Levi didn't stay long at Gen's house, though he
spent quite a bit of time trying to urge her to meet up later at Stephie's
house for their usual Bad Movie Night. She declined, citing every excuse
in the book and a few that would probably be thrown in the appendices. She
rarely missed one of their nights, but she knew she wouldn't be able to
concentrate on anything...not until she got a few more answers.
Of
course, Gen lied later that night when she went out again after her walk
with Penny. It was nine-thirty and her parents had retired to the living
room. While they wondered why she was leaving so late for Stephie's, she
assured them Levi just got Hayden to pick her up after work and she was
going to meet him at the corner. They wouldn't call and check up on her.
They trusted her, after all. Why would they bother suspecting her of doing
something crazy, such as returning to the park where she'd been attacked
at gunpoint earlier?
Saturday was far from the best night of the
week for a girl to go walking at night, even in a place like Newhaven.
There were usually a bunch of teens drinking and smoking up in quiet areas
around town, but that night the park was empty and silent. She paused near
the ground where the men had been scuffling earlier. Grass had been torn
and boot treads dented the ground.
She went to the swing set and
took a seat, deciding to wait and think before heading all the way to
Meredith’s. Michael seemed like he was telling her the truth...but he
wasn't exactly a picture of trustworthiness.
In the pocket of her
light jacket, she felt her phone vibrate. Her dad had played around with
the broken phone all afternoon, and returned it to her, insisting it would
work. She hadn't believed him, but it seemed to be in decent condition
now. Gen pulled out the phone. The LCD screen blinked with Stephie’s phone
number.
"What’s going on?" she asked as she answered.
A
fit of giggles met her ear. "You’re missing
the best movie ever!" Stephie
declared.
"What’s it this time?"
"Seventies sexploitation
flick. It’s hilarious! Oh-mi-god, hold on, Lev wants to saying
something..."
Somehow in the process of handing the phone over,
the receiver fell, and it took a few moments for Levi to pick it up. Gen
kicked her feet off the ground as she waited, gently swinging back and
forth.
"Gen!" Levi shouted into the phone. "Okay, I was thinking
something. Wait...okay, now I remember. Why is the name Lois spelt like
i-s? Why can’t it be like i-c-e? Like Lo-iiiiiiiicccee..."
"Because that would be ‘ice.’"
"No, like what about
Wallace? Wall-issss..."
"Lev, you’re stoned, and I’m hanging up
now."
"Hey, did you call Sage yet? Saaaa
ge.
Ge. Why can’t it have a 'J' in
it?" He giggled again and in the background she heard Stephie laughing as
well. "You’re gonna call Sage, right? So you can learn like kung fu or
something. Oh, I’m so brilliant! We should watch a kung fu movie next
week!"
"Goodbye Lev." Just as she tucked the phone back in her
pocket, something yanked the swing to a halt, and the force nearly pitched
her to the ground.
After correcting her balance, Gen sent a
scowling look up at Michael, who stood next to her with the chain of the
swing in his hand.
"Dammit, you scared me!"
"Sorry," he
said unconvincingly.
"No, you’re not."
"That‘s true." He
let the swing go and sat in the seat next to hers.
From what she
could see, he had a few bruises, but otherwise seemed alive and well.
Still a sadist, sure, but physically well enough.
"You believe me
now, don’t you?" he said, the volume of his voice not far above a whisper,
but the tone clear and deeply serious.
"No," she lied, not yet
ready to admit as much to herself, let alone him.
"Being stubborn
isn’t going to help you survive."
"Neither is you being creepy."
"But you understand I’m serious now; you would have died today had
I not intervened."
"No, I don’t understand that. For all I know,
you led them here and you’re so delusional in your belief about all this
that you convinced them of it too, and put me and Meredith in trouble."
"It’s the other way around. I followed them here. They led me to
Merri."
"And to me?"
"You I found on my own."
"So
you did lead them to me—"
"They would have found you regardless.
It’s what they do."
"But who are they?"
He raised an
eyebrow skeptically and gave her a sideways look. "You were there for our
discussion earlier, right?"
I hate this guy,
she
thought, grinding her teeth.
"Yeah, I remember, but who are they?
What are their names? Who sent them? Why can’t we have them arrested?"
"They don’t have names."
"Everyone has a name."
