The world ended at 9:48 p.m. on Friday, September 24, 1993. He remembered the time because the Windows screen on Pallin Wolf's desk computer had a running clock, and that was the time he heard the first gunshot. Tessa's official time of death wasn't until 11:55, but that was only because the paramedics and emergency room doctors tried everything they could to bring her back. Duncan knew from the very minute he saw her lying on the street that she wasn't coming to back. Mortals didn't come back, not the way he did, not the way Richie did just seconds after Duncan lifted and cradled Tessa's body.

He should have gone with them to the car. What in the world had he been thinking about? After spending so many frantic hours to find her, he'd just kissed her blithely goodbye and sent her and Richie out. He'd wanted to find out as much information as he could about the man he'd just killed and the rogue Watchers who targeted Immortals like game hunters going after unwitting prey.

Don't be long, she'd said. I love you.

I love you too.

He should have gone with them.

Duncan raced across the grass and sidewalk, all of the hairs on his neck rising with foreknowledge. He slowed several feet from the Thunderbird, all the strength suddenly gone from his legs. The only sounds were the faint barking of a dog and the rustle of wind and crickets as backdrop. He stared at the two bodies laying lifelessly in front of the car, and smelled gunpowder and blood in the air.

Tessa. Oh, love.

He walked towards them in a muffled, dream-like world where details blurred but every second stretched to forever. He spared a brief look for Richie but Richie wasn't important now. He knelt and took Tessa's body into his arms. Her eyes held a faraway, glassy stare. Her heart had already stopped. He could smell the faint perfume of her shampoo. Her skin was still warm, but her lips were shading towards blueness and her bladder had released, leaving her wet in his lap.

The world ended but time kept moving forward, too callous and cruel to notice. Duncan's brain shifted from a brief burst of denial into a deep, leaden numbness that hid the knowledge his heart had just been carved out of his chest. He heard a gasp and felt a shift in his Immortal senses as Richie returned. A different pain waited there, ready to blister into awareness, but Duncan shunted it aside to face later. He couldn't deal with Richie's new status just yet.

"Mac," Richie said, sitting up, his voice dazed. "I'm alive. . . and the pain - it's going away."

"Wait another minute and you'll be fine," Duncan choked out.

"Then I'm like you. I'm an Immortal."

"You always were."

Richie looked at Tessa as if seeing her for the first time. "Tessa?" he asked.

"No," Duncan whispered. He tightened his hold on her. Already he knew that he couldn't let the paramedics or police take her from him. "You have to go."

Richie stared at Tessa's body, giving no indication that he'd heard.

"Richie!" Duncan snapped, putting the force of a whip into his voice. The teenager looked up, dazed. Duncan knew he would be struggling to deal with so many things just now - the trauma and pain of his fatal injuries, the adrenaline dump that came with healing, his own grief - but the far scream of sirens and lights going on across the street left no time for coddling.

"Walk your bike around the block and go home," Duncan said. He wondered how he could manage to sound so calm, so in control, so logical. Tessa's soft hair tickled his hands. "Change your shirt and wash off the blood. If the police come, pretend you were sleeping. Got that?"

Richie stared at him. "Huh?"

"Do it!" Duncan ordered. "It'll be too hard to explain to you right now."

Richie looked down at his chest. He fingered the bloody holes in his shirt. "We were shot," he said, his voice distant and remote.

"Richie, go home!" Duncan ordered harshly. "Do it now!"

"Okay," Richie said, hurt that Duncan was yelling at him. Couldn't Mac see what had happened? They'd been shot. Little Richie Ryan, street punk and thief, had risen from the dead. And Tessa . . . he felt his eyes tear up even as he climbed to his feet. Tessa wasn't moving. Tessa would never move again. Knives twisted in his stomach and lungs, making each breath burn as he lurched to his feet.

"Mac, I - "

"Go!" Duncan interrupted. The sirens grew nearer. Richie stumbled toward his motorbike. Duncan watched him walk it around the corner, and then turned his attention back to his love, his soul, his dead fiancee.

"Tessa, you can't be dead," he murmured, kissing the top of her head, rocking her body ever so carefully. That she was already gone made no difference. His voice shook uncontrollably but he clamped down on the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. "Tessa, God, please don't leave me. I can't live without you."

She would open her eyes. She would smile and call him Mac, and wrap her arms around him, and hold him against the pain. She would give him that special look that promised no one else understood him and loved him as much as she did. She would kiss away his distress, and they would go back to their bed and devote the rest of their lives to merging their two bodies into one.

No. She would do none of that.

Swirling red lights cut into his vision. Funny that he hadn't even heard the police cars pull up. "Sir?" a voice asked. A hand reached out of the blackness to touch his shoulder. "Sir, let us help her."

"You can't," he murmured.

"Let us help her," another voice echoed, and he blinked up at two uniformed officers. An ambulance screeched to a stop beside the Thunderbird. Neighbors drifted out of their houses, drawn by the spectator sport of tragedy.

Duncan held Tessa closer and muttered, "No."

One of the officers circled behind him, and with his partner's help broke Duncan's grip. Duncan almost went berserk on them but at the last moment found some shred of self-control that kept his trembling limbs from lashing out in violence. The paramedics spread Tessa's body, shoved a plastic tube in her mouth, started pumping on her chest. Her body shook beneath the onslaught of their efforts.

"They're hurting her," Duncan protested, and stepped forward to protect her.

"No, they're helping her." One of the policemen blocked his path. "Come over here with me. Can you tell me your name? Can you tell me what happened?"

He couldn't do it. He absolutely could not stand here and give the policemen bureaucratic red tape information while Tessa lay there, defenseless and helpless, in the hands of strangers. But he did. Heaven forgive him, he did. He gave them his name, her name, their address. He barely heard the words in his own ears, and couldn't feel anything but the chill that had possessed him from his scalp to his toes.

One of the paramedics claimed he had a pulse. They plunged needles into her, lifted her helpless body, strapped her onto a gurney.

"Where are they taking her?" Duncan asked. "She has to come home with me."

"The hospital," the policeman said. "Come on, we'll get you there too."

Duncan had never known such a complete, fathomless bleakness. "She's dead."

"Maybe there's hope, pal. Come on."

No, there could be no hope. He knew death when it came for a mortal spirit. He'd seen his clansman die on the fields of Scotland, seen newborn babies turn blue and cold in midwives' arms, seen men and women fall to the deadliest plagues of Europe. He'd seen Tessa's face. He'd seen the emptiness left behind for him to remember the rest of his life.

They took him to the hospital and parked him in the emergency room. The numbness made him entirely passive. Another Immortal could have come by and asked him to lie down on the dirty linoleum floor so he could chop off the Highlander's head, and Duncan would have agreed. In fact he wanted to die, but that was a separate issue. For the moment all he could do was sit and stare at the floor, his arms wrapped around his middle as protection against the freezing chill that had nothing to do with room temperature.

The waiting area of the emergency room was full of late-night victims of mayhem or illness, and the television overhead blared out CNN's top headlines. The people, the staff, the clutter and noise, the TV - he knew they were there, but he'd moved to a separate planet where they didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered, now that the world had ended.

Someone came to talk to him. A short doctor in bloody clothes. So sorry. Nothing to be done. Another policeman. Could he tell them what had happened?

His brain came through with the story of how he and Tessa had gone out to dinner, then stopped by the house on Briarcliff Street to appraise an antique sword the owner called them about earlier. Duncan had gone to the door while Tessa waited in the car. He heard gunshots and came back to find her in the street.

"The man in the house," the policeman said. "Someone killed him too. He was run through with a sharp weapon, a knife or a sword."

Only some last remaining instinct of self-preservation kept Duncan from unsheathing his katana and giving it to the officer. He must have ridden to the hospital in the squad car with it, the police actually driving the murder weapon around, but could barely remember the ride.

The policeman was saying something more now, but the word were gibberish. Duncan interrupted with the plea, "Can I see her? I need to see her."

He shouldn't have to beg. She was his Tessa. She was going to marry him. They had shared each other's lives and bodies for over twelve years. But he would beg, he would prostrate himself in front of them, he would kill them, just to see her.

The cubicle down the hall had all the earmarks of a hurricane - dirty instruments, bloody sheets, gloves discarded on the floor. The two nurses cleaning up were gossiping about a boyfriend as if nothing had happened. Tessa lay on the exam table, her body still lax and lifeless, her face oddly peaceful in the glare from the overhead lamps. One of the nurses came over and started to draw up the sheet, but Duncan caught her wrist with a grip that nearly snapped it.

"Leave," he said flatly. He didn't even look at her. "Go away."

When he was alone he reached out with a trembling hand and gingerly touched her right cheek. Her skin had cooled and taken on an unfamiliar stiffness. From the neck up, she looked amazing beautiful and strong, like one of her own sculptures. From the neck down, she was a gory mess where her chest had been cut open, her heart massaged, her lungs inflated by cold machines.

"Tessa," he whispered. "Please don't go."

She didn't answer. She would never talk to him again. His own heart, protected by the numbness, burst up in into his brain with crimson waves of grief, but he didn't cry, he couldn't cry, because he had sent her to the car with only Richie for protection.

Richie. Something important about Richie nagged at Duncan for a brief second. But Richie didn't matter now. All that mattered was Tessa, lying here, and the idea that she would never come to his arms again made him feel tiny and mortally wounded and anguished, so very anguished.

At some point he looked at the clock. The hands had turned past midnight. It was now Saturday, September 25th.

Tessa Noel was dead.

And so was he, in every way that mattered.

Richie reached the store nearly in a blind panic. He'd imagined himself followed for the last several miles - by the police, by the Hunters, by anybody he'd ever angered, by ghosts, by grief. He didn't know how much of it was shock, how much paranoia, how much of it induced by his newfound Immortality. He couldn't keep track of what was current and what was past. He parked the bike in the alley, watched it topple over, couldn't even stop to right it. His right hand trembled so badly he couldn't work the lock. When he finally did get inside his knees gave out, and he slid down against the wall in a cold, soaking sweat that shook him from head to toe.

He tried to calm his breathing. In, out, in, out. His chest still ached where the bullets had blasted into flesh, muscle, lungs. Each shot had been seared into his mind like a branding iron against the soft flesh of a defenseless animal. He remembered the face of the punk who had shot them. Shot them! His brain went into overload frenzy. He'd been shot, Tessa had been shot . . . .he scrambled to his feet. He was an Immortal now. He needed a sword to protect himself, defend himself -

The store lay dark and quiet all around him. The grand re-opening was tomorrow. Was Duncan going to cancel it? Richie fumbled at the display case holding the El Cid sword. He got it out, and felt a hot slice of pain as the razor-sharp edges slit open his hands. He fell to the carpet, gasping. Why did he need a sword? He was the only Immortal here . . .

Immortals. Mortals. He'd crossed the dividing line. He thought of his friends both alive and dead - Gary, Nikki, Angie - and realized he'd been ruthlessly ripped from their world. He no longer had to worry about illness or AIDS or accidental death. Felicia, Gregor - they would come for him, hunting him with razor-sharp weapons for his Quickening. Quickenings! He would have to kill people now, and experience the shattering explosion of energy that he'd seen Duncan scream his way through.

Immortal. Never grow old. Never die. Just four days ago he'd turned nineteen years old. The three of them had gone down to Disney Land and Universal Studios in Los Angeles to celebrate. Richie remembered joking that his score was nineteen down, only forty or fifty more to go. Duncan had laughed. He had laughed, but the merriment hadn't reached his eyes and now Richie knew why.

His hands stopped gushing blood and began to tingle sharply. Slowly they started to heal before his eyes. Richie rocked back and forth, distraught at the very thought of it all, and only the tingling of his skin sewing back together anchored him to this cold, dark store. For a long time he could do nothing more than sit in a empty, shaken heap. Then he remembered Mac's words, and stumbled to the shower off Tessa's workshop.

His clothes went into a soiled, bloody heap on the white tile. He shivered under the hottest water the shower would give, and didn't even feel his skin burn and heal, burn and heal. He thought he should cry but he seemed to have forgotten how. Maybe Immortals eyes didn't make tears. He scrubbed at the healed holes in his chest over and over with a loofah that he remembered, too late, was Tessa's favorite and off-limits to the men in the house.

Richie stared at the sponge, and then crushed it against his nose. It smelled of her French soap. He slid to the floor of the stall, the hot water burning his head and neck and back now, and then the tears came. He remembered how to cry. Maybe not everything had been stolen along with his fragile mortality after all.

His muscles and limbs shook with the force of the sobs, and he found it hard to breathe. He wrapped his arms around his legs and fought his own body for command and control. What would Mac think, to find him sitting like this in the shower, weeping like a child? Mac would expect him to be strong. Tessa would want him to keep himself together, to help Mac with his own grief.

After several minutes he managed to calm himself down, and reached up to twist off the shower. He wondered why his skin was so red. An infinite weariness from head to toe made it hard to stand, but he finally managed to wrap himself in his bathrobe and stumble into his own bedroom.

He crawled under the blankets without turning on a light and lay quietly, listening to the silence and the slowing beat of his own pulse. He was Immortal. Immortal. That Mac had known and never told him hurt in a special stabbing way. It took a few minutes for him to realize why, but then the thought slammed like a bolt of lightning into the grieving core of his mind.

He could have saved her.

He could have leapt in front of their mugger's gun and taken the bullet that had ripped flesh and blood from her chest with its horrible impact. He could have shielded her, protected her, and she would still be here.

Mac had known and not told him.

Maybe there was a rule against telling. He'd have to ask. The thought came, cold and unbidden, that Mac would turn him away now. Without Tessa, their lives couldn't be the same. The store, the apartment . . . Maybe Mac would see Richie as an enemy now, and take the teenager's Quickening for himself.

Ridiculous, Richie chided himself. He began to think he was over- reacting, either from the shock of Tessa's death or as a side-effect from coming back to life. But he was cold, so very cold, even under all the covers of his bed, and lonelier than he'd ever been in his entire life.

Tessa. His eyes filled with tears again, burning their way out of his eyes.

