Under the Moon (Goddesses Rising)

Chapter Eight

Goddess lineage is maternal and almost never dormant. The Society keeps careful track of its members, registering a new goddess upon her birth and offering educational support when she turns twenty-one and discovers both the source and manifestation of her power.

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

…



Quinn’s phone beeped. Low battery.

“I have a what?”

“A sister. She’s—”

Another beep. Shit. “Sam, I’m going to lose you. I’ll call you back.” The call dropped and the screen went dark. She whirled on Nick, her ankle protesting. “Let me use your phone.”

He shook his head. “It’s almost out of juice. I was on with Sam for a lot of the last six hours.”

“You have a charger, don’t you?”

“Car charger broke. Haven’t had time to get a new one.”

“What about a regular charger?”

Nick waved a hand. “No electricity.”

She turned, studying the room she hadn’t noticed when they first came in. The tiny, warp-planked cabin was bare bones, with an empty steel bed frame in one corner and a bent Formica table in another. No outlets, no lamps, only the glow of the headlights outside. “What is this place?”

“Private campground. Sam figured it would be deserted this time of year. The sign out by the highway is damaged, too. They won’t find us.”

“Shit.” She shoved a hand through her hair, realizing how wild it must look between the hood, her run through the woods, and Nick’s hands in it. “Okay, let’s get going as soon as possible.”

“Give it a few more minutes.” He picked up his coat from the floor and shrugged it on. “You warm enough?”

“Fine.” She limped to the bed and lowered herself to the edge of the frame. “Should you turn off the headlights?”

“It’ll be okay for a minute.” He didn’t come closer, but she could feel his frown in the darkness. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Sam just told me I have a sister.”

The distance Nick had been trying to maintain disappeared. He snapped back to his usual self and sat beside her.

“I meant you were limping, but we’ll come back to that. He didn’t have time to tell you anything else, did he?”

“No.”

He took her hand. “Only a few more hours.”

“You really need to get a car charger for your phone.”

His teeth flashed white in the darkness as he smiled. “Or maybe one of those battery-powered instant chargers?”

“Yeah.” She wished she could shut off her brain until they got to Michigan and she could get answers from Sam, but it persisted in spinning questions and theories. At least, if she concentrated on those, she could ignore the indecipherable swirl of emotions inside her.

After a moment of silence, Nick joined the what-if game. “You think the family ties Alana mentioned mean your sister?”

A foreign sensation zipped over Quinn’s skin at the word. “It’s the likely assumption. But how do they know? She might not even be a goddess.”

“She’s gotta be. Dormancy’s rare, you know that.”

Quinn wanted to feel joy and excitement about the prospect of a sister, but the men in the truck had made that impossible. “The guys who abducted me?”

“Yeah.” His voice went deep, gruff. “What about them?”

“They were careful with me. They wanted me neutralized but not harmed. Because ‘she’ would have their asses.”

“Oh, man.” He straightened and let go of her hand to check his watch, pressing a button to illuminate the face. “Why were you limping? Twisted ankle?”

“Yeah, it’s okay. I’m sure it’s swollen and it’ll be sore for a while, but I can walk.”

“The first-aid kit had a chemical cold pack. You can put your foot up on the backseat and ice the ankle.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

They drove nonstop. For a while, Nick left Quinn to her thoughts, reclining on the seat behind him. She focused on the mundane. What would a sister look like? Was she older or younger? Was she adopted, too? Quinn didn’t want to be jealous if she wasn’t, if their parents had kept her sister when they hadn’t keep her. She reminded herself of their visit when she was eight, of how glad they had been that she was with people who loved her. She thought her mother—her birth mother—had had tears in her eyes when she smoothed Quinn’s hair and told her to be happy. And she had been happy. She couldn’t lose sight of that. But when she let her imagination go, it spun daydreams of pushing her little sister on the swings, playing tag in a big sunlit park, teaching her to tie her shoes.

Fanciful crap, she thought, squinting as the sun broke on the horizon. She hadn’t had that and never could. Her sister was an adult, and whether she knew about Quinn or not, welcomed her or not, they’d have to build a relationship from scratch, like any grown strangers who met…under extreme circumstances.

