Feeling my face heat as I realized that was pretty much exactly what I’d been doing, I only shook my head.
“I don’t know,” I said, a little less truthfully.
When the silence stretched, I cleared my throat, glancing around us once more. “They didn’t bring us menus,” I said.
“I ordered for us.”
I pursed my lips, still clutching the phone in my hands. “You did?”
He leaned deeper into his side of the booth, sighing one of those rumbling sighs of his. “I got you grilled salmon with asparagus, doc... medium rare... and a salad. Don’t worry, it wasn’t the Caesar. The apricot gorgonzola. I told them to skip the walnuts... and to put the dressing on the side. I also got us wine. Red for you... even though it will go horribly with the fish.”
My jaw loosened. “How the hell could you have possibly known––”
“Lucky guess?”
My mouth shut with a snap.
He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Don’t be alarmed, doc. It works better for our cover, does it not? That I seem to be the dutiful boyfriend?” His eyes fell to the ring on my finger. “Or perhaps the dutiful fiancé?”
I leaned closer to him, my hands flat on the table. My voice came out low, but even I heard the threat in it. “All right. I mean it. You’re going to talk, Black. Now. Or I’m not going anywhere with you tonight.” Seeing his smile begin, I cut him off. “...Anywhere else, okay? Moreover, if you keep lying to me, I’ll call Nick when I leave here, and tell him everything.”
His smile crept back. “Everything, Miriam?”
“Enough to get you picked up tonight... Quentin.”
He frowned, opening his mouth to speak.
Again, I didn’t give him the chance.
“...Since I’ve already given one of my oldest friends the first real reason to question my word... and my professional integrity for that matter, thanks to you... and I’m now contemplating lying to my boyfriend and soon-to-be husband, I think it’s time you told me the truth.”
Those gold eyes locked with mine. I saw genuine bewilderment there that time.
“The truth about what, Miriam?” he said.
I flinched again when he used my given name.
Then I could only stare at those oddly-opaque gold irises.
Briefly, I saw past the stillness there. I saw enough that I wondered if he wanted me to see it, or possibly even to see more of him. Flickers of emotion reached me through the cracks, despite his lack of facial expression––or maybe contrasting that lack to make those flickers more obvious. Realizing I was listening to him––listening hard, for the first time with anyone in as long as I could remember––I bit my lip, partly in frustration at how little I could hear.
I did feel things though. Not words, but...
Emotion.
A faint vulnerability. It reminded me of those glimmers of nervousness I got off him when he first invited me into his penthouse apartment. He felt strangely more open in those glimpses, but they were so fleeting, so intangible, I couldn’t be sure of anything I felt there, or even if he was planting those impressions on purpose to confuse me.
God, it really felt like...
“You’re wasting your time,” he said softly.
“Am I?” I retorted. “Because I can feel something.”
“Not enough,” he said. “And nothing relevant to what you seem to want to know.”
I stared at him, fighting to think if that felt true. I honestly couldn’t decide.
“Are you letting me feel those things?” I demanded.
“Which ones?” he said, reweaving his fingers on the table.
“Where it almost feels like you...” I stopped, feeling my face heat. Then I just said it. “It almost feels like you’re treating this as a date, Mr. Black,” I said, my voice curt.
“Are you asking if I’m attracted to you?”
“I’m asking if you’re trying to manipulate me,” I said, sharper. “Which isn’t the same thing. At all.”
“No, it isn’t,” he conceded.
Another silence fell between us.
“So are you letting me feel that? That...” My fingers tightened. “Whatever that is?”
“You know, doc,” he said lazily, his eyes giving me a more warning look. “It’s rude to try and read me when you could just ask.”
“I thought I was asking.”
“I have yet to hear a coherent question.”
“Are you deliberately trying to manipulate me right now?”
“Deliberately?” He raised an eyebrow, smiling faintly. “No.”
“But you can’t hear me, either?” I said, my frustration audible.
“Correct.”
“How can you know so much about me, then?”
He quirked his eyebrow once more, but didn’t answer.
“You’re not going to tell me?” I said.
“Clearly.”
“Why did you let yourself get arrested that morning?” I demanded.
He leaned back, unfolding his hands gracefully as he did, a kind of open-palmed shrug. “What makes you think I did, Miriam?”
I gave him a disparaging look, similar to the ones he’d given me a few times that day. “You can convince a victim’s family that they hired you last week, when they’d likely never heard of you before. You can order food without going near a waiter. But you can’t do whatever it is you do to convince a bunch of cops to let you go when they find you walking down the street covered in blood?”
“You’re making erroneous assumptions,” he said, exhaling a bit.
“Which ones?”
“It doesn’t work that way here,” he said. “It doesn’t work here how you’re implying. There are... limitations. Risks. I suspect they relate to living around so few of our kind, but all I have are theories at this point. It could be different rules in this dimension compared to our home world... even different Barrier properties. Either way, I can’t do a lot of the things you think I have done. Not here. Not in this dimension.”