"They used to, but they don’t now. Stripped of name, of identity,
of anything but the mission, they exist simply to find you and the
others."
She remembered the look in their eyes then, and the
vacant, soulless expression that sent shivers of fear through her. Michael
still watched her, however, so she brushed the feeling aside.
"They can’t be that tough—I mean, you’ve fought them off a couple
of times now."
He shot her a look.
"Not that I’m insulting
your fighting abilities or anything," she added.
Please don’t let him stab
me.
"But four guys against you, and you’re still alive. I like them odds."
"Their mission isn’t to kill me. It’s to kill you."
"That's not a reason
not to kill you."
"It is for them."
"But then why didn’t one of them run after me or shoot me while I
was leaving the park? I think they suck at their mission."
"I
suspect the person who sent them is testing you right now."
"Me?"
"And the others. He wants to know what you can do, where you are
in terms of abilities, what resources you have available."
"Why
bother if he’s just going to kill us?"
"I haven’t figured that out
yet." He sighed. Gen didn’t know if he was tiring of her questions at that
point, or just pissed that he had to reveal to her he didn‘t have all the
answers.
"If all of this is true—and I’m not saying it is—but
hypothetically if you’re right about it all, why are you doing this? Yeah,
you saved my life, but you’re far from cheerful about it—why are you
helping?"
"I really don’t know," he muttered, and she believed
him.
"Okay, again with a hypothetical...what am I supposed to do
now? Just carry on every day like someone isn’t trying to kill me, and
hope to god they leave me alone?"
"I start working with you and
Merri while I look for the warrior, then with the three of you together,
we come up with a way to remove the assassins from the picture completely
and see who’s pulling the strings."
"Gee, is that all?"
"To start with."
"So what kind of, like...uh...dammit, you
realize how cheesy and ridiculous this seems?"
"Yeah. But you’d
like to know what it is you’ll be able to do? What the others can do?" He
seemed to read her a little too well, and she shifted uncomfortably under
his steady gaze.
"In a nutshell."
"As you might have
guessed, Merri sees things."
"Like dead people?"
"No. Like
auras. Like dimensional tears. Future events, remote viewing, entities
invisible to the naked eye, and a person’s true form."
"Is that
it?" she joked.
"At the moment."
"Wait, so she can already
do all that stuff?"
Either this guy is bullshitting me, or I’m in
serious trouble, because I sure as hell can’t do anything like that...
"A few gifts are stronger than others, but
she’s learning. You’ll be able to affect physical matter, control the
elements...at least in theory."
"Oh,
ha ha."
"Then there’s the
warrior. As I would hope you’d have guessed by now, she’s a gifted
fighter."
"So she just kicks ass?"
"No, she's a
warrior. It's not merely physical prowess she possess, but
mentally, she's someone who knows war."
Though she’d been dreading
this part, Gen knew she’d have to fess up eventually.
"Uh...about
the warrior chick..."
She told him what Levi had described to her;
the fight, Sage’s easy win, how she moved with a speed and grace that
couldn’t have simply been taught. Michael didn't say anything for a few
moments after she'd finished. A look of understanding crossed his face,
though, and suggested he knew the reason she decided to believe him was
because what he described seemed to match information she received from a
more reliable source.
"He wasn't lying?" Michael asked at last.
"C'mon, it's Levi."
He gave her a look, as if "it's Levi"
wasn't explanation enough for him.
"He wouldn't lie, especially
not to me."
"Exaggerate?"
She wavered on this question.
Considering it was Sage, he might have exaggerated a bit...but she
wouldn't dare tell Michael that. "No—if he said that happened, then it
happened."
Michael sighed. "Then I guess I'd better talk to her."
*~*~*
Not once on Saturday did Genevieve think that she
would spend the next day sitting in the house of a man she thought tried
to kill her, phoning a girl she didn't know—or like—particularly well, all
because a group of people were stalking and planning to kill them both
because of their supposedly mystical powers.
And yet that was
where she found herself, sitting on Michael's kitchen table, hanging up a
cordless phone after calling Sage.
"Well that was a world of
weirdness," Gen commented with a sigh.
"But she's on her way
over?" Meredith sat next to the table.
"So she says. I don't know
if she'll stay or just think we're all crazy, though."
"Did you
call yet?" Michael called from across the building. Gen glanced over to
see him staring at her from the upper loft.
"Yes, I did, and you'd
know that if you were down here!"
