“Not those twins,” she said, pointing to where Bev stood barely visible with Archer, Mac and Shep.
“Well,” Noah said. “This just got interesting.”
The night breathed damp and silver across the Mulvaney gardens, all wet grass and cut earth and roses that smelled too sickeningly sweet. Archer paused beneath a trellis veined with climbing vines, tilted his head back, and let the cool air skate over his throat. The moon snagged on the beads braided through his wig and set them glinting like fish scales. Dew slicked the sleeves of his coat and the air tasted faintly of copper and ozone. Somewhere close by, the fountain coughed up another glassy noise and fell quiet again.
This costume had him waxing poetic tonight.
Across the yard, Mac and Shep worked as a singular unit, scanning the perimeter, watching for a geriatric woman brandishing a knife. Their movements mirrored each other so precisely it was uncanny, Mac’s stride steady, Shep’s a little too smooth. It was strange seeing his husband as something other thanhis husband.Even at the Watch, despite their roles, at the end of the day they were Mac and Archer™.
They were together 24/7. Day in, day out. Not that he found it tedious. He’d imagined he would. There was a time when three days in the same area code with a person would have felt likea wool sweater in dead summer heat. But it never felt like that with Mac, no matter the location.
While they were beholden to the Watch for the foreseeable future, they had ample time to travel. And they did. Mac couldn’t stay still for long. He grew too restless and while Archer wasn’t the traveler Mac was, everything seemed…stress-free with Mac. Together, they’d traversed the globe.
Before Mac, all global travel had been work-related or forced family vacations. And vacationing with five psychopaths and a medieval torture enthusiast wasn’t exactly relaxing. With Mac, he’d seen a thousand sunsets, surfed big waves, gone on safari, sailed across the equator, camped under the aurora borealis, fucked under millions of stars thousands of miles away from the light pollution of the city.
He’d learned the shape of Mac’s silhouette in every light the planet had to offer, every kind of quiet that came after chaos. Somewhere along the way, Archer had also started to see him as them. But before they werethem, Mac and Shep werethem.
It was strange seeing how the two brothers interacted togeth?—
“Mac, Archer, Shep, secondary comms check. We've been getting some feedback on the line since the power went down,” Calliope said in his ear, businesslike fingers you could hear just from the rhythm of her typing.
“Shep,” came the calm answer to Archer’s left.
“Mac,” came the exact same timbre from his right, pitched with just enough lazy amusement to be a mirror and not a copy.
Archer lifted two fingers in a sloppy little salute that matched his costume. “Captain Jack, reporting for pillage and plunder, luv. Do try to keep your knickers on in mission comms, though it pains me to request it.”
“Worry less about my wife’s knickers and more about your own, Captain Morgan, before you get a peg leg and an eye patchto make that pirate costume more authentic,” Lola said, dry but fond.
“Ouch,” Archer said, clutching his chest and stumbling a bit. “Though art a heartless wench.”
Lola scoffed. “I’ll show you a wench.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Archer murmured, flashing a grin she couldn’t see but definitely felt through the line. Around him, the garden rustled, leaves whispering, gravel crunching under slow, deliberate boots.
Archer grinned into the dark, then adjusted his leather coat like a stage curtain. The costume had been a joke—a nod to his husband’s pirate fetish—but now it was more a hindrance than a help. The heavy leather clung to him like wet skin, carrying the scent of salt and Mac’s whiskey from earlier in the night. Mac and Shep had already ditched their burdensome coats, both now down to form-fitting pants, white shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and tall boots.
It turned out the bones of Van Helsing and Lt. Norrington’s costumes were startlingly similar. Which wasn’t a problem unless one’s husband and brother shared the same face. From the back, the only difference was the color of their pants, which left Archer spending a great deal of time staring at their asses.
Not exactly a hardship.
“Visual?” Lola asked.
“Not yet,” Archer murmured lazily, falling back into a character he hadn’t played in years but found he kind of missed. His voice came out smooth, affected, a rakish slur. “But the witch’s broom left tracks. She’s cutting across the east beds, headed toward the hedge maze.”
“Copy,” Calliope said. “Power grid’s stabilizing. East wing cameras are fully rebooted. Bev’s tracker shows south by southeast, thirty yards past the rose arbor.”
Mac’s shadow eased forward past Archer’s peripheral like a tide coming in, silent and steady. The gravel didn’t dare crunch under his boots. Shep ghosted the right flank, hands in his pockets, a small smile turning up the corner of his mouth as if he alone was enjoying a private joke…or maybe Elijah was talking dirty to him in the private comms. Maybe both.
Archer let himself appreciate the twin geometry a second longer. Same jaw, same shoulders, same chiseled cheekbones, but everything else a study in divergence. Mac’s cocky swagger versus Shep’s military precision. Both sins, just different temptations. On another night, he might have made a meal of it. Tonight, they had a different dinner guest.
Calliope again, crisp, “Update from inside. Adam’s stable. Generator’s holding. Don’t underestimate the nasty ancient hobgoblin. She’s desperate, and desperate people have nothing to lose. Keep her outside if you can, the workshop is still her final destination.”
“Copy,” Mac said, and then he went quiet again.
They slipped deeper into the garden. The air thickened, green and damp, humming faintly with life. Past the boxwood, the rose beds sat in two precise rows, ridiculous, gorgeous, and secretly armed to the teeth.
Archer heard her before he saw her, the wet hitch of breath pulled wrong through a throat unused to running. Then a figure lurched into the opening of the path, dress torn, one shoe missing. She banged a hip on a stone urn and hissed, scrabbling for balance, the knife in her hand flashing. Her perfume—cheap and cloying—mixed with the sharp iron of blood and sweat. The scent hit him like a slap in the face. There was blood on her gown, dripping from the hand that held the blade. She must have cut herself when she stabbed Adam.
