Stopping a murder that happened forty years earlier may be the only way to heal a tortured mind ...<br><br>Six months after Jesse Madding is brutally tortured by Marcus Brooker, he is still experiencing flashbacks, panic attacks, and jumping at his own shadow. His lovers, Gideon Keel and Emma Coolidge, would do anything to help him, but Jesse refuses to be hospitalized for treatment, or even visit a therapist. Desperate for a change, Gideon and Emma suggest a radical solution.<br><br> Jesse wants to fix his life. More than anything, he wants to be normal again. He doesn't want to live in fear. He doesn't want to be ashamed of his scarred and mutilated body. He doesn't want to shy away from Gideon's touch. Certain that the holding pattern will kill him, he agrees to Gideon and Emma's proposed solution: travel to an alternative dimension and save Marcus Brooker from witnessing Mary's grisly murder ... in order to save Brooker's soul.

Chaos and Communion

“I guess he didn’t take it well?”


Gideon started to lift a hand to run it over his hair, his most common nervous gesture, and noticed the blood, seemingly for the first time. “He begged me not to make him go. Not to make him be alone.” He sucked at his knuckle, the sound hollow within the room, but after only seconds, he seemed to choke on the blood, snorting as he dropped his hand again. “Can we even blame him?” he demanded. “He spent how many days with Brooker? How many days alone, when I couldn’t help him, I couldn’t even findhim. Of course, he doesn’t want to go.”


Emma would have predicted exactly that reaction, and she suspected Gideon would have, too, if he had been honest with himself. In the past six months, Jesse had somehow become more closed off, and at the same time, hyperaware of them. Emma didn’t miss the way Jesse’s eyes tracked either of them when they were in a room. He was always watching.


Chapter 7