by Devin Hanson
“Yes. I… things are fine. Listen, I know who your abductors are.”
“Do you? That was fast work. You’re not in danger?”
“I’m safe.”
“Good. Are you available for lunch?”
“You don’t want to hear who it was?”
“Not over the phone, no,” David’s voice was firm. “How does Italian sound?”
“Ah… sure?”
He rattled off an address a few blocks from where his hotel was. “Meet you there in an hour?”
I pulled my phone away from my ear long enough to check the time. It was nearly ten now, and traffic in downtown would be just starting to congest for the lunch hours. I put the phone back against my ear. “Wouldn’t that be more like brunch?”
“Bring an appetite,” he said, and hung up.
I sighed. I wasn’t particularly hungry after my breakfast at Ethan’s place, but I was curious about what David thought was a suitable lunch. So long as he was buying, I was more than willing to be open-minded.
I still wasn’t used to just how easy it was to bypass traffic on my scooter. I reached David’s restaurant a solid twenty minutes early. I found a spot to sit in the shade of a tree and got my phone out. I’d been burning with curiosity about where the other addresses on Lei’s list were located.
A few minutes on Google Maps confirmed what my original suspicions were. None of the addresses were anywhere near where my old apartment building had been. One was in Santa Monica, one in Pasadena, and the last in West Hollywood.
There wasn’t much I could do from my phone to investigate the apartments. I looked at them on Google’s street view, but from the street there wasn’t anything that made them stand out. If I wanted to find out what made those apartments special, I would have to go and visit them in person.
“There you are.”
I looked up and saw David standing on the sidewalk a few feet away. Beside him, her hair blindingly white in the noon sun, Ilyena looked anywhere but at me. “Oh. You didn’t say you were bringing her with you.” Even as I said it, I knew it was going to come out harsher than I intended. But still, the girl creeped me out.
“Is that a problem?” David frowned a little and pulled off his designer sunglasses.
“No!” I tried a smile. “Not at all. Just a comment. How are you, Ilyena?”
The hinn glanced up at me just enough for me to catch a flash of her piercingly blue eyes, then she was back to examining the sidewalk. “I’m much better today, thank you.”
David tucked his glasses away and sighed. “Let’s get our table then we can talk.”
I stood and followed David into the restaurant, falling into step beside Ilyena. Despite myself, I found I couldn’t pull my gaze away from her delicate features. She really was beautiful. Now that I saw her when she wasn’t in pain or drugged, I couldn’t help but admire her.
“Have you met many hinn before?” Ilyena asked quietly without looking up at me.
I jerked my gaze away and took a forced interest in the restaurant’s décor. “Not that I’m aware of. You, uh, make a beautiful fox.” I glanced over at Ilyena and caught her blushing. It abruptly occurred to me that my attempt at a compliment might actually have been an insult. “Sorry! I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, I was trying to say something nice.”
David chuckled and threw a look back at us but refrained from comment.
“It’s okay.” Ilyena had on a flannel shirt that must have belonged to David, along with stretchy yoga pants and fuzzy Ugg boots. She looked completely like a basic college freshman. She covered her face with her hands and the ends of the sleeves flopped over her fingertips. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“Here’s our table.” David pulled out a chair for Ilyena then did the same for me on the opposite side of the table. He sat himself on the end and accepted a menu from the waiter.
Ilyena kept her eyes pointed at her lap, but I could see the furious blushing on her cheeks.
Chagrined, I picked up my own menu and hid behind it. The words were all in Italian, and none of the dishes had prices on them. I looked at David and showed him my menu. “It’s all Italian.”
“Va bene, tradurrò,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. What’s good?”
“It is all excellent,” David grinned. “But this place is known for its hot sandwiches.”
I flipped through the menu until I reached the panini section. There weren’t any pictures, but I recognized enough words here and there to understand what the sandwiches were. I pointed out a spicy pastrami to David, then folded the menu and put it aside.
