Natasha recovered from the swerve with the composed silence of a woman pretending the last thirty seconds had not happened. She kept her eyes on the road.Her cheeks were still pink. Her grip on the steering wheel was tight enough to leave fingerprints in the leather."You're a dangerous man, Dr. Morrison." Her voice was level, but the faintest tremor underneath it said she was working harder than usual to keep it there. "Saying something like that to a woman while she's driving.""You asked me about outstanding women. I answered honestly.""You were calling my bluff.""Was I?"Natasha glanced at him. The look lasted exactly one second, long enough to search his face for the joke and not find one. She turned back to the road, and the pink on her cheeks deepened by another shade."She's warming up," the Spirit observed. "Another two conversations and she'll be making you dinner. Three and she'll be asking where you keep your toothbrush.""Shut up.""I'm just doing the math, kid."The G

He paused beside Ethan on his way to the medicine cabinet and patted his shoulder with the patronizing gentleness of a man comforting a child who had lost a spelling bee. "Lucky a real doctor arrived in time, son. No harm done."Ethan brushed the hand off his shoulder the way someone brushes a fly off their sleeve. He did not leave. He stood by the wall, arms folded, watching."He's wrong," the Spirit said. "Catastrophically wrong. Adjusting her medication will do nothing because her kidneys aren't failing. The Heart Devourer is mimicking kidney rejection symptoms by feeding on the cardiac tissue that regulates renal blood flow. If he increases her immunosuppressants, which is exactly what he's going to do, the parasite will use the weakened immune response to accelerate its feeding cycle. She'll be dead in two weeks."Lawrence looked between Gloria and Ethan, his face carrying the strained expression of a man being pulled in two directions by people who both claimed to be saving his

Across town, Ethan sat across from Natasha Sterling at a corner table in a quiet Italian restaurant she had chosen. The lighting was dim, the music was low, and Natasha was on her third glass of wine."You know what people call me behind my back?" She swirled the glass slowly, watching the red liquid climb the sides. "The Sterling Widow. Like I'm some cursed artifact they're afraid to touch.""People talk because they have nothing better to do." Ethan picked up a piece of bread and tore it in half."Easy for you to say. You're Quinn Hartford's husband. People don't whisper about you. They shout it to your face." A small laugh escaped her lips, warm and unexpected. "Do you know the last time someone just sat and had dinner with me without wanting something? I genuinely can't remember."Ethan looked at her for a moment. Beneath the expensive dress and the cold reputation, there was something tired in Natasha Sterling's eyes. Not weak. Just lonely in a way she had gotten very good at hid

Gloria lunged forward. "You ungrateful cockroach! You bottom feeding worm! You would kill your own mother for money? I'll have you thrown in prison so deep they'll forget your name!"Lance's hand came up fast.The slap caught Gloria across the face with enough force to spin her sideways, and she hit the floor hard, her cheek already swelling red.She lay there with her palm pressed against her face, staring up at her youngest brother with an expression of total incomprehension.Gloria Griffin, the woman who had bulldozed every person in this family for decades, could not process what had just happened to her."I told you to sit down." Lance's hand was still raised."Lance, stop this!" The old woman tried to push herself upright, tears streaming down the deep lines of her face. "I love all my children equally. I have always loved you. Please, my boy, please stop.""Love." Lance pulled a small bone whistle from his jacket pocket. It was no bigger than his pinky finger, carved from somet

Ethan dropped from the Griffin compound wall and hit the ground running. The spiritual mark that Master Garrett had planted on his shoulder earlier that day was long gone, burned off within seconds of contact.But the Spirit had done something far more useful with those seconds. He had copied the signature."Got him," the Spirit said, his voice focused and locked in like a hunting dog on a scent. "Northwest. Moving fast. About four miles out and climbing."How strong is the signal?"Clear as a bell. Old man left his fingerprints all over your meridians when he touched you. Sloppy. Arrogant. The kind of mistake people make when they think they're the smartest person in the room."Ethan moved through the city like smoke, leaping between rooftops and cutting through alleys at a speed that would have blurred him to any camera that tried to catch his shape.The signature pulled him north, past the commercial district, past the residential towers, toward the old parks on Crestwood's outer e