V

The road was dark and foreboding, the kind I didn't normally like to wander down, even in the middle of the day. And right now, it was the middle of the night.

"Kaye, that was my foot," Ben muttered in my ear.

"Well, if you would watch where you're walking, I wouldn't be anywhere near your feet," I snapped back.

"Just keep moving, and keep it down. We don't know what we're up against."

While Ashling slept soundly in her bed, Ben and I were out in the streets, performing the perfunctory security sweeps around the city. We hated leaving our Subject alone--even for ten minutes--but protocol demanded that we take these precautions.

So now we were scanning the surrounding streets, looking and listening for any sign of an approaching threat. Ashling, of course, had no idea where we were; she slept quite peacefully in her elaborate bedroom back at the house.

I shivered in the cold. Again, something I wasn't used to, feeling temperature. Back at Headquarters--in our unchanging immortal state--we'd never felt hot or cold or anything in between. But here, with mortality and the Revolving taking their toll on us, we were entirely exposed to the elements.

Trembling again, I moved closer to Benji, secretly wishing that some of his warmth would leap from his skin to mine. As if he could read my mind, he moved in closer, too, our arms touching in the darkness.

"Do you sense anything?" he whispered. "Any hostile people? Any animals, even?"

I closed my eyes for a second and focused on my sixth sense. Combined with Ben's, it nearly overpowered my mind, and I was abruptly consumed by flashes of mental color, each one uniquely depicting someone--or something--else's emotions. The harder I concentrated, the more defined each became...

"Nope," I replied. "The only people around here are sound asleep."

Ben chuckled. "Except for that guy," he gestured toward the nearest house, a daunting fortress upon a small hill. "He never sleeps soundly. Too many women to keep him occupied."

Awkward. But funny nonetheless.

I rolled my eyes and pushed my best friend with my shoulder. "Ew, don't listen, Ben. That's terrible."

"Ha!" he laughed loudly. "If they're going to be so ostentatious about it, I have the right the listen in."

"You are absolutely disgusting." I shook my head.

"No, you're just ridiculous and boring."

"And you're just a stupid, adolescent boy, Benjamin."

He was silent for a moment, apparently taking in the current situation in the house. We walked together in the comfortable quiet...

"Tell me something," he finally spoke, in a voice so soft that it blended with the misty air. He didn't continue.

I waited for him to finish, as we rounded the last corner before Ashling's street. When he didn't, I slowed down a bit, giving him time...

He shortened his steps, too, and then suddenly stopped. We were just behind an ivy-covered brick wall, of the ones the fenced in the neighbor's extensive property.

"Tell me," he said again, moving me closer to the wall, moving faster and faster until I felt the bricks on my back.

I wasn't sure what he was doing. My senses were on overdrive, all of his emotions mixing with mine, confusing me, making me crazy.

I leaned into his advance, letting his warm hand wrap around my arm, letting him stare me in the eyes with a look that could have melted my heart.

He waited until his face was less than an inch from mine before he finished his thought.

"Tell me what you remember from being alive."

I felt entirely extinguished, my eager flicker dead. That was what he wanted to know?

"Umm..." I stammered. "Not much, actually."

He laid his forehead on my shoulder, sighing heavily. "Same here. I wonder why. I feel all of their emotions, all the time... I kind of want to remember what it felt like, you know?"

I nodded, suddenly understanding what he meant. He and I were both going through the same thing. Every time I looked at him, I longed to recall those human emotions.

I could feel them. I knew how it felt to be sad, to be happy, to be afraid. But it wasn't the same. They were dulled, less intense, entirely overshadowed by the call of our Revolving, by the summons of our Guardian duties...

By the knowledge that we were dead.

In the same movement, Ben and I folded our arms around each other, grasping at the chance to feel something real. Our partnership was real, wasn't it? The deep attachment we felt had to be something similar to the power of a human emotion.

So we stood there, intertwined, his face buried in my hair and mine in his jacket.

And despite the drive to defend poor Ashling, we didn't move until dawn.