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  Docia disappeared from the world as she knew it very shortly after that.

  “Hello? … Helloooo? … Sis?” Jackson frowned at the phone, then hung it up with the push of a button. His sister’s cellphone was a piece of crap. He knew it was all she could afford on her salary, but it bugged him that she dropped calls all the time and had a hard time getting a good signal. One of these days she was going to need help or something and that crappy little phone wasn’t going to do her any good.

  He made a mental note to get her a better one for Christmas.

  * * *

  You are much too young to die, a beautiful voice breathed across Docia’s mind.

  She agreed wholeheartedly. But she didn’t see how she had much choice in the matter. Who really did? When your ticket was punched, your ticket was punched. There wasn’t much that could be done about it.

  So easily you give up. I have no compatibility with such a weakness.

  Oh, bite me, she thought back heatedly to whatever afterlife spirit had suddenly decided to harass her at the shittiest moment of her impending death. Since this is my first death, you’ll have to excuse the hell out of me if I don’t know what’s expected of me! she railed at the voice twisting around her spirit. Where the hell was the warm, fuzzy light and the peace everyone said she was supposed to be feeling? No one ever mentioned a nagging, judgmental bitch with an exotic accent picking on her flaws.

  Then Docia found herself on her feet in a soft environment. She could smell the thick presence of incense in the air, pungent and sweet, yet musky and as erotic as it was exotic. She was surrounded by a swirling grayness with ever-moving clouds of fog tumbling past her as though they were commanded by a current as rest-less as the one she had fallen into.

  Been shoved into.

  Hey, what the fuck was with that, anyway? she wanted to know. If she was going to be all dead, shouldn’t she be able to look down onto the world or something and find out all the answers she hadn’t been able to see when she’d been alive? Oh … hell … could she be an angel if she thought the word fuck a lot? Oh fuck! What if she said it all the time? That was bad, right? She really wanted to be an angel. Not that hell scared her so much— no, wait, it did— but more because she wanted to be able to watch Jackson. To make sure he made it okay. Angels got to watch their loved ones, didn’t they? Maybe protect them?

  You will be useless to them dead, that annoying bitch in her head said depressingly. But she was less in her head now and more in front of her. She materialized before Docia, a small, petite creature dressed all in gold and rough-cut gems that seemed to catch the sudden growing sunlight that poured in around and over them both. Now here was the amazing warmth she had been expecting, but she had not expected it to feel like lying in the sun on the beach … that baking heat that singed her nostrils. The clearer the unseen spirit became to Docia’s eyes, the more beautiful she seemed. Crisply banged black hair smoothed to straight perfection beneath a gleaming gold headdress, its crest looking like a serpent in a very Egyptian fashion on her forehead. She had skin the color of a dark nut, but her eyes were the most vibrant black and brown she’d ever seen in her life. She’d always thought brown eyes, such as her own, were dull and plain, but there was nothing dull or boring about these eyes that ran over her from head to toe. In fact, she seemed to be sharp and assessing, alive and regal in ways that Docia had envied in powerful women she had seen in the media. She had envied them their braveness and their seemingly unstoppable will. Traits she felt eddying off the woman in front of her.

  “Welcome to the Ether,” she greeted Docia crisply. Not that she didn’t sound very welcoming, just that she sounded impatient, as though she resented the time she had to waste on the formality. She confirmed that with her next words. “We haven’t much time. You show some promise, I must say. You have more strength than you know.”

  “Good to know,” Docia said dryly, her eyes rolling.

  The woman tsked. “She’s impatient.”

  “She’s in need of molding, love.” A disembodied male voice burst to life, its depth and richness seeming to come from all around her, pressing in from all sides with power and strength. “You will lend her all she needs.”

  The queenly figure tilted her crowned head and narrowed her kohl-lined eyes on Docia. The heavy black-and-gold accent should have made her look like an overmade piece of trailer trash, but somehow it did not. It made her even more beautiful, even more imposing, made those brilliant brown eyes all the more exotic.

  “She has heart,” she said after a long moment.

  “The rest will come,” assured that resonating, bodiless male voice.

  Docia opened her mouth to say something, feeling a bit irritable, seeing as how she’d just died and all, and the woman raised a hand to forestall her.

  “No,” she corrected. “Not dead yet. But on the cusp. That is the only reason you are able to come to the Ether and see me,” she said strongly. “You have a choice to make. To live or to die. Only now, on the brink of death, as you open enough to allow me in … only now do you have an opportunity like no other. I cannot promise it will always be everything that is good and wondrous, but if you let me in, it could help us both to evolve into the beings we wish to be.”

  “I’m supposed to decide between life and death? Well, duh. That’s a no-brainer,” Docia said dryly.

  “But you will not be Docia any longer,” the regal beauty warned her. “You will share everything about yourself with me from this moment forward. In some ways you will supersede your mortal flesh. Nothing will ever be the same for you again.”

  “Nothing? You mean, I won’t see my brother?”

  The Egyptian beauty hesitated, then looked over her shoulder as if at someone else. The owner of that disembodied male voice, no doubt.

