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“A message for Den from an Eyar Marath. Shall I forward it?”

“Don’t,” said Jax. “It might be traced. Encrypt it, crystallize it, and bring it with you when you come. If that’s all right, Den?”

The Sullustan had gone incredibly pale and his dewlaps quivered. He said nothing, merely nodded.

Jax opened his mouth to ask if he was expecting bad news, but before he could say anything, Den slid from his chair and left the room. They heard him take the lift down into the studio.

A moment later, Dejah appeared in the broad entry to the living room. “The kitchen’s empty and I feel like cooking something. I’m going down to the marketplace,” she announced.

Jax was relieved to see her go, hoping that doing something creative might settle her nerves and make her more kindly disposed toward his decision that was not a decision.

sixteen

Jax met Laranth in a corner of the Grotto Room of Sil’s Place. Cut out of the ferrocrete substructure of the commercial block above it and fashioned to look like a natural cave, the sub-basement was the only quiet spot the cantina possessed.

Jax got there first, took a corner booth with a table made to look like a squat, flat-topped stalagmite, and ordered a daro root beer. Then he huddled over the pale golden beverage watching the fizz die out of it. It was not alcoholic, but looked as if it could be. He sipped it slowly, savoring the creamy flavor and wondering if Laranth would even show.

He felt oddly hollow inside, as if some part of him were absent—something he was used to having there. And he was uneasy.

Well, there were any number of reasons for unease: Inquisitors prowling Poloda Place, Kaj throwing Force tantrums, Haus leaning on them to expose Kaj, Sal leaning on them to plot murder. And then there was the seemingly trivial friction between Dejah and Laranth … and Dejah and Den … and Dejah and Rhinann. In fact, the only people who did not seem put off by the Zeltron were I-Five, Kaj, and Jax himself.

He was reminded suddenly of that alien roil of jealousy he’d felt in his gut when Dejah responded to Kaj’s neediness. That was just plain weird. Yes, she was attractive, but he had filtered out the chemical portion of that, hadn’t he?

He flashed back to the conversation he hadn’t quite had with Laranth at the studio—to her comment about their leave-taking in the medbay. There had been a moment in which he had looked into her eyes and known—known with the certainty of Force-enhanced intuition—that they were on the same wavelength and that deep beneath the differences in their species, their philosophies, their training, and their personalities, they were … what?

He shook his head. It had been such a fleeting sensation. The feeling that he knew her, completely and candidly, and that she knew him with the same stark clarity. That they were, somehow, two parts of a whole that was held together by the Force itself.

Then it had been gone, blotted out by their mutual fear.

And something else.

He recalled it as if it had been yesterday: walking out into the ward beyond the room in which Laranth lay; the filtered sunlight, the others waiting for him, Dejah’s sultry laughter, and the feeling that everything would be smoother, easier without the grim Twi’lek …

Something cold and insidious crawled up from the pit of Jax’s stomach. He took his hands from the chilled mug and sat back in the booth, staring at the play of light through the pale amber liquid. Had he been manipulated? Had he let himself be manipulated?

“You all right? You look as if your life just passed before your eyes.” Laranth, her own large, dark eyes watching his face, slid into the booth next to him.

He tightened his hold on the Force, pulling its fabric around him like a comforting cloak. Life passing before my eyes? Yeah, something like that. Something of his life had certainly passed by him so swiftly he had been unable to even so much as touch it before it was gone.

He turned to look at her, caught the honest concern in her eyes. Could he ever get that moment back? “I just