"If you had called her half an
hour ago like I told you to, she'd already be here." He disappeared from
view before Genevieve could reply, leaving her fuming. Why the hell did he
insist on sounding exactly like her mother?
"Is he always like
this?" Gen nearly shouted, too easily taking her anger out on Meredith.
Merri shrugged. "Not really. I don't think he likes you very well,
though."
"I hadn't noticed," Gen muttered.
She talked a
little to Meredith while they waited for Sage. At first, Gen couldn't help
but be abrupt and short with her; she had lied to her, after all. Add to
that the fact an entirely different person emerged from the shy girl she
met at school, and Gen remained uncomfortable with her.
Merri
revealed she didn't live in the old warehouse building herself; it
belonged entirely to Michael. Everything he told Gen the night before had
been true, as well. Merri had recently moved to Newhaven, and it was one
night a few weeks ago that she was coming home from the store, and the
group came after her. Merri, of course, always knew there was something
different about her; she couldn't help but see things others didn't.
"You knew about...well, did you tell Michael I was like this witch
person or something?" Gen asked at last.
Merri shook her head. "I
can't tell, not since it's a part of you. Some other person who'd had
something magically done to them? Sure, I could tell that kind of person
right away. But not you, and not Sage."
"How did..." Gen lowered
her voice and sent a wary gaze to the loft. There was no sign of Michael,
and they sat far enough away from him that she hoped he didn't hear her.
"How did Michael know? About me?"
"He wouldn’t tell me." Merri
shrugged, and in all honesty, Gen believed she really didn't know. "Just
said he knew."
"That’s...like disturbing, actually. God, he's
weird."
"I can still hear you," Michael called from somewhere in
the loft.
"Then later I won't need to repeat that I think you're
creepy and psychotic!" Gen returned. While she still hadn't completely
ruled out him suddenly killing her, she'd made more than a few
questionable remarks already, and he hadn't done much more than glare at
her.
A knock sounded at the door. Meredith and Gen exchanged
glances then Merri rose to answer it. Gen waited at her spot on the table;
Merri could explain this one. Gen didn't have a clue what to say to Sage
about all this. "Hi, Levi told me you kick ass, and we think you might be
like Buffy or something." That'll go over really well.
Gen glanced
to Michael's loft, but there was no sign of him. Goddamn, after all that
nagging her to call Sage, he better not just check out on them.
"Gen's in here," Meredith said, back to her cheerful—and in
retrospect, quite deceitful—tone of voice she had used the day before when
greeting Genevieve at the door. She led Sage to the kitchen.
Sage,
as always, looked completely disinterested in her present company. On top
of that was a healthy dose of annoyance, and Gen wondered if perhaps this
was not the best idea after all.
"So?" Sage said, crossing her
arms over her chest and waiting. "What questions did you have?"
"Questions..."
"Your social science project? Local girls
involved in martial arts?"
Genevieve figured she should start
making more of an effort to remember all these ridiculous lies she was
coming up with.
Sage glanced at Merri, probably hoping for more of
a response from her.
"Right. The project." Merri looked to Gen. So
did Sage.
"Um..." Genevieve's gaze shot to the loft again. Where
the hell was Michael?
"I have somewhere to be this afternoon,"
Sage said coolly. "If we can do this at school tomorrow, that would be
preferable—"
Other than Sage speaking, the room had been so quiet
that Gen didn't notice Michael until the moment he appeared near them. Her
eyes went over Sage's shoulder to where he stood just in time to see his
closed fist about to strike.
Before Genevieve could open her mouth
to warn her, Sage seemed to sense the attack, and pivoted out of his way
before his strike connected.
What the hell is he
doing?!
Gen thought, horrified to see him quickly recover from the missed hit, and
attack Sage once more. Initially, she'd been glad to know that at least he
didn't plan to stalk Sage around town as he did her, but this had to be
worse!
Sage's responses surprised Gen; though on the defensive,
she managed to deflect most blows, adapting with ease to a situation that
must have seemed surreal.
It wasn't long before it became clear
Michael had the upper hand, though. Offensive tactics didn't seem to be
getting him very far, however as soon as Sage took the initiative, he was
able to counter her attacks with little effort. Sage kept her face
expressionless, but Gen caught a glimpse of surprise in her eyes at how
quickly Michael managed to turn the tables. In only a few minutes of
fighting, he had her pinned to the ground on her stomach, his one knee
pressing down on the small of her back, and his strong hands twisting her
arm into a gruesome position that made Genevieve shudder to see.
Well, Gen mused,
guess she's not the one we're
looking for. "I'm not here to kill you," Michael said,
staring down at Sage.
She could only twist her head so far, and
was unable to meet his gaze. Sweat poured down her forehead, and her brow
was pulled together in a wince of pain. She didn't say anything, though;
not a word of protest or a cry of pain, not even a request for an
explanation as to why he was keeping her in such a horrible position.
"I'm going to let you up now," he said. "I'm not going to hurt
you, but we've got some things to discuss. All right?"
Sage gave a
quick nod, then let out a heavy sigh of relief as Michael let go of her
arm and stepped back. She pulled herself into a sitting position and
rubbed her sore arm, glaring up at Michael warily.
"So it's not
her?" Gen asked as Michael walked to the kitchen table and leaned on the
surface not far from her.
"Of course it is," he replied.
What the hell? "But you just beat her;
I thought the warrior—"
"It's her."
Sage stood up slowly,
still gripping her arm, and her gaze went over each one of them. "This
doesn't make any sense."
"What doesn't?" Michael asked.
"You...no one beats me. Ever."
"You're faster than me,"
Michael agreed, "and you're more agile, probably just as strong, and your
instinct borders on precognition. You're just not as skilled...yet."
"But...but I've been doing this for years—"
"I've been
doing it longer."
Meredith vacated her chair as Sage walked over
then she went to get the exhausted girl a bottle of water.
"So it
is her?" Genevieve asked, thoroughly confused at this point.
Michael nodded, his gaze still on Sage.
"What's me?" Sage
asked, her impatience growing.
Neither Michael nor Meredith seemed
about to explain, and since she found Sage's eyes on her, Gen realized
with a sinking feeling that this task was being left up to her.
I hate you, Michael.
"Okay...there's no easy way
to say this," Gen began, really wishing someone else would do it for her.
She glanced to her companions, but both appeared to waiting for her to
continue. "Alrighty then, essentially there are these people who are all
coming together with special abilities and they're going to play some
important role in the apocalypse. You're one of them—the fighty one, to be
precise."
Sage looked at each of them again strangely.
"I
know, it's weird and crazy, but that's why those guys attacked you after
Levi's game the other night, so you're just going to have to trust us on
this one."
The warrior herself seemed to ponder this for a moment,
her gaze sliding over the others. At last she nodded. "Okay."
Huh? "Okay?" Gen repeated. "Just like that?
You're fine with all that?"
Sage shrugged. "Makes sense."
"But..." God, was Genevieve the only sane one here? She sighed and
flopped down onto the chair next to her. "Oh, forget it."
Meredith
explained in more detail, touching on all the things she and Michael said
to Gen the day before. When she finished, Sage just nodded again, as if
she couldn't imagine a more rational explanation for it all.
"So
why is she here?" Sage asked, gesturing in Gen's direction.
What a bitch. "
She has a name," Genevieve
answered for them.
"Gen's the witch," Meredith replied.
Sage looked Genevieve up and down, clearly skeptical. "Now that I
do find difficult to believe."
"Something still doesn't make sense
to me," Gen directed to Michael. "Why is she able to beat those guys
without getting a scratch, meanwhile you got all banged up, but you still
beat Sage? I know what you said about testing us, but I still don't see
why the four of them would just stand there and get their asses handed to
them—"
"They did what they were told to do," Meredith spoke up,
and all eyes went her way. "They
only do what they're told to."
"But I gotta
agree," Sage said. "That doesn't seem right—"
"I saw it," Merri
said quietly. She dropped her eyes. "Saw it in them when they came after
me. They're like machines now...and they're just waiting for their orders.
They tested you Sage. If they had actually been instructed to kill you,
you probably wouldn't be alive now."
In watching Sage digest this
information, Gen wasn't sure if the girl really believed that bit or not.
Whether it was arrogance or just confidence, Gen couldn't say, but Sage
hardly seemed prepared to accept that the only reason she won a fight was
because her opponent more or less allowed her to.
"This is why we
need to get started immediately," Michael said. "All of you do. We can't
afford to waste time."
Sage glanced down at her watch and frowned.