The dread flowing quietly under her thoughts rose. For a while, she’d forgotten her sister could have orchestrated her abduction. Maybe she’d also flipped Sam’s car and attacked her and Nick in Boston. Maybe she was a psychopath.

That was when Quinn forced herself to stop thinking.

Nick actually let her drive when he got tired, and whenever they stopped for gas she woke him up and stayed with him almost every minute. He was in and out so fast when it was his turn to use the restroom, she wasn’t sure he did anything.

They got back to Benton Harbor in record time. The car hadn’t even stopped next to the green sedan in front of the cabin before Sam barreled out the door. He swept Quinn into his arms, her feet dangling, and hugged her tight.

“Thank god.”

She rested her head on his shoulder and squeezed him, grateful to have him to come back to. Who needed blood family? “Thank Nick.”

“I know.” He set her down but kept an arm around her. “He didn’t give up. You should have heard him when he followed those guys. Thank you, Nick.”

Nick gave him an inscrutable look while he lifted the bags out of the trunk. Quinn knew why. Sam sounded like a grateful husband. She slipped out from under his arm and went to the car for her bag.

“They weren’t trying very hard to hide,” Nick said. “And she escaped on her own. I was just the pickup.”

“Still.” Sam stepped forward to take some of Nick’s load, but Nick sidestepped him and went into the cabin.

Sam looked down at Quinn. “What’s with him?”

“I don’t know.” Fear and relief might have driven Nick to kiss her, but she had no idea what he was thinking now. When he’d first been assigned as her protector and they’d grown close, Quinn tried to talk about the “something more” that filled the air when they were together. Nick had blocked her so sharply he’d left no room for discussion. He was a protector, right to the bone, and protectors did not get involved with goddesses. Even as young and inexperienced as she was then, Quinn understood his conviction came from the heart, not an externally imposed rule. His personal feelings didn’t matter. He would never tell her what he wanted.

She’d accepted it then and hadn’t ever tried to change it, never mind what Nick had come to mean to her. She didn’t think she could change it now, despite his lapse the other night. And if that were so, Nick didn’t have much right to jealousy.

The front door yawned open, the flickering light inside beckoning. Sam watched her, then turned his speculative gaze on the house.

“Tell me about my sister,” Quinn said to head him off as she led him inside.

Sam picked up a sheaf of papers lying on the table. “Her name is Marley Canton and she lives in Maine.”

“Never heard of her,” Nick called from the bedroom.

Neither had Quinn, so did that mean she wasn’t a goddess? Marley. Quinn let the name roll through her head. If Marley wasn’t a goddess, that could mean she wasn’t the attacker. But it also gave a potential motive, if she was jealous of Quinn’s power or considered it demonic or something. Quinn scoffed at a prick of hurt. It was far too early to be thinking of building family relationships.

“How did you find her?” she asked Sam.

“Birth certificate with your birth parents’ names on it. The correct names.” Sam shot Nick a dirty look as he came out into the main room.

“You must have read it wrong,” Nick said.

“If your handwriting was better, I wouldn’t have.” Sam settled at the table in his usual position in front of the laptop. Today he wore a snug T-shirt, and his arms flexed as he worked the keyboard. Quinn sat on the couch and glanced up at Nick. He looked back at her, then at Sam, and chose a chair far from either of them.

Quinn took a deep breath against the far larger ache that didn’t care how much she understood Nick and his motivations. A rejection was a rejection.

Concentrate. She considered what Sam had said about the birth certificate. “Both my birth parents were listed?”

“They’re still married, as far as I can tell.” Sam looked apologetic.

“Did they keep her? Marley?” She couldn’t help asking the question but wasn’t surprised when he nodded. It was what she’d always feared. They hadn’t wanted her, not even enough to find her after she’d grown up.

“She’s a registered goddess, but inactive.” Sam picked up the folder with the database information and stretched to hand it to her.

