She had circled the entire building when a glance out at the water made her soar up above the roof. Was the weird color she couldn’t name infrared? Because she could see a small boat tossing on the waves, heading out toward where the yacht was parked in the harbor. Three large shapes and one small sat in it, pulsing with that non-color, which was reflected in the small shapes of sea birds.
Her dot shivered, as if the compass in her mind had made a leap. Those were people in that boat, one of them small. And it was headed for . . .
The yacht.
Jen didn’t think. She launched into the air, and flew as hard as she ever had. She skimmed low over the water, noting vaguely that it was no longer black, but had lightened to blue ripples. A sudden thought occurred, and she glanced toward the east. Shock rang through her when she saw the milky pale shade along the ocean. Dawn was only minutes away. Maybe seconds.
She flew hard, but the boat had an engine and it reached the yacht first. A hundred yards . . . fifty . . . the big figures yanked the small round one up a ladder onto the deck. Ten yards . . . the bees-walking-on-skin feeling blurred over Jen, and she cleared the rail of the yacht and tumbled to the deck. Years of practice in falls had her rolling to her feet.
A fast glance revealed Cleo’s tearstained face as she was pushed onto the deck by one of the three huge guys who’d brought her in the boat. Two more guys stood on deck, their heads turning sharply.
“Grab her,” a woman said.
All five charged at Jen.
Jen used her momentum to grab up a carved wooden deck chair, and smashed it into the first guy. His head snapped back and he tumbled to the deck, out cold, leaving her with a broken chair back. She wrenched apart the ribs, and now had double sticks.
Another glance at the four still coming. The way they ran, shoulders forward, big fists doubled, revealed they were used to relying on their size. She charged the middle two, and as one’s fist whizzed past her head, she turned, tapped him smartly behind the ear with the stick in her right hand as she whirled and used the momentum to sweep the feet of the guy at her left—who fell heavily, tripping the one next to him.
Her thoughts ran ahead, working out the calculus of the fight.
A hard strike to the solar plexus followed by a crack to a vulnerable collarbone, a spinning sidekick to a knee, and the last two went down.
But when she turned, there stood Cleo in the grip of a tall, lethally thin woman with slowly writhing hair, the locks gleaming with an oily sheen. This had to be Medusa. Her long fingers gripped Cleo’s arm, digging into her flesh. But why didn’t Cleo shift and fly away? She was a hippogriff!
Jen flung the thought at Cleo—to smash into that icy wall. Behind it she heard Cleo, but faintly, as if she were miles away.
So Jen raised her sticks and advanced on the two of them.
Before she could speak, Medusa lowered her sunglasses with her free hand as she turned a scornful glance at poor Cleo. “You’re too old for puppy fat,” she said poisonously.
Cleo’s cheeks reddened, and she looked away, her lips parted.
Jen snapped, “That’ll be enough crap about her size, or you are going to wish that scrawny butt of yours had a decent cushion when it meets my size eleven.” She wiggled a foot suggestively.
“A Valkyrie, it seems,” Medusa said in a marveling tone, her heavy-lidded eyes bored, Jen was distracted by that long curling dark hair. No, those locks had open mouths—they were snakes. “Or would Hulk be more up to date? What label are those shoes?”
Jen tore her fascinated gaze from those writhing snakes, which were mesmerizing in their way. “I don’t remember. I bought ‘em years ago,” Jen retorted. “Oh! Wait! You actually think I give a hoot what brand my stuff is? Do I look like I’m still in high school?” She gave a great belly laugh, inadvertently meeting those glowing green eyes to see if Medusa was really that shallow—
And was caught.
Awareness of the rocking deck, the groaning bad guys, poor Cleo shivering in Medusa’s grip, and Medusa herself all faded as Jen’s tired mind was forced back through memory images.
“Ahhhh,” Medusa sighed with satisfaction.
Jen no longer stood on the yacht. She knelt in a pool of spilled coffee on the worn linoleum of her kitchen floor, desperately trying to do CPR on Robert—
Her mind flinched away, as it had for four years. But Medusa’s whisper seemed to come from everywhere. “You didn’t save him . . .”
And beneath that, Jen’s own agonized thoughts, over and over, I should have called 911 first, I should have repeated the CPR class, I did it wrong . . .
I killed him.
The memory she had refused to look at gripped her with all the strength of immediacy: the EMTs arriving. Their shaking heads. Their mutters, Dead on arrival, and Put it down as eight fourteen a.m. . . . She, standing there, numb, sick, trembling in her coffee-soaked jeans, as they covered him up and wheeled him out . . .
She tried with all her strength to shove the memory away, but the inexorable voice whispered louder, speaking every guilty, horrible thought she’d had about her uselessness, her stupidity, maybe she somehow even secretly wanted him dead . . .
And she was jerked back again, watching him standing at the sink, filling his coffee cup, taking a sip, then frowning. “When did we wash the percolator last—”