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had a chance to touch Lala.
    Her skin paled. Kiev wished he could spare her the pain of her grief. She swallowed, gathering up the long layers of her scarf-dress. “Then we must hurry to our guest. Fate offers a second chance to only a few.”
    “The alien is dead.” Softening his harsh tone, Kiev sighed. Lala took her visions seriously, and so did the people, for good reason. While the scientist in him had balked, he’d still done a study and calculated her at ninety-six per cent accuracy for the wise woman’s visions. The other four per cent could be a margin error for faulty interpretation. “I do not know whether it is even human, much less the woman from the stars that you predicted. It might have scales and tentacles instead of arms.” He shook his head, frustrated with his own thoughts. Visions, psychic ability, and conferring with the gods had no real basis in science. He regretted the words instantly—now spoken, they couldn’t be taken back.
    He tensed, waiting for the expressions of old friends and family that said he’d revealed too much of what he had become. The host. Guardian of the Past. He was the representative of the technology that had failed their planet long ago. His people both feared and revered him.
    Kiev could have laughed. If only they knew the real truth of it.
    “I would pray for human, my son.” Lala brushed by him, taking her cloak from the hook by the door. She slanted a long glance over her shoulder. Her soft, sweet smile said that she knew who and what he was. And accepted him. “Because it would be unfortunate for my future grandchildren to have to slither about like garden snakes.”

Chapter Two
    Distractions loom ahead. Don’t lose sight of the end goal.
    Love on the rocks. The future of a relationship will be endangered if you can’t let go of old hurts.
    Sasha regained consciousness slowly. She held herself still against the pain she knew would strike again.
    “Are you going to just lie there? Because we do not have eternity.”
    Sasha’s eyes flew open at the rich, accented voice and she saw…feet. Translucent feet that belonged to an equally see-through, uniformed woman. Sasha frowned. At least, she thought the high-necked unitard was utilitarian enough to be a uniform.
    Easing herself up was surprisingly painless and she cast her gaze beyond her greeter to the ghostly crowd watching her.
    She sighed and spoke out loud, testing her abilities.
    “Well, damn. I’d kind of hoped I’d live through that.” Standing, Sasha nodded a polite hello at the crowd and brought her hand up to inspect her own ghostliness. Sure enough, her form lacked its usual solidity. “My horoscope was looking up until this mess.”
    Too bad she’d bit the big one. That was decidedly unlucky. Maybe she could haunt that ass, Hobbs, for tossing her off her own ship. Though technically she’d jumped, Sasha was sure turning traitor was a big, black mark on Hobbs’s karma. She certainly wasn’t counting her death as a suicide.
    “Ahem,” the ghost in the unitard said.
    “Aren’t they supposed to bring us the brightest and bravest?” sniped one of the ghost women. “She doesn’t look very smart.”
    Sasha frowned. Great, she was stuck in alien heaven—she supposed it could be hell—with a bunch of biddies.
    Unitard Woman crossed her arms over her chest and shot a silencing glare at the heckler. Even in death, Unitard’s titties were stupendous. Sasha noted that her own miserly assets would apparently follow her to death and beyond. The woman even had amazing hair, dark and straight. Sasha bet the locks were silky smooth without one frizzy end. A bit uncomfortable with the direction her thoughts were leading, she scanned over the crowd of onlookers. Not one of them had the same intensity or beauty as the woman before her.
    Death’s door-greeter cleared her throat again. “Time is running out, so pay attention, miss.”
    “Captain Sasha Tran of Fortune ,” she introduced herself,