by I. T. Lucas
She had stumped him, and he didn’t know how to answer that.
Perhaps he wasn’t the right guy for the job. He was a Guardian, not a philosopher, and he wasn’t going to become one over the next two weeks. Especially since the retreat didn’t offer access to the internet, so he couldn’t even search for what smarter people than him thought about Anastasia’s claim.
“Is it really your way, though? Or is it Emmett’s?”
She shrugged. “We all need guides on our journey through life, and Emmett’s way resonated with me.”
As they reached the lodge, he stopped in front of the door. “Is the way to the residents’ compound through the lodge? I want to walk you home.”
“It is, but you don’t need to walk with me. It’s safe here.”
“I want to make sure that you get home without incident.” He pulled the door open and held it for her.
“The residents' area is restricted. You can’t come in there, but you can walk with me to the back door if you wish.”
What he wished was to take her hand and lead her to his room, but his wishes were irrelevant.
Too soon, they were on the other side of the lodge, and Anastasia stopped next to the door. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“It’s goodnight, but not goodbye.” He took her hand. “Tomorrow at the same time?”
“What for? You can go home, Sam. Tell my father that you saw me and that I’m perfectly fine.”
He shook his head. “First, I need to determine that you are indeed fine, and I haven’t yet. Secondly, I’m not ready to give up yet, either. I’m going to spend the night thinking about better arguments for tomorrow.”
That brought a smile to her lips. “I can’t wait to hear them.” Her tone was mocking, but he detected an undertone of hopefulness.
Was it possible that Anastasia wanted him to persuade her to leave? Or did she just want to see him again?
Reaching with his finger, Leon moved her scarf aside, exposing one rosy cheek. His hands were cold, so he resisted the urge to smooth his finger over that soft skin. