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“Are you sure they aren’t already gone?” Alec asked. “We haven’t heard even a whisper of a rumor of the Guardians since they left Earth.”

“They are still out there, biding their time, plotting their revenge,” I puffed out, and my breath froze on my lips. “The Guardians didn’t spend millennia plotting the demise of the gods and demons to give up so easily. They are playing the long game. And when you’re immortal, long can be very long indeed. Eventually, they will strike back, and they won’t care how many innocent people die along the path to vengeance. The universe—and everyone in it—is still in danger.” I clenched my fists. “That’s why I’m going to stop them.”

Alec clasped my arm. “I know you are, boss.”

“But what if…” Gin swallowed hard, her lips quivering. “What if we don’t find them in time?”

“We will,” I promised her. “But today we have a different sort of problem.” I glanced at the tablet in her hands. “How’s it coming with those camera feeds?”

“It’s not.” Gin swiped her finger across the screen. “I can’t access any of the cameras.”

The town’s water and sanitation systems were on the fritz. There appeared to be several blockages, which wasn’t all that suspicious by itself, given how ancient this place was. But then the cameras in the sewers had also gone out around the same time, so…

“Maybe there are a bunch more of those scary micro-kittens hiding out down there,” Alec suggested, sliding Claudia a sly smirk.

She rolled her eyes at him. “Very funny.”

Gin tapped the tablet’s screen, and it replied with an agitated beep. She scowled at it. “Hopefully, we’ll find out what we’re dealing with when we get to the control room.”

“It’s just down this street.” Alec fell into step beside Gin. “So,” he said, looking at the tablet in her hands. “How’d you get to be so good with computers?”

“Well,” Gin said, “growing up, I always wanted to help Calli and being the tech girl on comms was the only way she’d let me do it. She never let me come along when she went out to hunt down the people she’d been paid to find.”

“Yeah, our foster mom was mean like that. She didn’t want her kids to get stabbed by dangerous criminals,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Gin’s gaze snapped to me. “Easy for you to say. Calli always let you go, Leda.”

“Not always,” I said. “And, anyways, I was a bit rougher and tougher than the rest of you since I’d spent all those years living on the streets. But don’t think for a second that Calli wanted me to come along with her on her jobs. She just sometimes had to. She had need of my insider knowledge. I know all the shortcuts in and out of the shadiest parts of town.”

“Yeah, that’s what you and Calli say, that she didn’t have a choice except to bring you along, but the truth is she always treated you differently than the rest of us, Leda.” Gin beat her free hand against her leg, trying to get it warm. “She treated us—me and Tessa especially—like we were made of glass.”

There was a simple explanation to Calli’s overprotectiveness. When she’d found Gin and Tessa, they’d been only four years old and were being hunted by a warlord’s gang. The girls had managed to escape the warlord’s prison—or perhaps laboratory would be a better word—and they’d had to kill people to do it. Calli had brought them home with her, then asked our brother Zane to wipe their memories so they could live normal lives. That’s all Calli had ever wanted for her kids: to live safe, boring, normal lives.

Of course it hadn’t really worked out that way for any of us. I guess when you were special, normal was pretty much off the table.

“Leda, are you all right?” Gin asked, her brow etched with concern.

“Yes, of course.”

I started walking again, trying to shake off the worries piling up on me like an avalanche of boulders. My young daughter Sierra was special too. She was so special, actually, that a lot of very powerful, very dangerous people would love nothing more than to steal her from me and raise her to be the universe’s ultimate weapon.

“You shouldn’t feel like your mom was sidelining you,” Alec told Gin. “In fact, you had the most important job because you were the one watching over them. You were the one keeping them safe, not the other way around.”

“Wow, Morrows, that’s pretty deep,” Claudia said.

He nodded, smiling. “I know.”

A sardonic smile twisted her lips. “You always save your best lines for when you’re trying to get into a girl’s pants.”

“I do not,” Alec protested, a little too strongly.

“Sure you do, but don’t worry about it. Your cover isn’t blown. Tech girl didn’t even notice.”

Claudia was right. Gin was totally engrossed in the information on her tablet screen. I doubted she’d even noticed Alec’s flirting. And she certainly wasn’t paying any attention to his conversation with Claudia.

Even so, as Gin’s big sister, I felt obliged to step in. “Alec.”

“Yes, boss?” He hit me with a suave smile.