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  The remark took Marissa so by surprise that she hesitated, her words trapped in her throat. “I most certainly am not staring out at him!” she protested.

  “Liar,” Lina accused knowingly.

  “Shut up,” Marissa groused, hating that Lina knew her so well … and beyond grateful for it at the same time. They both had other friends and companions in the w of Random House, Inc. and the lorld, but no one was closer to Marissa and she knew the same stood for her sister. “So tell me why you feel compelled to torment me in the middle of my workday.”

  “You mean besides it being fun?” But Marissa could hear the smile fading from her sister’s voice in the next sentence. “Actually, I do have kind of a small teensy little problem,” she confessed.

  Marissa rolled her eyes. Angelina never had a small problem. And the more adjectives she used to minimize it, the more Marissa knew she wasn’t going to like the favor she was going to be asked for.

  “What is going on, honey?” she encouraged her, sighing silently.

  “Can I come see you? I’m not far away.”

  Marissa glanced at the clock.

  “I have an appointment in an hour …”

  There was a knock on Marissa’s door, interrupting her. She got up and hurried over to it.

  “Hold on a sec, Lina, I have—”

  She broke off when she opened the door and saw her sister standing there. Angelina lifted a hand, gave her a sheepish version of her winning smile and wiggled her finger in hello.

  “Oh for Pete’s sake,” Marissa huffed, shutting off her phone with a click. “Why didn’t you just …”

  That was when she noticed the large, surly looking officer standing behind her sister. Officer Weiss she thought his name was. Marissa slowed down a moment, taking in the details of what she was seeing.

  “Oh hell no!” she exclaimed.

  “Yeah. I kinda got arrested.”

  “How do you kind of get arrested?” Marissa demanded, using every last remnant of professionalism and patience she owned to keep from losing her cool in front of the entire bullpen. Just a few yards away everyone she worked with was milling about and any of them, most probably all of them, were witnessing this developing debacle.

  “She kind of punched a cop in the eye,” Weiss growled churlishly.

  Marissa’s eyes flicked back to the officer, and sure enough he was turning black and blue around the orbital bone of his left eye.

  “Angelina!”

  “I didn’t punch him!” she exclaimed. “I sort of … flailed. It was an accident!”

  “She was at the MaxCon rally.”

  Now things were starting to make sense. MaxCon was a notorious textile company on the Hudson River, just north of the village of Saugerties. They had recently been fined for illegally dumping chemicals into the Hudson River. MaxCon’s press release claimed it was an accident, a malfunction of some piece of equipment or other. There were a lot of people who didn’t believe that for a second. Clearly, her sister was one of them.

  Leave it to her sister to be in the thick of trouble. Angelina was a blunt, outspoken, and confident person. She didn’t prevaricate. She didn’t keep her opinions to herself and she always, always fought for what she believed in.

  Needless to say, it wasn’t the first time Angelina had had a run-in with the of Random House, Inc. and the l Saugerties Police Department.

  Well, she wasn’t in cuffs. She was holding her cell-phone, so it hadn’t been confiscated. And Officer Weiss had brought Lina straight to her. Marissa winced inwardly when she realized he’d probably been privy to Lina’s entire conversation, including the part about her staring out the window at Jackson Waverly. She hadn’t mentioned him by name, but still it didn’t take a genius …

  Oh man she was going to commit sororicide!

  “What else did she do?” Marissa asked wearily, deciding not to waste energy worrying about that. Her sister had offered far more fodder for worry at the moment.

  “She trespassed.”

  “I climbed the fence and sat on top of the wall! I didn’t even touch the damn ground!” she argued fiercely, hands on her hips as she rounded on Officer Weiss. “At least I didn’t until you grabbed me and yanked me down! And that’s when I flailed.” She waved her arms around wildly. “I was trying to get you off of me and get to my feet at the same time!”

  “Lina!” Marissa hushed her through her teeth and stiff lips. Angelina was in the process of embarrassing her in front of the entire precinct. And of course she picked shift change to do it, when everyone was present in the building for clocking out or briefing before shift. There was an audience growing in the distance behind Weiss and Lina.