“What’s her power source?” Quinn flipped open the folder to scan the roster. She didn’t know what she expected. Some kind of zing of recognition when she saw her name in black and white, maybe. An invisible weight pressed on her, and she glanced up to meet Nick’s eyes. Instead of distant and reserved, they were warm, encouraging. Quinn flushed and looked back down, flustered. She wasn’t sure how to interpret that, and she was too raw to try right now.

She forced herself to concentrate on the roster. Sam had highlighted Marley’s listing, the word “crystals” circled as her power source.

“She can pretty much bring her power anywhere she goes,” Sam said.

“Son of a bitch,” Nick growled, clearly taking that as evidence against Marley.

Sam frowned at him. “I don’t know what level her power is. Crystals have been used as a focusing medium for centuries, so—”

“It could be limitless,” Quinn finished. She set the folder down and covered her face with her hands, resting her burning eyes.

“You’re not reacting like I expected,” Sam said. “What’s wrong?”

“She’s not overjoyed that she has a powerful goddess sister who might be evil.” Nick moved to sit next to her and rubbed his hand up and down her back. It went far to negate the pain of his rejection a few minutes ago.

“What are you talking about?” Sam demanded.

Quinn shrugged at Nick to bring him up to date.

“The goons who kidnapped—”

“Abducted,” she corrected from behind her hands. “I’m not a child.”

“The goons who took her from the convenience store said a woman was in charge. They were under orders not to hurt Quinn.”

“That’s weird.”

“She could also have been behind the hotel attack and your car accident.”

“The flash I saw could have been a crystal set in a puddle,” Sam agreed. “She could have been watching and focused her energy through it to flip my car.”

“And used the same energy to control the flip so you didn’t get killed.”

Quinn raised her head to see Sam nodding. “It makes sense. Endanger me, then make Quinn afraid to pursue whatever trail we were on. I thought I imagined the slow motion of the Camaro’s roll, but maybe it actually was.”

“Same thing with the hotel,” Nick said. “The noise and tossing stuff around? Amateurish. But instead of someone who didn’t have control over their power, like the leech…”

Quinn stood and walked to the stainless steel sink. “It could have been someone holding back, giving us time to get out. It would be frightening enough to make us think it was real, without intending to hurt us.” She took a short glass from the plastic drainer and filled it with water, then drank it without turning. Every movement was a struggle against the heavy awareness that her flesh and blood could be working against her. Not simply ignoring her existence but willfully acting, maybe even trying to harm her. They assumed the lack of physical damage was intentional, but maybe it was luck.

“There’s something else, Quinn. Not about your sister,” Sam said, “but I got an e-mail while I was on the road. From Alana.”

Quinn turned. “She e-mailed you? Like she knew I wouldn’t get it?” God, she’d become suspicious of everything.

He shrugged. “No, she copied me on it. Everyone knows I do all your work for you.”

She managed a small smile.

“They found Jennifer Hollinger.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “Alive?”

“Barely. She was on an island in the river. Dehydrated, undernourished, scratched, and wearing torn clothes, like she’d been wandering for a few days. Disoriented, too, but one thing was clear.”

“She’d been leeched.”

“Yeah.”

“Dammit.” Poor Jennifer. She didn’t know her, but tears stung her eyelids anyway. If they’d moved faster, she might have prevented this. Where the hell had the Society and their security team been? What was the Protectorate doing to keep this from happening? “Not much point in going to Mississippi now.”

“Nope,” Sam said.

“There’s only one thing to do, then.”

“No, Quinn,” Nick warned.

Sam leaned over his laptop, fingers flying over the keys. “You want to go to Maine.”

“I said no.” Nick stood, his hands in fists. “You don’t know enough. She endangered you, whether or not she intended to hurt you. She could be working with the leech. Someone created him.”

Quinn’s stomach lurched. She hadn’t taken her thoughts all the way there. “I know.” As much as she wanted to rush to Maine, and prove them wrong, she wasn’t a fool. “But there’s no way to learn much about Marley from here.”

“I got some more data,” Sam said, “but it’s meager at best. Like I said, she’s not a very active member of the Society.”

“So we’ll go to the next best place,” Quinn decided, hope and a little girl’s optimism dictating her choice as much as logic and determination. “Sam, where are my parents?”

