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create-a-wardrobe-with-a-thought clothes. She’d miss that ability. A lot easier—and cheaper—than shopping.
    Expecting sore muscles, she carefully swung her feet to the floor. She moved easily. No aches or pains, but everything seemed muffled. She could hear her mother’s quiet breathing from the adjoining room, the hum of the refrigerator, the engine of a car passing on the street outside—but nothing like when Michael had been in her head.
    The sharp odor of disinfectant hung in the short hallway. She stopped at Jason’s room. His eyes were open, his unfocused gaze roaming the opposite wall. A light blanket was tucked around his chest. His thin arms lay at his sides, his once-wiry muscles soft from lack of use. Even the frequent exercises that their mother put him through couldn’t combat almost a decade in bed.
    Alive, but not fully alive. Michael had known exactly where to stab.
    “Hey.” She brushed her fingers through his dark blond hair. Already time for a cut? It seemed only last week that she’d held him while her mother trimmed. “It’s been a few days since I’ve been in to see you. I hope you aren’t giving Mom too much trouble.”
    Even after nine years of silence, it was so easy to imagine his grin, his reply.
“I live for trouble.”
    But that had been before he’d hit a pothole while riding his bike, and his helmet had cracked along with his head. A freak accident, and all the superpowers in the world couldn’t fix the damage. She’d asked Michael if he could, but healing Gifts simply didn’t work that way. A vampire friend gave him regular transfusions—as long as Jason didn’t ingest the blood, it wouldn’t transform him. The transfusions improved his overall health for a while. But he hadn’t woken up.
    I’m so sorry that I couldn’t do more, Jason,
she wanted to tell him, but he wouldn’t have wanted to hear it—and he might be able to. So she said instead, “I’ll be around a little more to help out now. Maybe we’ll get out of here. Go to a new city.”
    She’d been in San Francisco her entire life. But that life was over. Maybe it was time to start everything over. Her mother might want to as well. It would be hard—money was always tight. Her mother’s job barely covered the day nurse’s wages, and Taylor’s salary barely made up the rest. But they’d get through it. They always did.
    She administered drops to moisten Jason’s unblinking eyes, then left him with a kiss to his cheek. In the kitchen, her mom’s teacup sat in its usual lonely spot on the drying rack, but the two plates and the pair of wineglasses waiting in the sink eased Taylor’s worry. Her mother must have had company for dinner. Good for her.
    Though not hungry, Taylor realized she should probably eat, too. Humans needed food. She grabbed cereal and a bowl from the cupboard. The breakfast of champions . . . and former detectives who were too lazy to cook.
    The refrigerator light almost blinded her. Taylor blinked and squinted, looking for the milk—then realization struck.
    She’d been walking around in the dark. All of the lights in the apartment were off, yet she saw everything as if in broad daylight.
    She wasn’t human. Even though she could feel the difference of
before Michael
and
after Michael
all the way down to her bones, that difference wasn’t between Guardian and human. It was the difference between the thousands-of-years-old Michael and a new Guardian who was no longer boosted by her link to him.
    Jesus. Was Michael really that much stronger than the rest of them?
    From her mother’s room came the rustle of blankets and sheets, the shifting of weight on a mattress.
God.
She should have realized. She’d heard her mother breathing from behind a closed door. That wasn’t normal. And now she detected the whisper of clothing, light steps on carpet—and the beat of her mother’s heart.
    It was racing.
    Standing in the light from the fridge, Taylor glanced into the hall. In