too. She didn’t need a fuzzy head, and she was already tired after being up all night and getting less than two hours of sleep on the plane.

“Surface stuff. The names of your birth parents, adoptive parents, their parents, where you grew up, went to school, worked. You know.” He twisted to lean against the arm of the couch. Quinn kicked off her shoes, pulled her legs up onto the couch, and faced him from the opposite end.

“Did you get assigned to me later because I’d been a training assignment already?” Her heart thumped a little harder as she waited for his answer. It came in a curl of his lips, a tenderness she’d rarely detected in his eyes.

“Something like that,” he said, the curl lifting into a smile. “We get info for every goddess we’re assigned to. When your mother called for a protector, I was available and they knew I already had the background on you.”

Quinn watched her knee rock back and forth, a little lost in the past. He’d been so confident and strong, even as new as he was to the Protectorate, and that had allowed her to turn away from her fear and be strong, herself. Maybe he’d been that confident because he already knew her. Maybe he’d even cared about her.

Dangerous territory. Nick watched her steadily, as if he knew what she was thinking and wanted her to think it. But why? She already knew she meant more to him than a standard assignment. He didn’t talk about his other goddesses much. She knew he traveled all over the country to be wherever he was needed, and he protected other goddesses not even half as often as he protected her. But she also knew he wouldn’t take his relationship with her any deeper because his duty to those goddesses was just as strong as his personal feelings. No, stronger.

Quinn had settled for what they had because it was so much better than not having him at all. She’d always believed that was also Nick’s motivation. But now that she recognized the same pattern with Sam, she had to see her relationship with Nick differently, too.

The familiar ache of longing sharpened enough to make her turn away from that line of thought and face the other. Family ties. Alana could have meant only one thing.

“What—” She swallowed, but the rest of the question still came out raspy. “What did you learn about my birth parents?”

Nick’s tone was gentle when he asked, “What do you know about them?”

She folded her arms and lifted her shoulders. “Not much. I met them once, when I was about eight. They were still together, but they were only twenty-three. They told me they’d given me up for adoption because they were too young to take care of me.”

“Did your birth mother tell you what you were?”

“Not really, but she didn’t have to. I was too young to understand the whole genetic thing, but I believed I was a goddess because my real mother—my adoptive mother, I mean—was a goddess. But they had different sources and skills.” She remembered the small tricks her birth mother had done and how awed Quinn had been. “My birth mother snapped her fingers and made a hair ribbon appear. I thought it was out of thin air, but it was probably from her pocket. My hair was frizzy beyond belief, and I hated it, but she smoothed her hand down it and tied it with the ribbon, and it was perfect after that.”

“Still is.”

He said it so low Quinn wasn’t sure she’d heard him. She hesitated before going on. “She left a box for me, some things her mother had handed down to her, things to help me focus my power and learn how to use it. But my mom was the one who actually taught me.”

“Did you ever look for your birth parents once you were an adult?”

She shook her head. “Of course I thought about it, all adopted kids do, but I decided not to. At first, I didn’t want to hurt my parents.” They’d been a close-knit family, especially after her father quit the corporate world to open the bar. Her mother was a traditional housewife who didn’t use her power for commercial use. Seeking her other parents had seemed insulting, and then Quinn’s father had his first heart attack when she was nineteen. He stayed fragile until he died seven years later, leaving her the bar she’d renamed Under the Moon. Her mother suffered so much with his death that Quinn hadn’t even considered adding to it.

“After Mom died, I was so lonely it was easy to spin fantasies about reconnecting with my birth family. But I decided there were more reasons I’d be sorry than glad if I tried.”

Nick shifted closer on the cushions and lifted her feet into his lap, stretching out her legs. He rubbed her arch, like he often did after she’d worked a long shift at the bar—with care and skill and no awareness he was doing it. Warmth blossomed where he touched her and seeped up through her muscles. The banked hunger glowed a little, but she was so tired and so distracted by their conversation it remained low, present but ignorable.

“What kind of reasons?” he asked.

“The usual. However young they’d been, they were still together eight years later. What if it hadn’t worked out after that and they were both miserable and blamed me? Or it could have been the opposite, and they had a great life together I wasn’t a part of.”

“But you had a good life without them, too.” He pressed his thumb deep into her arch, stroking upward, and she shivered.

“Yes, and being sorry I wasn’t part of their life would have been disloyal to Mom and Dad.” She’d still had to work hard to fight the disappointment when they never tried to contact her again. “Mom wasn’t a very powerful goddess. She derived her power from plant energy but couldn’t draw enough to do spectacular things. I was afraid if my birth mother was as powerful as I can be, especially if she had a constant source, that would make Mom feel bad, too.”

“Not after she was gone,” Nick pointed out.

Quinn shook her head. “No, the only real risk after they’d both died was that I’d be rejected. Whatever I found couldn’t hurt Mom and Dad, then. But my birth parents didn’t want me when I was born, and they didn’t want me when I was eight, so why would they want me at twenty-six?” Her throat tightened, the vulnerability of being left behind returning. “Or what if they welcomed me at first but decided they didn’t like me? I was already in too much pain to face that.”

Nick nodded and slid his hand from the top of her foot to her ankle, resting it there. His heat seeped through her sock, relaxing her even more. But god, it was easy to remember that pain. Only the bar and Nick’s visits had given her anything to be happy about at first. Slowly, she’d built her own independent life. And then Sam came along, and the pain had faded.

“I don’t know much more than that,” Nick told her. “Just that they’re from New England and were still here fifteen years ago.”

His gaze went distant and Quinn wondered if he was thinking of his own family. His parents had both been protectors, two strong legacies who went back to the origin of the Protectorate. Nick had wanted to be a protector since he was a little boy, but then his parents had been injured in a mundane car accident and forced to retire. His two older brothers had nothing to do with goddesses, so it was up to Nick to carry on the family legacy. It drove every choice he made.

“How often do you see your family?” she asked, stifling a yawn. Her eyelids had gained a few pounds.

“The usual. Holidays and stuff. We get together in the summer sometimes. You know, family vacations.”

“I can’t picture you with them.”

His smile was sad. “I don’t exactly fit. Six or eight families, all with spouses and kids. Even the divorced ones get along. Stepparents and real parents in one big, chaotic, mostly happy group.” He framed a space with his hands. “And then there’s me.” He stuck his fist out to the side. “The kids climb all over me, their parents braced to snatch them to safety. At night, once the kids are asleep, they want me to tell exciting stories, because I’m the freedom and adventure they want but will never risk.” His tone had gone bitter at the end, an edge of resentment at the burden he’d taken on but no one else would share.

Quinn hesitated over whether or not to pry open that crack. “Wow.” She eyed his beer. “I thought you only had one of those.”

He chuckled. “It’s not some big secret. I like my life. I love my family. It’s balanced.”

Her yawn caught up to her, and she tilted her head sideways against the back of the couch. “You don’t feel like something’s missing?” Like she did. It was harder and harder to keep it buried.

“Sometimes.” He shifted again, tugging her down so her head rested on the pillow behind her, her neck more comfortable. She lost the battle against her heavy eyelids.

“Do you?” he countered.

Quinn shook her head and tried to make her tongue work. “Rarely.” She didn’t have the energy to correct the lie, and somewhere in the very small part of her brain that was still awake, she knew she wasn’t ready to go down that road, with or without Nick. She let herself continue to drift until she fell asleep.

Only to wake a short time later with the world exploding around them.