…



No matter how Quinn argued, Nick refused to fly to Connecticut.

“It’s faster, Nick. Time is important here!”

“Less important than your safety is. With the security since 9/11, there is no way we can get on that plane without leaving a blinking neon sign saying, ‘Here I am! Come and get me!’”

“Right. Security. No one will get to me, and I’m frickin’ sick of driving!” And it obviously wasn’t any safer. Not that she’d say that aloud. Nick would think she blamed him, and she didn’t. But she didn’t argue because she was right and he was wrong, since they both had valid points. She argued because she couldn’t help herself. Too many things crowded into her mind and heart, and she was venting unfairly.

Nick rocked back on his heels, a satisfied smile tugging at his mouth. “Fine. We’ll stay here a few more days. You should recuperate anyway.”

“From what?” She dropped onto the sofa, aware of how long it had been since she had a shower or real rest. Since any of them had. “I’m fine,” she lied.

He ticked off her injuries on his fingers. “Cut arm, cuts on your back, bruises, possible concussion from being knocked out, sprained ankle. Did I miss anything?”

She didn’t mention her sore back from awkward positions in the car and bad motel-room beds.

“Right. And I could use a break, too.” He stalked toward his room. “So you just chill for a while.”

“High-handed tyrant,” Quinn muttered. Nick slammed the door.

Sam, pouring coffee at the stove, turned to grin at her. “You guys fight like siblings.”

Quinn scowled, remembering their last “fight,” and how non-sibling-like it had been. “Well, we’re not.”

“I know.” He brought her coffee in a plain ceramic mug. “He’s right, though. Driving is safer.”

“How? You were in a crash, I was abducted—she has some way to track us. If she’s not trying to kill us, then flying is the best way to get to her quickly, without giving her days’ worth of warning.”

“There’s another reason to wait.” Sam stretched his legs in front of him. They seemed to go halfway across the room. He leaned his head back, looking for all the world like a frat boy whose only concern was tonight’s kegger.

“What, oh wise one?”

He grinned. “’Bout time you recognized it.”

Quinn finally smiled back, her frustration fading. “Brat.”

“I know. Anyway, I think it would be wise”—he emphasized the word—“to wait until full moon.”

Nick’s door opened. He carried a pile of folded clothes and had a towel slung over his shoulder. “Sam’s right. Going in powerless is stupid.”

“Waiting two weeks could be stupider.” It was just new moon now. “The leech could strike how many times by then.” And she didn’t want to wait anymore, dammit. After twelve years of being alone, she wanted to meet her family now. Answer all the questions crowding into her, including whether her parents were her enemies or if she could maybe start relationships that weren’t freaking hopeless and painful.

But all the guys cared about was her physical safety.

“You think seeing your parents won’t threaten Marley?” Nick shook his head. “You can’t be objective about this. Let us—” He cut himself off, and he was lucky, because Quinn knew his words would have been arrogant and pissed her off. She took a deep breath and gave in. They had to compromise.

“We’ll wait a few days, then drive. It will be first quarter by the time we get to Connecticut, and I’ll start to have a feed.”

“Only when the moon is up,” Sam cautioned, “and it’ll deplete quickly.”

She pushed to her feet, annoyed again. “I know my limits better than you do, Samuel. Don’t patronize me. And you.” She pointed at Nick. “Get your ass in the shower so I can take my turn. I’m filthy.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” the men said in unison. Quinn took a turn slamming the door of her bedroom, but amusement slowly overcame anger.

“God.” She sighed and threw herself on her bed, the little room’s walls tilting toward her, feeding her urgency to leave, to surge forward. As frightening as it was to face her birth family, it was going to be more difficult to stay here.

As soon as she closed her eyes, she was up against that tiny cabin door again, Nick’s entire body touching hers. His skin smooth and hot under her hands, his scent filling her up, lifting her to joy independent of the desire he’d ignited in a scant second. Quinn would have let him take her up against the door and rejoiced in it—again, not because of uncontrollable moon lust, but because of passion driven by the love she’d buried for so long.