"That's great, but I was serious about having to go. I'm already late for
my class—"
"Cancel it," Michael said.
"I can't—"
"Cancel it," he said again.
Gen inched back a bit in her
chair as the tension between Sage and Michael became palpable. This was
one fight she didn't want to get into.
"I can't cancel it," she
said coldly. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to find a Muay Thai
class that I could get to easily? Or how difficult it was for me to sneak
out today to go to it?"
"No, and I don't care."
"What can
you possibly teach me that…"
"
Kenjutsu."
Sage stared at him,
disbelieving, and Gen couldn't help but feel she was missing some vital
bit of information they both knew that she didn’t.
"You can't be
serious," Sage said at last.
In response, Michael stood and walked
to the weapons cabinet Genevieve had looked into the day before. He pulled
out a katana, walked to Sage, and handed her the blade to look over. She
studied the sword for a moment then looked at him skeptically.
"I
wish I could have the sword," Gen leaned over and whispered to Merri. It
seemed like Sage got all the cool stuff, which was seeming less and less
fair as the discussion went on.
"Maybe you'll get fireballs,"
Merri replied with a sly grin.
"Now that would be cool."
"This is for real?" Sage asked, handing the sword back. "You know
kenjutsu?"
Michael nodded. "And I'll teach you, as well as
anything else I know."
Sage mulled over this for a moment. "I want
to keep my Muay Thai class too, though. It's only one afternoon a week."
After a moment, Michael agreed. "All right then."
*~*~*
Sage was almost relieved to skip her afternoon
class, because that meant heading to Hayden's home earlier than expected.
She crept down the staircase to the basement, knowing by heart all the
spots on the steps that created the most noise and avoiding them so he
wouldn't hear her coming. After slipping through the short hallway, she
paused outside the basement room where a couch and T.V. was set up. Hayden
sat on the floor, back against the couch, X-Box controller in hand,
focused intently on the images that played on the screen.
She
watched him for a moment, not yet ready to announce her arrival, and
smiling to herself. He was so different from her—a polar opposite,
even—and yet she couldn't imagine being with anyone else. After an
incredibly strange couple of days that seemed surreal to her now, Sage
could take a deep breath, let it out, and will it all to disappear.
Strange guys following her. Michael. Bizarre tales of apocalypses. The
involvement of that obnoxious friend of Levi's. But with all that gone,
there was still something that remained; the promise of something she
wasn't sure she'd ever have...
Purpose. Meaning. A reason for
being the way that she is. Hayden loved her more than she'd ever thought
possible, and probably more than she deserved, but that was the only thing
he could never give her. Years of feeling there was something more,
something she knew was there but couldn’t see, and now this.
"You
going to just stand there all day?" Hayden called, not taking his eyes
from the screen.
"Why do you always know I'm there?" she said with
a sigh as she walked over. She dropped to the floor next to him and sat
cross-legged.
"My mutant mental powers, of course. You're around
early."
"Change in my schedule. So what's up this afternoon?"
He waited until he had finished killing some aliens, then put Halo
on pause. "Heard Uwe Boll is making another film, so I was preparing
voodoo dolls."
"How's that working out for you?"
"Haven't
heard any cheers in the streets yet, so I'm guessing not well. Oooh, and
this morning I unlocked Princess Kitana's second outfit for you."
Sage rolled her eyes. "Guess I'll have to play now."
"Hey,
maybe you'll win this time."
She couldn't explain it, but for some
reason she was incapable of playing fighting games. Take on a group of men
with weapons in real life? Sure. No problem there. But defeat Hayden when
he was playing as Shang Tsung? Impossible.
Hayden returned his
attention to the game, went through a couple different screens, then
passed Sage the second controller. "Here, you can help me."
Sage
muttered under her breath, but picked up the controller anyway. She looked
at the T.V., but it being a first person game, she couldn't figure out
which character was hers in the split screen.
"Which one is me?"
"Bottom of the screen."
She could see her own character in
Hayden's window. "You gave me pink armour?"
"It's light-ish red.
Now come on, we've got aliens to kill."
"How do I do this again?"
"Stop stalling. Just start shooting."
He ran ahead, while
her light-ish red guy stayed hiding behind a rock.
"C'mon," he
teased. "You can do it. Take a deep breath and just yell 'Leeeeeroy
Jenkins!'"
"What?"
