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energy. He could barely stand.
    Axton said something that sounded like “ she ,” and Miriam shrugged. “Perhaps,” she said.
    “He’s a threat,” a different voice announced. “Let me get rid of him.”
    Lara’s slim body tensed. Trouble. Justin raised his head, squinting into the shadows.
    The speaker prowled from the foot of the stairs, wearing black and a sneer. Big hard dude, like those stone gods on Easter Island, large nose, strong chin, maybe six four, two hundred forty pounds, easy. Which meant he could kick Justin’s ass even before the bump on his head.
    “Some welcoming committee you got here, honey,” he muttered.
    Lara squeezed his hand. Reassurance? Or warning?
    “Justin was hurt protecting me,” she said.
    “A ruse,” Stone Face said. “To get you to trust him.”
    Justin had heard enough. “Okay, I’m out of here.”
    As soon as he found his balance. His strength. A cab.
    “Don’t be ridiculous,” Lara said. “We’re hours from Norfolk.”
     “You should have left him there,” Stone Face said.
    “He needed a doctor.”
    Axton arched dark blond eyebrows. “There are no emergency rooms in Virginia?”
    “He didn’t want . . .” Lara’s voice shook slightly. “He was my responsibility. I had to make a decision—”
    “When you go into the field, I expect you to be guided by your training and your partner. Not indulge in misplaced compassion.”
    She winced.
    Pain hammered Justin’s skull . “So dump me back where she found me, asshole, and we’ll  call it even.”
    “Please,” Lara said. To which one of them? “He wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me. We were attacked.”
    “You are trained in self-defense. Was it your preparation that was lacking? Or your skill?”
    “There’s nothing wrong with their training,” Stone Face said.
    “Gideon?” Axton’s gaze pinned the Boyfriend like a bug. “You were Guardian on this mission.”
    The younger man flushed to the roots of his blond hair.
    “We were outnumbered. There were four of them. Five.”
    “Which?” asked Stone Face.
    “So many?” Miriam said at the same time.
    “Four and a lookout,” Lara said.
    “Which compels me to inquire what you did to attract their attention,” Axton said.
    The quick exchange made Justin dizzy. They’d been jumped in an alley. Had they been set up? Had he?
    He was in over his head, the undercurrents in the room sucking his strength. He felt the walls closing in, the room whirling around him.
    “Justin?” Lara’s voice, sharp and worried. “Justin.”
    I’m okay , he wanted to tell  her.
    Except his brain was on fire and his mouth wouldn’t form the words.
    His eyes rolled back in his head, and the floor tilted up to receive him.
    * * *
    Miriam Kioni stripped off her latex gloves and dropped them on the procedure tray. “He’ll have a scar, of course,” she said to Simon, standing with Lara at the side of Justin’s bed. Jude Zayin, the dark-browed master of the Guardians, watched silently from his post at the infirmary room door. “But the edges of the wound aligned nicely.”
    The hot, bright medical lamp switched off.
    In the sudden dimness, Lara blinked down at the shaved patch above Justin’s ear. Twenty-two stitches marched antlike across his scalp, disappearing into the gold stubble of his hair.
    Something fluttered in her chest like wings. One of his eyes had swollen shut. His tanned skin had the waxy sheen of a melted candle. She curled her nails into her palms. “Should he still be unconscious?”
    “It was easier to suture his wound while he was sleeping,” Miriam said with the calm authority of her hundred years.
    The nephilim were not immortal. But the wisest and most powerful of them could enjoy the span of several human lifetimes. Miriam had been master of the Seekers and the school’s physician longer than Lara had been alive. 
    Lara would have to be an idiot to challenge her.
    She moistened her lips. Apparently she was an