Hands caressed me in the dark, strong hands, narrow-fingered and callous-palmed, but gentle.

  “She’ll live.”

  And I realized the hands had not been caressing me, so much as checking for injuries, and it was dark because my eyes were closed. A finger lifted one of my eyelids, and I caught sight of a blurry face.

  “You back?” the same voice asked, and my eye was allowed to close, again.

  “Sure,” I said, and my voice sounded like I’d been breathing night-club smoke and singing at the top of my lungs all night.

  Actually, that sounded right, and also kinda wrong. I didn’t go to night clubs. Never…ever… Oh. Wait a minute. I sat up, and wrapped my arms around my knees, forcing my eyes to open as I did. Smokey smell, minor injuries, smoke-scalded throat, and bruised all over. I rested my chin on my knees, and watched as my friends and colleagues shuffled into view.

  “We didn’t stop them, did we?” I asked, and, even to me, my voice sounded bleak.

  I didn’t care. My voice matched my mood, crashing depression, an inexorable sense of loss. I wish I could explain why…or maybe not. Maybe that last feeling was something I needed to explore later, on my own. Yeah, definitely maybe.

  I stared at the half circle of solemn faces in front of me, and tried to put names to them. The dark one right in front of me, the one belonging to the guy holding me by both shoulders, that face was one I really should remember. I stared at him, feeling my eyebrows coming together in a frown as I tried to place him.

  His dark eyes stared back into mine. They were brown, a brown so dark it was almost black. I loved those eyes…and that brought back another association: those hands—narrow-fingered, callous-palmed, and gentle, so very, very gentle. I reached out and touched my fingertips to his cheek.

  “I love you,” I said, and his eyes widened in utter, terrible surprise.

  His reaction made me wonder, as I watched the expressions crossing his face, I identified fear, wonder, sheer delight, and unspoken horror. It made me want to laugh and cry and apologize all at once—and, judging from the reactions of those around us, we weren’t alone.

  I took my hand away from his cheek, and wrapped it back around my knees. I kept staring, frowning harder as I tried to rediscover his name—and maybe something more, like what he was when he wasn’t rescuing damsels in distress, or confusing the hell out of me.

  “Hey, Oni, you okay?”

  I saw his mouth move, heard the words come out, and the world shuddered.

  I saw him see the shudder cross my face, and then watched as he glanced back over his shoulder. Not only that, but the blonde to his left, and the red-head beside the blonde, also looked over their shoulders. To the right of him, the mousy guy and the albino one also looked back.

  Oh shit. It wasn’t just me.

  And all of a sudden, they scattered. Dark Eyes and the red-head reached back and grabbed me, yanking me in two different directions, before deciding to follow the mousy guy into the shadow of a doorstop. I saw the blonde and the albino one make another doorstop on the other side of the street, and then the wind hit.

  The wind, like a solid wall, sweeping the street clean, and hurling rubbish before it. I saw a dumpster fly past, then a motorcycle, and watched as a car slid by, metal screaming against the bitumen. I saw humans…bits of humans follow, and then the sound came.

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  It didn’t howl, or roar; it was just loud, purely and unadulteratedly loud. It defied description. I knew what this was, but I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t name it, like I couldn’t name the beautiful man holding me safe, or his red-headed companion.

  None of us moved, when it stopped. We sat, braced in the doorway, trying to remember how to breathe.

  “What the hell did you do?” the beautiful man asked.

  “Yeah, Babe,” the red-head repeated. “Just what did you do?”

  Babe? I looked across at him, and then stood, took a couple steps into the scoured street, where I let my legs fold beneath me. When I had wrapped my arms around my knees once more, I went back to staring. This time I was staring at him.

  Babe. It felt uncomfortable, and kinda right, all at once. So, who was he since I definitely didn’t love him?

  This time both men were looking at me strangely, as they crouched in front of me.

  “You remember the mission?” the dark one asked.

  And I nodded. Of course, I remembered the mission: infiltrate the nightclub, find out where they were holding the pixies, plant the tracer, and get back out. Maybe get a map of the place while I was at it.

  I certainly hadn’t been told to dance my way as close to the stage as I could because I was under close surveillance by two of the goons. And I definitely hadn’t been told to get dragged into a bit of impromptu karaoke with the leader of the band we were pretty sure was into the dust distribution trade, or to get blown up and almost burned alive when something went wrong in the dust distillery in the basement.

  Basement. I giggled. We were in Australia, and I’d found a basement…in Canberra…in a suburban night club. Basement… That was important, but I couldn’t remember why.

  “Why can’t I remember?” I whispered.

  “I thought you said you did?” said Deep-Dark-and-Sexy.

  “The mission. I remember the mission, but I don’t know why the basement is important.”

  “What basement?” Red was onto that like a fly on shit.

  Ah, that’s why it was important. My team hadn’t known about the basement.

  My team. I looked again at the faces gathering around me.

  “Team,” I said, looking at each one, and they suddenly grew tense.

  “Oni?’ Tall-Dark again. “You okay?”

  “What can’t you remember?” Red, demanding and to the point.

  Trust Red to get to the point. Always Red.

  “We need to get back,” I said, pushing to my feet.

  “Oh no, you don’t.” Red again, obstreperous as usual, giving me a shove that set me back on my butt. “We’re not going anywhere, until you spill.”

  I tried for innocent.

  “Spill what?”

  “What can’t you remember?”

  I looked at them again, each of them, one at a time. I tried really hard to put names to those faces, to remember anything at all about the people I’d spent the last two years working with. Two years? Yes! I felt a grin stretch my face.

  “What?” Red sounded exasperated.

  “We’ve been working together for two years,” I said, and then my gaze fell on the albino. “Except for him. He’s only been with us for two months.”

  Ha! Another new fact. Except that Red didn’t seem too impressed.

  “You can’t remember us, can you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Not a single thing?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Then how do you know we’re the right people?”

  Oh no, he wasn’t getting it that easy.

  “Look!” I said, and I managed to sound even crankier than I felt. “I remember we’re on the same team, we’ve been working together for two years, and spent the last six months on this case. I remember we were pretty close to breaking it, and the only way was for me to go into the night club.”

  I stopped. Other things were clicking into place in my head.

  “And things have been going wrong with the investigation for around two months.”

  The Albino looked horrified, like he expected me to start pointing the finger at him, but I didn’t, even if Tall-Dark, Red, Blondie, and the Mouse all turned their heads to give him a good hard look.

  “And then I went dancing, alone…because you”—and here I turned, and pointed at Tall-Dark—“You absolutely refused to let the Mouse, here, go dancing with me.”

  “He’s not the type,” Tall-Dark protested, but he didn’t know I could see right through him.

  “Like you know,” the Mouse muttered, and Blondie giggled.

  I ignored them and got on with it.

  “Anyway, I went dancing. My cover was suspect, because I had to dance with some of the club stooges we’ve been following, and then Kyrios looked out from the stage and called me up to do a duet dueling thing, and that went just fine, apart from the strange smell that started seeping up from under the stage, which was right before things went boom.”