Ilyena seemed to be recovering from her embarrassment and she gave me a shy smile. “I think you have very pretty eyes,” she said. Her canines were only slightly longer than usual for a human, but they were tapered and sharp like fangs.
“Oh. Uh, thanks.” I smiled back at her uncertainly. “I’m surprised to see you up. It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since…” I trailed off.
“Yes.” She glanced at David, and he gave her a small nod. “Caradoc helped me with my recovery.”
“That is… nice of him.”
“It was part of my contract with him.”
David cleared his throat. “Ilyena, what would you like to eat?”
Ilyena asked him something in Russian, and they had a brief conversation, pointing at things in the menu.
Whenever people start talking in languages I don’t know, it always feels like I’m being intentionally excluded. That probably wasn’t the case here. Ilyena likely had a question about the food that she didn’t know the English words to express clearly. Still, I couldn’t ignore the feeling of pique.
I looked away, trying to find something in the restaurant to interest me while they talked. There were quite a few people in the restaurant despite it being before the more usual lunch hour, but not a single person looked in our direction. Other than the waiter coming by to take our orders from David, we might as well have been invisible.
“Alexandra, I find my curiosity to be too much to bear. You said you had news?”
I kept myself from rolling my eyes at David, but it was a near thing. Oh, now he wanted to know who had abducted him yesterday?
“Sure, but are you sure you want me to tell you now? Sorry, Ilyena, no offense.”
“I think she has a right to know who stabbed her,” David pointed out. “And she is entirely trustworthy.”
Put like that, I felt like an asshole. “Oh. Right.”
“Do not fear, Alex,” Ilyena said softly. I swallowed and met Ilyena’s eyes. She smiled gently and I braced myself for the drowning sensation but felt nothing other than my own embarrassment.
“Okay. There were four of them, at least that I saw. The marid you saw following you is named Dimitri; then there was a man named Frederick—”
“Human?” David asked
I paused. I didn’t actually know. I hadn’t thought to check while he had been unconscious. “I’m not sure. The third is definitely human, named Eric. He’s their driver. The fourth is Elaida Tindoras, Ethan’s girlfriend. Or, I should say, ex-girlfriend. She is houri, and a powerful one.”
David’s eyebrows went up. “You are certain of this?”
“Absolutely. I have photos of them meeting.”
“I would like to see those,” David requested.
“Sure. One sec.” I got my phone out and flipped through my recent pictures until I came to the closeup of Elaida. She was sneering at me over Ethan’s shoulder, and in the shot, you could see her pronounced canines. “Here’s Elaida.”
David looked at it for a moment, then passed my phone to Ilyena. I felt a sudden itchy nervousness. I hate it when people have their hands on my phone. I couldn’t remember what photo I had taken before Elaida.
Ilyena looked up at me, then swiped and a sudden bloom of color touched her cheeks. On her pale skin, her blushes showed up like fireworks, and I suddenly remembered what the photo was. I lunged ac
ross the table and snatched my phone back, knocking my water glass over in the process.
“Shit!” I fumbled the glass as it rolled and only succeeded in sending it spinning off the table. It hit the flagstones underfoot and shattered. I felt my face burning as I pushed back from the table, trying to avoid the water running off onto my lap.
David rose to assist or something just as I got my feet tangled in the chair legs. He caught my arm as I was on my way to the ground and my phone fell from my hand and clattered onto his plate, face up. The incriminating picture stared up at us, me in my old bathroom and naked as the day I was born, cupping one breast and the other bare.
I found my feet and grabbed up my phone again, hurriedly swiping back to Elaida. Only then did I look around the restaurant. Nobody was looking in our direction, nobody seemed to care about my clumsiness or near pratfall.
“Alex,” Ilyena said. I looked up at her and was a little surprised to see the intensity of her gaze. The fumbling shyness was gone and her blue eyes grabbed me. There was a sudden rushing in my ears and the restaurant seemed to gray out. I couldn’t look away from Ilyena’s eyes, but in my peripheral vision, David’s hand moving toward my shoulder had slowed to a crawl.