She rolled to press her face into her mother’s old quilt, her fist closing around the cool fabric. Damn him for breaking open that vault! Sam’s revelation about Marley had given Quinn something to focus on, but now they had a plan in place and no action to take for several days. The need to go to Nick, to make him talk to her, twisted with the fear that he’d reject her again, this time blatantly and maybe even forever. After all this time, after so much mutual denial and silent, deep growth of their friendship, why had he crossed that line? Protectors were loyal to the powerless goddesses they protected but committed to none. What would have happened if they hadn’t stopped and someone found out? Would he be barred from the Protectorate? It was all he’d known his whole life. If he was stripped of it…she wasn’t worth that loss, and whatever relationship they might salvage in the aftermath wouldn’t last for long.

How could she survive losing Nick, especially when she also faced losing Sam? Their relationship had already changed. She could tell he’d finally accepted it, and it was only a matter of time before he moved on. Either the way she wanted him to, by finding someone to love who could love him the way he deserved, or because he couldn’t work for her anymore, knowing he couldn’t have her. In the meantime, she didn’t want Sam to know what had happened between her and Nick. That would be salting the wound, even if it had begun to heal.

If Sam did decide to quit, Quinn could hire another assistant, maybe even someone who’d run her business as well as he did. But no one would understand her like Sam or be the kind of friend he was. He was her rock, her only family, even if best-case scenario brought parents and a sister into her life. They’d stay friends, no matter what he decided to do.

But Nick had infiltrated her soul. If he left, he’d rip a hole in her so dark and deep it could never be repaired.

She closed her eyes and let her mind drift into random memories. Sam working at his desk, a groove carved between his eyebrows when he concentrated. Nick shooting the shit with Quinn’s waitresses, who flirted while Nick kept a subtle eye on everyone in the bar. Shooting pool with the guys after hours, Quinn cleaning their clocks. Nick, very young, lounging on her couch, complaining about the romantic drama she’d put in the DVD player, a movie she couldn’t remember because all she knew was her racing heart and the press of his shoulder against hers.

Then Sam, interrupting her negotiations with one of the bar regulars, leading her upstairs to one of the empty rooms, and encouraging her to recharge with him because it was safer and easier.

Nick, cold and hard, erecting the wall that had always been impenetrable. Instead of shutting down, Quinn’s feelings had intensified behind that wall, concentrated and simmered until two nights ago, when he’d unlocked a door she’d never known was there.

Hard knuckles rapped her bedroom door. Quinn’s eyes flew open. Her breath rasped at the abrupt leap from deep in her thoughts to full consciousness. She had to clear her throat before she said, “Yeah.”

“Your turn.” Nick’s voice was normal, but it still scraped across all Quinn’s nerve endings.

She rolled to her side and stared at the door. “Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”

She gave Nick time to retreat to his bedroom, but Sam would still be out there. A few minutes later, her door rattled under another knock.

“Quinn?” Sam sounded tentative.

“Yes?”

“I’m going to the store for supplies for the next few days. You want anything in particular?”

“No, thanks. You know what I like. Ask Nick, though.”

“Already did.”

“Thanks.”

His boots thumped across the floorboards. The front door creaked open and closed. There was silence for a few seconds before the rental car door thudded and the engine whined down the driveway. Quinn figured it was safe to flee into the bathroom now.

But she had no idea how she was going to get through the next few days.

…



She slept a lot. The new moon didn’t do anything to her but make her as normal as any non-goddess, but she still used it as an excuse to go to bed early, sleep late, and take naps. She didn’t realize how exhausted she was until a few days of that routine, and she felt better than she had in months.

Nick enlisted Sam’s help in cleaning weapons and working on the car, and when they weren’t doing that, Sam helped Quinn with research. It ensured Nick and Quinn were never alone together, a fact Sam clearly noticed but never commented on. Quinn caught him eyeing them speculatively more than once, but he kept his mouth shut. At least, around her. She had no idea what he said to Nick when they were beyond her hearing.

The research gave them a solid base of information. Quinn’s mother, Tess, was a member of the Society but like Marley, not a very active one. Quinn checked all the records the organization posted online, and meeting minutes and lists of attendees never mentioned her mother or sister. Neither did newsletters or e-mail loops, regional chapter notes and websites, or individual goddess sites.