  “Is she under arrest?” Marissa asked coolly.

  “Well … not yet.”

  “Why not?” Marissa wanted to know. “Hey!” Lina protested.

  “Hush!” she commanded her sister. Then she looked at the bruised officer. “Why isn’t she under arrest?”

  “Because she didn’t do anything wrong,” Lina grumbled, absolutely unable to keep her own countenance. It was perhaps her most infuriating trait.

  “Well … uh … the incident in question … it’s kind of a gray area.”

  Lina turned back to her sister and looked smug. The girl didn’t have the first idea how to be careful for her own good. But it did seem as though her sister was perhaps in the right here. If Weiss had been convinced of malicious intent he wouldn’t have brought her to Marissa. The department was very strict about giving preferential treatment to friends and relatives. The town was too small and everyone knew everyone. They had to stay as professional and as impartial as possible.

  “You mean you don’t believe she hit you on purpose.”

  Weiss hesitated, clearly debating with his injured ego for a moment, but Marissa believed that he would be fair if it was warranted. She did know him a little and had never heard of him being accused of being a hard-nosed cop.

  “I’m willing to believe it was accidental,” he grumbled at last.

  Angelina exploded into a beaming smile and, instead of gloating over her victory, she leapt up with a bounce and hugged the officer so hard he grunted.

  “Thank you!” she exclaimed. She pulled back and patted his cheek as if he were a child. “You’re a good man, Officer Weiss.”

  And I swear to godag.the burly officer colored, his entire posture turning “Aww shucks!” as a smile grew across his lips.

  “Just you stay out of trouble, little miss,” he scolded her, reaching out to pinch her on her chin. Then he turned and walked off, shaking his head and grinning.

  Lina wins again.

  Always. It was that ingenuous face and disarming smile, Marissa thought. Not to mention the rest of her ebullient personality. She didn’t blame Officer Weiss for his reactions to her sister. He wasn’t the first to be taken with her charm and spirit.

  Lina turned back to her sister, all white smiling teeth. “So? Show me Mr. Delicious!”

  Marissa grabbed her sister by the arm and yanked her into her office, slamming the door behind her.

  “I wish I’d never told you about him,” Marissa hissed at her. But she was talking to Lina’s back. Lina was already hurrying across to the closed blinds that blocked Marissa’s view of Jackson Waverly. At least Lina was circumspect enough to peek out between the slats and not press her whole face and body against the glass. Marissa needed to be glad for small favors.

  “Oh my freaking god!” Angelina exclaimed.

  “Will you lower your voice,” Marissa hissed, her face burning with inexplicable embarrassment. Well … actually … it wasn’t exactly embarrassment that made her skin heat up. She knew exactly what Angelina was seeing. She’d peeked out that window endlessly these past weeks. And that moment didn’t turn out to be any different. She moved up beside her sister and peeked out at Jackson right along with her sister.

  “Jesus, Mari, he’s gorgeous! Look at that ass! You could bounce a quarter off that thing.” />
  “Lina!” But the scold was ruined when she laughed behind it. “He is pretty,” she said as she made herself move away from the window and pick up her tepid coffee. “I’ll give him that.”

  “Pretty? He’s a god. He’s the kind of guy that makes you wish to be a bar of soap in his shower.”

  Coffee sprayed across Marissa’s desk as the remark hit her mid sip. Marissa dissolved into a coughing fit and half-inhaled coffee swam in her lungs. “Oh my god!”

  “You said it, sister,” Angelina said with a giggle as she turned away from the window. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  Angelina waited patiently as her sister recovered a normal breathing pattern.

  “I’m doing nothing about it of course!” she croaked out. “Jackson is a patient. Doctors don’t date patients. It’s a matter of ethics.”

  “Please,” Lina said rolling her eyes. “I’d quit for that.” She nodded toward the window.

  “Well, I’m not you. And it’s a good thing too because someone has to pay the rent.”

  “Oh. Ow. Low blow, sis.”

