My pulse raced as I stared at the small dish sitting on top of my drawing pad on the nightstand, obscured by Alex's shadow. It contained the remnants of stitches that had been extracted from my shoulder. His hand went to the smooth, now healed skin, persuading me to relax as the needle's tip grazed my side for round number two. I buried my face in my pillow, blocking out the orange industrial glow of factory lights filtering through the curtains of my bedroom windows. Sweat trickled down my back, but I wasn't hot. "Easy now, Eos." His accented voice sent a ripple of reassurance through me, and I shifted.

A softly spoken word. A murmur of response. A whisper of warm fingers across bruised flesh sent shivers through both of us. The syringe was filled with more restorative. The portion I drank earlier stopped any internal hemorrhaging; however, it would do nothing for already established injuries. These required direct injections.

I gasped as the needle broke through skin and silently braved it as he worked the tip in and out, injections shallow at first to address surface bruising, and then deeper to penetrate closer to the bone. A warm wetness filled the corners of my eyes, but I would not cry. I was too exhausted to cry; I just wanted to be better. Panting, my breathing became pained as the last of the liquid was expelled in one forceful rush.

"It's okay. You're doing well." His arm slipped under the pillow to cradle my head while he set his other hand firmly against my side. His fingers twitched as they made direct contact with my skin. "Just a little maneuvering to make sure everything is in place before the bones set."

"O-okay." I planted my forehead against his stomach, taking in his damp scent.

I let out a whimper when the injected liquid shifted, moving with his will, it seemed, rib bones realigning. My side began to burn, and I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting the urge to scream as I endured the fire of instantaneous healing licking red-hot at my nerve endings before cooling to a dull nothing several moments later.

"That's a good girl." Alex removed his hand, pulling down the random T-shirt I'd changed into along with a pair of shorts when we first got back. "You're doing wonderfully. Now rest for a bit."

I bobbed my head without saying anything, accepting his offer of downtime. He rocked us while my trembling dissolved, giving me time to regroup before he tended to my sprained ankle.

Now that he was no longer in healing mode, his purpose for touching me took on a hesitant eagerness, seeking my permission to experiment with how skin-to-skin contact affected us. The gestures were small: a hand against my wrist, a finger under my chin.

When he wanted to run a thumb across my cheek to send shivers through us both, or simply brush the hair from my eyes, I let him. I wasn't even shy with him. In fact, I was truly comfortable with letting him be close. Accepting the attention he wanted to pay me came easily, as effortless as stepping out into the rain, just as I had suspected that first day at the academy.

Things went on like this for a while—repeated touching, that extra frisson of feeling going through the point of contact—until Alex placed both of his hands behind himself, leaning back.

He cleared his throat and finally spoke. "I want to ask you about something that happened at the theater."

"Before or after I somersaulted down the stairs?" I asked unhappily. I shifted on the pillow.

"Before." His mouth quirked with a hint of amusement. At least one of us thought my ungraceful way with steps was funny. "In the lobby, you were going to argue against coming with me, but then the ventilation kicked on, you scented the air, and you changed your mind."

"It did. I did."

Alex continued with what was on his mind, saying that at the time, all he scented from the vented air was car exhaust and fuel emanating from a nearby gas station, neither of which spelled out imminent danger that would cause me to react the way I had.

After a quiet moment of weighing whether or not I should disclose what had made me decide to go with him, I finally opened up and said, "I smelled animosity: the ill intent to harm another. This is what I can decipher from the air: emotions, intentions, and desires. Truth and deceit."

I shrugged at his wide-eyed amazement and added, "I guess being the over-privileged owner of two souls puts me in the solitary position of being able to do so." Lucky me. I sighed as I went on, "It is said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, which in my case, is truer than you'd think. Not only can I look past the glass, I can also lift up the pane to slip in and...and do other things from in there."

"What I observed you doing with Reese to convince her to go back to watching the movie," he said, and I smiled a little when I understood he wasn't put off by my, um, "peculiar talents."

On the contrary, my unique ability to scent emotions and other intangible stuff was intriguing to him, especially since I didn't know everything I was capable of doing once I was inside of a person's heart. I was an "olfactory clairvoyant" as he put it. I didn't mind the title. I thought it was pretty darn close to the truth.

Moving beyond talk of my clairvoyance, he surprised me by asking if I liked to eat anything other than peaches—how he knew my favorite food, he wouldn't admit to. The answer to that question: no, not really.

I ate other fruits and vegetables, bread, sometimes fish if it was prepared properly, but I was never truly enthused about any of it. I would have liked to tell him that I loved eating ice cream. It was silly, I suppose.

He chuckled when I offered something amusing and sympathized deeply when I lamented. When he asked about my human mother, he was particularly in tune with the weight of the loss I carried from her death, something that struck a chord with him because of his own recent bereavement. From what I could tell of the vintage of his pain, his mother's death had taken place within the last six to eight months. And it hadn't been a natural death.