But normal records did, and Sam was a whiz at digging into those. Tess and her husband Ned lived in Fairfield, Connecticut, a top-dollar suburb on Long Island Sound, where Ned was an executive for a software company. Tess ran a greenhouse, which Quinn found ironic, considering her adoptive mother’s power source was plants. But the database listed Tess’s source as mineral, and a lot of minerals were found in soil, so the affinity for gardening made sense.

Marley was their only other child. She’d lived her whole life from birth to college in Fairfield and attended Fairfield University before moving to Maine seven years ago, when she was twenty-three.

That part bothered Quinn. Her sister was thirty now, only eight years younger than Quinn. Which meant the last time she saw her birth parents, when she was eight years old, Marley had been either on the way or an infant. Their parents had been willing, or able, to keep her. But they hadn’t wanted Quinn, even then.

It was unfair to cast blame. Her adoptive parents had already given her a good home for eight years, and undoing that would be a legal mess. And of course Quinn would have resented Tess and Ned and longed to be back with Mom and Dad. That long ago, adoptions weren’t open the way they were now. Birth parents didn’t stay in touch with the kids they’d given away. There was no way to make everything “right.” That was life. Except logic rarely had an effect on emotion. Quinn could spin it all day long, and she still wouldn’t banish that eight-year-old’s sense of abandonment.

Tess did modest business in the greenhouse but appeared to have a significant income from personal consultation. It took Sam a while, but eventually he figured out that she made subtle adjustments to a person’s appearance. She didn’t seem able to do major changes, like underlying bone structure or body sculpting. Or at least, she chose not to. But frizzy hair—like Quinn’s had been—acne, eyes that were maybe a bit too hooded or lashes that were sparse and thin, spider veins and blemishes and unsightly growths were all fair game. Quinn wondered what drove Tess—vanity or a desire to help people. Or greed, since she charged a lot of money for what she did.

Ned was, on the surface, a typical executive. The local newspaper featured him regularly. He won golf tournaments, dined with members of the board of selectmen, was a past trustee of the university and associated prep school, and was photographed with his wife at country club events every few months.

They came from a world Quinn had never been a part of, but one she understood. Her adopted father had preferred not to climb so high on the corporate ladder in the years he’d worked for someone else before opening the bar when she was a preteen. He hadn’t been willing to make family sacrifices to get ahead professionally. So they’d lived modestly and out of the public eye, and they’d been happy. All in all, Quinn couldn’t regret the life she’d lived, despite that stubborn ache over the fork in her road and the one she hadn’t been given a chance to take. She hoped things would feel different once she met them and could get out of this never-ending circle of thoughts.

One afternoon the boys clattered into the cabin, shirtless and gleaming with sweat from doing chin-ups on the tree outside. Her mouth went dry over Nick’s sculpted torso, narrow waist, and powerful arms.

“I did six more than you!” Nick shoved Sam, who stumbled sideways, laughing.

“This time. But that’s only because I was tired from doing ten more than you yesterday.” He shoved Nick back and pulled his shirt on.

“Bullshit. You only did ten more because your feet touch the ground, you freak.”

They spotted Quinn at the table and sauntered over. Nick caught her eyeing his abs and slapped his shirt onto his shoulder with a grin.

“Hey, bright eyes. What’re you up to?” He spun a chair and straddled it. He flexed the arm closest to her, and she burst out laughing.

“You guys are unbelievable. Macho men with teenage maturity.”

“What?” Nick pretended to be affronted, and when Sam laughed, he threw his shirt at him. “She’s talking about you, too, bozo. Now seriously.” He sobered and motioned to her pad. “You’ve been planning.”

“Yep.” She pulled off the top page and stood. “It’s a day past first quarter, and it’s time to go.”

…



“You’re sure this is the place?” Nick peered through the Charger’s windshield at the one-story Cape-style house across the winding road. He’d pulled off as far as he could, but the almost nonexistent shoulder and semideep ditch next to it discouraged on-street parking. The houses in this neighborhood all sat on huge lots, with great distances and tall tree lines between them.