He could hear her frantically begging the mugger to take what she had and go. He could hear himself, the humiliation of it drenching his mind in fresh waves. He was going to find the son of a bitch who'd killed them both. Find him and kill him, somehow, someday.

His mind wouldn't stop spinning in a thousand crazy circles but his body, exhausted by the traumas of the day, dragged him down. Richie was half-aware of the damp pillowcase beneath his wet hair and tears, the tight bathrobe belt around his waist, his very cold feet. But his body went leaden, his thoughts slowed, and the only true feeling became the thousand tons of grief sledging at his mind with every slow breath -

The electrical sockets in his room screamed into overload, filling the air with a hum that sounded like an airplane screaming down a runway. At the same time a hot, bright light like a handful of highway flares burst up the back of his skull to the back of his eyes, driving him upright and panting. He pressed his hands to his ears and squeezed his eyes shut but the sensory perceptions were inside him, nowhere else. Even as he struggled to block them, they faded and became part of the overall background noise in his mind. It took a second for him to realize what had happened, and then he leaped to the floor, shed the bathrobe, and threw on shorts and a flimsy T-shirt. He had indeed fallen asleep; it was just past one a.m., just three devastating hours since the shooting.

He contemplated grabbing the El Sid on his way to the back door, but if the approaching Immortal wasn't Mac, he wouldn't last more than a few seconds anyway.

The door swung open. Duncan's shape, dark and sturdy, filled the passage. The only light came from the alley behind him, and Richie held back, unable to read his face. Duncan turned, shut the door, and came into the kitchen. He put his coat on the back of a chair and then turned, so that he was half illuminated by the glow of the microwave controls and the nightlight on the kitchen counter. His eyes were like bottomless black sockets, and his features were etched like stone with a frightening blankness.

"She's dead," Duncan said, his voice quiet in the darkness, but laced with unyielding hardness. He said it in Tessa's kitchen, in Tessa's home. Her dirty dishes from lunch were still in the sink. Her wine glass sat on the counter, still rimmed by faint traces of lipstick.

Richie fought down a shiver and tightened his folded arms. He nodded, but couldn't think of a thing to say. His throat already felt clogged again, his eyes suspiciously wet. But he wouldn't cry, not unless Mac did first.

"You should get some sleep," Duncan said. "It's never . . .easy . . . the first time."

"Okay," Richie agreed faintly.

Duncan pushed past him and went down the hall. Richie watched but didn't follow. That was it? That was all Mac was going to say? If Duncan noticed the El Cid lying on the floor in the middle of the shop, he didn't say anything. The door to his bedroom closed with a firm click, shutting Richie and the rest of the world out.

Richie tried to think of what he should do. Knock on the door, ask Mac if he wanted to talk about it? The love of his life had just been slaughtered in the middle of a safe neighborhood. He probably didn't want to talk about it. Tessa's begging filled his ears, and he wondered, dimly, if he would ever be able to think of her with anything more than hollow, stunned pain.

He doubted it.

***

Better to make the calls now, before he lost his courage. Duncan sat on the floor of his and Tessa's bedroom and held the phone in his lap for a few long minutes, trying to steady his breathing. Everything in the room reminded him of her like a blow to the head. He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see her clothes, her jewelry box, her silk kimono. It would do absolutely no good to be hysterical with grief at this point. He dialed a memorized number in New York and waited six rings for the answer.

"Hello?" asked a woman's groggy voice.

"I need to speak to Connor MacLeod."

"Hmm?" she asked.

"Connor MacLeod," Duncan insisted.

The receiver fumbled into someone else's hands. "He's sleeping!" a different female voice insisted playfully. Then she exclaimed, "Ouch!" and Connor's voice came onto the line.

"This is Connor."

"Tessa's dead," Duncan said.

For a moment nothing came from the other end of the line but the faint sounds of sheets rustling. Then a click, as if Connor had moved into the bathroom and shut the door. "What did you say?" Connor demanded.

"I need you," Duncan moaned. "Please, Connor. I need you to come. I can't do this."

"I'll be there on the next flight," Connor promised. There had never been any doubt, Duncan knew. The hard part was the asking, the admitting that he, Duncan MacLeod, felt like a tiny, insignificant and helpless child against this awful looming monster of living without Tessa. He was only managing now by grasping one moment after the other, like going hand-over-hand on a slippery rope above a thousand-foot chasm of pain.

"Duncan, what happened?" Connor asked.

"Um. . . she was shot. She and Richie. I was inside, looking at the computer. . . I thought it would be important. . . " Duncan stopped. The very faint hum of the long-distance line was the only thing holding him above the chasm. He cleared his throat and wiped at his eyes. "Actually . . . I'm not sure. Richie knows the whole story. He was with her."

"Is he one of us now?"

Duncan could barely force the word out. "Yes."

"I'll be there as soon as I can. Duncan, I'm sorry."

"I know." Duncan hung up quickly. He dragged in a shaky breath. Half of him wanted to go and ask Richie what exactly had happened in the street. It wouldn't matter to the Noels, however. She was still dead. Hunters or muggers, it made no difference. It was almost ten-thirty in the morning in France, and Tessa's parents had no idea what horrible news was about to arrive at the end of a telephone call.

He placed the call. When Monsieur Noel answered, full of energy and cheer at seventy years old, Duncan nearly hung up. But in French he said, "Louis, it's Duncan."

"Duncan!" Louis Noel greeted warmly. "So good to hear from you!" To the side he called, "Marie! It's Duncan and Tessa."

"Louis . . . " Duncan nearly faltered. He forced strength and volume into his voice. "Louis, listen to me."

"Yes?" Louis Noel sounded puzzled now. In a minute, Duncan knew, he would wish he'd never picked up the phone.

Duncan couldn't say anything.

"Duncan," Tessa's father said, his voice growing stiff, faltering a little on its own, "what is it? Where's Tessa?"

Words failed him. He felt himself slipping and gave in to the need of his body to curl up on the deep, plush rug Tessa had bought last year in Chinatown. He kept an iron grip on the receiver, although he was incapable of making any sound but weeping.

"My God," Louis Noel whispered. The phone in France dropped, only to be snatched up a moment later by Marie Noel.

"Duncan?" she demanded, her voice high. "What is it? What did you tell Louis?"

She was also seventy, a formidable woman with a brisk tongue and hard heart. She'd never approved of her youngest daughter going off to live in America, and had begged Tessa just last month to stay in France where she belonged.

"Oh, Marie," Duncan managed to say, "you were right. We shouldn't have come back."

"Duncan, where is my daughter?"

He shut his eyes closed. "Marie, I'm sorry. She's . . . dead."

Marie's sharp cry of denial reached across the phone lines like a weapon, dropping him into the chasm. For awhile all he could do was cry and try to answer their questions at the same time. Marie, then Louis, then Marie again. They were in shock, and accused him of making a terrible joke. By the time he'd convinced them it was for real, Louis' breathing had gone to gasps, and Marie was cursing him for taking her daughter away.

He couldn't take much of that talk, and had to hang up. It was just past two thirty in the morning. He lay curled on the floor, unable to move, unable to think clearly, thoroughly exhausted, drained of all energy. In the morning he was going to have to make arrangements for Tessa to be flown back to France. He was going to have to pick up Connor at the airport. He was going to have to look at Richie's face, and see a brand new Immortal who needed to be taught so much, except Duncan was in no position to teach it.

He knew there would be several sleepless hours between now and then. He couldn't have slept if he wanted to, anyway. Too much to do. He thought of Tessa's soul, drifting through the darkness of the night, and wondered if she'd left behind a ghost to haunt him for the rest of his life.

Propelled by instinct, not thought, he went through the apartment and rousted every candle he could find. She had dozens of them, in varying scents and shapes. He put them all over her workshop - on the flat workspaces, atop metal-cutting machinery, on the floor. Then he lit them, one by one, sometimes using both hands because his right shook so badly. When he was done, the workshop had been transformed into a eerily beautiful collection of shadows shifting across metal with the breath of breeze from the loading dock doors. He fashioned himself lotus-style on the floor, palms on his knees, and tried to reach out through his mind to wherever her spirit was.

He kept breaking down into tears doing it, though, and her image wouldn't stop pulsing through his head with blinding beauty. Her luminous eyes, regarding him with mischief and amusement. The slide of her hands on his back. The swell of her breasts beneath a bloody sweater. . . he realized the candles might burn the shop down, but it didn't matter. He and Richie would survive. Tessa was irretrievably gone, ripped away in one second that he would have died to change.

He reached out through his mind, but she wasn't there.

At some point he must have slept, because when Duncan opened his eyes after a long period of no thought he found the workshop bright with sunlight. He lay curled on the cold concrete floor, every muscle locked into place. The candles had sputtered out, and the air coming through the cracks around the windows was cold with the first real taste of autumn.

His watch told him it was just past seven a.m. The answering machine flickered with a call from Connor, who would be departing from New York at six a.m. and arriving in Seacouver at nine, courtesy of the time difference. He was on America North flight 19, and would rent a car at the airport. Duncan found no sign of Richie, which was at once a relief and a worry. Relief because he wouldn't have to answer any questions just yet. Worry, because it was just yesterday that Wolf had attacked the teenager and dragged Tessa away. He knew Wolf had accomplices . . .but Richie's bike was gone, and Duncan hoped he'd just gone out on his own to deal with grief his own way.

He put on coffee for himself but wasn't hungry. A short, hot shower made him a little more limber but no more alive. He shaved and nicked himself a dozen times without noticing it It took a half hour for him to contact the funeral home that had done Linda Plager's ceremony and arrange for them to prepare Tessa for the flight to France. In their bedroom he pulled two suitcases down from the closet and started packing. One for his own clothing, suitable for a funeral. The other with Tessa's clothes for her sister Elise or Elise's daughter Tessa-Marie. He packed methodically, folding everything precisely, and had nearly finished when he felt Richie's return.

The teenager appeared in the doorway, looking cold and haunted beneath his leather jacket and torn jeans. Duncan could only look at him for a few seconds. "Where did you go?" he asked, hearing the own distance in his voice but unable to change it.

Richie didn't answer for a moment. He'd had, tops, maybe two hours of sleep. He could barely see straight. He said, "Errands," and hoped Duncan would leave it at that.

"Oh," Duncan said. Richie thought he could have announced he'd joined the circus or NASA and received the same response.

"Why are you packing?" Richie asked.

"I"m taking Tessa back to Paris."

No tears, no anguish, just a flat recitation of facts. Richie watched Duncan fold a pair of black knit socks into a precise square. They went into the left suitcase. He went to the dresser and returned with what looked like Tessa's underwear, which he rolled into tiny little balls and set delicately in the right suitcase. Richie wondered why Mac was packing Tessa's underwear.

"When?" he forced himself to ask.

"Tomorrow morning," Duncan said.

Richie watched one suitcase close. "Am I . . . " he started, then stopped. The words were amazingly hard to get out, and even harder to make sound neutral. "Am I going to Paris with you?"

"No."

Richie took Duncan's word for it. It wasn't as if he had any money to buy a plane ticket himself. It wasn't as if he had any reason to go back to Paris, except for the funeral of the only woman who'd ever come even close to being a mother to him.

Either Immortality, exhaustion or shock gave him the courage to ask his next question. "Are you coming back?"

"Of course," Duncan said automatically. But he didn't meet Richie's gaze when he said it.

Richie nodded slightly to himself. One was gone; the other was going. The hollow ache in his chest deepened.

"Connor will stay with you while I'm away," Duncan said, as if it was only an afterthought.

"I don't need a baby-sitter."

"For now you do. Someone might want to take your head."

Like Richie hadn't thought about that already. He'd gone out before dawn convinced he was a blazing neon sign that would draw any Immortal within a thousand miles. His neck had itched all the way to Briarcliff Street and back. He scratched at it now. "So Connor's going to protect me? Does he know that?"

Duncan didn't respond to the sarcasm in Richie's voice. Truth be told, he didn't even hear it. "He will," he said. "I'm picking him up at the airport in an hour."

"I'll go with you."

"Stay here. I'm expecting a call from the morgue. The information is on the counter for which funeral home is going to take her. Everything's already arranged."

Pick her up, as if she were at a doctor's appointment. As if she'd gone downtown to get her hair done. Bile rose to the back of Richie's throat, and he turned from the bedroom. In the kitchen he gulped orange juice from the carton to ease his churning stomach. If Tessa had been there she would have yelled at him for doing that, but her not being was the problem anyway.

He went to bed and was asleep by the time Duncan left for the airport. Duncan stopped by his bedroom on his way out, and stood for a few long moments at the foot of the bed. Richie looked very young and vulnerable, curled on his mattress much the same way Duncan had during the night. In a fetal position, against the cruelty of the world. His neck was exposed, and Duncan could see where the stroke of one sharp blade could knock his head off the pillow and send it rolling across the floor.

Men and women would come for Richie. He had to be taught, trained, pushed to the edge of his endurance and beyond. Made to face all the obstacles inside his soul that would keep him from delivering necessary fatal blows. Nurtured and hardened and then cut free, to make his own decisions in the Game. At one time Duncan thought he was equal to the task, but he knew now he could never do it. He couldn't look at Richie without thinking of Tessa, and if he didn't stop thinking about Tessa he would end up insane. He would find Richie a new teacher, someone who wouldn't fail him the way Duncan already had.

***

Connor MacLeod, who preferred disembowelment over flying in an airplane, disembarked in Seacouver with a profound sense of gratefulness. His stomach tightened instinctively against the shuddering recognition of another Immortal nearby, and he guessed Duncan had come despite his message. When he saw his dark-haired clansman standing alone by a bank of telephones Connor's gratitude vanished into worry, and the grim reminder of why he was here.

Duncan's expression - drawn, sorrowful, but supremely calm - didn't surprise Connor. They were, after all, in the middle of a crowded concourse. Duncan's formidable will would stay him through public appearances, even if it took every last shred of strength he possessed. But his eyes betrayed him. They told Connor that the body of Duncan MacLeod was a puppet, sustained inside by a thousand tiny bits of anguish held together by an army of fraying threads.

Connor went to him and without a word wrapped him in an embrace. Duncan stayed stiff and unresponsive. Connor expected that, too. He pulled back and held his fellow Highlander at arm's length. "I'm so sorry," he said.

