I shrugged out of my jacket, letting it fall to the floor.
“Enjoying the night life Paris has to offer?”
I spun around, striking a defensive stance.
A shadow stepped out of the darkness in the bathroom. “Miss Dawson.” He stepped into the light casting dawn into my room and bowed his head. I recognized him immediately. Hector—a council member serving with Charles, a country back and a lifetime ago. William told me he’d once been a great gladiator back in the Roman times and had he not been in the modern single-button suit, he looked just as I’d imagined a gladiator would. Short, stocky, cleft-chin, and eyes that had partaken in countless deaths.
“How did you find me? Why are you here?” I whispered, my panic making my voice come out in gasps. My thoughts took a dark turn. “Is William alright?”
He crossed his arms, resting his back on the wall behind him. “Charles found you, I simply got on the plane and cab to get here,” he said, eyeing my apartment like he wished he could have been anywhere but “here.” “I’m here to remind you of something,” he continued, counting off my questions on his fingers, before staring through me. “And I believe you lost your privilege of knowing how William is the day you walked away.”
His words penetrated my shell of anesthesia, stabbing my heart with a blunt knife. He was right, though. I’d lost the right to say his name aloud—let alone know how he was doing—the day I’d brought him a within a foot of death.
“Charles knows where I am?” I asked, looking out the window. I should have known he would, with his ability to locate any Immortal in the world, but the hate I’d seen in his eyes in the clearing had said he never cared to see me again, let alone keep tabs on me.
“Of course he does,” Hector answered. “Do you really think a Chancellor would let an Immortal who was capable of what you are—alone in the world—off his radar?”
It didn’t seem like he expected an answer from me, so I asked another question “What are you here to remind me of?”
There could be about a hundred things I suppose, but I wasn’t sure which one was the most offensive in their eyes at this juncture.
“You made quite a scene at that lovely place you are gainfully employed at.” He smiled, although it was not meant to be friendly.
“You heard about that already?” Twelve hours hadn’t passed yet. William had been right when he said Immortals were everywhere.
“Did you really assume we wouldn’t? Or that we’d do nothing?”
To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it yet.
He continued as my silence dragged on, perhaps not interested in my responses or excuses “May I remind you that being on your own is a luxury we’ve turned a blind eye on? After everything that happened”—his eyes held the reminders of the past—“we felt it would be best for you to be on your own, but after your public display of bone-crushing strength”—he smiled, this one for real—“we felt the need to intervene.”
“It appears the Council’s idea of intervening is breaking into a woman’s apartment and scaring the dickens out of her.”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Consider your message delivered,” I said, trying not to think about the home he’d be returning to. “I know the importance of our anonymity. It won’t happen again.”
He studied me until he looked convinced. “One more thing. You’ll have to complete your strength training, as well as go through talent training.”
“How’s that going to happen when the Alliance I’m a member of is half a world away? Are you expecting me to move back?” I wasn’t trying to be difficult; I just didn’t understand.
“And leave all this?” His voice was sarcastic as his eyes circled my apartment.
I crossed my arms and smirked in response.
“No need to change your present address. Given your strength instructor just so happens to be a Teleporter, Patrick will be able to complete both phases of your training without causing too much inconvenience to either of you.”
Obviously he hadn’t heard about Patrick’s and my last conversation and how he’d said he never wanted to see me again. I don’t think Patrick could have been any more inconvenienced had he been blindfolded and had his arms tied behind his back for the rest of eternity.
“Our Alliance tends to be more laid-back and had you been any other Immortal on your own, we wouldn’t have insisted the training be completed. But given your powerful gift, we feel that training is of the highest priority.”
I cleared my throat, wanting to ask if there’d been any retaliation from John’s Alliance due to a member of ours—namely, ME—killing one of theirs. “When will I be starting back up?” I asked, trying to distract myself.
“Approximately one week,” he answered, looking chagrined. “Since Patrick is still not aware of this recent development, it may take a little coaxing and time before he’s ready to play teacher to you again.”
So Hector was aware of the biting words Patrick and I’d exchanged.
“But a week at the latest.” He pushed off the wall and headed towards the door.
“I’m sorry I’ve caused so much trouble for everyone,” I whispered, not sure why I was apologizing to him—someone I’d never spoken with before—just needing to apologize to someone. “I’m trying to be better—to not make such a mess of things.”
He stopped in the doorway, not turning back to me. “A good friend of mine once told me that trying was the opposite of doing. He told me this when faced with an impossible mission. One that would consume decades of his life, one that would set him against his family and friends, and one that would likely never result in his desired outcome.”