  “You will see him. But … all your relationships will change. This cannot be helped. Often, humans cannot accept change. And there will be much change. Now decide quickly. Time runs very short for you. Your hold on the Ether is weakening.”

  Life or death. Herself but different. Leave Jackson and make him suffer another difficult loss, or stay and—

  “Leave or stay for yourself only, Docia,” the stranger urged her. “Your love for your sibling is admirable, but he cannot be your reason for staying. You must make this choice for yourself and yourself alone. No other reason.”

  No other reason. No other reason except that she was too young to die. Hell, she’d barely even had a chance to live. She’d never traveled outside of New York. She’d never fallen in love or had mind-blowing sex. Sex, yes, but her mind had remained decidedly unblown. She’d wanted to go white-water rafting … Oh. Wait. Scratch that. She might have been missing a raft, but that definitely had just been a white-water classification.

  And she wanted to find out just who the hell had pushed her over the wall. The jerk. Was that some kind of joke? Not to her! There was no way in hell she was going to let someone get away with killing her!

  “I want to live,” she said quickly, before the ethereal queen could tell her vengeance was an unacceptable reason for living. It was only one of them. And it wasn’t vengeance so much as a powerful desire for justice.

  “Justice is one of the best reasons to fight for survival,” the other woman countered as she reached out to touch Docia’s face. But just before she made contact, she stopped. Docia realized the Egyptian beauty was breathing hard, her hand shaking as it hesitated in the air. That was when Docia realized the grand and composed woman was more than a little afraid. She glanced over her shoulder once again, and there was another wash of warmth, again like sun radiating off well-baked sand.

  “Go. It is well past your time, love. You will be very needed,” the male encouraged her in a warm whisper of strength that seemed to emanate all throughout.

  “I will see you again,” the beauty whispered to him just before she touched Docia’s cheek, leaned in, and kissed her full on the lips. It was a kiss of warmheartedness, almost tender at
first, but it quickly grew stronger and more passionate. Docia was shocked by the aggressive sensation of a tongue parting her lips, reaching to touch her own. She wanted to balk … she would have balked … but the moment that tongue touched hers, a searing golden light began to pour into her from every orifice, starting with her hot, burning mouth.

  She breathed in, a reflexive reaction, and just like breathing in ice-cold water, the act of breathing in the fiery heat of this burning light was excruciatingly painful. She felt as though her body and soul were bursting apart, devolving into a molecular state where all the tiny bits of atoms that made up Docia came apart, unraveled, and hung suspended in that hot, golden light. Then the molecules slowly drew together again … only this time when they connected, there were newer little atoms weaving their way into her makeup.

  By the time she was whole again, she had collapsed into unconsciousness and let the comfort of darkness take hold of her.

  Of them.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Jackson!”

  Jackson Waverly felt the back of his neck cringe a little at the familiar bark of displeasure his boss managed to make of his name. Then again, everything his boss said came out as a bark of displeasure. It just got on his nerves some times more than others. And this was one of those times. One of those days. So far, he’d accidentally let Sargent, his dog, get past him, allowing him to run loose in the neighborhood for a full hour before the untrained and defiant SOB had finally tuckered out and come to his call, tongue wagging in a full-on doggy pant while he looked at him with eyes that said very clearly, “That was fun! Can we do it again tomorrow?”

  Mmm. No.

  But no doubt about it, Sargent would do his damnedest to get his way. However, that was the least of his worries at the moment. His main concern was his boss, who was headed for him in ground-devouring strides. Jackson thought he could actually see steam coming out of Landon’s ears. Not that any of this was unexpected or surprising, seeing as how he’d shown up almost a full hour late for work and as a result had missed the morning briefing.

  “Where the hell were you this morning?” Landon demanded instantly.

  Chasing a multi-thousand-dollar police department investment across a four-lane highway.

  Mmm. No.

  “Car trouble,” Jackson lied smoothly. “Couldn’t be helped. Say, when are we starting group basic with Sargent?” He was convinced that Sargent was one of those dogs that would absorb training better and faster in a group setting.

  Landon opened his mouth, but the seemingly strange change of gears threw him off his game. Little did Landon know they were still talking about the same thing.

  “I think you’re on the new schedule. Provided you can manage to show up on time.”

  “Eleven years on the force and I think I’ve been late maybe three times. Are we really going to smash heads over this, Landon? Do I need a union rep or something? Gonna formally write me up? Or should I just hang my head in shame? What’ll get you off my back?”

  Jackson had no idea what propelled the sudden release of ichor, but something inside him snapped loose and he lost patience with his boss, his dog, and the world in general. Right there. That very second.

  It was clear to him how out of character the jolt of temper was … and how out of line it might actually be … as the entire room fell silent. Well, shit. If Landon can be an asshole, so could he. Right? And he was far more justified in his show of temper than Landon was with his constant griping and his seemingly dogged way of finding flaws in his staff where they didn’t exist. This was a good team of cops. In a small-town police department that couldn’t afford specialized forces full-time, each man and woman cross-trained to fill whatever shoes were needed at any given moment. Jackson was not only one of two K-9 cop teams, he was also a bomb disposal tech and a SWAT team member. Hell, he’d be on the hostage negotiation and retrieval team, too, if he could, but SWAT, bomb squad, and HNART sometimes had counterpurposes, and even he couldn’t be split into thirds.