“Positive,” Sam answered. “This is the address listed in public records as the residence of Tess and Ned Canton.”

Quinn didn’t share Nick’s skepticism. Though the house was on the small side, with a two-car garage and a sunroom visible at the back, the land was vast. Wide lawns had been carved out of the surrounding woods, a few maples towering on either side of the house. She spotted embedded wires in the long driveway, the kind that heated it in the winter so snow blowing or plowing was mostly unnecessary. That took money. And peeking over the top of the house was the unmistakable roofline of a greenhouse. It wasn’t where Tess did her work—she had a separate site for that—but it was evidence enough for Quinn.

And now that she was here, she couldn’t wait another minute. “I have to see her,” she said.

“That wasn’t the plan.” Sam, in the backseat, put his hand on her shoulder.

She smiled, unable to curb her anticipation. “I know I said I’d call and schedule a meeting, but that doesn’t feel right now. I want to meet my mother.”

“Sam, you go in with her,” Nick decided. “I’ll stay out here and keep watch.” He made a call on his cell phone. Sam’s rang and he answered, looking quizzical. “Keep that line open. You can alert me if you need me in there. She’s probably not a threat, and no one knew we were coming here, but no sense taking chances.”

“And you want to listen to everything we say,” Sam said with a smirk. Nick didn’t respond, but Quinn saw his silent laughter.

“You ready?” Nick asked Quinn, hand on the ignition. She nodded, and he started the car to glide up the driveway to the house. Her heartbeat seemed to keep pace with the car’s acceleration. He parked outside the garage and twisted the key to off. “I’m out here if you need me.”

“I know.” But she stared at the house in front of her and made no move to get out of the car. Fear, resentment, and hope all paralyzed her. She couldn’t even visualize what kind of reception she’d get. How would Tess feel when Quinn showed up on her doorstep? Would her daughter’s presence threaten the very nice life she appeared to have built? Or had they been waiting all this time, as Quinn had for them? This isn’t all about you, she reminded herself. This morning they’d gotten word of a new leeching in South Carolina. Quinn didn’t know the leeched goddess, but the database file showed her power source as wind. The leech had kept moving, and the Society seemed incapable of stopping him. They’d sent out new, more urgent warnings, but there was no way to be certain every goddess received them. No one had a photo of him, and Quinn wasn’t sure she’d be able to identify him from the generic sketch they’d attached .

Nick said the Protectorate was working overtime, but she suspected he wasn’t calling in because he was afraid they’d pull him and assign him elsewhere. She was selfish enough to be grateful. She didn’t want to say good-bye, though if anyone asked, she’d have said that the approaching full moon had given everything a new urgency. She couldn’t argue that she wasn’t a potential target anymore.

Which meant she needed to grow a set and get moving. She took a deep breath and shoved open her door to climb out, straightening her ivory wool pants and cotton sweater.

Sam pulled on a navy sport coat over his khakis and blue button-down shirt and adjusted the collar. “Chilly out here today.”

“It’s November.” The leaves were spectacular, flaming reds and brilliant yellows and oranges that were almost peach. The lawn was still a lush green, and the contrast made her think of jewels, which made her think of money, which tapped into additional insecurities she refused to acknowledge. It was stupid to guess at her parents’ motivations. “You ready?” she asked Sam.

“Whenever you are.” He stood patiently, god love him, letting her take all the time she needed.

They walked up the flagstone walkway to the black front door. Deep breaths temporarily stilled nerves that insisted on jangling. The doorbell rang the Westminster chimes, and they hadn’t died before the door opened, a pleasant smile on the face of the short, curly-haired woman on the other side.

Small as she was, she blocked out the chilly fall air and brilliant foliage and even, for a frightening few seconds, Sam. Quinn was eight years old again, looking up with a trembling smile and tears in her eyes, yet she towered over her mother, whose expression was politely inquiring. She looks nothing like me, Quinn thought, and the world came rushing back.

“Can I help you?” Tess’s gaze landed on Sam first, then swung to Quinn. She held the smile for a few beats before it faded into shock.