I looked off to the side, letting his words absorb.
“This friend, as if fighting fate itself, somehow managed to achieve his mission.” He turned his head back and I could feel his eyes penetrating into me. “Don’t try to be a better Immortal, be a better Immortal.”
I cleared my throat and nodded, knowing he was right. Trying was just that: trying. I’d had my share of trying—with little success—it was time to do. “Whatever happened to your friend?”
“You should know,” he said, when my eyes met his. “The friend I speak of is William.”
I wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d just named Marcus Aurelius. Of course the impossible mission should have rung a chime—the shunning of family and friends, a decades-long search—but hearing Hector speak with such respect of William and knowing I was the one responsible for upending his happy ending made me want to ignite that deadly power on myself.
“Could you tell them hello for me?” I couldn’t imagine how ridiculous it would sound to the Haywards to hear Hector’s message of hello from me, but not having the strength to relay anything else, this would have to do.
Lifting the collar of his suit, Hector turned his head away from me. “With everything that’s happened, I really don’t think that would be a good idea. For your sake . . . for their sake, try to forget them.”
I exhaled through my nose. “‘Try?’” I quoted back to him. “Don’t you mean, ‘forget about them?’”
“Patrick was right.” I heard the amusement in his voice as he started down the stairs. “You are a quick learner.”
CHAPTER NINE
OLD FRIEND
“I’ll take a cosmo,” the geek-meets-chic guy leaning across the bar ordered, yelling above the music that was raging somehow louder than last night. It was Friday and Mikey had warned me the weekends were busy, but we must have a different meaning for the term “busy.” Mine was a steady flow of customers ordering drinks, adding to my apartment rent. His was bodies sardined to bursting, stacked on top of the shoulders of whoever was willing to oblige.
“Mikey,” I shouted over at him. “What’s a cosmo?”
He thrust the shot glasses at a couple of customers, snatching up their money, and marched over. He stared down the man I was helping. “You want a drink that’s more fruit than liquor, you get the hell out of my bar.”
My mouth dropped.
“We got whiskey, we got vodka,” Mikey snapped, counting off on his fingers. “We got tequila and we got beer.” He lunged at the guy who was adjusting his expensive-looking glasses that I doubted had a prescription in the lenses and laughed. “Now, sissy-boy, pick your poison.”
“I’ll just have some water,” glasses boy replied, his voice cracking.
The look that broke out on Mikey’s face made it seem he was experiencing a coronary. “Get the hell out of my bar. You’re a disgrace to the male species.”
To my surprise, “sissy-boy” turned and left, not another word or a single protest.
Despite his vulgarity, shallowness, and the fact he was a couple sandwiches short of a picnic, I wished I could take command of my life and tell all the annoyances to bug off like Mikey did.
Mikey turned to me, his face a tomb of grave. “Listen here, California. I know you’re new here, but don’t riddle me with any more questions about what we serve.” He stared me in the eyes. “Whiskey, vodka, tequila, beer.” He pushed off the bar and pointed at a row of girls in boobilicious tops. “Capiche?”
No room for confusion—I liked that. “Capiche,” I answered as he made his way to the beer taps.
I heard Mikey curse something in Italian and found him covered in a froth-like substance. “Hey California, the keg blew,” he said, reaching for a dishtowel to wipe his face. “Go roll me out another one?”
“I’ll be back in a jiff.” I ducked under the bar and shoved through the crowd, no measure of politeness possible if I wanted to get to the storage room in the next week.
I felt like a pin-ball being slapped, bounced, and thrown through the crowd, but was making steady progress. It would have been so much easier to use the strength I knew I possessed to cut through the crowd, but having promised Hector last night I would be a better Immortal (no more measly trying), I suffered through.
I had a few more bodies to shuffle through before I could get into Mikey’s liquor cache—as impressive as an exhibit at the Smithsonian—when a man swerved in front of me without warning, causing me to run smack into him.
“Excuse me,” I said, dodging to the right of him.
He lunged right with me, blocking my path again. “You’re anything but excused.” He eyed me in a way that made my skin crawl. He wasn’t a large man—I probably could have held my own against him when Mortal—but there was a cockiness in his eyes that was intimidating and a confidence in his stance that gave him his power.
“Nice line.” I narrowed my eyes and rolled to the left.
I felt his hand barely grip the flesh of my right butt-cheek before it was promptly removed.
The man squealed with pain.