Then there was a rush and color surged back into the world around me. David caught my shoulder and he steadied me.
“All you all right, Alexandra?”
“Fine,” I gulped. My hands were shaking. I looked across the table at Ilyena and saw some of the confusion I was feeling mirrored on her face. Ilyena’s eyes were unfocused and she raised a hand to her chest with a soft groan. At first, I thought she was reaching toward her wound, but then she cupped her breast, the same way I had in my selfie. Her nipples stood out, visible under the flannel.
The distant look in Ilyena’s eyes faded. She snapped out of whatever trance she had fallen into and stared back at me, before flushing and quickly folding her arms across her chest. “I’m sorry,” she gasped.
David looked back and forth between us before bending over to right my chair. He steered me into it and returned to his own seat. A moment later, a waitress was bending over my shoulder, mopping at the spilled water with a towel. The intrusion gave both Ilyena and I a chance to recover ourselves. I wouldn’t meet Ilyena’s gaze, but I did see her keep sneaking looks at me.
When the waiter was gone, David cleared his throat. “I take it you got a good look this time, Ilyena?”
Ilyena buried her face in her hands. “Prosti! I swiped the wrong way, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“That’s not what I meant,” David said, barely keeping his laughter from bursting out. “You saw her paths?”
“Yes. No! I mean, some… possibilities.”
I caught her eyes and saw the curiosity and eagerness there. “Something good, I hope?”
Ilyena bit her lip and nodded.
“Well!” David grinned at us. “If I had known this meeting was going to go like this, I would have ordered room service.”
Ilyena buried her face in her hands again.
I cleared my throat. “We were discussing serious things,” I said pointedly.
“Yes. Elaida.” The humor faded from David’s face. “She was the one questioning me. Did Ethan know?”
“Not before we went into that soundstage to get you. He was horrified that she had been using him to get to you.”
David looked at me a long moment before nodding once. “Very well. You were not surprised, though.”
“No. I had followed Elaida the day before, which is when I took the pictures of the rest of her crew.” I got the photos of the meeting in Barnsdall Park pulled up and turned my phone around so David and Ilyena could see. I kept ahold of my phone this time, and neither of them made any move to take it from me.
I narrated the photos as I swiped, the right way this time, and told the story of having Eric as my Uber driver twice in a row, all the way forward to following them into the cathedral. I didn’t say anything about what had happened when I tried to enter the church grounds, though, just glossed over it and hurried forward to following my phone to the soundstage.
David frowned throughout my story, nodding absently every now and then. Ilyena, though, listened raptly, her eyes wide, making little gasping noises at the exciting parts.
Our food came, and I discovered that I was quite hungry. David picked at his grilled chicken salad, lost in thought. My pastrami was piping hot, drooling melted cheese, and the spicy pepper garnish made my mouth burn. It was delicious. Ilyena had some sort of steak sandwich, with the meat cooked to a bloody rare.
“We should discuss our next move,” David announced abruptly.
I looked up, my mouth full of pastrami. “Hmm?”
“We have the names of the ones who intend to steal from me. Now we must act to prevent them from carrying out their intentions.”
I shot a glance across the table at Ilyena. She took another bite of her sandwich. “I’m not a killer,” I objected.
David frowned. “I did not suggest you kill them, Alexandra. If that was my intent, I would have other people more suited to that task take over. No, I would prefer a subtler approach. They believe stealing from me would solve a problem. What is the easiest way to solve a problem?”
I put my sandwich down and wiped some pastrami juice from my hand. “I don’t know, David.”
“A problem is a balance of forces,” he explained. He held up his hands and balled them into fists. “If I push equally, the problem remains.” He demonstrated, pushing his fists together. “But remove, or lessen, one side and the equilibrium of force breaks apart. The problem disappears.”
Well, that was a reasonable explanation, but did nothing to explain how to make Elaida go away. “I don’t understand how that helps.”
