Chapter 1 The car Luke rented looked like it had been in a demolition derby. I had to hand it to the rental place—keeping the bumper on with chicken wire was some kind of sorcery. My head hit the window and jammed my earring back into my neck as we bounced over a crater in the Mexican toll road. I rubbed my forehead, giving Luke, my work partner, a pointed look. He didn’t notice. No surprise there—he’d ignored the last three questions I’d asked. Before I thought better of it, I reached over, chose an arm hair, and plucked it out by the root. “Hey! What was that for?” Luke rubbed his arm while his thoughts seared into my mind. One of the bonuses of our position—telepathic link. It was great for communicating while invisible, but a serious liability when it came to privacy. Unfortunately, the switch that kept my thoughts to myself shorted out like wiring chewed by a rat. I held up my hands with a grin and slipped into the non-visible realm. The air around me shifted, like I had walked into an air-conditioned room after being outside in scorching hot weather. “Funny. You know I can still see you,” Luke said with a tilt to his lips. Wasn’t that the truth. Luke was the only person I couldn’t hide from. Of course, whether or not he wanted to find me was a whole other matter. “What’s got you wound so tight?” I asked. Luke shook his head, dark brown hair falling into his eyes. “You can’t feel it yet? The next job?” “Already?” I laughed. “We’re not even home yet.” “I don’t feel them this soon, either. Normally.” This time his eyes squinted. “This is going to be a big one.” That was enough to sober me up quick. “Like, how big?” A shiver raced up my spine. I liked the little jobs. The no lots-of-lives-in-danger ones. Getting people to meet. Helping someone find their way. Putting lives back in order, even if just a tiny bit. The small coincidences, at least in our line of work, were the kind that ended up helping someone out in ways that even I never saw coming. I mean, who knew that making sure someone made it to work on time meant they’d get the promotion they’d been hoping for? Or that finding another person’s wallet would lead to meeting the love of their life? They were easy, simple, and every once in a great while, enjoyable. They didn’t have massive ramifications if we messed something up. That suited me fine. But the big jobs? Some other workers described them as “a stitch that tightened down the fabric of time.” Brought a whole lot of pieces all together to make sure everything worked the way it needed to. I’d been part of one, once. It hadn’t been easy or pretty, and it didn’t have a happy ending either. But, the sacking of Rome had to happen. I helped make sure it did. Several other partnerships, along with Luke and me, came together to coordinate massive amounts of small tidbits, gossip, and leaked information, devising a foolproof plot. Not that I was proud of what happened. Not that I liked to think of how many lives had been lost. Still gives me nightmares, truth be told. “I’m not sure yet. It just feels different. Urgent. Something big is going to happen. You sure you don’t feel it?” I shook my head, but after the doubtful look he cast me, I leaned back against the ratty seat and closed my eyes. New jobs always manifested the same way. A pressure that built against my sternum. One by one, images came and told a story. They often showed a person and an important place to the job. There were always a few details to sus out—although they were never incredibly obvious. Luke got the same ones, only tweaked to see what his end of the job was supposed to entail. And together we worked out what we had to do. At this point, we barely had to talk to do it. I hated that. The car hummed along the road, and I pressed my palms against my thighs and forced thoughts of the happy job we’d just finished, to tumble out of my conscious mind. Then it hit. Like someone filled a balloon inside my chest. It ached like the memory of pain after the wound has healed. The fact I could feel it, now, when we’d only just finished our last job, made sweat gather on my brow, despite the cool air blasting from the vents. “I’ll take your expression as a ‘yes,’ then.” “What do you think it’s going to be?” I chewed my lip, rubbing my hands against my khakis. “Another big war? I really don’t want to be around that again.” I didn’t care what the ramifications might be, no way was I ever going near a death camp ever, ever, ever again. Luke shook his head. “I don’t think so. But I get the feeling it’s going to be difficult.” “I hate it when you’re right.” “I’m always right,” Luke laughed, patting my shoulder. That was too accurate, actually.    Chapter 2 The first image filtered through my thoughts shortly after our plane took off toward home. The details were perfectly clear in a glossy way I associated with Photoshop these days—not something planted in my head by some unknown force. The image sharpened. Luke’s giant hand gripped my wrist, so tight it almost hurt, his eyes shut when I whipped around to look at him. “I told you this was a big one.” “Not the time for ‘I told you so’,” I muttered. Bodies. Lots and lots of them. Lined up along the edge of a mass grave. Wrapped in stained white bags. Here and there a hand or a tangle of hair poked out; enough to identify each as a person. Men in full-body white suits and respirators strapped to their backs slogged through mud as rain pelted down from a low-hanging sky. A tractor dug a trench. Only on the most important jobs did Those Who Know Best