Pausing, he gave me a more penetrating look.
“It’s interesting that you think I can, though, doc. Given that you say you don’t remember anything about how you got here.”
I stared at him. “I never said that.”
He dismissed me with a wave. “It is implied. You don’t belong here. You claim you do. Therefore, you don’t remember how you got here. Whether or not you believe the stories you were told as a child is utterly irrelevant.”
My jaw fell more. “What on Earth is that supposed to mean?”
“Which Earth?” he said, smiling again as he held up his hands. Probably seeing the anger building in my face, he turned his hands into more of a peace gesture. “Relax, doc. Just a little inter-dimensional humor. What I’m telling you is perfectly clear. I can’t do a lot of the things you are implying I can do. Not here. That’s all you need to understand right now.”
“What things?” I said. “With the waiter?”
“I spoke to the waiter by the door,” he said. “While you were giving up your coat.”
“And the Velaquez’s?”
“I had several in my staff talk to them.”
“To threaten them?”
He let out a more impatient-sounding sigh. “No. To offer free services if they were willing to testify that they’d hired me last week.”
“And they went for that?” I gave him a skeptical look. “They didn’t think you were just buying them off because you’d killed their daughter?”
“My people can be very convincing.”
I let out a disbelieving snort. “I’ll bet.” When his expression didn’t move, I sharpened my voice. “So you’re saying you couldn’t push those cops to ignore you yesterday morning?”
He gave a more noncommittal shrug. “I didn’t say that.”
“So you could then?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then why didn’t you?” I said through gritted teeth.
“Perhaps there
were too many witnesses.”
“At five in the morning?”
He held up his hands in another of those obvious, if odd, shrugs.
“Or maybe you let them arrest you,” I said. “Maybe you wanted them to arrest you.”
“Why on earth would I want that, Miriam?”
“You tell me... Quentin.”
There was a silence.
Then he sat all the way back in the leather booth, laying his arm on the top of the backrest. His eyes had darkened somewhat during our exchange, shifting to a more predatory slant. In the process of leaning back, he removed both hands from the top of the table, resting the one not on the backrest on the booth’s seat. I found myself watching the way he moved again, if only for the oddness of his mannerisms and how they flowed. Just another of the dozen or so things about him that were wrong, without my being able to explain to myself why they were wrong.
At least, not in a way that made sense.
Adjusting his shoulders and back in the clean but old-looking leather upholstery, he glanced around us at the scattering of other diners, although none of them appeared to be looking at us. Waiters had begun to light candles in the middle of each table as they walked up to take drink orders and dessert orders and to set down plates full of food and refill water and wine glasses. Thinking over everything I’d asked him, and how few of my questions he’d actually answered, I looked out at the sunset, wondering again what the hell I was even doing here.
When I glanced back at him, amusement had returned to his eyes.
“You know, I do intend to train you,” he said. “...Assuming you allow it. But I’m not sure this is the most efficient way to do it, Miriam.” He glanced around us. “Or the most discreet.”
“Just tell me the truth,” I said. “Please. You owe me that.”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” I said, sharper. “You do. I’ve come with you on this little jaunt. I’m trusting you... more or less.” I lowered my voice more as I leaned over the table towards him. “I’m at least trusting that you won’t murder me if I go with you tonight, Mr. Black... which is a lot more trust than anyone I know would place in you. I’ve taken your word that you aren’t really the wedding killer and that this isn’t all just some elaborate ruse to make me your next victim. Although the irony that I would have accompanied you while you cased your next killing floor certainly wouldn’t be lost on Nick... who might get a kick out of chiseling ‘IDIOT’ at the top of my headstone...”
Black blinked at that, his eyes showing real surprise.
“You still think that’s a possibility?” he said.
“Wouldn’t you? If you were me?”
His expression grew thoughtful.
Then he nodded, slowly.
“Yes. I suppose I would.” He studied my face, that predatory glint returning to his eyes, making them look more animal-like again. “Does that mean you aren’t coming with me tonight, doc? Because I confess, that would be... disappointing.”
I watched him look at me, seeing that warier look sharpen.
He still didn’t frighten me though.
Honestly, the realization almost frustrated me.
“I didn’t say that,” I said after another pause, even as I wondered why I wasn’t saying that. I glanced around us before I lowered my voice. “My point is, you say you want me to come... you seem to even mean it. So if I go with you, that makes this a favor, at least in part.”
He lifted his eyebrow. “Does it? I’m not sure I agree.”
“I don’t care if you agree. It’s a favor. And I want a favor in return.”
“Which is... ?”
“Information,” I said tersely. “Why did you let the police pick you up?”
When he didn’t answer right away, I fought with another jaw-clenching rush of anger, intense enough that it startled me, even as the more clinical side of my brain noted how unusual that was for me these days.
I didn’t usually get this emotional. Not anymore. Not even with Ian.
It also made me wonder if Black was doing that to me too, intentionally or not.
