I smirk. “Yeah, Fredrik, I’ll try not to pull you away from your weird fetishes if I can help it.”

“I appreciate it,” he says at the door, then pushes it open and leaves.

I turn back to Osiris, and everyone else in the room.

“OK.” I nod, thinking to myself. Then I pluck the cigarette from behind my ear, a lighter from my pocket, and set the end aflame. “Aside from me, the blond is the best operative in the First Division—”

“We both know which one us is the better operative,” Nora cuts in snidely, and I continue to ignore her.

I point briefly at the suit-clad woman.

“Agent O’Hara will be your second recruit,” I say. “And if something happens to one of them”—I grin at Nora—“then Agent Asthma over there can take her place.” I take a drag and inhale deeply, then say to Osiris with smoke in my lungs, “You said Victor hired you and your sister?”

Osiris nods. “Hestia,” he answers. “The only one of my family who I trust.”

“And this Hestia,” Nora inquires, leery, “is as willing and eager as you, to betray her own flesh and blood?”

“As a matter of fact she is,” Osiris says.

“And just how…capable is she?” Nora interrogates. “Better yet, how capable are you?”

Osiris grins, and licks his lips subtly. “Oh, I’m very capable,” he answers, though I get the feeling his answer has nothing to do with the mission. “I can assure you that, Miss Kessler, is it?”

Nora’s body movement shifts from rigid and untrusting to relaxed and interested. What the fuck is this, some kind of mating ritual?

“Why don’t you tell us more about this Artemis and Apollo,” I interrupt. “And hell, while you’re at it, you can tell us about you and Hestia, and everything else, too. I’d like to know exactly how we got to this moment, why Izabel ended up on the wrong end of a blade, and how my brother ended up falling from grace.”

Osiris spends the next thirty minutes telling us everything he knows: his history with my brother; Victor’s history with Artemis; what Victor told him happened in Venezuela—of course, this is all Osiris’s account; before I believe any of it I’ll need Victor’s account, too. And when the inevitable questions about Hestia arise, the devil hears us talking about her and she shows up right on cue.

“I’m only here for the money,” Hestia says as she struts through the room toward her brother—goddamn she’s beautiful. “Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not here to be anyone’s friend, or partner—Osiris is my only partner. There’s nothing in my contract with Victor Faust that says I need to put my life on the line to save any one of you, if you step in shit too deep to pull yourself out of. I’m here to do a job, collect my cut, and then take my sweet ass back to Venezuela.”

Yeah, that’s a sweet ass, all right.

I glance at Nora, sensing that at any moment her claws are going to come out—though it has nothing to do with me; this room just isn’t big enough for two alpha females.

Nora walks toward Hestia, bold and fearless the way only Nora can be—this could turn out to be an interesting night. “Trust me,” Nora says, smirking, and crossing her arms, “I’m the last person here who would step in shit.” She moves closer to Hestia, stands just a foot away; there’s a dark smile in Hestia’s eyes that sends a slight chill up the back of my neck. And I kinda like it.

Nora continues: “I don’t do friends, either; and I won’t think twice about leaving you for dead, so I guess we understand each other perfectly.”

“I guess we do,” Hestia says, venomously.

Neither of them back down from the other; Osiris steps between them to stop a fight before it starts, and only then do they move away in opposite directions: Nora back to her seat next to me; Hestia next to her brother. It’s then that I notice they kinda look like twins, too, Hestia and Osiris.

“So what’s your story?” James speaks up—I had forgotten he was even in the room. “I-I mean, despite wanting the rest of your family dead, you two seem close…” It’s as though when more than one pair of eyes looks at James Woodard all at the same time, he immediately tucks his head back inside his shell.

“The more important question,” Nora puts in, “is what your qualifications are? Just because you come from some crime family, doesn’t make you Order material—Niklas, I really can’t believe Victor would leave this up to these two.” She begins to pace back and forth behind her chair. Then she reaches for her cell phone on the table. “I’m calling Victor.”

As she’s running her thumb over the screen, Osiris says, “We are The Gemini.”

Nora’s thumb freezes over her phone, and she looks at Osiris.

I throw my head back and laugh, because I just can’t fucking believe it.

The Gemini. Here. In the flesh.

I sit in Victor’s seat again and kick my feet up on the table, crossing my ankles.

“Interesting,” I say.

And then I light another cigarette.

I have thought about it a lot in the two hours I have spent in this car, parked outside near Dina Gregory’s newest residence: When have I ever sat alone, the way I am now, evaluating the events that have unfolded throughout my life? Never. Never have I bestowed upon myself such a luxury; I do not deserve it; I do not want it; I do not want it because it frightens me.

Evaluating one’s life leads to change in one’s life.

Change. The very thought of it sets my teeth on edge. But I can no longer pretend that I am forever immune to its inevitable purpose. No one is immune to change, especially those who fear it. It comes for us first, and it destroys us swiftly because we fight it the hardest. I have been fighting it since I met Izabel. I fought it relentlessly as it happened all around me; every single thing I have done, since Sarai in Mexico, has been me fighting the change she has stirred.

I was wrong before, when I told Izabel I cannot change for her—I must. I cannot fight it anymore. In the end, to continue fighting it would mean that Izabel would have to die.

But she lived.

Again, and again, and again—she survived. And although it was not me who ultimately saved her, it was I who spared her. And for me, there is no proof more compelling that I love this woman more than I have ever loved anyone or anything.

But I must find a balance in this change. I am still the same man I was yesterday—that will never change—but I must now also allow the part of me that Izabel created, to live equally alongside him.

I get out of my car and walk down the sidewalk toward Dina Gregory’s house, and for the first time in my life I look up at the stars with purpose, a hundred pinpricks in the fabric of a black sky, and I feel the change happening in real-time. I feel the pressure in my chest, a strange, warm light in my eyes, and, of all things, I welcome it. Maybe that is the key to surviving change: embracing it, however cumbersomely, or gracefully, one can.

Bugs swirl around the blazing porch light near the front door; I hear a dog barking in the distance, the night breeze combing through the trees, a truck engine revving in the driveway of a house nearby, and my heart beating in my ears and in my head. I knock lightly. And I swallow.

Izabel has been staying with Dina since she was released from the hospital, and I have not spoken to her since the night Artemis slit her throat. I was there with her, nearly every hour of every day at her bedside, and when she was awake and able to talk, I tried, but she would not talk to me. Or anyone for that matter. Only the nurses. I have been patient, as I will continue to be. But I cannot deny the anxiety I feel inside, not knowing what she is thinking, or if she can ever forgive me for what happened to her.