  Marissa frowned. It was a low blow. Times were tough across America, and Angelina’s personality couldn’t fill just any kind of job. Oh, her smiling eyes and sunny strawberry-blond looks made it easy for her to get a job, but the opinionated champion of underdogs and lost tromping through the woodsan better causes everywhere eventually got on nerves and infuriated or exasperated her bosses. The fact that Lina was just too sweet for words and was as compelling as the day was long … that made it really hard to fire her as well. But eventually she got on a last nerve or crossed an inappropriate line and the employment opportunity would dissolve around her.

  “I’m sorry. I know you try.”

  That was part of the problem. Lina tried too hard to champion the world. She came dead last on her own list of things that needed taking care of. Everything else came first, whether it was the Hudson River, the homeless, or the extinction of Siberian tigers … just to name a few.

  “Angelina, you really need to be more careful,” she said with a sigh, fingertips rubbing at the ache throbbing at her temple. Marissa knew she was wasting her breath, and in a way she was proud of her sister for that. She stood for something. She wasn’t ever afraid of anything.

  Marissa couldn’t say the same. In fact, she was the overcautious, strait-laced, serious one of the family. Yes, that’s exactly how she would describe herself.

  “You need to loosen up,” Lina said, for the thousandth time. “Before you know it your youth will be gone and bam!”—she smacked her hands together—“You’re old and decrepit with cobwebs in your vagina and you’ll be sitting there wondering why you never actually lived your life. I constantly hope you’ll throw caution to the wind one day and just embrace your life.”

  “And I constantly wish you’d tread a little more carefully.” Marissa sighed. “Let’s face it, we’re never going to be what the other wants us to be.”

  “Never say never,” Lina said with a mischievous wink. “If you’re up against the glass drooling over that, then I have tremendous hope for you!”

  “That,” she said, pointing to the window, “is never going to happen. Not in a million years. So give it up.”

  “Humph. Maybe so. Maybe not.” Lina moved toward the door. “You never know what the future holds.”

  “Never, Lina. So stop bringing it up,” Marissa said sternly as Lina pulled open her office door.

  “I’ve got to jet. Later, sis,” she said waving as she breezed out the door. “Hey Weiss!” she shouted across the bullpen. “Coffee and donuts on me!”

  of Random House, Inc.y “If youCHAPTER TWO

  Jackson looked to his left, a flash of movement briefly catching his attention. Rising to his full height, he smiled as he watched the blinds drop behind Marissa’s windows. A snap of his fingers brought Sargent to his heel. The dog took his position and gazed up at him, tongue lolling out of his mouth as he panted from his exertions and his excitement.

  “Wow, Jacks, that dog’s a beast,” Officer Carl Manheim panted as he came toddling and hopping up to them, the bite suit he was wearing too bulky to allow for any grace and even less dignity. There were better made suits these days, but their tiny little department with only two K-9 units in training didn’t rate such costly equipment. They had to make do with ancient leftovers inherited from the Albany police department.

  Jackson pulled his cap down to shade his face, his sunglasses protecting his burning eyes from the sunlight. He felt heavy and tired, as though he were slogging through a marshland full of thick, sucking mud. He would be glad when training was finally complete. This weakness to sunlight he’d inherited along with a certain Egyptian monarch was beating the Christ out of him. And from what he had come to understand, he was lucky to be moving at all. According to Ram and to Menes himself, the only reason he was able to move at all was because Menes was slowing down the Blending process to an infinitesimal rate and because Menes himself was incredibly powerful and had the strength necessary to buck the one weakness that dogged a Bodywalker’s heels.

  This was perhaps why Menes was pharaoh over all the other Bodywalkers. Even above powerful, dominant men in their own right like Menes’s best friend Ramses.

  Ramses II.

  Holy hell. It had been three weeks since Jackson had nearly died, only to be saved by making a strange deal in order to save his own life. He remembered every single detail of everything that had happened. He remembered the agony of being hit with a searing blast of power known as the Curse of Ra. He remembered the force of it propelling him back through yards of air, and he very clearly recalled the feeling of crashing violently into a car windshield.

