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I did anyway "I need to take some of your life force"

Brett looked at me for a full ten seconds, then he looked at Jade and his face got tender

My jaw clenched

"Okay She can’t die, Caleb She’s one of the good ones"

"Yeah," I said, feeling like that was the only thing we’d ever agree on

I kept ularity I grabbed Brett’s hand, he looked at me but wasn’t scared

He was scarred from his past and those lessons had made him unafraid

I opened myself to my power and it caophers, fieldher life ebbing, waiting to claim her

Death waited for Jade to co at Brett, his face a mirror of ers of power and drove theasped in surprise "It’s cold," he said through his teeth, gri with the pain

I nodded, transfixed in the process, I began to transfer his life energy to Jade It flowed like war between the two of theasped, rich color filling cheeks that had grown ashen, shock stealing her coloring, her warrasped my free hand Then she noticed her face was in Brett’s lap and instantly intuited ere doing

Not too shabby on the Empath vibe

"Stop it," she whispered She looked up at Brett with green pools of eh his pain, he pushed the hair out of her face

"No," he said softly, with a tenderness that made me want to corateful It was such a confusing wash of anic arrived until she tapped my shoulder

I turned to look into Jezebel’s somber face "I think I’ll take it from here, Caleb I have two patients instead of one"

I opened my mouth to protest and she held up a hand "One would have been bound for the ue, but for you," and her eyes took in Brett’s and she nodded in his direction, "and your friend here"

I didn’t correct her on the friend part with an effort

The ed and Brett fell backward into the arinning her body scan as she called them

She looked up at her leadhis pulse out of his red s in the worst way to touch Jade

"We need a chopper You’ve staved it off, Caleb, but it’s a near thing, she’s sustained extensive internal trauhtmare last year

I looked over at her dead dad and a cruel smile twisted my mouth The Skopa on faces that never wavered fro

He lay in a pool of blood that spread around his body, creeping across the floorboards tohere Jade and Brett lay

I was beyond glad that he was dead The zo their lips back frori anxiously at the warriors

Jezebel and theto ?" Jezebel asked

"Nah, they’re cool," I said, looking down at Jade She gave a weak smile at me and I breathed a little easier

I heard the pulse-sirens before they showed

Gale and Garcia popped into the house Cops-in-a-box, I thought with hue of hysteria

Garcia waded in, gun naked in his hand He saw me and made a low noise in his throat I knew it had been a sord

"Why am I not surprised?" he asked to no one and everyone in the rooore of LeClerc that was spreading into the crevices that ran between the wood slats, inching toward the round

"See it was like this " Jonesy began and there was a collective groan in the room Garcia whirled on him "Absolutely not"

He turned to the irl live?" She nodded tersely but added, "She would not have if it hadn’t been for Caleb and Brett" She s shade of nothing, holding his chest like a five-hundred pound guy had used hi end of his ass He nodded atto be okay We both looked at Jade The medics put her on the stretcher as the whir of chopper blades could be heard over the house

Garcia made the circle motion with his hand "Get her out of here, I’ll pulse the et the body out of here" His eyes took in all the kids standing around, et outside, now"

Jezebel stood, noticing Andrea for the first time Her hand flew to herher over gently she used a practiced hand and opened it above her head, then her heart Her eyes met the cops’

She didn’t have to say it

I could feel her, Andrea was part of it now

Part of the dead

Jade ht

LeClerc had beaten his own sister to death My eyes met the J’s, Sophie’s, Tiff’s, Archer, Alex, Bry and Mia’s battered face I saw the sa in all of them

Sorrow

Sorrow for Jade And what she’d coto touch her with her aunt’s death inlike slow poison in my consciousness

She looked up at me and I saw she already knew Somehoith not one ounce of AFTD, she knew that death had welco in her gaze Maybe it was a trick of the light, but I thought I saw soave my heart pause, made my soul hiccup

Accusation

I looked at her until she was in the helicopter

Then I looked at where she’d been until the chopper was a dot in the sky that was edging toward twilight

Bruised and beaten, the dark looked like I felt

They loaded Brett into the a Garcia’s "He’ll be okay, needs a few days to recover"

"And the girl?" he asked, his eyes searching her face I realized at some point in the last couple of years that we’d become more than just a call to come to, a scene to take note of, contain

He cared He cared about us