Shadowbound by Dianne Sylvan

here. But a couple of years ago he moved back to Rio Verde—to the same house.” Miranda paused, then said, “She said please. She’s never said that to me before.”
    David leaned forward and kissed the skin just above her Signet. “You’re going, aren’t you,” he said.
    “It’s a last request,” Miranda said. “How can I deny a last request? Plus . . . it’s just one of those things I think I have to do. They’re the only thing left that links me to my history. I don’t want that history, but . . . I just have to see the house one more time, look them both in the face.”
    “All right. Rio Verde’s five hours from here—we can get there and back in one night, but it’ll be pushing it.”
    “I want to go alone,” she told him. “I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
    “Out of the question,” David replied. Her eyebrows shot up, no doubt a precursor to her pointing out, quite rightly, that he wasn’t the boss of her, but he added, more gently, “If you don’t want me to go, I won’t, but you must at least take a pair of guards. The thought of you being alone and something going wrong—”
    “David, it’s a town of eight thousand people. I’ll be there for a few hours. What could go wrong?”
    He frowned. “You do realize that by saying that you’ve already damned your luck.”
    “Yeah, probably. If it will really make you feel better, I’ll take Minh and Stuart. I can go Friday—I don’t have a show.”
    Their eyes met and held. “I know I can’t protect you from getting hurt,” he said. “I know it’s not my job. But I can’t help wanting to keep you safe, even from things I know you need to do. I would cheerfully dismember anyone who made you unhappy.”
    She grinned. “And I love you for it, which is kind of twisted.”
    He put his arms around her again and grinned back. “Remind yourself periodically over the next century or so that you said it, I didn’t.”
     • • • 
    Amy’s Ice Cream on Sixth was an odd touchstone in Miranda’s life. Every time she sat down—always at the same table—she was a different person, living a different version of her life. What she ordered was never the same, but the place itself had barely changed in the time she had become a part of the Shadow World.
    The first time had been her first date with David, though “date” was a bit of a misnomer. She was still human then, and though they had both felt the growing connection between them, she’d had no idea she would end up taking him to bed that very night.
    She smiled to herself as she spooned up another bite of her ice cream. She’d been a cheap date—a sundae and a little Shakespeare was all it took.
    That night was the beginning of the end of her humanity. Now, after death, war, infidelity, forgiveness, and still more death, she felt far more secure in her relationship with David than she ever had before, and certainly more secure than she would have expected three years ago. Despite all that had happened and all that still could, she had no regrets.
    Yet now she had to step back in time and revisit the years before Austin, before she became what she considered the real Miranda. She would have said they wouldn’t recognize her now in Rio Verde, but given her celebrity status, they probably would.
    That didn’t mean they’d see her, though. For her whole life, people had looked right through her. Marianne was the “good daughter,” the medical professional, smiling out from a cheerful Christmas card with her societally approved white-bread family all in matching reindeer sweaters.
    Marianne had never been the kind of sister one confided in, or giggled with over boys as a teenager, but when they were children, they had known how to talk to each other. Adolescence followed by their mother’s madness killed that sweet, young knowledge between them. Miranda wasn’t really interested in rekindling a relationship, but still, she hoped that Marianne would remember that