  Then there had been nothing. A world of floating, disembodied nothingness. The Ether, they called it. A dimension of foggy clouds and barely existent beings you could feel rather than see. But then he had seen Menes, a tall, dark-skinned warrior, a tower of strength and well-defined musculature and very little in the way of clothing.

  Then he remembered the proposition.

  Die now … or live as host to me. We will share your body; Blend our spirits. One man made of two souls. I am a king, a powerful central figure in a world beyond anything you have comprehended before this. With this position comes not only heavy responsibility, but also very persistent enemies. Enemies who will want us dead.

  It had not been a prettied-up offer, had not been glorified, and Menes had made him no promises save one …

  Join with me and I will show you many things you never would have expected to understand … but most of all, I will show you a love like no other. I will introduce you to the most perfect woman in all known history. You will know a love that will transcend anything you can conjure in your mind.

  There had been many factors that had intrigu; line-height:1.4em; } div.toc_. ied him into agreeing, but he secretly admitted to himself that this particular one had held a curious amount of appeal to him.

  “Thanks, Manheim,” he said absently as he bent to scrub at Sargent’s ruff. The dog grunted and groaned happily.

  This would be the last safe day in the sun for Jackson. It had been three weeks since that bargain had been struck. Tonight the Blending would become complete, according to Menes, and daylight would be taken from him for the rest of his life. It had surprised Landon, his boss, when he had volunteered for third watch. Usually night watch was for rookies who hadn’t earned enough seniority to get the day shift. But it was the only option open to Jackson if he wanted to continue at his job.

  Oh, he understood he would have to give up his position in the Saugerties, New York, police department eventually. Perhaps sooner than later. The Bodywalker seat of government was somewhere in New Mexico, the desert apparently feeling very much like home to these ancient Egyptians.

  But he had some unfinished business that needed taking care of, and Menes was inclined to agree. Together, he and his Bodywalker looked toward the set of windows that would have al
lowed him a straight view into Marissa’s office, had she not dropped the blinds in an effort, he imagined, to shut him out.

  He didn’t know why the psychiatrist was a cause for delay exactly. After all, she’d been within reach for the better part of two years and, other than ogling her backside and other deliciously hot curves of her body as she’d walked back and forth past his desk, he’d never felt compelled to do anything more about his attraction to her.

  But then his sister had disappeared—or so he had thought—and his entire outlook on the world, including his perspective toward Marissa “Hotbody” Anderson, had changed. How much of it was her doing, his doing, or because of Menes’s hijacking of his body, mind, and soul was truly unknown to him. All he knew was that he wanted her. Bad. Really, really bad.

  Menes looked through his new host’s eyes, studying the drawn shades of the good doctor’s windows. As his and Jackson’s Blending neared the finish, Menes grew more and more aware of the strong attraction his host had for the redhead beyond the glass. Jackson may not understand his sudden compulsion to sniff after the resident shrink, but Menes did. Menes did because he was encouraging it. He was fanning the flame of it.

  When he had first been reborn in Jackson, he’d been drawn too quickly to the surface, had exploded with an unexpected and dangerous surge of power. He had sublimated his host in order to speak and be heard. It was not something he was in the habit of doing. He was in the habit of unifying with his host, sharing the world they now lived in symbiotically. He gave Jackson enhanced strength, retarded aging, leadership of a great people, and a power the likes of which no one else among the Politic had claim to. Jackson gave him breath and body, sight and smell, and the resurrection of life so that there may follow a resurrection of his heart … so yes, it was a perfect symbiosis. They each brought something to the table. It would be wrong for him to reward Jackson’s invitation with an internal slavery, dominating him and forcing him to his will.

  But Menes knew he would be sorely tempted these first years. It was so difficult in the beginning when two strong personalities had to learn the perfect rhythm to coexisting as one. Rather like a marriage or a great love; line-height:1.4em; } div.toc_. i. The first part—the infatuation and the fascination—was easy. The second part was where all the work lay. As many marriage vows have declared, in one version or another, throughout the ages he had lived in … in prosperity and in famine, in health and in sickness, in the daily cost of living and the tribulations of every soul, that was where the difficulties and best rewards were to be found.