"I seriously need to nerd you up one of
these days," he replied with a sigh.
She tried—with little
success—to involve herself in the game, but thirty seconds after she
started playing, her character was brutally killed by a grenade.
Sage
could merely sit back and wait for Hayden to re-spawn
her character, but a better idea entered her mind then. She slid her arm
over his shoulder and gave his ear a playful nip.
"Hey..." He
tried to lean out of her grasp while maintaining his winning streak
onscreen, but that resulted in his character slipping over a cliff.
"You're not content to just lose peacefully and be a good sport?"
he said with a sigh as he tossed the controller down.
"It's just I
can think of more than a few things we could be doing instead." She
grinned, and he eagerly met her lips as she leaned in to kiss him. Sage
fell back on her elbows under his weight, happy any gaming attempts were
forgotten, and content to lose herself—and memories of her rather surreal
day—in him.
"
Bow-chica-bow-wow!"
Sage gritted her
teeth at the voice coming from the doorway. What the hell was he doing
home?!
Hayden's hand, which had been dragging up the hem of her
t-shirt, paused heavily on her bare skin for a moment then reluctantly
smoothed the material out. He sat up with an audible sigh. Annoyed, Sage
did the same and crossed her arms over her chest, not even glancing in
hello at Levi, who slouched in the doorway to the basement.
"There
are several rooms in this house that have doors," Levi informed them, as
if they didn't already know. "You couldn't pick one of those ones for your
NC17-rated adventures?"
"Maybe you could mind your own business
and stay out of the room when you see people otherwise engaged?" Sage
snapped. Generally, she didn't usually say two words to Levi, so her
sudden outburst caused a look of confusion from Hayden.
A distant
buzzer sounded, interrupting the tension in the room.
"And that
would be the laundry," Hayden said as he stood. "Fabric softener time."
As he disappeared into the laundry room at the end of the hall,
Sage stood as well and tried to follow. No way was she waiting in the
awkwardness of the rec room for him to return.
Levi stepped in
front her, however, blocking her from going any further down the hallway.
While she felt confident she could put him through the drywall if
necessary, she stopped long enough to see if he'd move on his own after
she issued a warning.
"Please, get out of my way," she said,
making no attempt to hide her annoyance.
"We gotta talk about the
other night," Levi said, in a voice loud enough for Sage to glance behind
him at the laundry room in concern. She hadn't breathed a word about that
night to Hayden, and she didn't plan to.
"There's nothing to talk
about," she hissed.
"But who were those guys?" Levi lowered his
voice to just above a whisper.
"It doesn't concern you, so just
forget it!" She tried to move past him, but he grabbed her arm to halt
her.
Sage glared up at him, immediately tensing up at his touch.
"Sage—"
She wrenched her arm from his grasp and pushed him
out of her way.
"Does Hayden know?"
She spun on her heels
to face him. "Know what, exactly?"
"That...that you can do all
that..."
"It's not important."
"But—"
"Leave it
alone, Levi!"
"Hey, hey," Hayden interrupted, returning from the
laundry room. Sage sank gratefully against him as his arm encircled her
waist, her anger dissipating. "You two look ready to kill one another."
"It's nothing," Sage said before Levi could comment. She turned to
Hayden with a bright smile, attempting to forget her exchange with his
brother seconds ago. "Want to head upstairs now? Perhaps to one of those
nifty rooms with doors?"
"I know just the one—it even has a lock."
Sage happily left Levi behind in the basement, her hand in
Hayden's as they raced up the steps to the main level. Though she expected
they'd head to his room on the second floor, he pulled her into the
kitchen instead.
"I don't think this actually has a door," she
began.
"What was that all about?" he asked in all seriousness.
"What was what about?" Though she'd never been good at playing
dumb, it was particularly difficult with Hayden. He usually saw through
it, and this was no exception.
"Your rather heated exchange with
my brother. What was that about?"
"Nothing," she said, perhaps too
quickly. "He just...I didn't stick around after his game the other day,
and I think he was a little pissed about it."
It was clear from
his expression he didn't believe her. What precisely he thought she was
lying about, she couldn't be sure. Should he call her bluff, she didn't
have a clue what she'd tell him, but she breathed with relief as he
finally sighed and nodded.
"Guess that's the last time I'll ask
you to do that, then." He grinned. "Now let's find that door with a
lock."