“We must understand the motives behind the thieves. Only then can we remove an element of their problem and cause them to abandon their quest.”
“You want me to solve Elaida’s problem for her?” I asked dubiously.
“Put simply, yes.”
“I… see.”
I looked over at Ilyena to see what her reaction to this revelation was. She was looking at me, her head tilted to one side, licking a trail of bloody juice from her wrist. Her tongue was long and pink, probably half again as long as a normal human’s.
“What?” she asked.
“How exactly am I supposed to do that?” I demanded, looking back to David. “Elaida hates me. There is no way she will tell me anything, let alone ask me to solve her problems.”
“That is where Ilyena comes in.” David tilted his head toward the hinn.
“I am sybil,” she said. It wasn’t exactly pride in her voice, more like a wearied acceptance of her gift, but there was also the underlying acknowledgement that what she could do was useful.
“She sees paths,” David clarified. “She will see what path you must take to gain Elaida’s trust.”
“You can do that?” I asked.
“Oh yes.” She shuddered a little and her eyes took on a distant look. “It is not always pleasant.”
“The path you saw for me a few minutes ago, was that how I would meet with Elaida?”
“Nyet.” Ilyena blushed furiously.
David’s phone rang and he glanced down at the screen before pushing back his chair. “I’m afraid our meal must be cut short.”
Ilyena pushed back from the table and started to stand.
“No, you two can stay.” David took out his wallet and wafted a couple crisp bills onto the table. “Finish your meal. Alexandra, work with Ilyena, see if a path can be found to Elaida. If not, more direct action will have to be taken.”
“Caradoc…” Ilyena whimpered softly, her face suddenly drawn with fear.
“You will be perfectly safe with Alexandra, my dear. Ms. Ascher, take care of Ilyena for me, please.”
“Uh, of course,” I agreed.
Awkwardly I sat back down again and watched David weave his way through the tables and leave
the restaurant, his phone pressed against his ear. As soon as he left, I became aware of the noise of the restaurant again and the familiar glances in my direction. Whatever influence David had had over our privacy was gone.
Ilyena was staring after David with zero interest in the remainder of her sandwich.
“Are you done eating?” I asked. Without David here, I felt underdressed amid the business suits and blouses around us. My pastrami sandwich felt like a lump in my stomach. Whatever appetite I had had was gone.
“Da.”
I glanced over at the money David had left. Apparently lunch in this place was worth several hundred dollars. Or maybe David was just a generous tipper.
Our waitress appeared. “Can I get you girls anything else?”
“No, I think we’re done.”
Ilyena nodded her agreement, and we got up and left the restaurant. Outside, the bright bustle of the city washed around us and Ilyena stepped up next to me, close enough that I could smell the conditioner she had used in her hair.
“Um, hey.” I awkwardly patted her on the shoulder as she leaned in and pressed her face in the hollow of my neck. I could feel her breath on my skin and her bushy hair tickled my nose. “Are you all right?”
“Mmm,” she said. “Yes.”
Now what? I didn’t want to push her away, but I wasn’t sure how to react. Was this a hinn thing? Or did she just feel the need to be hugged right then? Well, I wasn’t squeamish about physical contact. I wrapped my arm more firmly about her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze.
“You’ll be fine,” I mumbled. “I’ve got your back.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ve seen it.”
Oh, well, that was reassuring. Still, I couldn’t shake the memory of the look of fear on her face when she had realized David was leaving us on our own. “Ilyena.”
She pulled back enough to look up at me. In the bright sunlight, her eyes were like liquid crystals, as blue as the sky overhead. “Yes, Alex?”
“What are we doing?”
Ilyena blinked up at me, confused for a moment, then chagrin made her drop her gaze and her cheeks flushed. She took a measured step away from me and stuffed her hands into the oversized pockets of her flannel. Muttered Russian tumbled out, then she took a deep breath. “Forgive me, Alex.”