Henry nodded as I rose from my chair, and Jim’s eyes bounced between my face and my chest. Malachi glared at him and stepped between us, blocking Jim from sight. My Lieutenant kept a respectful distance between us but gave me a lingering look, full of wish and want. It took everything I had not to touch him. With Henry and Jim there, though, it wouldn’t be very Captain-like of me to fling myself into Malachi’s arms.

So I headed home.

I let myself into the house as quietly as possible, but as soon as I closed the front door, I could hear the heavy, even breaths that told me Diane was deeply asleep, as Raphael had promised. I padded down the hall to my room and closed the door. My books and papers lay scattered across my desk. My backpack was propped against my chair, my camera tucked into one of its side pockets. A pile of dirty clothes in the corner, a pair of sneakers under the bed.

Life as it had been.

I lifted my fleece jacket and looked down at my waist, at the black leather belt and sheathed knife.

Life as it was now: a weird intersection of normal and crazy, of life and beyond-life, afterlife, undead, whatever. I put my hand to my heart and felt it beating, remembered feeling Malachi’s pounding through his shirt as he kissed me. Were we alive? Were we here on borrowed time? Did we have a right to live or only to serve as Guards? Did we have a future, or were we headed back to the dark city when we were done? Did anything we did here, apart from eliminating the Mazikin, matter? Could we keep anything for ourselves? I hadn’t exactly signed a contract that spelled that out for me.

Raphael had told me I should finish high school, that I should “go be a normal American teenager.” But this wasn’t the dark city, where all the Guards had a Station, a base from which they patrolled. Where they had authority. Where they could get things done.

Nope, this was freaking Rhode Island. And I was freaking Lela Santos. I was stuck in this house with my overprotective foster mother—the department of child welfare had custody of me for another three months and sixteen days. I had to attend school so that my probation officer didn’t come calling, and so that I could stay away from an all-expenses-paid trip back to the Rhode Island Training School, or the RITS, the state’s glorious juvenile facility. I had to keep my grades up so that I could stay eligible for that scholarship to the University of Rhode Island. If we could get rid of all the Mazikin, maybe the Judge would let me have that chance. Maybe she would let me have a future.