Total Eclipse by Rachel Caine

kids.”
    “Did I ever say you weren’t?”
    “No, but your hero complex scares the crap out of me,” Lewis said, and straightened up. “Here we go.”
    I thought he meant that we were ready to disembark, but he turned toward me, and before I even knew he was intending to do it, he kissed me. Not one of the desperate kind of kisses he’d given me in the past, none of that longing or anguish or pure lust I knew was still locked up inside of him. This was surprisingly . . . pure. Chaste.
    It was a good-bye kiss.
    I didn’t fight it.
    He didn’t say another word, and it wasn’t necessary. I watched him stride away, already calling orders to the Wardens who flocked around him like birds, swooping in to get instructions and then breaking off on their own.
    That left me alone at the rail, until I sensed a warm presence next to me, and looked over to see that David had joined me. He had no particular expression on his face. It was just—studiously neutral.
    “You saw,” I said.
    “Yes. I know what it was,” he said. “And he’s right. We might never see him again. I’d kiss him myself, but he might kill me.”
    Which made me laugh, as he intended. Though, knowing how ancient David was, I wasn’t entirely putting that kind of flexibility past him, either. “You’re a good man,” I said.
    “Am I?” He frowned down at the docks, as if it was a difficult question. “Maybe I was, once. Maybe I can be. But I’ve done a lot of things that wouldn’t qualify as good. I think—I think this is a chance to remember what that means.”
    “Bullshit,” I said crisply. “We’re not in the navelgazing business, my love; we’re in the world-saving business. Don’t you forget it.”
    That surprised a smile out of him, a spark that reminded me of the fire he’d had before . . . before the island, and that black corner. “I won’t.”
    Cherise arrived, out of breath, rolling two suitcases. She had on a Miami- length sundress (as in, just too long to qualify as a shirt, and illegal in forty-nine other states), clunky platform shoes, an enormous sun hat, and designer sunglasses. Very Cher. “Well?” she snapped as she breezed on past us, leaving a smell of crisp lemony perfume in her wake. “Hustle it up; what do you think—the world isn’t ending or something? I am not holding a cab for you slackers!” Kevin trailed her, looking as slouchy as ever but somehow a little less unkempt—maybe Cherise had been after him with a comb—dragging two more suitcases. Considering we’d come on this journey with almost nothing, that was quite an accomplishment. Only Cherise could pump up her wardrobe while evading death. I generally just ruined mine.
    David offered me his arm. “She’s right,” he said. “So are you. Fight first; introspection later.”
    “We’re going to make it,” I said. “You believe that, right?”
    He looked around—at the seemingly normal sea-front, at the Wardens disembarking from the ship, at the world all around us. And he said, softly, “Not all of us.”
    I shivered.
     
    Four in a cab was a stretch, but we voted Kevin to sit up front, much to the displeasure of the driver, who groused about rules and such until I tossed money at him. The money had been issued to all of us out of the ship’s treasury—another thing that was going on the Wardens’ already staggering tab for saving the world again. It wasn’t going to be enough, but it was enough to get us moving, and that was all that mattered.
    I had the driver drop us at a car rental place—not Avis and Budget, which were already swarming with Weather Wardens attempting to secure their own preferred methods of transpo, not liking what I’d booked for them—but a luxury place, where I plunked down the gold American Express Warden card to the clerk behind the counter. She was a professionally lovely girl, the way a lot of South Beach ladies are, and she had a practiced, customer-service-approved smile. “What kind of vehicle are