Duncan offered a tiny shrug. "They all die," he said, the words hollow, and scooped up Connor's flight bag and started for the luggage carousel. The raw hurt pouring out of Duncan seemed to clear the crowd in front of them. At the luggage claim they found Connor's suitcase, with his sword inside. Just having it nearby made Connor feel a little more comfortable. Duncan led him down a hallway towards the airline offices.

"Where are we going?"

"Making flight arrangements," Duncan said. "I'm taking her back to Paris tomorrow."

The last time Connor had seen Duncan grieve like this was over a mortal woman who had been in a destroyed Sioux camp in the late nineteenth century. This time there would be no funeral pyres or animal spirits to invoke for mercy and kindness. They slipped inside the quiet, muffled offices of the special cargo department and Connor looked for people of Indian descent, but saw only the bland features of Europeans like himself.

They spent thirty minutes with a crisp, impersonal manager. Duncan signed whatever was put in front of him and asked few questions. By the time they emerged into the bright September sunlight Connor was ravenous, but he held his complaints. He offered to drive. Duncan shook his head.

"I need to do things," he said.

They stayed quiet all the way back to the antique store. Connor studied the city skyline from behind his sunglasses and wondered if Duncan would stay in Seacouver. Connor preferred the pulsing rhythms and hard edge of New York, personally, but he understood Duncan's affection for this small, seacoast city nestled in the splendor of the Pacific Northwest. He'd built up a successful identity and lifestyle, and had no real reason to leave. On the other hand, Duncan tended to make disastrously impulsive decisions based on grief. This loss of Tessa just might push him into flight, abandoning everything he knew.

That her killing had come so soon on the heals of Darius' heinous murder in Paris made it all even worse. Connor's jaw clenched at the obscenity of mortals slaughtering an Immortal on Holy Ground. He hadn't seen Darius since World War II, because he'd always thought there would be time to visit later. Now there was no later, for either the 2,000 year old priest or 35 year old artist.

Before they even entered the dim coolness of the apartment and shop, Connor felt Richie Ryan's Immortal presence. The kid appeared in his bedroom doorway a few seconds later, blinking groggily as if just waking up. Dark circles stained the skin beneath both of his eyes like teabags, and he held himself against the doorjamb as if he barely had the strength to stay upright.

Connor reminded himself there had been two victims of the shooting. Just because one had healed - and been fundamentally changed, from every atom of every cell outward - didn't mean he had been any less wounded in spirit or heart.

Thirteen months ago Richie Ryan had been a teenage maelstrom, bristling with misdirected energy and zooming off in a dozen different directions that drove Duncan to distraction, or so he'd claimed on the phone. Now he was a year older, in appearance and age both, but the guarded vulnerability on his face spoke of a pain only adults should have to bear.

"Richie," Connor said, offering a handshake.

"Connor." Richie took the strong grip into his own hand.

They stood there, linked by a common denominator but separated by centuries of experience and practice. Duncan moved past them, his voice flat and almost uninterested.

"You should get some sleep," he told Richie.

"Like you?" Richie challenged.

Duncan didn't answer, but instead disappeared into his and Tessa's room and shut the door. Richie went back to bed, his jaw clenched tight. Connor knew Duncan wanted to be left alone, but knocked on the bedroom door anyway and then went inside. Duncan sat perfectly still on the edge of the bed, his hands flat on his knees, his body shaking. Connor moved behind him and placed both hands on Duncan's shoulders.

"It won't hurt forever," Connor promised. "It only feels that way now."

Duncan shook his head vehemently. He'd been stifling everything since going to the airport, and now the grief had returned with a vengeance. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I don't believe you," he managed.

"I know," Connor soothed. "But it's true. Would I lie to you?"

Reassurances aside, all Duncan could do for a few minutes was sit and weep and feel Connor's presence at his side - silent, supportive, strong. Connor knew grief. He wouldn't tell Duncan how to feel, or tell him Tessa was happy in heaven now, or give any of a thousand other trite responses to the specter of death.

Connor fetched him a glass of water and then said, "When's the last time you ate?"

Duncan said he didn't know. Maybe lunch, yesterday. Connor said, "Come out and eat something."

In the kitchen, Connor found some frozen French toast and toasted a batch. They came out in little bits of smoldering pieces. "You're supposed to microwave them," Duncan said dully from the kitchen table, watching him with his head propped in his hands.

"Don't toast the French toast?" Connor asked skeptically. "What will they think of to irradiate next?" But he dutifully microwaved the next group, and then mixed them with heaps of golden butter and real maple syrup. Duncan took a plate and ate one half of one slice before pushing his plate away to stare silently at nothing at all.

"How did her parents take it?" Connor asked.

"Her father is probably having a heart attack even as we speak. Her mother accused me of killing her."

"You didn't," Connor said, and slid the plate back in front of Duncan.

"Not by my own hand, no," Duncan said. He told Connor how Pallin Wolf had kidnapped her to lure him to his death. He recited the facts as if they were the narration of a movie, and unrelated to the real world. Most of the French Toast went from one side of the plate to the other, but not actually into his mouth.

"You think this Wolf has friends who'll come here next?" Connor asked.

"Not right away. They'll be too busy covering their tracks. He had at least two accomplices. One who lured me from the shop and another who picked him up on a bike. The first one's dead. The other . . .I don't know." Duncan took a deep breath and let it out slowly through his nose. "Will you stay with Richie while I take her back to France?"

"Yes."

"Defend him, if someone comes looking for him?"

"To the best of my ability," Connor agreed. "But I won't teach him to fight."

Duncan blinked at Connor as if seeing him for the first time. "What?"

Connor pierced his French Toast with a fork. "I won't teach him to fight," he repeated. "To carry a sword. To take a head. That's all your job."

Duncan didn't answer. Connor understood, then, a little of what was going on in his kinsman's brain. Not unexpected, but not an issue to push just yet. The phone rang, pulling Duncan away from the kitchen table. It was a reporter, asking about the murder of Tessa Noel, and Duncan slammed the phone down. The next call came only minutes later. Apparently the police had just released her name, having agreed to give Duncan until the morning to notify family members.

A news van showed up outside the shop at eleven, almost exactly twelve hours after Tessa's death. Duncan retreated to his room, unable to bear their presence. Connor identified himself as a friend of the family said that whenever the police found Ms. Noel's murderer, he hoped they chopped off his testicles, disemboweled him with a rusty Swiss Army knife, and then left him to die staked in the sun in the middle of the desert. The reporters blinked at that, dutifully jotted the quotes into their notebooks, and left muttering about the crazy guy with the cold looks of a killer himself.

Homicide detectives arrived soon after, to verify facts with Duncan. He responded woodenly, keeping to his story from the night before. The funeral home that had received Tessa's body called as soon as the police left. They needed something to dress Tessa in, and a photo to set her makeup and hair. Duncan spent thirty minutes going through the closet, tossing one dress after the other onto the floor. Connor and a newly wakened Richie watched silently, offering no suggestions. Duncan finally picked out Tessa's favorite suit, a black number with golden cuffs and ribs. He managed the shoes, but froze when it came to picking jewelry.

"These will do fine," Connor said, his hand closing on a pair of golden orbs.

Duncan looked at him bleakly, unable to answer.

The mournful-looking funeral home director took the clothes and photo, offered his condolences several times, and told them they could come back at six a.m. to seal the coffin before it was shipped to the airport for the nine o'clock flight. At the moment she was being prepared, a word Duncan visibly flinched at.

Richie, who guessed that being prepared involved all sorts of chemicals and knives, excused himself and rushed to the bathroom.

When they returned to the apartment Duncan went straight to his bed. Richie flopped down on the sofa, too worn to think of anything to do. The phone rang repeatedly, first with reporters, then with the morgue and funeral home, and then with stunned friends of Tessa's. He let Connor answer. Tessa's friend Natalie called, and Richie listened with only half his attention while Connor tried to dissuade her from some kind of memorial service.

"I don't think that's what Duncan wants," he said. "He's taking her to be buried in France."

Richie picked up the morning paper Connor had bought at the airport. On the bottom of the front page was an article about an unidentified woman who'd been murdered on Briarcliff Street, shot once in the chest by an unknown assailant. The grainy black-and- white photo showed a gurney being loaded onto an ambulance next to the Thunderbird. Two policemen flanked a figure that might have been Mac. Another body had been found inside, stabbed to death. No suspects were identified in either case.

Heart pounding, he re-read the article twice. No mention of himself, of course. No one but he and Mac and Tessa up in heaven knew he'd been there. Briarcliff Street looked different in the photo, almost like a normal place. Certainly not like the scene of a murder last night, or of a burglary this morning.

"Do you remember where you first died?" he asked Connor, when the older Immortal got off the phone.

"Of course. It's not something you ever forget." Connor sat down and studied Richie across the top of the newspaper. The kid hadn't said much all the way to the funeral home and back, and still looked tired and pale. Connor said, "There's some cold French Toast in the kitchen if you're hungry. You can microwave them."

Richie put the newspaper back down on the table and turned his attention to the toothpaste commercial on the television. He didn't know how he was supposed to act around the great Connor MacLeod. All he personally knew of the man was what he'd seen during Connor's last visit, when an Immortal named Slan Quince lost his head to Duncan's sword. Everything else came from Duncan's and Darius' stories. Duncan worshipped the older Immortal, who currently appeared to be off-guard and relaxed but who could probably have his sword at Richie's neck before Richie could even say the word, "Decapitate."

"Well?" Connor asked.

"Well what?" Richie asked, confused.

"Hungry?"

"No."

Duncan and Tessa would have pushed him to eat, like they did when he was sick or recovering from an injury. Connor merely sat back and browsed through the Sports section. Richie watched him read for a moment, then turned his gaze back to the television. He didn't have the energy to do anything else, and no ideas of what to do even if he had the energy.

The Saturday afternoon movie was Beach Blanket Bingo. Richie didn't understand most of it. The teenagers looked like they were in their twenties, none of them had jobs, and all they did was live on the beach all summer. The songs were hokey and the plot stupid. The only redeeming factor was Annette Funicello in tight sweaters. Tessa had worn tight sweaters. He tried to veer his thoughts away from her, although it was hard, so very, very hard.

He fell asleep without even realizing it, and woke when the living room lay mostly dark and quiet, illuminated only by the flickering lights of the muted television. For a moment he was caught in a web of disorientation, and struggled upright in confusion. The smell of flowers hung heavy in the air, and he saw several bouquets that must have arrived while he was conked out. Belatedly he realized he wasn't alone, that Duncan was sitting in the armchair watching him with an unreadable expression.

"You were calling her name," Duncan said softly.

Richie ran both hands through his hair. He had a headache. He didn't think Immortals got headaches. His eyes felt swollen, although he didn't think he'd been crying. He didn't know what to say to Duncan. He wasn't going to tell him he kept hearing her beg.

"Mac," he said, after a minute, "you haven't asked me what happened last night. After we left the house."

Duncan's chest rose with a slow inhalation. "I know," he said. "I don't want to know."

Richie didn't think he'd heard correctly. "What?"

Duncan shook his head, but before he could say anything more the doorbell rang. Connor flipped on the lights from the wall switch, and came in with a tall blonde woman whose face was streaked with tears.

"Duncan, I can't believe it," she said.

"I know," he said, taking Natalie into his arms, squeezing her to his chest. Several months ago she'd been attacked by a serial killer, and a long scar still marked her forehead from where he'd tried to scalp her. Natalie's hands rubbed his back, offering physical comfort, and she clung to him shaking.

Richie scooted over on the sofa so that Natalie could sit down. Connor got her a glass of water. She wiped at her swollen eyes with sodden Kleenex at her eyes and asked if the news reports were really true - that some unknown assailant had gunned Tessa down in the street, without provocation or warning.

Richie watched Duncan. Duncan didn't look at him. "Yes, it's true," Duncan said.

"I can't believe it." Natalie's eyes welled again.

"They'll get the killer, I'm sure they will," Duncan soothed.

Connor noted that Duncan was responding to Natalie's grief by pulling himself together a little and sitting straighter. He excused himself to give them privacy, and nodded at Richie to follow. In the kitchen, Richie rummaged in the refrigerator and then drank orange juice from the carton. Connor threw away the cold French Toast and watched the teenager start eating Captain Crunch with a spoon from the box.. He thought about speaking to Richie's table manners, but kept his own counsel.

The phone rang - somebody named Aaron, calling for Richie - and Richie took the cordless receiver into another room. Connor stretched and yawned, feeling the jet lag, and then moved protectively towards the living room when he heard Duncan's voice rising in protest.

"Natalie, there's no time - we're flying to Paris tomorrow!"

"Duncan, please. You don't have to do anything. I'll take care of it. This is for Tessa's friends and colleagues here, not in Paris."

"So you can do what? Gossip about her? Take the spoils of her work?"

Cruel words, even from a man in Duncan's state of mind. Connor saw Natalie blanch, and Duncan's shoulders slumped in defeat.

"I'm sorry," he offered. "I just can't . . .see what good it does."

Natalie took his hands and squeezed them. "It helps those of us left behind to mourn her. Duncan, please. You won't even be here. It'll just be a small group of people, and we'll only be a few hours."

Duncan looked helpless. Connor didn't intervene. It was a decision only Duncan could make. Connor realized Richie was watching from behind him, trying to figure out what the argument was about.

Duncan swung on the teenager. "Natalie wants to have a memorial service here, tomorrow night. It's up to you."

Richie's eyes grew wide. "Up to me?"

"Yes," Duncan said.

Natalie's imploring eyes turned to Richie. He shuffled uneasily. "Yeah, okay, I guess."

After Natalie departed, Richie reached for his helmet and keys. Duncan, who could barely see straight from weariness, demanded, "Where are you going?"

"Out," Richie said. "To see a friend."

"We have to be at the funeral home at six a.m," Duncan reminded him sharply.

"I know," Richie said, shrugging into his leather jacket. "I won't be all night."

Both Connor and Duncan looked at him. Richie said, in exasperation, "What? I'm Immortal now, I can't go out? You guys are going to follow me around to make sure no one comes after me? Give me a break."