  Jackson ran a hand through the haphazard curls of his hair, the length one of many signs of neglect that made up his life of late. And now Landon was giving him one of those dark appraisals that inevitably was followed by …

  “Jackson, do I need to send you to Psych?”

  And there it was. As if sitting across from some tenderhearted touchy-feely shrink clutching a pen in one hand and a tape recorder in the other would be like waving some kind of magic fucking wand and make things all better all at once. Well, until that magic wand could bring Chico back from the dead … thanks, but no thanks.

  “Nope. No need. I did my time. I got my happy stamp of approval. Didn’t you get the memo? They even gave me a new dog and everything. I just want to train the little bastard and get him on track for duty.” Jackson gave his boss the fakest, brightest smile he could muster. He did everything but hug the prick. “It’s just been a crappy morning and I’m itching to get back to work, boss.”

  Landon frowned and eyeballed him as if he were a brick of C4 jammed full of blasting caps. Jackson gritted his teeth, counted the seconds while he waited for Landon to figure out he was wasting his time. Finally Landon nodded, his perfect buzz cut accentuating his squared-off head and making him look a lot like the typical jarhead he had once been.

  Jackson sat back with an exhalation of relief as Landon retreated to his office. It wasn’t that the man didn’t deserve his job. In truth, he was a strong captain at what Jackson imagined was a stressful helm to manage. He did respect Landon, it was just that they were both men of very strong opinions, and often those opinions clashed. And Jackson didn’t much appreciate the fact that Landon didn’t seem to trust him enough to let him have a little autonomy. Jackson didn’t take it personally, because Landon was a control freak and treated everyone the same way. It was kind of a craptastic quality in a leader of strong individuals, and Jackson had to wonder who the hell had thought it was a good idea to put Landon in a leadership position. Then again, he doubted Landon had ever been introduced to a rule book that he didn’t enjoy following to the letter. In a bureaucratic environment like the upper echelons of the SPD, that was no doubt an excellent quality to have. An attractive one, too, to those who were looking for a police lieutenant they could be assured wouldn’t go maverick on them.

  Jackson decided to take his sister’s lead and switch his attention away from his boss’s more irritating qualities. Touching his laptop’s mouse, he woke up the screen. He went straight for the schedule, and sure enough, he was off the streets for the next three weeks. It was an immersion schedule, where there would be nothing but him, Sargent, and an entire class of K-9 pups from the Catskill region with nothing to do but learn how to listen to their partners and start learning what it meant to be a cop.

  It wasn’t that Sargent didn’t have the goods. Anyone who knew what to look for could see everything he needed right there in his personality. He was strong, fearless, and determined almost to a fault. But his willfulness needed to be worked with. Not broken per se, because that strength would serve him well once properly molded.

  The truth was, Jackson hadn’t been molding him. Every time he looked at the goofy little booger, he felt … cheated. Angry.

  Crap.

  Jackson glanced across the bullpen and down the hall, the blue-rimmed glass in the door of Dr. Marissa Anderson’s office jumping out from all the others. But that was a whole other can of worms, he thought as her door opened suddenly and she stepped into the hall, taking a moment to adjust to the bustle of the corridor. As if she were trying to blend into her surroundings and become a part of them.

  The very idea made him exhale a short, hard, and soundless chuckle. It was utterly laughable, the idea of the tall, flawless woman, wrapped up tight in a snug gray business skirt and a plain white oxford-style blouse, being able to blend unnoticed in the sea of blue unis and unkempt older detectives with their doughnut bellies. As she turned and walked toward the bullpen, every step she took in her high
heels sending an impact of bouncy shimmers through her breasts and the long curling ends of her red-penny bronze hair, he recalled exactly why he couldn’t wait to get her to sign him back on to duty and put an end to their required sessions together. She was entirely too hot to be some egghead doctor he was supposed to shed all machismo in front of as he plumbed the depths of his grief over the loss of his partner. He’d almost taken the option of seeing an off-site doctor, but damn it, he wasn’t about to run away from her just because every time he looked at her his mouth went dry and his penis grew hard. Rather like what was happening right that minute as she hurried through the bullpen and headed for Landon’s office.

  But just before she entered his lieutenant’s office, she glanced in his direction, her pretty blue-green eyes be neath a wrinkled brow of concern settling on him just long enough to kick him out of his shallow objectification of her and provoke a frisson of concern down the back of his neck.

  Jackson sat up straighter in his chair and watched through the glass as she exchanged succinct words with Landon, which then made Landon look in his direction in exactly the same manner. Landon barked at Marissa and swept up the phone. The call lasted about thirty seconds, if that. Then Landon looked back up and saw him still looking on with interest. His boss immediately rose to his feet, lifted two fingers, and beckoned to Jackson.