give us images of what would happen if we failed. Luke said it was motivation. I said it was sick. But whether it was motivation or sick, I had the image. I knew what we were up against. And our opponent made my palms sweat and my knees knock together. I gripped them with my hands and took a deep breath, pushing down the panic that bubbled up. “What do you think it’s going to be?” I rubbed the heels of my hands over my face. I still felt gritty from tramping through the Mexican jungle on our last job. “Some kind of plague.” Luke opened one dark eye and wrinkled his nose as if he could smell the corpses in the image. “Again.” Neither of us liked any of the plagues we’d lived through, clearly. The Black Death was a nice way of putting the horrors of the Middle Ages—the smell of those years had taken years to go away. Smallpox ravaging through Native American populations had resulted in the loss of so many lives and so much history. All of it was horrible and senseless. They often resulted in us attempting to put lives back together, or give some people hope, but for the most part it was just chilling. With lots and lots of death. I’d hoped we’d outlived that kind of thing. “Well, that’s just great.” I crossed my arms and clunked my head against the headrest. “It’s probably terrorism.” He peered at the mostly empty seats around us like someone who lurked on the plane might be in on the plot. “Some kind of attack.” I brought the image back up, focusing on any details I could glean. “The sign, in the background. Does that say Berkeley?” My stomach lurched as I made out the white script against the green sign. Luke replied with a low sound in the affirmative. “Well, shit. Okay, and that one person in the suit, off to the left? Got to be a female from her shape. She’s glowing.” Which meant she was my mark. The person I had to watch. Perfect. “Mine’s not here.” “Could be one of the dead bodies.” “Thanks, Ami, I really needed to think that,” Luke said. “Well, it could be.” I turned to the window, staring out without really seeing anything. A plague. In the Bay Area, where Luke and I had lived for the last century. Which meant, what? We had to stop it, obviously, but how? Drawing a deep, shaky breath, I reminded myself I didn’t have all the pieces yet. There wasn’t any sense in freaking out until I did. No job we’d ever worked came with everything at the start—that was what we had to do. Piece together all the bits, find the pattern, and see what was supposed to happen. Then ensure it did happen. Make the improbable probable. And once we knew more, we’d be able to figure out who was behind this mess and stop it. Hopefully. So many body bags. I stuffed my trembling hands between my legs. I didn’t want this kind of pressure. I didn’t want that many lives hanging over me. I didn’t want to test how good a job I could do. Luke pulled out his laptop and connected to the plane’s Wi-Fi, searching for plagues and diseases. Tendrils of panic crept up the back of my throat when I caught sight of disfigured people and oozing sores. Just the pictures made me gag. I’d seen pretty much every kind of death imaginable but knowing how much the people had suffered didn’t ever get easier. I closed my eyes tight and counted backward from a hundred. Somewhere amidst attempting to read a book and staring at the horizon, I dozed off, drool and all, and didn’t wake until we landed at SFO so I missed my favorite part of the landing, coming in over the bay. Luke and I grabbed our minimal luggage and groggily joined the jostling crowd maneuvering to get off the plane. We herded like zombies through customs and out into the parking lot. Already the gloomy fog threatened to drown any chance for a nice afternoon. “Hey, see you later, okay?” I touched his arm to bring him back to reality. He hadn’t said anything more than the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the customs agent in hours. Luke managed a weak smile. “Yeah, of course.” His gaze skittered off, distracted. I pressed my lips together and shook my head, disappointment settling around me like the fog. “Later.” Stalking off toward my car, I tried not to stomp along like the asphalt had insulted me. I shouldn’t have felt bothered by the situation. Luke and I may not have seen each other much, but he was never far away. He had every right to his privacy. Still, it wasn’t like I had a lot of friends who understood what things were like for me, the strange way my job worked, and how my life flipped upside down every few weeks. Luke did understand and talking with him made it easier. Less of a burden and more like a crazy spy adventure. Plus, even when he was broody, he looked like a cologne ad. So, yeah, maybe I was irked that he’d been so distant today. And the last three times we’d seen each other after other jobs. Not that I was counting. I hunted down my red vintage Mini Cooper. Stashing my stuff in the back seat, I got in and rested my head against the wheel for a moment. I flashed on the image we had seen. A mass grave. Another. An apartment building—a decent 4-plex in the residential part of the city. Off-white stucco walls, two bushes lined the entry to the main breezeway the four doors opened onto. One of the numbers carried the trademark glow of the woman I was supposed to track. A street sign in the corner showed the address. It was a start. Sure as hell hoped she had a better idea how to stop the massive numbers of bodies piled up in my head. Ice ran through my veins as I thought about what to do. I couldn’t fail this one.