"Someone might," Connor said.

Richie rolled his eyes. "Then I'll run away."

The teenager left. Connor could see Duncan's obvious exasperation and took that as a good sign, too. "He's right. Baby- sitting does not mean holding his hand. He'll be fine."

Duncan said, "There are still Pallin Wolf's friends out there."

"And Richie has fast feet," Connor retorted. "Where do you keep the Scotch these days?"

"Under the counter."

Connor found the bottle and two glasses.

"Come on," the older Highlander proposed. "Let's get very drunk."

"Won't stop the pain," Duncan said, gazing at him steadily.

"I didn't say it would," Connor answered.

Richie slammed the bedside alarm clock into silence and blinked groggily at the numbers. Five a.m. He'd gotten into bed at midnight, having coming home to find Connor and Duncan both extremely drunk in the living room. The Highlanders had tried to coax him into a few shots but Richie demurred. Duncan called him a coward. It was the alcohol, nothing more, but Richie couldn't help thinking about the words when he crawled into bed. Sleep had come in small allowances, interspersed with nightmares about shootings and beheadings and Tessa's pleas. Now he felt like crap, and the only thing that got him into the shower and into a fresh set of clothes was the knowledge this was his last chance to say goodbye to Tessa. The two older men were in the kitchen, nursing cups of coffee. Duncan let Connor drive the Thunderbird, a treat he rarely allowed Richie. The streets of Seacouver, still dark, slid by Richie's gaze, as insubstantial and bleak as his dreams during the night.

Mr. Grenshaw, the funeral home director, took them through the darkened rooms to a small parlor with an open casket to one side. Duncan stopped so abruptly that Richie nearly slammed into him.

"We should leave for the airport in about twenty minutes," Grenshaw said.

Connor nodded. He went first to the casket. He'd only known Tessa for a few days, and seeing her dead now stirred only the briefest of memories. They'd done a good job with her makeup and hair, and he although he knew there were stitches holding her lips together he couldn't see them. Her hands lay folded across her chest, bedecked by one diamond engagement ring and an older claddaugh ring. She seemed smaller than he recalled, but very definitely dead.

He knelt and put his hands together and whispered an old Gaelic prayer. Then he said to her, very softly, "Wherever you are, you have to look after him for awhile. He needs your help."

When Connor moved away Richie knew it was his turn next, but fear and sorrow kept his feet locked in place. "Go on," Duncan growled beside him.

"I can't," Richie said, and left the parlor.

Duncan didn't have time for Richie's stubbornness. He looked at Connor, and Connor went after him. Almost against his will, Duncan's feet carried him forward to the casket until he was looking down at the last woman he would ever love.

That was a promise he'd made to himself somewhere between the first and second bottles of Scotch last night - never, ever, would he love a mortal woman again.

Tessa looked almost perfect. He stared at her, trying to memorize every curve and line of her face. He already knew them by heart, but was afraid that once the casket closed they would vanish from his memory. A stray curl of hair near her left eye bothered him, and he brushed it aside. Her skin was cold and hard beneath his touch.

"Tess," he murmured, eyes filling again, and although he promised himself he wasn't going to cry this morning he went to his knees on the bench and reached his hand over to lay on hers. Cold, hard, gone.

For a few minutes he let himself go into the pain that sent dark red sparks through his body with every pulse of his heart and tore at his insides like a razor, over and over. Awareness of his surroundings disappeared until the only real thing was the loss of her, the hollowness that had been gouged from his brain and soul. Life without her made no sense at all. That he would get up every morning for the rest of his life and not have her to touch tipped him towards insanity. He murmured her name, over and over, hoping to hear her say his name back, but her face remained still and unresponsive.

"Mr. MacLeod," a voice said. Grenshaw's hand, coming to rest on his shoulder. "It's time."

Duncan turned away, unable to watch, and forced himself from the room. Connor stood by Richie, who had a wad of tissues stuffed in his hand.

"It's time," Duncan said dully.

"I have to say goodbye," Richie stood up, panic flaring in his voice.

"It's too late," Duncan told him. "You're too late."

Richie went to the parlor. Grenshaw and an assistant were closing the lid. "Wait," Richie pleaded. "Please, wait. I have to say goodbye."

Grenshaw hesitated, then nodded. "Just a few minutes, please. We're going to be late."

Richie didn't kneel. He stood over Tessa's body, convinced that if he watched hard enough he would see her breathe. Nothing. No flicker of life. Just another dead body. He remembered Darius' funeral, the closed casket. Gary's body, dwarfing the coffin Duncan had helped his mother buy. Childhood friends, mowed down by guns or drugs.

"Tessa," he said, "you weren't my mom, and you didn't want to be, but I can't help . . ."

He couldn't finish.

Richie brushed his tears away angrily and forced a deep breath. "I can't help wishing you were," he said. He kissed her, trying to ignore the faint smell of chemicals leaking from her pores, trying not to lose it all at the touch of her dead skin against his lips. "I love you," he said huskily. "I'm going to always miss you."

He didn't look at Connor or Duncan when he came out. Only dimly aware of Connor leading him to the Thunderbird, he realized Duncan was going with the funeral home hearse. He felt a pang that he wasn't too, and then stifled it. Connor started them on the highway towards the airport.

Desperate for something to distract himself, Richie asked, "You're staying here?"

"Yes."

"What are we going to do?"

"What would you like to do?"

"Nothing at all," Richie said.

"Sounds fine with me."

Richie turned to him, suspicious. Connor looked perfectly serious. Then again, he had one of the best poker faces Richie had ever seen. He asked, "Are you going to teach me to fight?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"That's Duncan's job."

"Duncan's going to France, in case you haven't noticed. We're going to the airport, aren't we?"

Connor ignored the sarcasm. "He'll be back."

"No he won't," Richie said.

"Did he tell you that?"

"Why would he want to come back?" Richie asked. The sun was beginning to peek over the horizon and he blinked painfully at it. How many hours had it been since Tessa died? It felt like he'd spent months in limbo, caught in a nether-world where nothing made sense.

"He has obligations here."

"I doubt it," Richie said, and they spoke no more until they reached the airline terminal.

Tessa's coffin went through a loading dock, escorted somberly by Mr. Grenshaw, his two men, and Duncan. At Connor's motion, Richie hung back with the older Highlander. A few remaining forms had to be signed, and then airline personnel took custody of the coffin. Quick, impersonal, business-like. Connor had already brought in Duncan's luggage, and the three men went upstairs to check the bags through and get Duncan's first-class boarding ticket. The flight wasn't for another two hours, and Duncan tried to persuade them to leave.

Connor said no. Richie would have been glad to leave - he was still embarrassed over how he'd acted back at the funeral home - and slumped morosely in an armchair in the first-class flyer's club. Being at the airport made him think of flying to and from France with Duncan and Tessa. Reminded him, like a kick to the chest, that Tessa was forever gone.

They sat quietly until fifteen minutes before boarding was supposed to start, then walked down to the gate. Richie wondered if Duncan was going to even say goodbye. He himself couldn't think of anything to say. So long, and thanks for everything, and sorry Tessa died and I lived. Have a great life. May we never have to fight each other.

"Richie," Duncan said. "Did you hear me?"

"Huh?" Richie blinked at him. The first-class passengers were moving towards the gate. He'd zoned out completely.

"Be careful," Duncan repeated. "Listen to Connor. I'll call from France."

Duncan hugged him then, quick and hard.

"Mac, I - " Richie started.

"I know, Rich."

"No you don't," Richie said. He couldn't bear the hurt that flashed through Duncan's eyes and retreated. "Of course you do. What I mean is - goodbye."

"Goodbye," Duncan said, and clasped Connor briefly before stepping back to the gate. The last thing Richie saw of him was his squared shoulders, disappearing down the ramp. The airport suddenly became too loud, too crowded, and his stomach tightened in knots.

"Come on," Connor said, taking him by the arm. "Let's go."

Back at the store, Richie went immediately to bed. When he woke it was late afternoon, and confusion gripped him. For a full minute he wondered why something felt wrong in his chest. Then Tessa's death came back to him with the force of a sledgehammer, and he calculated by the clock that Duncan hadn't even arrived in Paris yet with her body. When he finally dragged himself out of bed he found Connor and Natalie setting up trays of h'or'doevres in the store. Dozens of more bouquets that had arrived during the day lined the counters and shelves.

"What's this?" Richie muttered thickly.

"Memorial service, remember?" Connor asked. "People should start arriving in about a half hour."

Richie felt like a creep. He'd completely forgotten about the service. He took a shower and put on his best suit. Tessa always did the tie for him, but he was loath to ask for Connor or Natalie's help and fashioned it as best he could.

The service went well, at least from Connor's perspective. Richie, obviously uncomfortable, stayed mostly to himself but would respond when Natalie or some of Tessa's clients that he knew spoke to him. Leonard Helliman from Helliman's Antiques adopted a fatherly pose and stayed with him for awhile. Natalie greeted all the guests and was the first to offer a brief testimonial to Tessa, delivered with a calm voice but glistening eyes.

"Some of us knew her as a supremely gifted artist, who could shape ideas from form and material that touched all our minds and hearts. I knew her as a good friend who came to me in my time of need and who always had a compassionate shoulder to cry on. Whoever killed Tessa Noel killed not just our friend, but killed that part of ourselves that loved her so much. We should focus on her life, not her death, and I know she would have wanted it that way."

Connor sensed Richie tense at the last part, and sympathized. No one could presume to speak for the dead. As other grieving friends took their turns to speak about Tessa, Natalie tried to persuade Richie to say something as well. The teenager was visibly mortified at the thought, and Connor saw him slip out into the alley for some privacy and fresh air.

One of the male guests followed Richie, which struck Connor as a little odd, but he pushed the thought aside for the moment to concentrate on what Mr. Helliman was saying about Tessa.

Once outside, Richie gulped in the cold night air and fought for some control. He thought he'd been doing well until they all started talking about Tessa in the past tense. Every word started driving home again that she wasn't coming back. He hadn't set foot in her workshop since the killing, and hoped he never would have to. She'd be pissed if she came back and found her stuff moved around . . .

He caught himself, gave himself a mental kick. Not coming back meant not coming back. His brain kept kicking the information out, rejecting it as a sheer impossibility. But all he had to do was trace the healed flesh of his chest to make it real again.

They had begged. And the mugger had shot them anyway.

"You all right, kid?" a voice asked. The man was of medium height, with blond hair and dark eyes. He'd been talking to Natalie earlier, although Richie couldn't place him as one of Tessa's clients.

"Sure," Richie said. "Have we met?"

"Not yet. I'm Josh Rollwood."

"Richie Ryan." Richie shook his hand. He wasn't quite sure how it happened, but pain flashed up his wrist into his shoulder like a bolt of lightning and drove him to his knees. A solid kick against his back sent him sprawling onto the filthy ground. One hand held his right arm twisted so far up his back that his wrist touched his shoulderblades, while another levered a butcher knife against his throat.

"Scream and I'll cut your Immortal head right off," Rollwood threatened. "What did you do with Wolf's computer, you little son of a bitch?"

Nausea swelled with the agony lancing up his arm as Richie fought for both breath and control. "Huh?" he asked, aware of the razor- sharp edge of the knife against his very vulnerable skin. He thought he could feel a rivulet of blood on his neck.

"Where did you take it?" Rollwood hissed, and then slumped over Richie's head and pinned him down. The next thing Richie felt was Connor hauling him free. The alley spun in little circles, and he wondered dimly if his arm was broken.

"Friend of yours?" Connor asked.

Richie looked at Rollwood's slumped body. "Never saw the guy before," he said. It didn't look like Connor was going to help him to his feet, so Richie staggered upright on his own. Connor bent and claimed the knife that had clattered to the ground, then crouched next to the mortal and searched through his pockets. The man stirred faintly, then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

"No driver's license," Connor said. "But here's a business card."

Richie took the card and examined it. "I know this address," he announced. He knelt next to the man and held his wrist for Connor to see an odd tattoo of a circle and a ram's head.

"Some sort of club?" Connor asked.

Richie nodded grimly. "Duncan knows about it. People who watch Immortals."

"Watch Immortals?" Connor sounded skeptical. A noise from further down the alley snapped his attention around, and a figure who'd been apparently eavesdropping bolted from behind a dumpster and sprinted toward the street Connor chased after her and dragged her to a stop. Richie followed at a slower pace, still dazed.

"Just hold on there!" he said.

"Let me go!" she hissed. She didn't scream, Richie noted. She didn't want to draw attention.

"In a moment," Connor promised. His head jerked back towards the unconscious Watcher. "Friend of yours?"

She drew herself up straighter and gave him a withering gaze. She was a tall blonde, dressed for night stealth in black pants and a black pullover jersey, and her face bore a beauty marked by pain. "I don't have friends," she said.

"Must be lonely," Connor remarked.

"No lonelier than living for hundreds of years," she snapped.

Connor turned her wrist over. No tattoo. "You're not Immortal," he said. "Are you one of those . . . " He looked to Richie.

"Watchers," Richie supplied.

She gave them each a withering gaze and wrenched her arm free of Connor's gasp. "I don't know anything about Watchers, whoever they are. I came because I heard about Tessa Noel's death on the news, and I knew Duncan MacLeod was an Immortal. I needed more information."

"You could have come through the front door," Connor said.

"I couldn't risk it. Not if he's here . . . or one of his men . .. " She took in a steadying breath. "I'm looking for the man who killed my husband, James Camerack. He was an Immortal. The man who took his head kidnapped me, held me captive, and lured James to his death."

Richie made a small noise. Connor glanced at him, noting that he'd gone very pale in the darkness. He hoped the kid wasn't going to faint. A faint scuffle noise drew his attention back to where they'd left Josh Rollwood, and he saw the man stagger back inside the shop.

"Let him go," Connor advised as Richie made to chase him. "Don't cause a scene."

"Don't cause a scene?" Richie exclaimed. "The guy wanted to kill me!"

Connor silenced him with a look and then turned back to the woman. "My name is Connor MacLeod. This is Richie Ryan. Why don't we go inside, and discuss this?"

