Forever The World of Nightwalkers - By Jacquelyn Frank Page 0,87

in her life … she had her ebullient sister providing more than enough of it, thank you very much. But all the push me, pull me emotions, the petty jealousies, the insecurities, they were not something she wanted to indulge in.

Since meeting him, she’d had nothing but drama where he was concerned. And the last couple of days had only exacerbated it. But she had thought she would have been very unhappy in a volatile relationship. Hell, she’d counseled enough people who were engaged in them. Some of them unhealthy to the point of danger and poisoning of the spirit. But … by trying to avoid all of the emotional pitfalls, she’d also managed to bleed out the joys, the passions, and the pleasure, she realized. The past hours in his bed had proven that to her. She’d spent so much time concerned about what type of life she didn’t want to have that she’d not been living much at all. She’d schooled herself not to take chances, but chances were what life was all about. Taking them or passing up on them, those chances meant something.

“Let me ask you this,” she said. “Let’s make the wild assumption that I agree to do something like this, which, I’m still not inclined even the slightest to do. But let’s say I was. How would she know? I mean, if you’re down here and she’s up there in the Ether or whatever, how would she know that I’m the one you want her to take. I could be dead and stay dead, no Bodywalker, if she gets it wrong. What if she’s already found someone else and is on her way here?”

“She’s not here,” he said, reaching to smooth back the tumble of hair that seemed to be everywhere around them. “I would know. I expression on his face”

“Not even Ram and Docia. And they are very, very close to each other. And as to your first question, she will know. She knows everything I am feeling here, just as I know everything she is feeling there. She would feel me directing you toward her. She would feel how special you are to me. She will know instantly that you are my extraordinary gift to her … and she would be the most precious gift I could ever give to you. Oh I know it comes fraught with complexities and even danger, I won’t pretend that it doesn’t. But so does any other life, more or less. Look how this began … with Docia, a normal girl in a normal life, suddenly being pushed off a bridge. That should have been the end. It would have been the end.”

“If not for a Bodywalker. And I understand that. I think it’s … really something special to be given a gift like that. A second chance at life. But … it’s not a natural death if I do this consciously. It’s … just not.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand what she meant. He did. She didn’t want a second life because she wasn’t done with the first one yet.

“I think you should know … it won’t be safe for you to leave here for a while … if ever,” he said, sitting up so he could put his back to her and not let her see the disappointment that was clutching at him. Disappointment, but not condemnation. He wanted her so badly his souls ached for it. But he understood why she felt it was a disrespectful thing to do, to simply throw away a life in order to try on a better one. These were not things that could be discarded and put on like clothes. He never thought it would be and he never once thought this would be easy. But now he was tangled up in her and it was getting really complicated really fast. He wished they could just shut it out for a few more—

The sensation that suddenly ran through him was like a scream, an alarming, screeching thing that propelled him to his feet.

“Jacks—?”

“Shh!” He was listening, listening to try to understand what he was hearing.

Gargoyles, his other half whispered to him. The Gargoyles who are attached to us have arrived and there is something very wrong.

Jackson grabbed for the nearest pair of jeans he could find and put them on as he was hurrying to the window. He couldn’t remember how to work the smart glass, glass with particles inside of it that, when excited by an