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the commercials. We discussed world events like grown-ups ought to. Seemed like there was something going wrong in every corner of the globe, lately. Riots. Droughts. Unrest and discontent, fledgling conflicts that promised to grow into mini-wars and disasters just poised to strike. Is it any wonder that I’d been in a crappy mood for the last few months? Every time I flipped the TV on, the world was going to hell, and . . .
    See, that’s what I’m talking about right there. The sudden dives into dark thoughts, the overwhelming sense of impending doom. Like there was this giant boot somewhere, and I was just waiting for it to drop on my head. It wasn’t like me, and even I knew it. That’s what I was supposed to be working on. I would enjoy my friends, dammit.
    And if I fell into a brooding silence, I had Anna and Nicky there to clamber into my lap, chattering about anything and everything. It didn’t matter what. It was nearly impossible to be glum with the pair of them in close proximity.
    I had Dr. Bridget there to threaten electroshock therapy (and of course the guys knew just where to get a spare car battery to make that happen, if she was serious). Her keen eyes watched me when she thought I wasn’t looking, the medical professional in her always analyzing, diagnosing. I couldn’t blame her. It’s what she did, and she was good.
    I had Mira. And she was just perfect, hiding her worry much better than I did, touching my shoulder lightly every time she walked past the couch. More than anything, that tiny bit of contact did me a heap of good. Just that reminder that I wasn’t alone, and someone amazing loved me. I glanced over my shoulder to give her a grateful smile.
    And somehow, somewhere, Mira and Bridget got their heads together, and before any of us realized just how it happened, Cam-short-for-Cameron had been invited along on our camping/paintball trip.
    Oh how wonderful.

3

    N othing can put a dent in a man’s dignity so quickly as being forced to parade around a doctor’s examination room in nothing but a paper sheet. But after my injuries last spring, Mira insisted that I get Dr. Bridget’s okay before I went traipsing off into the wilds of Colorado. So, here I was doing laps while my friend the doctor watched me critically.
    Not that I mind good-looking women staring at me, normally. Dr. Bridget was curvy in all the right places, even in the tailored suit she was wearing for the day. Funny how she looked so different here at her office, her dark hair all pulled back and tamed, than at my house with her hair in pigtails and wearing shorts and a smart-ass T-shirt. The two sides of Dr. Bridget.
    “Are you having any more pain?” She jotted down some notes in my file as I hopped back up on the table.
    “Nope. Everything seems to be fully functional.” Her hands were ice cold when she started groping my calf, and I jumped. “Geez, Bridge! Did you go juggle snowballs or something before coming in here?”
    She smiled sweetly at me over the rims of her new glasses. “Iced them down just for you, Jesse dear.”
    The scars on my calf were still nicely pink and hairless, circles the size of fifty-cent pieces adorning both sides where a crab-demon had stabbed me last January. I didn’t think that was a body-piercing fad that was going to catch on. Innocuous in appearance now, that wound had almost cost me my leg, the demon’s poison invading my body despite all medical intervention. Only my wife’s magic had kept me from having Stumpy as a nickname.
    Of course, it was the torn muscle on the inside of that same leg that had landed me back in Dr. Bridget’s office. That particular injury was earned by falling on my ass on a wet floor (speaking of bruised dignity). Well, and the running around fighting hellhounds and dodging tornados after that hadn’t helped either.
    But I’d been a good boy ever since, I promise! I’d given up walking with a cane (most of the time) only two months ago, and I’d