The Taken by Vicki Pettersson

second-rate Houdini just to buy himself time to think. Because Katherine Craig was alive . She still had flesh and breath, which she’d likely be thankful for when she woke, but the point was that she shouldn’t ever wake again.
    Fate, he was willing to bet, was pissed.
    But the ripple had smoothed out, and the plasma dogging the woman had disappeared. None of his celestial senses picked up a hint of looming death, and even his headache had dulled. And it had all happened at the moment Craig was scheduled to die but didn’t.
    Pulling out his Luckies, Grif lit a stick and noted his scraped knuckles with odd fascination. Flexing, he wondered what it meant that they were both still alive.
    “Means you’re in deep with Sarge, that’s what,” he muttered, slumping on the chair in Craig’s bedroom. The lack of communication alone told him that much.
    But Sarge had dumped him back on the mud to do a job no soul should have to shoulder. And now that Grif had screwed up his case, what was the celestial response? Silence . . . with the additional bonus of memory and emotion to cement him to the Surface. Now it looked like he was stuck here until Sarge saw fit to reclaim him.
    They’ll probably send another Centurion to Take her, Grif thought. Maybe even her Guardian, a Pure. Yet, despite it all—screwing up Craig’s life and death, along with the pain of breathing and remembering—he didn’t regret beating off those men. Craig had been so outnumbered, so helpless, and literally naked, that it seemed unnatural not to help. He couldn’t stand by and watch a woman get beaten, raped, murdered. He’d rather be dead.
    “I thought for a moment that it had all been a dream.”
    Grif jolted and, looking over, knew exactly how she felt. Katherine Craig sat up, the covers slipping down the upper half of her body to reveal her bare neck and one smooth shoulder, the skin so flawless it was like a curvy pail of warm, fresh milk. He swallowed hard, keeping his gaze away from the flare of her hip and breasts as she pulled her robe tight, but it was like trying to keep his eyes off the hills framing a sunrise. After all, it was so much more of an event when there was something majestic supporting it.
    Yet Craig’s eyes weren’t bright with dawn. The shadows that’d been beneath them the night before were now deep half-moons, made even darker with knowledge. Oddly, coupled with the cascade of rumpled raven hair and her round bare face, it made her look impossibly young.
    “Did you sleep?” she asked, the very question eliciting a yawn. It felt strange. He hadn’t been tired in decades. Grif shook his head, putting out his cigarette in a white ceramic vase. Craig’s shadowed eyes narrowed at the movement, but she didn’t chide him.
    “Coffee?” she asked instead, pushing back the covers.
    “Please.” His voice was as musty with disuse as his manners. He stood, and so did she, which was how they found themselves uncomfortably close. It was odd, Grif thought. He knew what she looked like close to death, close to naked, close to him . . . yet didn’t really know her at all.
    “Excuse me,” she said, lowering her head and skirting him. Grif shoved his hands in his pockets, allowing distance between them as he followed her from the room.
    The house looked fresh-scrubbed in the early morning, unfiltered light falling over the dark wood floor like the kiss of a veil. The furniture was even more lacy and feminine glowing with the dawn, and the soft surroundings seemed to revitalize Craig. Until she rounded the corner.
    There she saw the kitchen’s sliding glass door, marginally ajar, which put a hitch in her step and breath. Cursing himself for not closing it before, Grif crossed to it and locked it shut. By the time he turned around, she was already standing with her back to him, stiff in front of the coffee pot. Though there was no mistaking its use, it was the one thing in the room he didn’t recognize from his time on the