Natalie met them inside, saying a man had staggered through the shop mumbling about robbers and demanding to know what was going on. Connor told her it was something he'd taken care of, and she was not to worry. Michelle Camerack stayed in the kitchen, nursing a cup of tea between slightly shaking hands. Connor and Richie saw the last of the mourners out shortly before nine o'clock - including a somewhat miffed Natalie - and then sat down to listen to Michelle's story. She and James Camerack had been married for six years, and she'd known about his Immortality since before the wedding. They'd lived in Victoria, B.C., where James owned a music store. Michelle was a classical pianist who taught at the university and performed at the arts center.

"Three months ago," she said, "James and I went out to dinner. While he went to get the car, I was kidnapped from the restaurant by a man whose name I don't know. A pretty man, if you know what I mean - and a sadistic son of a bitch. He kept me prisoner for three days before James tracked us down. He kept saying things about how Immortals were evil, and had to be scourged ..." She trailed off for a minute, staring at her tea. "James came. And the man killed him. I don't know how. But he showed me . . . he showed me his head, after it was done. He showed me James' head, and I saw a tattoo on his wrist when he did it."

No one said anything. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock on the wall.

Finally Michelle looked up from her cup. "Where do the Quickenings go when an Immortal dies alone?" she asked Connor hoarsely.

"I don't know," Connor admitted. "No one does."

Michelle wiped at her eyes. Richie fetched her tissues from the counter. He hadn't cried since the afternoon, and wasn't going to now, but took some for himself just in case.

"Anyway, I thought he would kill me too, but that's not his style. He drugged me eventually, and I woke up back in our house in Victoria. After that he would call me on the phone, taunt me. Tell me he was coming for me again. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat - James was dead, and I had no one to turn to. So I started trying to track down his Immortal friends. See if there was anyone who would help me avenge his death. The last address he had on Duncan MacLeod was a postal drop in Paris from the spring, and it took me until two days ago to find this address. And I was too late to warn him."

Richie wondered what would have happened if she'd just been one day early. If Mac had known, Tessa might have been saved. Suddenly desperate for something to do, he took his own empty glass to the sink and washed it out.

Connor said, "I'm sorry. What happened to you and your husband should never have happened. The man who did it . . . he is dead. Duncan saw to that."

Michelle's face visibly crumpled. "Then he's rotting in hell right this minute, and I hope he rots forever." She started weeping quietly, and Richie left Connor to comfort her. He went to his own room, stripping off his suit and tie, and then flopped down on his bed in his underwear. He couldn't remember a time that didn't hurt. He bunched the pillow under his head and tried not to think about what might have happened, what could have been. He missed Connor's first knock on the door, but sat up for the second.

"Yeah," he said.

Connor came in. Richie, who hated being undressed around other men even in locker rooms, pulled a sheet over his legs and waist. He wouldn't have done it around Duncan. Connor pretended not to notice.

"Michelle's gone home," he said. "The poor woman has been through a lot."

"So have we all," Richie retorted.

"She's coming back in the morning, though," Connor said, straddling the desk chair and giving Richie a thorough appraisal. "Tell me about the computer you stole."

"Not much to tell. It was Wolf's. I went back for it the morning after Tessa died."

"Why?"

Richie picked at a hangnail. "Because Duncan had thought it was important enough to stay behind and look at. I thought I was helping. The police had just finished bagging evidence, and I waited until they were gone before going in and snagging the hard drive."

Connor asked, quietly, "Is that the only reason you went back?"

Richie's blue eyes met his squarely. "I wanted to see where it happened. I saw her blood on the ground. I saw my own."

Connor understood the need to see the site, to make it real. The kid had taken a real chance, going back to the house, but he silently admired his bravery. "Where's the hard drive now?"

"My friend Aaron has it. He's working on decrypting two files. Everything else was games, checkbook, on-line service stuff."

At Connor's request Richie related all he knew about the Watchers, beginning Darius' death in Paris and then moving to Joe Dawson, James Horton, and the bookstore at 27 North Jay Street. By the end of the tale he was fighting to keep his eyes open. Connor left him to get some rest. Richie woke at four a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. He spent a few hours sitting in the dark and cold living room, watching home videos they'd taped over the last twelve months. Through the miracle of electricity and magnetism, Tessa lived and breathed, smiled and laughed, through the television scream. He shut the movies off before Connor woke, and forced himself to eat some breakfast before Michelle showed up.

She looked tired in the daylight, and the yellow blouse she wore over blue jeans made her pale and sallow. She swore she wasn't going to rest until she saw Pallin Wolf's dead body and made sure he had no colleagues free, like the man who'd attacked Richie. The first stop the trio made was at Aaron's pawn shop, in a shabby strip mall off the interstate. Connor quickly decided that Aaron, a soft and pudgy man in his late twenties, would be absolutely worthless on a battlefield but was a wizard on the keyboard.

"I don't understand who all these people are," Aaron said, blithely pointing to a list of people that contained James Camerack and Duncan MacLeod. Addresses and phone numbers accompanied the names. "But they all live within a thousand miles of here, and six of the forty have been killed within the last year."

A separate list paralleled the first with more names. Joe Dawson's name was attached to Duncan's. "Assignments," Richie said.

Connor nodded. They asked Aaron to make two disk copies of the lists, and then Connor paid him five hundred dollars for his time and silence. Richie lugged the hard drive into the back of the Thunderbird, and after securing it in Michelle's hotel room they went to Joe Dawson's bookstore and inquired for him at the front desk.

The man who came out was in his forties, gray and grim, with prosthetic legs. He didn't seem surprised to see Richie, was polite but not very interested in Michelle, and visibly blanched at Connor's face.

"Maybe we should talk somewhere in private," Connor suggested.

They settled into Joe's office. Joe appeared calm enough as he levered himself to his seat, but Richie noticed his hand was clenched tightly on his cane. Connor leaned back on the leather sofa and said, "We're here about Pallin Wolf."

"What if I said I'd never heard of him?" Joe asked, not breaking Connor's gaze.

"I'd say you were lying."

Joe appeared to weigh that in his mind. "Duncan told you about our operation."

"That you're a bunch of voyeurs with nothing better to do?" Connor baited.

Joe's head lifted defiantly. "If that's all we are, then all you people are is a bunch of murdering maniacs with swords."

Whatever Joe Dawson was, he took pride in his organization. Connor allowed himself a brief, humorless smile. "Sometimes," he agreed. "But Pallin Wolf, who was killed on Briarcliff Street three nights ago. . . he was one of yours, not one of mine."

Joe said, "He was a renegade. He was wrong. If we'd known about it, we could have . . . taken steps."

"He has at least one friend," Connor said. "About six feet tall, blonde, almost Nordic looking. Left this behind last night."

The Buck hunting knife that had been held against Richie's throat landed on Joe's desk. Joe picked it up and put it in a draw. "There were three of them," he said. "Pallin Wolf. Ira Bernstein, who Duncan killed in an alley the day Tessa Noel was kidnapped. The third one is Paul Abrahms. That's his knife."

"He said his name was Josh Rollwood," Richie blurted out.

"Josh Rollwood was a Watcher killed last year by an Immortal in Rome. He was Pallin Wolf's stepbrother. We think that's what set Pallin off in the first place, and he recruited the others."

Michelle, who'd been quiet until now, demanded, "What are you going to do with him?"

Joe shifted slightly. "We'll take care of him."

"How?" Richie demanded.

Joe looked at Connor. The Immortal sat there, watching him patiently. Joe said, "How we discipline him will be up to our chain of command. He'll be charged with violating our Oath. That's all I can say."

Richie felt himself flush with anger. "That's it?"

Before Joe could answer Connor said, "You don't know where he is, do you? Or he would have been charged already."

"We'll find him," Joe said firmly. "We missed him last night by just minutes."

Michelle stood. "He helped Pallin Wolf lure my husband to his death. If I find him first, all you'll get is a corpse."

"Don't take justice into your own hand," Joe said. "Please."

"I will if you don't," Michelle warned. "Where is Wolf's body?"

"Cremated," Joe sighed. "Sent back to his mother in Ohio."

She asked grimly, "Do you have picture of him?"

Joe pulled a folder from a stack and flipped it open. Michelle looked at the passport-sized photo of the man who'd destroyed a large portion of her life and then left the office. Connor and Richie rose to follow, but Richie stopped at the door and spun around.

"Were you there that night?" he asked. "When Tessa was killed?"

Joe nodded slowly.

"Could you have stopped it?"

"No more than you could have," Joe said softly.

Richie squared his shoulders. His voice came out bristling with cold anger. "So you know."

"We know."

Richie couldn't believe what he was hearing. In four days he'd gone from being the best man for Tessa and Duncan's wedding to this - Tessa dead, Duncan gone, his own mortal life stripped away, and now his privacy stolen. "If I ever see my Watcher," he threatened, "I'll make him sorry."

Richie stalked out after Michelle. Connor lingered in the doorway, appraising Joe Dawson.

"He probably doesn't mean it," Connor offered. "Then again, he might."

Joe insisted, "We're not voyeurs, MacLeod. We don't take perverse pleasure in our work."

"Pity," Connor smiled coldly. He wanted to leave a lasting impression with Joe Dawson. "Some of us do."

He tossed one of the copied disks to Dawson. "That's for you, for your own information. Call it a little insurance. You know who we are, but we know who you are too."

Connor went outside and found Richie and Michelle waiting in the Thunderbird. "So," Richie said as Connor slid behind the wheel. "We going to find this guy? Rollwood, Abrahms, whatever?"

"No," Connor said.

"Why not?" Michelle asked.

"Let them do it," Connor said. "He's their man. And if they don't take care of him, we will. But in the meantime, I have a better suggestion."

"Like what?" Richie asked dourly.

"Camping," Connor said.

Duncan kept his sunglasses on all the way from Seacouver to New York and then from New York to Paris, even as the day dimmed to dusk and nighttime. He wasn't trying to look mysterious. He was trying to hide his swollen, bloodshot eyes. He seemed to be cried out for the time being, and since his concentration didn't last more than a few seconds on any one thing he settled for staring out the window of the first class session for hours on end. He didn't really see the sky or clouds or horizon anyway. All he could see was Tessa's face, interspersed with the horrific sight of finding her dead in the street.

His thoughts kept straying to the coffin in the hold. He and Tessa had flown several times between Seacouver and Paris, but never like this. He'd bought two first-class seats for this trip, keeping the second one for her memory and ghost. Sometimes he would glance over, expecting to see her, only to remember with a clench of his gut that he was all alone in the world again.

Of course, he still had Connor, and Richie, and a number of good friends. But no one who'd loved him like Tessa had. No one that he could be alone with in the dark, skins gliding together, sweat binding them. No one who loved him as Duncan, the man, and didn't demand of him his head or instruction or help.

All she'd wanted was his heart. He'd given it to her, and she'd taken it to her grave. Rationally he knew there would be a time some day when he might think differently, but for now the only thing in the world that mattered was the loss of her.

The first-class flight attendants tried to flirt with him, but he answered their smiles and perky questions with curt monosyllables. He didn't want magazines. Nothing could be important or newsworthy compared to what had happened. Yes, he would take dinner. But he couldn't eat it, his thoughts wrapped up in thoughts of what happened to mortal bodies when they died and rotted. The movie came on and he watched that for awhile, through his sunglasses, but turned away when he realized he couldn't keep track from one moment to the next of who the actors were, or what the plot was, or why he should care.

He fell asleep and dreamt of her standing on the roof of the antique store in a flowing white gown. He woke with a jerk, his heart pounding, sure she'd called his name in the airplane. He looked at her seat. No Tessa. Sometimes, on airplanes, she had thrown a blanket across them both and proceeded to work his body beneath the cover, daring him to betray anything to the flight attendants or other passengers. Sometimes they'd slipped off to the restroom to renew their membership in the Mile High club. He fell back asleep to memories of that, and woke when the plane skidded to a stop at Orly Airport. The warning sense of an Immortal hit him right after he'd cleared passport control and customs. He was too tired to pull his sword from his bags and hoped that whoever it was, he or she'd take his head quickly. He plodded towards the cargo office, where he'd sign for Tessa like she was just a piece of oversized luggage. Figures blocked him, and he blinked uncertainly.

"Duncan!" Gina diValincourt said, drawing him into her arms. She smelled of some heavy designer perfume, so different than the light fragrances Tessa had preferred. "We had to come. How are you?"

"Damn bloody shame," Hugh Fitzcairn put in, his hand patting Duncan's back. "Hope they caught and hanged the bastard."

Duncan worked himself free of Gina's arms and looked in bewilderment from one to the other. "How did you know?"

"Connor called," Fitzcairn said. He pulled out his pipe, remembered he was in a non-smoking area, and put it away again. His mop of curly hair had grown longer since Duncan had last seen him, and his wrinkled clothes looked like they'd seen much better days. He'd needed help with his wardrobe ever since the sixteenth century.

Gina rested her hand on Duncan's arms. Her loveliness had not changed with the centuries, of course, and he remembered how he'd been in love with her small face, her almond colored eyes. He hadn't known what love really was, back then.

"What?" he asked.

"I said," Gina repeated herself, "you look exhausted. You need to rest and take care of yourself."

She looked towards Fitzcairn. "Take his bags, won't you?"

Fitzcairn had never been able to refuse her any more than Duncan. He obediently hefted Duncan's suitcases. Gina escorted Duncan, her arm wrapped around his possessively. "Where's Robert?" the Highlander asked.

"In Crimea," Gina said. "We have business interests there. Duncan, I'm so sorry."

"Me too," Fitzcairn said, struggling under the load. "Dreadfully sorry."

"They die," Duncan shrugged, repeating what he'd told Connor, but still feeling the same hollow denial inside. He wanted to be mad at Connor for involving their friends in this intensely horrible affair, but at the same time was almost pathetically grateful for their support.

Support he instantly needed in the cargo office, where Marie Noel rose from her chair, mustering every inch of her five-foot frame, and leveled him with an icy glare and a torrent of abuse.

"Mama!" Tessa's sister Elise, her face blotchy and eyes tired, pulled at her mother's sleeve. "Stop it!"