He surprised me again by saying, "You remind me of her."

His eyes closed in a long, soul-searching blink, and then reopened, a gentle smile laced with a touch of semisweet bitterness overtaking the uplifted corners of his mouth.

"She was dark-haired like me?" I guessed when he fell silent, studying my face.

He coaxed my hand upward, and his expression was imploring. A slow blink conveyed my permission, and my lips parted, breath catching when his mouth pressed briefly to my wrist.

"No," he said, sadness sliding behind his eyes even as his chin quivered from the rush of having placed his lips on my skin. "Her hair was so light that it was translucent, as is characteristic of the sirens of her Lake Erie bevy. What I mean is she was small like you, a rare occurrence among devvi females. Also, despite her advanced age, Mom never physically matured much older than you—but I guess you wouldn't understand what I mean by that."

"No." I tilted my head, wanting him to go on.

"Well, as you already know from passive observation, water, wind, fire, earth and light never age in their form. As it is of these rudimentary elements that our very existence is made up, we likewise do not age," he told me, addressing the wonderment bright in my eyes. "Although my mother died a few days prior to her five hundred and thirty-first year alive, she didn't appear to be a day over seventeen."

So devvis remained physically young all their lives? "Jeepers, your life spans are long. Can I ask, how old are you?"

"One hundred and thirty-one," Alex answered without hesitation.

Wow. I looked away as I processed this info. They stay young—and I am aging at the normal rate of a human being. Like any other mortal, I would grow old and die in a short seventy years or so compared to what he and Micah were capable of. I would be dead before everyone knew it.

As this latest angst settled to become a part of me, I noticed the warmth of his hand through my stocking when he touched my right knee. Alex was focused on the window when my attention returned, and he said, "Dawn is only a few hours off."

"You have somewhere to be?"

"I do. My cousin and I are heading up to Lake Erie to oversee a mating festival my family hosts every year."

"A mating festival?"

"A fertility event, really, put on for the sirens of my mother's bevy to ensure the next generation. It is a duty that fell to our family when the eldest daughter of the Erie queen took our father to be her mate—and you find all of what I am saying to be very peculiar."

He tilted his head as if in consideration of something when I lifted my shoulders in a wordless reply. Of course it sounded strange to me. Humans put on summerfests and applefests and had July fireworks and Christmas. We—they—didn't organize an event for mass impregnation.

"The look that passed over your face just now." My mouth pressed into a thin line as I watched Alex silently decide something.

"What look would that be?"

"The one that says you've made a decision about something in connection with my inability to act as though a mating festival is anything but odd."

"This 'look of mine' you're referencing is nothing more than me trying to achieve a better understanding of how you must perceive things, coming from a human upbringing."

"Your normal is not my normal," I rephrased.

"Yes, and I don't want to do anything to scare you away."

"Like this is normal for either of us?" I countered, taking his

hand solidly into mine, causing goosebumps to go rushing up our arms.

"All the more reason for me to talk with my brothers."

"You have siblings?" I asked. Our voices were breathless by the time we let go of each other.

"Two brothers and a sister."

"Your brothers might have some insight into this?" I brushed fingers across his again, then yanked them away.

He nodded, placing his hand again on my wool stocking, pushing it down. "At first light I need to leave, so I should heal your sprained ankle while the dark is still with us."

"Wait!" I jerked my stocking back up to stop him from seeing the underside of my foot, the one with the scar.

His surprise shifted to curiosity when I lowered my forehead against his shoulder, eyes closing, willing myself not to shake at the thought of it: my shame, my disgrace. I didn't want to risk ruining myself in his eyes if he saw the old burn mark and asked what had caused it. He was just starting to open about his grief over his own mother; he didn't need to know how mine had been killed.

"The treatment's intravenous again, with the needle?" I mumbled. I felt him nod. "You can do it through the stocking?"

"If that is what you wish."

Exhaling, I slumped against him in relief when he reached to refill the syringe. That he wasn't going to ask why I wanted things done this way endeared the guy to me even more. Alex respected what I wanted. He knew I had a personal reason for not wanting my foot exposed and left it at that.

"This won't hurt like your side. Stay relaxed, and it will be finished in a few minutes."

I nodded and allowed him to work. And just as he said, the treatment on my ankle wasn't painful. After several pokes of the needle I was able to move my foot up and down, testing. The swelling was almost gone.

"I'm going to take a shower," I announced quietly when he was finishing up, putting the syringe and other medical supplies back in their case. "But I don't want you to leave yet." I needed to get the last few hours of stress off me. I was grimy with old fear, emotionally dirty.

"I can wait for a little while, but then I need to get going." He touched my face, causing a fresh burst of those marching shivers.

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Over the summer I screwed up my own ankle pretty badly during a bike trip.  It took over six weeks to heal, and truthfully it still isn't entirely the same.  I'm all about a VOTE for instantaneous healing!