Remembering how I’d been as a child didn’t help, or how my father threatened me with a psychologist of my very own if I didn’t learn how to control my violent outbursts.
Zoe helped me with that, too. It was sort of ironic, given what I did for a living now.
I hadn’t thought about any of that in years, though.
I refocused on Black with an effort. “Tell me why you’re really doing all of this... and why you let yourself get picked up for murder, when I’m pretty sure you could have walked away unseen that morning. Even covered in blood.”
He frowned at me again.
That time, however, I could see him thinking on the other side of that frown.
Meanwhile, I was going over my previous words in my head, and realizing some of them sounded a lot more plausible out loud than they had when I’d just been thinking them.
Maybe this museum trip really was just an elaborate set up.
Maybe I really was the idiot Nick thought me to be, at least when it came to Black.
It had already been pointed out to me by both Nick and Black that I fit the wedding killer’s victim profile. Professional woman, twenties to early thirties. Athletic build. Long hair.
Engaged to be married.
Black seemed to feel at least a hint of where my head was going. Making that strange clicking sound, he leaned closer to me, until his gold eyes met mine from only a few inches away. I didn’t flinch back, but it took an effort, if only for the intensity that lived there.
“I’m not here to kill you, Miriam,” he murmured. “On the contrary, I would protect you with my life.”
I studied his expression from up close, a little thrown by the deadly seriousness there.
“...But I realize my saying so probably won’t reassure you,” he added, moving back somewhat. “Especially since I would likely say the same thing if I did intend to kill you.” He studied my eyes again, that frown touching the corners of his sculpted lips. Then he seemed to make up his mind. When he did, he finally leaned all the way back into the booth.
I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I held.
“I did let myself get picked up,” he said, blunt.
I flinched a third time. Then I pursed my lips.
“Why?” I said.
He exhaled, staring out the window at the now blood-red clouds. The sky was almost entirely dark apart from those splashes of color and an indigo and gold line at the level of the horizon. Looking back at me, he seemed to make up his mind a second time, maybe to go all the way with this. Or maybe only to convince me he’d decided that. I found myself thinking that, in addition to everything else, he might be skilled at throwing out emotions that he may or may not actually feel.
He smiled even as I thought it, right before he made another of those oddly graceful gestures with one hand, resting it back on top of the table.
“There were several reasons,” he said.
“Like what?”
“I was tracking this rogue, as I said. I’d just determined, more or less definitively, that he was murdering humans in a brutal way. And that he was ritualizing it.”
I narrowed my eyes, hearing the emotion in his voice for the first time when he spoke about the murders. He’d sounded genuinely angry.
Disgusted, at least.
“Because of that,” he continued, making another smooth gesture with his hand. “I wanted more information about where the cops were with the case. I considered pushing those beat cops to not see me,” he added more softly, glancing around us as if to make sure we weren’t being overheard. “...But I knew that was risky. Then I thought, why not let them bring me in? It might prove an interesting exercise. And it did.”
“Why not just show up in the waiting area to read the cops as they walked past?” I said. “Or at the corner coffee shop, for that matter? Why bother being arrested?”
He smiled, but it didn’t
touch his eyes.
Rather, they grew deadly serious again.
“One of the things I will apparently need to teach you, Miriam, is that it is very difficult to find a good reason to sit inside a police station and stare into space for numerous minutes, without responding when people attempt to speak with you,” he said.
He continued to study my face. Briefly, I got the strangest impression he saw himself as genuinely educating me just then, despite the sarcasm.
“...Also, as I have told you repeatedly now, it doesn’t work that way here. In-depth reads take considerably more work in this dimension, Miriam. It is much, much faster to do that work when you can guide the direction of your subject’s thoughts. Or, failing that, when you allow yourself to be interrogated about the very subject about which you require information.”
Leaning deeper into the booth, he sighed one of those purring sighs of his.
“You learn how to hide what you are, when you operate the kind of business I do,” he said. “I can’t hide behind the nonverbal language and deception detection training you can claim as a psychologist. Not nearly as convincingly, at least. Your gender and sexuality probably disarm a number of male humans as well... a valuable tactic, but not a reliable one.”
I felt my jaw harden, but said nothing, in part because I distinctly got the impression that he was trying to get a reaction out of me.
“Further,” he added after that pause. “...I’m tracking a rogue seer, as I said. I don’t know his exact relationship with the human authorities, but it’s not beyond the realm of imagination that he might have an interest in how the investigation is proceeding, particularly on a morning he’d just committed a crime. For all I knew, he had direct connections in the station. Which means, there is some chance he would pick up on me if I spied openly. The same risk pertained to tracking individual detectives. I don’t know what kinds of resources this seer has at his disposal. Or what kind of protection he has. Including psychic protection––”
“Seer?” I interrupted, staring at him. “You said that twice. That’s what you call them?”
“Yes.” His gaze flickered over me briefly. “That is what I call us, Miriam.”
“You said ‘he’ again?” I pressed.
“Statistical probability.”
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