"You killed her!" Marie said, refusing to calm down. They were all speaking in French. "If she'd never gone to America with you she'd be here, alive, happy and well. You took her to that country of murderers and thieves, and let them slaughter her!"

"Madam Noel - " Fitzcairn tried his hand at soothing her, but the formidable woman would not be silenced. Gina got into the fray, telling Elise in no uncertain terms to calm her mother down or remove her. Elise returned tartly that her mother had every right to be upset. The clerks and managers were coming out of their offices, curious about the shouting, and Duncan put his hand to his head.

"Shut up," he finally said softly. No one listened to him. "Quiet!" He roared, shaking with anger, and Marie's mouth drew into a grim line. Before she could start up again, Duncan said, "While we stand here and argue Tessa's out there, lying in a box, and it doesn't matter if it happened here or in France, all that matters is that we take care of her! We're going to do just that, or I swear I'll turn around and put her on the next plane out and you'll never see her again."

Marie Noel sat heavily and burst into tears and wails. Elise favored Duncan with a glare and sank to comfort her. Fitzcairn and Gina dragged Duncan off into the corner and made him drink a glass of water. When everyone was somewhat settled, Duncan signed for Tessa's coffin and then all five of them went down to watch it loaded into a hearse from the French funeral home the Noels had hired on this end of the journey.

"Duncan," Elise said, "I'm sorry for what Mama said. You know how she feels about Tessa going to America all those years ago."

"I know," Duncan said. He had a massive headache. It was morning here in Paris, but he wasn't sure which morning, or even what day it was.

"Please, let me take Mama and Tessa now. You need to rest. Come by the house this evening, when we can talk like rational human beings. Mama and Papa's friends will be there. The funeral Mass is at nine tomorrow morning, the burial at ten-thirty."

Duncan searched her expression. Under pressure, Elise could perform extraordinarily well. It was only in the matters of her day to day life and marriage that she messed up so royally. Or so Tessa had always claimed, with exasperation and fondness both for her older sister.

The process of giving up Tessa had to start now, this morning, in the snarled traffic outside the terminal. Duncan nodded reluctantly, and watched Elise and Marie go with Tessa into the hearse. It slid into the traffic and Duncan had to blink his eyes furiously to keep from breaking down.

"I didn't get the barge out of storage," he said, suddenly realizing he had no place to stay.

"You're not going to the barge," Gina informed him. She signaled for her driver and a Cadillac pulled up to the curb. She and Fitzcairn loaded Duncan into the back seat. "You're staying at the chateau."

"You're sure you have enough rooms?" Fitzcairn joked, trying to lighten the mood, but stilled himself under Duncan's frown. "I'm sorry."

"Everyone says that," Duncan murmured, "but no one really knows."

"You've loved and lost before, MacLeod," Fitzcairn pointed out. He wasn't trying to be cruel, Duncan knew. He was just being Fitz - hopelessly romantic and outlandish one moment, annoyingly pragmatic the next.

Duncan shook his head. "Not like this. She was the first mortal woman I ever told about me." He gazed out at the traffic. "She'll be the last one, too."

Gina stroked his arm, offering warm reassurances, but Duncan didn't believe her. At her countryside chateau he begged off their company and went to sleep. He dozed restlessly, tossing back and forth in the sheets, and woke twice in a cold sweat from nightmares. By nightfall he was anxious just to face Tessa's family and get the funeral over with. Then he could crawl into a deep dark hole somewhere, and blot out everything.

They drove to the Noels' modest home in Pontoise, outside Paris, and found the drawing room full of mourners wearing dark clothes and somber expressions. They were mostly family or friends of the elderly Noels. Seventeen year old Tessa-Marie sat in a corner with her mother, smeared with too much make-up on her face but behaving well. Marie Noel would not let Duncan come near her. Elise's husband Marc Charbonnier took Duncan down a dark passage to where Louis Noel lay in bed, too ill to rise.

He was nearly eighty years old, a veteran of World War II who'd fought with the Resistance in France after escaping German capture, and his once-strong frame had been whittled into nearly nothing over the last few years. He sat propped up in bed, breath rattling in and out of his chest, his eyes closed.

Marc bent close and whispered into his father-in-law's ear. Louis stirred, and then opened his clear brown eyes and looked directly at Duncan. He held out his hand, and Duncan took it. He allowed Tessa's father to pull him in closely.

"She loved you more than anything in the world," Louis muttered in French. "You were her life."

"She was mine," Duncan said softly. "I didn't . . .I couldn't... I never wanted this to happen."

"Of course not," Louis said, squeezing his hand gently. Such a frail old man. So many years, wasting his skin and muscles and organs. And Duncan was five times his age - this man, this worn- out vessel, was still a child.

"Sit with me," Louis went on. "Sit with me and we shall think quietly of Tessa."

So they sat, for hours it seemed, in the small and dark bedroom lit by candles and a soft breeze from the dark night outside. When Louis drifted off to sleep Duncan went to the bathroom and scrubbed his face as hard as he could. He went in search of Fitz and Gina to beg them to take him away. Fitz was sitting with Elise, who was in the middle of narrating a photo album of her and Tessa's childhood. Gina had retired to the terrace, despite the slight chill, and immediately warmed to Duncan's plea.

The next morning dawned gray and rainy, perfectly gloomy, but Duncan barely noticed the water that trickled down the back of his raincoat. He met the hearse at the church where Tessa had been baptized and sat through the memorial Mass with Gina on one side, Fitz on the other. Elise and Tessa-Marie sobbed their way through it. Louis, who Duncan had thought might not even last the night, had rallied to his feet and into his military uniform and sat with Marie, their hands clenched together.

The priest, reciting in French prayers that Duncan had learned in Latin, in Rome itself, prayed for Tessa's immortal spirit. He gave a start at that, and felt Gina's fingers tighten on his arm. The mass dragged on, interminably slow, but at the same time he felt gripped by the anxiety that this was the last time he could be with her, her body just a few feet away in its ornate wooden coffin. He pictured her lying in the black dress with the gold on it, and realized she wouldn't like the darkness.

"I've got to get her out of there," Duncan confided to Fitzcairn, his voice a bare whisper.

"What?" Fitz asked, startled.

Duncan stared at the coffin, making up his mind. "She wouldn't like it in there."

"You're leaving her exactly where she is," Fitzcairn warned, and Duncan felt a flash of intense hurt. He might be hurt, but he wasn't a child. He wondered what he'd just been thinking, something about the coffin, and Gina bent next to him.

"Just a few more minutes, Duncan," she whispered in Italian. "You can make it for a few more minutes."

He was five times as old as Tessa's father. He shouldn't have taken up with such a young woman. Someone his own age might have been better - someone who couldn't die of a bullet to the chest. Never again, he vowed. Never a mortal woman.

Oh, Tessa. Oh, love.

The graveside service went very quickly - a few words from the priest, laying of flowers by Tessa's parents, Elise and Marc, then Duncan; the rain drove the mourners away quickly, leaving only a few people among the gothic monuments and crowded sepulchers. Duncan looked at the coffin and knew that when they buried it, they would bury him as well. He had no idea how he'd been able to function through the last few days and spared only the briefest of thoughts for Richie and Connor, hoping they were managing as best they could.

"Duncan," Gina said, taking his hand. "It's time to go."

He shook his head.

So they stood there, linked in the drizzle and gloom. Marie and Louis stayed a few more minutes before shuffling off, their bodies sagging under grief and weariness. Elise pecked Duncan's cheek and told him to come by and visit. Duncan knew he'd never set foot in their house again. When it was just he and Fitzcairn and Gina, Duncan sent the other two away and said prayers in Gaelic for Tessa's soul. For his own. For the strength to get through the rest of his life without her, and for the courage not to give away his head.

He let Fitzcairn and Gina take what was left of him, the shell of Duncan MacLeod, away from the cemetery, while the most essential part of him stayed behind and went into the dirt with Tessa's coffin.

"I wouldn't exactly call this camping," Michelle Camerack said from the base of the slope, staring up at the massive cabin Duncan had built against towering pines and spruce trees. Behind her, Connor finished hauling the canoe ashore, and Richie lifted one of the canvas bags full of provisions. The late afternoon sun glinted gold off the blue water of the inlet. The crisp cool air made her cheeks rosy. Michelle added, "It's beautiful!"

Richie only grunted. Connor wiped his wet hands on his jeans and said, "Duncan's built it up over the last century. The whole place is Holy Ground."

"Didn't stop the Hunters in Paris," Richie said, referring to Darius' murder, as he hauled the box up towards the cabin's front porch.

Connor let that pass. Richie was in a gloomy mood and had been pouting since they'd left Seacouver that morning. He'd been stubbornly resistant to the idea of coming up the island. He'd wanted to stay behind and hunt down the street punk who'd shot Tessa.

"You don't know his name, where he lives, or even the color of his hair," Connor had pointed out. "You don't have the vaguest idea of whether he lived in that neighborhood, or in the valley, or who knows where. You said he was of average height, average build, your age, and might have been on drugs. How in the world can you look for him?"

Richie scowled. "I remember his jacket."

"And there are thousands more like it available in every mall in the state. Besides, he'll have ditched it." Connor watched anger and helplessness fight for dominance in Richie's expression. He leaned forward in the darkened apartment. "Richie, I of all men understand the need for revenge. But yours would be a futile quest. Come away, get some rest, and think it through more clearly. If, when we come back, you still want to do it...then I'll help you."

The teenager asked suspiciously, "You will?"

"Yes," Connor promised. He had his own plans for the kid who'd killed Tessa, should he ever lay his hands on him.

Richie had finally agreed to come up, but he seemed determined to make the worst of it. Connor was just relieved to have him out of the city and someplace a little more restful, where Tessa's presence was less strong. He'd invited Michelle because she was just as wounded and grieving as Richie. Since her husband's death she'd been adrift among men and women who knew nothing about Immortals, and who couldn't possibly understand the tragedy of dying at a mortal's cheating hands. She needed to talk, and he was good at listening. If Connor could get Richie to talk that would be an accomplishment as well, but he knew the boy didn't like him and needed Duncan more than anyone else.

The cabin had two bedrooms. Connor assigned them to Richie and Michelle, and opted for the couch himself. By the time they were done firing up the generator, unpacking the groceries, making up the beds with fresh sheets, starting a fire and fixing a small supper, night had taken the sky completely. Michelle's father had been an astronomer, and she went down to the water to pick out the constellations above. Richie sat morosely at the counter, picking over the remains of his sandwich he'd fixed for dinner. It was now Tuesday, and Tessa had been dead for four days.

"How long are we staying up here?" Richie asked.

Connor almost shrugged, but stopped himself. He was picking up that bad habit from the teenager. "We'll play it by ear."

"What if someone needs to reach us? There's no phone, and no one knows about the radio."

"Duncan knows," Connor reminded him. "If he needs us, he can put a call through to the ranger station and they'll call us. Or he'll leave a message in town, at the general store."

Richie broke a potato chip into a dozen tiny pieces. "Did he say when he was coming back?"

"No," Connor said. Richie had already asked that. Connor had called Gina's chateau before leaving Seacouver, and Gina had dragged Duncan to the phone. He'd sounded listless and weak. Tessa had been buried yesterday, and Connor ached at how awful that had to have been for his clansman. Duncan had no return date on his airline ticket, and Connor had decided not to press him.

"He's not coming back," Richie said now, his face a mask of tightly controlled emotion in the firelight reflected out of the hearth.

Connor said, "Of course he will."

Richie shook his head. "He's not coming back, and you're not going to help me learn how to fight. How long am I going to last as an Immortal?"

Connor resisted the urge to shake the whining out of the teenager. "There's more to surviving than swordwork, Richie. You have to know when to fight and when to walk away; you have to be smarter than your opponent; you have to want to win, with all your heart. Those things come from inside, not outside."

Richie rolled his eyes. "But they all mean nothing if I can't lift a sword in the first place." He'd been thinking about that all day - where he was going to get a sword, for starters. They didn't sell them at Sears. And he'd wondered where he would put it. Mac always seemed to have secret compartments in his clothing, but Richie couldn't see where he could hide a huge blade beneath a Guns'n'Roses T-shirt. He had the sneaking suspicion his wardrobe was about to change.

If Tessa were around, she could help him buy clothes. But if she were around, he wouldn't *need* the clothes. They wouldn't have been slaughtered on Briarcliff Street. The thought depressed him all over again, and he excused himself to go to bed early.

The next morning Connor woke him at dawn, to see if he wanted to go for a five mile run around the lake. Richie wondered what it was about Highlanders that made them love daybreak so much. He told Connor no and went back to sleep. He spent the rest of the day wandering listlessly around the cabin, pretending to read some of the books Duncan had stockpiled over the decades, but finally gave in to Michelle's request to accompany her on a walk through the woods and even enjoyed it, if just a little.

By the third dawn Richie had decided Connor wasn't going to give up, and with a grumble he slipped on his sneakers. He hadn't run in at least a month, and by the third mile he had a cramp in his side and shinsplints. Somehow he kept his creaking body moving, and the pain eased as Immortal healing took over. He felt amazingly better once they were done, and realized he'd been able to focus on something other than Tessa for the first time since the shooting.

Michelle's daily routine held no more ambition than long strolls in the woods, sometimes with Connor or Richie but often by herself. She found some old embroidery Tessa must have left behind one summer, and with Richie's permission took it up again. She taught him the names of the stars and the mythic shapes ancient civilizations had grouped them into. She spoke haltingly at first and then more openly about James, who had first died in 1710 during Queen Anne's War, in what had once been called Acadia and was now Nova Scotia. Richie thought he would have liked him, had they ever actually met.

Connor fashioned himself a cleared area behind the house where he could work out, using logs and stones for weights. He did two hundred sit-ups without stopping one clear, crisp afternoon while Richie watched from the sidelines. When he was done, he'd barely broken a sweat.

"You try," Connor said.

"No fair. You've had centuries of experience." Richie almost smiled, but caught himself.

"Come on," Connor said. "I'll do them with you."

Richie managed to crank out sixty before collapsing back into the grass. He'd let himself get lazy, and too many months of French cuisine in Paris had turned his body into a ruined mess. He squinted up at the deep blue sky and let his heartbeat settle back down to normal.

