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and error how to be careful about not accidentally touching anyone.
    “Like I said before, pink is totally my color,” he quipped, and then he took a sudden step forward and wrapped both of his hands completely around mine. “Why don’t we just get this over with?”
    This time, I didn’t fall down. I hadn’t done that in years. But it still hurt, and the jagged pain in my head almost drove me to my knees. Flashes of color; the scents of gunfire and blood. A crashing cacophony of shouting and screaming. Jack, in the middle of battle. The pain. Always the pain. That never changed.
    “Do you see how I’m going to die, Tess?” His eyes were dark pools of green, and I thought crazily that I could lean forward and fall into them.
    “No,” I gasped, wrenching my hands out of his. “I see that you already did.”
    Then I fell down.
    *
    An hour or so later, my cup of tea sat on the coffee table in front of me, ice cold, and I huddled under the faded blue and green afghan my great-grandmother had crocheted seventy or eighty years ago. Sometimes nothing but family-love-infused yarn would do.
    Jack knelt on the floor next to me and apologized again, for about the seventeenth time. “I’m sorry. Tess, please say something. Anything. I need to know you’re okay, or I’m going to call an ambulance. Or Ruby. I didn’t know it would be so hard on you—”
    “Maybe you should have thought about that before you grabbed my hands,” I snapped, finally speaking to him. The threat of him calling an ambulance snapped me out of the fugue state I’d been plunged into by the unwanted vision of his death.
    He blew out a huge sigh of relief. “Okay. You can talk. Are you in pain? Do you want to go to the hospital?”
    “No, you idiot. I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t want to be the subject of any more gossip.” I threw off the afghan and stood up, still slightly woozy. “I’m going to get a glass of water, and you’re going to explain to me how you’re here in my living room when you already died. Clearly you’re not a vampire, and zombies don’t exist, so what the hell?”
    He put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back down on the couch. “You stay here. I’ll get the water, and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just don’t pass out on me again.”
    “I didn’t pass out. I just got a little shaky,” I informed his back as he headed for the kitchen.
    “Right. I know. I’m just glad I was there to catch you and carry you in here.”
    He carried me? Oh crap. Like a swooning southern belle. I wanted to crawl under the couch and hide there for a week or two. Lou, who’d jumped into my lap as soon as I sat back down, meowed in agreement. Or at least I thought it was agreement. Who the heck knew with cats? It might have been, “Oh boy, I need to get Tess another dead bird, because she’s losing it.”
    I shook my head and tried to recapture an ounce or two of sanity. When Jack came back, I drank half the water in one gulp and then took a deep breath. “I’d say I’ll kill you if you ever tell anyone about this, but since you apparently already died, it’s probably an empty threat.”
    “I won’t say a word.” He sat down on the couch with me, but wisely kept some space between us. I still wanted to punch him, manners and hospitality be damned.
    “What happened?” We both said it at the same time, and then we both laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it served to cut through the tension.
    Jack looked at me and nodded, as if coming to some decision. “All right. I’ll start. What did you see?”
    I shoved my hair, which had come loose from my ponytail at some point, out of my face. “A battle. Vampires. People with swords. A small woman with short dark hair screaming at you not to die.”
    He flinched and then nodded. “Quinn. Yeah, that’s about it. The good guys had a tough time that night. We won, in the end, but the cost was high. And as you saw, I was