“The lunk is my brother, Adam,” Melissa threw over her shoulder before I noticed him. Actually, not him; that’s too weak a pronoun to describe the angel boy that sat on the crimson bricked front walk. The world froze as I regarded him, brought to a skittering, scratching halt by the force of my sheer amazement. His beauty was preternatural. His skin was shadowed from its very core, as if it had been created not from DNA or molecules or cells, but over the course of a thousand loving brushstrokes carefully drawn by the most kind, adoring God any human has dared dream or imagine. Oh yes, there was evidence of the Divine hand in the grace of his form, in the smooth plains of his broad shoulders—

His purr-meet-growl voice rumbled forth: “You can shut your mouth now.”

Reality came suddenly forward, kicking down the doors of my mind and cascading into all of my quietest places, the ones that had already filled with him—with Adam Fairchild. “Huh?”

“I was just letting you know it’s okay to adore me with your mouth shut. You know, to keep out the bugs and all.” With a sly grin tugging at the edge of his generous, perfect bow-shaped lips, the most beautiful boy ever to exist outside of a renaissance fresco watched me deflate.

“This is Maggie, Adam. Leave her alone until your personality has time to inoculate her against that pretty face, will you?” Melissa stepped past her brother, motioning for me to follow.

“Had we but world enough, and time…” Did he just quote a poem? Oh my god. He just quoted a poem. Any plans I may have had to become a professional poker player were shattered as Adam watched me drink him in, smug and stretching like a cat in the sun. “You could at least be a little original.”

“Excuse me?” My dazzled senses beginning to return, I reassessed my snap judgment about exactly which supernatural power would spawn such a specimen.

“Every woman I’ve met since I was eight years old has gotten that same look on her face. It’s getting old, really.” He sniffed. “Predictable.”

Insert hushed whisper in the manner of a nature show voice-over: “slow to anger but brutal and vicious when provoked, the Magda steps forth, fangs barred.”

“Do you suppose that’s what turned you into a creep, or did genetics do it first?”

A smile slowly dawned across his face, casting an illumination so bright I thought my eyes would be singed from their sockets. “Oh Melissa, do I ever like your new friend.”