"That wasn't too bad," Connor said. "Now let's do some push-ups. How about one hundred?"

"One hundred?" Richie squeaked.

"Too little? Okay, two."

After a week or so Richie began to feel like he could get through each day without being overwhelmed with fatigue or grief, and he almost began to look forward to his morning run with Connor. He mentioned that to Michelle one afternoon. He found it easy to talk to her, and she never made him feel silly or stupid.

"Connor's a good man," Michelle said, tossing small pebbles off the path as they walked.

"He doesn't like me."

"Whatever gave you that idea? Of course he likes you! Why else would he be here?"

"Duty," Richie shrugged. "Responsibility. Because Duncan asked."

"I don't think Connor MacLeod does anything he doesn't want to," Michelle said, giving Richie food for thought for the rest of the day.

They went by canoe, trail and car down to the nearest town one morning, where they stocked up on more provisions and had lunch at a very good diner. Connor used the payphone to call Joe Dawson and asked the Watcher if his organization had found Paul Abrahms yet.

Joe hemmed and hawed and finally said, "We think he's left the country."

"You think?"

"We're fairly sure." Joe paused, and then came with a tone that sounded slightly amused. "So how's the countryside?"

Connor automatically scanned the street outside the phone booth but saw no Watchers. He conceded, "Your people are good."

"We try," Joe chuckled, and hung up.

Connor called Gina diValincourt's chateau, but Gina said Duncan hadn't come back since leaving that morning. "He might be at the cemetery. He goes there often, for hours on end. Connor, I don't think it's healthy. Oh, wait - I think that's him at the door now. Wait."

After a few minutes during which Connor heard little, Duncan picked up the phone.

"How are you doing?" Connor asked.

"Fine," Duncan said, as if the word were meaningless. "How's everything there?"

"We're in the woods. Using the cabin. Hope you don't mind." "No, that's fine. How's Richie?"

"Talk to him yourself," Connor replied, and traded places with Richie in the booth.

Richie found his throat suddenly dry. "Mac?"

"Yeah. It's me. How are you?"

"Okay. You?"

"I'm still here," Duncan said. "Connor teaching you?"

"No. He said you would. When are you coming back?"

Silence stretched across the connection. "I don't know," Duncan finally said. "You just do what Connor tells you and stay out of trouble. Talk to you later. Goodbye."

"Mac - " Richie started to protest, but all he heard was a click and the dial tone.

He wrestled with anger and hurt all the way back to the cabin. By dinnertime his anger had abated into guilt. Duncan had just lost the most important woman in his life, thanks to Richie. Of course he wouldn't want to come home. Richie didn't expect him to, not really, but he guessed he'd been secretly hoping everything might turn out okay. But this wasn't a fairy tale. Tessa was dead, and he'd let it happen.

"What?" Connor asked

Richie hadn't realized he'd said anything aloud. He glanced at Michelle, who'd stopped eating and was watching him with a somber expression. "Nothing," he mumbled, taking his half-full plate to the sink. His hands felt cold.

"You think you could have saved her?" Connor asked softly.

"Maybe. Yeah."

"Why didn't you anyway?"

"What?"

Connor folded his arms. "Was it cowardice? You didn't jump in front of the bullet that killed her. You must have been afraid."

"Connor - " Michelle started.

Richie waved at her to be quiet. He didn't like the tone in Connor's voice and said, defiantly, "Well, excuse me, but it's no great thrill to have a gun pointed at your chest, but what does that have to do with - " "Fear is no excuse. Even when you're hundreds of years old, you'll be a tiny bit scared. Because the part of your brain that hates pain will still hate it, and the part that fears for your own life never goes away." Connor rose and came toward him, his manner still curt, one finger jabbing in accusation. "Did you know he was going to shoot you?"

"No, of course not!"

Connor's face hardened. "Why didn't you jump in front of the bullet? You were too afraid for your own skin? You weren't ready to sacrifice for her?"

Richie winced beneath the harsh tone and cruel questions. "I would have!" he protested, trying to move aside, but Connor blocked his way.

"Then why didn't you?"

"It happened too fast!" Richie shouted. He pushed Connor aside as a floodgate broke inside him. Words tumbled out so fast he could barely say them. "I didn't know he was going to shoot! How could I know that? He wanted our money and her jewelry and then he fired the gun! I didn't have time to do anything!"

"Then how could you have saved her?" Connor asked simply.

Richie glared at him. Michelle watched both of them, her face pale. The snap of the fire in the hearth and the drip of water in the kitchen sink were the only sounds in the room.

"You couldn't have," Connor said. "Richie, there was nothing you could have done."

Richie shook his head, grasping for the last straw that would let him hold on to the guilt. "But what if I'd . . .stood in front of her. Shielded her?"

"Then the bullets might have gone right through you into her. Don't you see? You couldn't do anything but what you did. You can't go back and change it. You have to move past it, and give up the guilt, or you'll end up just letting someone take your head."

Richie realized Connor had manipulated him into the argument, but felt too tired and relieved to care. He dropped to the sofa and hugged a pillow to his chest. Michelle came, sat beside him, and put her arms around him. He leaned against her. She wasn't Tessa and never would be, but she was enough. It was several minutes before he could speak.

"Duncan blames me," he said. "It's why he won't come back."

"Duncan blames himself," Connor corrected gently, laying his hand on Richie's shoulder. "And he will come back. I know he will."

Given the chance, Duncan would not necessarily have agreed with Connor. He didn't know if he was going to go back to Seacouver. He couldn't make that big of a decision, not with his brain clouded in fog every day. He had barely enough strength or willpower to decide what to wear each morning, nevermind determine the course of his life. Gina and Fitzcairn hovered, trying to be useful but in fact just getting on his nerves. Luckily Gina's chateau was large enough that he could avoid them for the larger part of the day just by wandering through room after room of treasure the diValincourts had collected through the centuries.

Robert returned from Crimea with two yapping puppies in tow. He had vague ideas of making them guard dogs, and tried to enlist Duncan in their training.

"Do you really think me helping you with puppies is going to take my mind off Tessa?" he asked Robert caustically.

Robert flushed. "Well, er . . . no. But it might give you something to do all day."

"I didn't realize my life of leisure was annoying you," Duncan retorted.

"Duncan, please," Gina said, laying her hand on his arm. "You can stay here for decades if you want, doing nothing more than eating and sleeping. You're one of our dearest friends. But we worry about you."

"Don't worry," Duncan said. "I'll be fine."

He drove into Paris with Fitzcairn one day, looking at properties for sale along the way. Maybe a nice small house to work on would fill his endless hours. He briefly imagined a new home, a new life, here in France. But France was Tessa's homeland, and being here when she couldn't felt like something of a betrayal. Of course, she was here, physically, and would be for centuries. He would make sure her grave was always kept neatly, whatever the future might bring.

He didn't know. He felt entirely too mixed up to think clearly. He went and visited Sean Burns, and his old friend told him what he was experiencing was perfectly normal. Duncan knew that, but he also wanted to know if it would ever end. Part of him wanted to cling to every bit of the pain he could, all the better to keep Tessa with him. The other part yearned for just a little relief. Just one morning, please, when he didn't wake and reach out and find the missing space where once she'd been.

"It will get better, if you let it. Why are you shutting out the people who can help you most?" Sean asked him as they ate lunch in his sunroom. September had just turned into October, and a wet wind tossed leaves across Sean's lawn. "Connor. The teenage boy. Tessa's sister."

"I'm not shutting Gina and Fitz out," Duncan protested.

"They also didn't know Tessa. The people who loved her are hurting every bit as much as you, Duncan."

"I can't deal with his pain and my own as well."

"His?"

"Richie," Duncan said morosely. "I look at him, and I remember Tessa spent her last seconds in his company, not mine. I see him needing so much - training, time, patience - and I don't think I can give it."

"Then don't. Help him find another teacher."

Duncan adopted a gruffer tone. "No other teacher could put up with him." That was a lie, of course. Richie might be a challenging student, but his potential and enthusiasm far outweighed his shortcomings. Besides, who was to say Duncan hadn't been just as difficult a student for Connor?

He missed both of them fiercely, but hadn't admitted it to himself. He thought about flying back immediately, but still felt too raw to actually get on the plane.

Sean squeezed his hand. "Duncan, you're adrift. You lost Tessa. You lost Richie, in a sense. You've run away from your home. You purposely have thrown your life into limbo. You have to settle down before anything's going to get better."

Duncan sighed. Knowledge didn't always make action any easier. He thanked Sean for his help and the next morning drove back to Gina's chateau. He found Robert tumbling on the lawn with the puppies, and Gina snapping pictures. Their togetherness and amusement twisted in his gut, but he hid it as best he could and went to his rooms. He thought about calling Richie, but he and Connor were still on the island. He left them a message at the general store, promising the counterman that Connor would tip him. Connor called back two nights later, long after midnight.

"How are things in France?" Connor asked.

Duncan struggled upright in his chair. He'd fallen asleep in the firelight with Voltaire in his lap. "All right," he said. "How are things there?"

"We're heading back to Seacouver on Thursday," Connor said, six time zones away, watching Michelle and Richie put grocery bags in the Thunderbird's trunk. Evening had come quickly with the shortening days of autumn, and already the sky was dark. Maybe they would just stay in town for the night, rather than face the hike through the woods and canoe ride. Connor asked, "How about you?"

Duncan took a deep breath. "I'll be back on Sunday. Can you do me a favor?"

"What's that?"

Connor listened to Duncan's request and then passed the phone over to Richie. "Your turn."

"Hi, Mac," Richie said. Connor and Michelle motioned they were going across the street into the department store. Connor had mentioned something about fixing a hole in the roof. Richie waved them away.

"How's Connor treating you?" Duncan asked. He actually sounded a little better, Richie thought.

"He's tough," Richie admitted. "But I can do a hundred and twenty situps now."

For a moment he thought that might sound too frivolous, but Duncan actually chuckled.

"Sounds like Connor's influence, all right. Look, Rich, I'm coming back on Sunday. I've asked Connor to help you find an apartment. I'm thinking about selling the store. Do you mind?"

Richie asked, "What did you say?"

"I said, I asked Connor to help you find - "

"You're coming back?"

"Yes."

"Oh," Richie said. He cleared his throat. "Look, Mac, Connor and I have been doing a lot of talking . . . don't come back because of me. Not unless you want to. You never promised me anything."

"Richie, I want to come back. I have to. As for what promises might have been made . . .we'll talk about that."

"Okay," Richie said. "We going to pick you up at the airport?"

"Um, yes." Duncan gave him the flight information. Just before he hung up he said, "Richie?"

"Yeah, Mac?"

"You hanging in there?"

Richie's vision blurred slightly. "Yeah," he said. "You?"

"It's hard. But I'm still here."

"Good," Richie replied.

He stood in the payphone booth for a few minutes after hanging up, thinking about what life would be like when Duncan came back. For almost three weeks now he'd been in the cabin with Connor and Michelle, able to hide from the Immortal world. He turned the collar of his leather jacket up against a chill that had little to do with the weather and stepped out of the booth. Someone brushed up against him in the dim light of the corner street lamp.

"Watch it," Richie said automatically, and then something sharp dug into his side with a slice of sudden pain. He looked at familiar face that was twisted with malice.

"Remember me?" his attacker asked.

Paul Abrahms, the man who'd attacked him in Seacouver, dragged him now down the alley between the grocery store and bank to a pile of garbage behind a dumpster. He forced the knife in deeper, driving Richie to his knees, and then with a kick doubled him into a ball. Richie grunted, the red hot explosion of pain driving all his breath away, and felt the alley start to slip away in a haze of blood and pounding. Abrahms picked up by the scruff of his jacket and shook him vigorously.

"Where's the computer?" he demanded.

"Computer?" Richie asked.

"That hard drive is the only thing that links me to Pallin Wolf," Abrahms snarled. "I'm going to prove to the Watchers that I was set up. I have too much at stake to be executed by them for breaking oaths."

Richie opened his mouth to scream for help but Abrahms stabbed him in the chest. He collapsed backward, aware of a hot wetness running down his body, and the taste of blood in his mouth.

"I'll kill you over and over until you tell me, you little freak," Abrahms promised.

Richie died. He came back with a sharp and powerful inrush of air and focused blearily on the sight of Michelle and Abrahms struggling with a gun. Connor was nowhere in sight. Maybe they had split up to look for him. The gun looked enormous in Richie's vision, made larger than normal with a silencer, and he felt the same rush of fear he'd felt on Briarcliff Street with Tessa.

Michelle screamed for help. Abrahms backhanded her, sending her crashing against the wall, and then raised the gun. Knowing he was probably already too late, dreading the first pull of the trigger, Richie nevertheless flung himself forward and tackled the Hunter. They went down to a crashing heap on the ground, fighting for the gun. One bullet ripped with a popping noise across Richie's right thigh. The second blasted through Abrahms' intestines and shattered his spine.

Richie rolled on the ground, pressing his hand against the hideous pain and bleeding, and heard Connor's running footsteps. Connor helped Michelle up, then crouched down in Richie's vision.

"You're covered with blood," Connor remarked.

"Not my fault," Richie forced out. He wanted to faint, but his body wouldn't let him. Connor dragged him upright, saying they needed to get moving.

"Where do bullets go when we heal?" Richie asked as Connor and Michelle half-carried, half-dragged him to the Thunderbird. The shock of the fight, of dying and being reborn again, and of seeing the gun aimed at Michelle was working its way in shivers through his whole body.

"Ask Duncan," Connor snapped.

"You saved me," Michelle whispered as she helped Richie ease into the backseat.

He closed his eyes. "One out of two beats my previous record," he said wearily.

They went all the way back to the cabin, reasoning it would only cause suspicion if they holed up in a motel room and a maid discovered bloody sheets. The next day Connor trekked back to town, sniffing out news about any recent murders, and wasn't too surprised to find that nobody had reported or found a dead body in the alley beside the post office.

The Watchers, Connor decided, took care of their own messes.

