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all.”
    Anna just smiled back at her husband. She didn’t think that was a task either of them were capable of. Colin called Luca as she finished packing to let him know where they’d decided to go for now, and as expected, Luca was excited by the prospect of hanging out in Boulder for a couple of months. Anna was pretty sure the only thing that would have excited him more was if they’d decided to go to Las Vegas. And she was not going to Vegas with Luca.
    Colin and Anna broke up the eighteen-hour drive by taking turns at the wheel, and Luca just kept buying more coffee and insisting he didn’t need to sleep. By the time they reached the Kansas border, Anna put her hands on her hips and eyed Luca seriously. “A car accident may not kill you, but you can still kill someone else, you know.”
    And Luca just smiled at her and told her he was going inside the gas station for more coffee. Colin raised a shoulder at her as if to say, “It’s Luca. What do you expect?”
    It was four in the morning when they pulled into Boulder and found a hotel, and Luca opened his car door and stretched lazily, smiling smugly at Anna. “Told you I’d be fine, my sweet girl.”
    And Anna thought about slapping him.
    The early afternoon sun creeping sneakily beneath the curtains of the hotel room woke Anna and she rolled onto her side to find Colin still sleeping. His golden brown hair fell loosely over his forehead and Anna tried to talk herself out of waking him up, but he was so beautiful. Sometimes, touching him was the only way to remind herself she was really still alive. Often, it was the only thing that ever made her feel alive still. She reached over to him and brushed the hair away from his forehead and his eyes opened drowsily.
    “I’d tell you good morning, but it’s probably far too late for that,” he smiled.
    “It’s almost three,” Anna moved closer to him and kissed him, and Colin’s hand slipped under her t-shirt, sending that same ripple of excitement and desire it did when they were eighteen year old newlyweds all those years ago. After the past four months, Anna thought about begging Colin to just stay in Boulder for a while where they had no reason to suspect they’d be fighting that many demons, and they could stay in bed and make love as often as they wanted, and football season was only days away. Anna liked the Broncos. Maybe they could even get tickets. And since she was thinking these things, Colin heard them, too.
    He stopped kissing her just long enough to look into Anna’s dark brown eyes and he smiled mischievously at her. “There’s a reason you’re bringing this up now , and not after we’ve had sex, isn’t there?” Anna tried to look innocent about it, even though it hadn’t been intentional. She couldn’t control random thoughts, but Colin was only teasing her. He wanted to stay in Boulder and spend his days just making love to his wife and going to football games, too.
    That evening, they met Luca at an Italian restaurant near their hotel, and before Anna sat down, she leaned over to smell their friend. He didn’t smell like he’d been smoking, but Luca knew what she was doing and just laughed at her. “No time for leisure. I found a local group here.”
    Colin and Anna both registered surprise. Neither of them had thought Boulder would be busy enough to need its own group of hunters. “Well, they work the Denver area, too,” Luca pointed out.
    “Ah, now that makes more sense. Though it’s a fifty minute drive. Why would they bother with this city?” Colin asked.
    “A couple just live here. Most live in Denver or the suburbs.”
    “How big is this group?” Anna asked.
    “Seventeen,” Luca answered, and he used such a grandiose tone of voice because he knew that would impress the hell out of them. And it did.
    “Holy shit,” Colin mumbled. “Is there some civil war or apocalypse or something in Denver we don’t know about?”
    Luca shook his head and waited to respond