Still, he remained skeptical of Dane.

“I don’t know—” JJ began, but Warren was done.

“Jay, please. I know it’s not much to go on, but we need every available advantage. Okay?”

He clenched his jaw, but nodded. “Sure.”

Tonya reached for his hand as soon as he settled across from her. “It’s better if I touch you.”

It’s better if you don’t. “I don’t like to be touched.”

She reached out anyway, her cool fingers as fragile as a sparrow’s foot in his tensile palm. He couldn’t help but compare her touch to Sola’s. Though undeniably female, his love’s form was merely a streamlined version of his own, as if tendons and veins, bone and muscle, were all concrete-filled. Tonya, in contrast, was air.

Her tone, though, gave her weight. “You’re a singularly driven man, which isn’t rare of your kind, but you’ve a compulsiveness that drives you harder, farther, and deeper. You fight where others will stop.” Which was when she stopped, her body jolting slightly. For a moment he thought she was going to pull away, but then her voice deepened, the cadence altered. “In many ways, and for many years, you will be the perfect superhero.”

So much for her preternatural abilities, he thought, starting to draw away. He’d already screwed that up. “Thank you.”

Her airy fingers constricted, catching his again. “You harbor a strong sense of duty, but entertain a private restlessness. Your gift, a talent with your hands, steadies you and helps you to live more in the moment, but it doesn’t entirely quiet the internal dissension.”

JJ sat straighter, warier now, but intrigued. He was the troop’s weaponeer, had been even prior to metamorphosis into a full agent, and was responsible for making the conduits that could kill agents, something mortal weapons could not do.

“You have a tragic past, not unusual for one dealing in evil matters, but yours has shaped you in a strange way. You are attracted to things you fear, and desire to understand them. You have friends, you’re well liked, but the one who will know you best is drawn in by your fallibility.”

Warren stiffened at that, though he remained turned away, pushing aside the curtain to look out the window. Tonya spoke faster, as if rushing through the words could lessen their impact. “Saving ‘all of mankind’ isn’t enough to motivate you. It needs to be personal. You strip away a person’s labels and see the individual. It’s very admirable.”

“It’s very dangerous,” said Warren, who always saw things in terms of black and white.

“Yes,” JJ agreed immediately, knowing too well how his leader felt. Cohesiveness was desired, the good of the whole came first, the troop was more important than the individual.

“Can be,” Tonya said, knowing none of this. “But you desire a deeper involvement. You want to feel more. People, their ability to choose—”

“That’s enough,” JJ jerked away, her pseudo-strength giving way to his will. “None of this is useful in finding the Kairos.”

But her voice continued to rasp from between those frosted lips. “This will allow you to see her. She is a mystery to you. A dark—”

Matter.

The greatest mysteries are destined to remain a dark matter.

Dane wasn’t talking about the Kairos, he suddenly realized. She was speaking of Solange.

“You will know she is meant for you before she does.”

“No more.” JJ shot from his chair, heading straight to the door. He needed air.

“You will recognize her immediately—”

“Later,” he said, thinking, Shut up, shut up, shut up.

“There is no later. Not for you. Not even for me,” she said, tone darkening as JJ threw open the door. “There is only now.”

JJ froze. Because now half a dozen Shadow agents fanned across the parking lot in a reverse chevron, Solange at the tip. She had her tomahawk in one hand, his cell phone in the other. Her chest was smoking. She looked through him as if she’d never seen him before, as if he’d never lived inside her.

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised, but the betrayal cracked his heart. She’d used their private time, their time of truce—and, he’d stupidly begun to believe, their love—to gain data for the Shadow side.

“Hope you’re living ‘in the moment’ right now,” Warren commented, suddenly beside him. “Because these next few are going to be doozies.”

When JJ saw Sola standing there, his first impulse was to smile.

You see the individual.

Luckily his instinct was stronger, because he dove sideways just as the tomahawk appeared in front of his face, death inscribed on the blade. Whirring head over handle, it sliced air, then there was a sick, wet thud as it found another bodily home. JJ shifted to find Tonya Dane reclined in her chair, frosted lips rounded in surprise, the tomahawk buried in her skull. The crevasse between skin and gray matter literally split her in two.

The glyph on JJ’s chest kicked to life, matching Warren’s, who’d dived to the other side of the doorway as the phalanx of Shadows moved closer. JJ reached into his pocket and withdrew his whip, unfurling it as he pivoted. Its length licked out and wrapped around Tonya’s chair leg, trapping her body to it as he yanked, whipping both to Warren’s side. His leader withdrew the tomahawk quickly, with a murmured apology, and JJ jerked his weapon again, this time spinning the chair like a top, the barbed tips in the strip of leather releasing, ready now for a Shadow.

Obligingly, they continued their advance. JJ didn’t aim for Solange. Warren, possessing her conduit, would do that. Turning a person’s own weapon against him was like turning his body inside out. It was personal, destructive, and gave the bearer of the death an additional measure of power. Instead, JJ centered his weight, flicked his wrist, and sent the barbed whip on a snapping journey around the doorframe. He felt the tug of flesh as it connected, and jerked back like he was fly-fishing, instead pulling a man ashore. Once the Shadow was blocking the doorway, JJ pulled his whip free, ripping the man’s life with it. Warren and JJ then used the dead bulk to push their way into freedom.

Using his tattered trench as a defensive shield—JJ had made the armored coat himself—Warren covered the rear, deflecting projectiles, Solange’s tomahawk still fisted tight. JJ’s whip danced. Warren planted his boots into solar plexuses and stomachs, both screamed their battle cries…and a part of JJ continued to search for Sola.

“Look out!”

The Shadow dropped from above. Warren drew the trench over them, and JJ swept the ground with his whip, one hand braced on asphalt. Even so, he felt death smiling at him—there were too many enemies from too many directions…and all because he had trusted Solange.

The full weight of the descending Shadow crushed his shoulders. He braced, but it didn’t move, even while other Shadows yelled warnings into the night. Warren whipped the shielding trench from their heads, and JJ circled his whip, readying for the next attack. But the voices raining around them were familiar, and he recognized the mace lodged in the chest of the Shadow at his feet as Gregor’s, an ally.

Arriving in response to Warren’s call, the troop had surprised the attacking Shadows, and managed to inflict casualties of their own.

Because Solange hadn’t known about them, JJ thought, once the remaining Shadow agents had fled. He stood, breathing hard, whip hanging at his side, and surveyed the lot. Warren’s phone call, which Solange had somehow taped or bugged or replayed, had mentioned only the two of them locked in a room with the woman who could deliver them the Kairos. But now that woman, and link, was dead, and they were left to clean up the mess.

And Solange had disappeared. Again.