On Thursday they closed up the cabin and drove back down to Seacouver. Michelle gave them both big farewell hugs and departed back for Victoria, where she hoped to pick up the pieces of her own life. Connor and Richie went apartment-hunting, and signed a lease on a fifth floor apartment that was short on charm but had windows, fire ladders, elevators and stairs for quick escapes in the event Richie ever needed to make a quick escape. They spent Saturday buying and moving Salvation Army furniture that fit Richie's savings. He was adamant about not taking money for anything more than the deposit and first month's rent, which Duncan had promised he'd repay to Connor.

Mac's flight was due to come in at noon on Sunday. Connor and Richie ate breakfast at Richie's new apartment. Richie hadn't found a kitchen set that he liked, so they sat cross-legged on the floor and ate cereal from boxes, orange juice from cartons, and French Toast Connor made from scratch.

"You're worried about how Duncan's going to act," Connor said during a lull in the conversation.

Richie's eyes narrowed. "Am I that easy to read?"

Connor chuckled. "Sometimes."

"You aren't."

"Practice," Connor said. "Lots and lots of practice."

"Connor, what's the best thing about being an Immortal?"

For a moment he was sure Connor would refuse to answer, as he'd refused any other time Richie asked about Immortality. Instead the Highlander chewed thoughtfully and said, with a glint in his eyes, "Love. Now ask me the worst thing about Immortality."

"Love?" Richie asked.

Connor grinned.

They made it to the airport twenty minutes early, and Connor watched Richie pace around the arrivals area until the passengers streamed off. Just as they were beginning to think Duncan had missed the flight he came out, one of the last passengers off. When he saw Richie he stopped walking. Richie went over, hesitated, and then offered his hand to shake. Duncan smiled, and pulled him into a bear hug.

Connor knew then that Duncan would be all right. And so would Richie.

Duncan had a hug for Connor too, and Connor examined his kinsman closely. He still looked tired, and thinner than before, but the haunting sorrow that had lined his face had eased into something deeper, no less profound, but slightly more peaceful. They all piled into the Thunderbird and went back to the store. Duncan asked if he could be alone for a little bit inside, and Connor and Richie gave him what he wanted.

"Come back in about an hour?" Duncan asked Richie.

"Yeah, sure, Mac," Richie said.

Duncan went through every room in the apartment and store, touching objects with the lightest of touches, filing away the details for later use. He stood in the store for a long time, looking at the world he and Tessa had built up. The artwork, the sculpture, the treasures. He would have traded all of it for just one minute with her alive and in his arms, so that he could tell her how much he loved her and missed her.

Some things could never be, no matter how dear his wish. Duncan grieved alone, trying to come to grips with what had happened, but he knew it would take time. Well, time was something he was both blessed and cursed with. And no matter how much he wanted otherwise, she was gone.

When he felt Richie's Immortal song, Duncan went outside and gave him the keys and told him to sell everything inside. He might have said something trite about watching his head since he was Immortal now, but he couldn't be sure later. He moved himself and a dufflebag's worth of clothing into a hotel room, and two days later had his accountant purchase a building on Fourth and Main that included warehouse space, a fifth floor loft apartment and Charlie DeSalvo's dojo.

He flung himself into the job of redecorating the loft, and even tried to draft Connor into the project. Connor bowed out gracefully, saying he had a friend to visit in Victoria.

"Take care of yourself," he said to Richie before he left. "Learn something useful from Duncan, if you can. If you can't, you have my phone number."

"Very funny," Duncan said.

"Duncan."

"Connor." With the names went the unspoken but very real wishes for good fortune and successful fighting. Duncan wondered how he was going to repay Connor for all the work he'd done with Richie, but figured his teacher would call in the marker someday anyway.

Charlie DeSalvo didn't seem thrilled Duncan was the new owner, although he was glad someone else would be paying for the new hot water heater. Richie sold all of the antique store contents to Mr. Helliman for a nice profit, and helped Duncan finish moving in a few boxes of personal possessions that included nothing of Tessa's.

They still hadn't talked about Tessa's death, and when Richie mentioned her name after buying lunch at a chili-dog stand Duncan flinched. Richie apologized, but Duncan knew it wasn't the teenager's fault.

"She was part of our lives, Richie," Duncan said. "Never pretend she wasn't."

"I don't," Richie insisted. "I keep waking up every morning - "

"Expecting her to be there?"

"Yeah."

"Get used to it," Duncan said. "It won't be the last time it happens to you."

"When does it start getting easier?" Richie asked wistfully.

Duncan sighed. He wished he had a good answer to that, but all he had was the truth. "It doesn't."

Two minutes later, just as he was reprimanding Richie for being overly enthusiastic about his newfound Immortality, they stumbled across Annie Devlin attempting an assassination on the city's British ambassador. They stopped her, but Richie took chances that made Duncan furious and Annie's mortal husband died on the sidewalk, a bleeding sack of torn flesh. All Duncan could see was Tessa's body on Briarcliff Street, and hear Annie's vow to come after the teenager. Richie's chances that night - coming to the house, not staying outside - had led to his early transformation from mortal life. Now he was courting disaster with Immortals far older and deadlier than he was.

Richie's cavalier attitude towards the man's death, and his obvious excitement over the gunfire and subterfuge, only incited Duncan's fury to new heights. He decided it was time to teach Richie Ryan some lessons.

"You better start learning the Game and I mean now," Duncan told him hotly.

"Fine," Richie shot back. Finally he could learn something. "You teach me."

***

"Come on," Duncan taunted. "Get up!"

Richie hauled himself upright despite the blur in his vision and pounding in his head. He grabbed for Duncan, and the Highlander threw him to the mat. Again. Again. He was Richie Ryan, Immortal punching bag, and humiliation flooded through his aching muscles. Duncan wasn't teaching him anything. Duncan was beating him methodically, inch by inch, without ever delivering a single punch. Richie had been hopelessly outclassed since the second he'd stepped on the mat, and he was angry and bewildered about why Duncan was doing this to him.

Finally he had enough and left the mat. Duncan came after him until they were nose-to-nose in the office. Annie was going to come for him, and she would only be the first. "You've got to be good and you've got to be ready!" The Highlander shouted.

Richie threw his towel aside. "Oh, Mac, killing me isn't going to make me ready!" Then a realization wormed into his head, and he turned back to Duncan. "You know what I think? This isn't about me, or her. It's about Tessa."

Duncan retreated from Richie's glare. "Tessa's got nothing to do with this," he said.

"Bull, Mac. You can't get past it. I know, you've seen a lot of people die, but you had to be the hero, you sent us out to the car that night, you could have been there!"

"Let it go, Richie," Duncan warned.

Richie wouldn't back down. "No. You look me in the eye and you tell me you don't blame yourself for her death."

But Duncan couldn't, of course.

In the shower Richie began to regret the words, but he couldn't take them back. He dried off carefully and eased into his street clothes. Maybe they both just needed some space. They hadn't addressed the changes in their relationship since Mac's return from France, and Richie wondered if they ever would. He'd hoped Duncan would teach him how to use a sword, but the way he was now, he'd probably run it through him instead.

Duncan was still in his office when Richie came out, his face an unreadable mask. "Where you going?" he asked, his voice much calmer than before.

Richie shoved his workout clothes into his backpack. "My place. The zoo. Anyplace there's no mat for you to dump me on."

Duncan warned, "You come in second to Annie and you'll die. Forever."

Richie's voice and face were impassive. "I'll take my chances."

Richie spent most of the night tossing and turning. He didn't relish the thought of going up against Annie at all, and in the long dark hours his bravura retreated into cold acknowledgment of fear. She could probably beat him with one hand tied behind her back. His Immortal career would be over as soon as it had begun. Maybe he should run away, hide on Holy Ground, but the one thing he'd learned living with Tessa and Mac was that problems had to be faced and resolved, no matter how hard they were.

He didn't want to die again, for real.

Across town, Duncan slept no better. He told himself it was lingering smell of paint in the loft, the sounds from the street, the creak of a new mattress. Finally he curled up on the sofa with a box of photographs. Dozens and dozens of Tessa's smiled up at him from different years. Her hair had been longer when they first met on the tourist boat in Paris. He'd taken candid photos of her at work which she'd always hated - captured moments of her wrestling with sheets of metal, or smoothing clay between her hands. Mingled in the box were pictures of Richie - he'd seemed so much younger just a year ago. They hurt to look at now, and Duncan knew exactly why.

He didn't know what had gotten into him on the mat that afternoon. Richie was helpless when it came to self-defense, and each stumbling or stupid move he made had infuriated Duncan. He was going to die at the hands of Immortals who'd practiced this game for far longer, and Duncan was going to have to bury him too. He didn't know if he could do that. Not Darius and Michael and Tessa and Richie, all so quickly, one after the other.

He wondered aloud what sin he'd committed lately to deserve such punishment, but nobody answered.

The next morning Richie returned to the dojo, resolved to be as strong as possible when the time came. He worked out for awhile, using the punching bag and free weights, aware of an Immortal's presence nearby. He took it for granted the buzz came from Duncan. Mac showed up around ten, looking contrite. All of Richie's carefully rehearsed apology vanished from his memory.

"I was wrong," Richie said instead.

"You were right," Duncan said, at the exact same moment.

Richie insisted, "Mac, I was wrong about what I said about Tessa. I'm sorry."

"No," Duncan returned, "you were right. I've just been losing a lot of people lately and I didn't want to lose you too."

Richie almost smiled. "That makes two of us."

Relief flooded through both of them. Richie gingerly jabbed Duncan in the chest. "So listen, tough guy - you want to beat the hell out of me again?"

"I'll take it a little easier on you this time," Duncan promised.

They spent the next few days training intensively for Annie Devlin's return. Duncan tracked her down at a lighthouse up the coast, and before he knew what he was doing, the memories, liquor and loss combined to make him take Annie to bed. He tried to lose his memories of Tessa in the sensations of her body and succeeded for only a brief second, at the very end, when the world blotted out in a shuddering climax. He felt ashamed afterwards, because now Tessa was not the last person he'd made love to, and she'd only been dead a month.

Richie might have suspected something happened during the night, but they didn't discuss it. Annie had not abandoned her blood oath, and Duncan tried to persuade Richie to leave town. Richie agreed, then snuck out and went to the lighthouse to face Annie on his own.

He was deathly afraid to even raise his sword but he tried imagining Annie was the punk who'd killed Tessa, and that gave him more strength and resolve.

Duncan arrived near the end of it, sure that he would already be too late, and saw Richie stop a killing blow and scream a denial into the sky instead.

Annie was not impressed at Richie's generosity. "I'll come for you," she swore.

"No you won't," Duncan said, his tone as hard as the stone beneath their feet.

Richie had gone off to the side, to crouch on a wide flat expanse that looked out at the pounding surf and endless horizon. Duncan took Annie in his arms, comforting her for a brief moment, taking a little comfort himself in the fact another old friend was still alive, and then sent her on her way.

He climbed out to kneel beside Richie. The teenager looked scared and wounded and raw, as if the fight had broken open wounds barely healed over.

"You all right?" Duncan asked, eyeing the rip along Richie's left ribs.

Richie nodded. He sat down, shivering as his arms encircled his folded legs. "I couldn't do it," he said. "I even tried thinking of Tessa, and I couldn't do it."

Duncan wasn't sure what Tessa's death had to do with Annie, but he let the comment go for the moment. He had something more important to address about Tessa.

"Richie, the night she died . . .and you were with her . . . afterwards, I said I didn't want to know what happened."

Richie nodded, but his eyes didn't stray from the sea.

Duncan took a deep breath. "I want to know. If you can tell me, I want to know."

Richie hesitated for the briefest of moments. "Why didn't you, before?"

"Because I wasn't there," Duncan said. "I failed."

Richie's gaze swerved to him. His eyes were the same color as the ocean. "That's not true, Mac. You couldn't have known what was going to happen. You had no idea. It could have happened at any time, to anyone."

"But it happened to you two," Duncan said. "I'll never forget the sounds of those gunshots for the rest of my life."

In simple words, without flair or colorful words, Richie told him what had happened. How Tessa had kept looking back at the house, as if forgetting something important. Richie getting her a sweater. The punk who'd come out of the shadows, demanding jewelry and money and the car keys.

Richie and Tessa had given all he'd asked. They had pleaded with him to take the stuff. And he'd shot them anyway before fleeing down the street, the jewelry and other items scattering in his wake.

"I blamed myself," Richie admitted. "If I'd known I was going to be Immortal. . . I thought I could have saved her."

"You couldn't have," Duncan said.

"I know that now, but at the time . . ." Richie's voice trailed off. He asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It never helps to tell pre-Immortals what they'll become, Richie. You might have taken more chances than you already did. I wanted you to live as long and normal a life as possible before having to take up a sword."

"But here I am," Richie murmured.

"And I'm here with you. You have a lot to learn."

Richie almost laughed. "Classic understatement, Mac."

For a long time they simply sat, staring at the ocean, at the waves that rolled and receded to the heartbeat of the earth. Duncan finally stood and asked, "You want to leave?"

Richie shook his head. "I think I'll stay here for awhile longer."

Duncan knew the fight with Annie was still bothering him, but he decided to let the matter rest until Richie brought it up. Of course, he could always nudge a little. "Come by for dinner," he said. "I have something for you."

"Yeah?" Richie perked up a little. "What?"

"A surprise," Duncan said. He already knew which sword he wanted to give Richie. After all, if the teenager was going to pitch himself against Immortals or be chased by enemies, it was better he have his own weapon than keep swiping them off the walls. For a deep, fierce moment Duncan wished none of it had ever happened, but he couldn't turn back time.

"I don't know if there's a heaven, Richie," Duncan allowed, "but if there is, Tessa's in it, and she'll watch over you."

Richie glanced up at him and smiled. "Only when she's not watching over you, Mac."

THE END

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other fiction at:
ftp.highlander.org:/pub/highlander/HLFIC-L
ftp.xmission.com/~ladyslvr/mcdonald
http://krakowka.cit.cornell.edu/HL/ (for only a short time more!)

upcoming stories:
"Accidents Will Happen" & "Good Night Kiss" in Richie Forever III
"Thieves of London" in Princes of the Universe
"Family Affair" in Highland Fling III
(that's how I spent my summer vacation!)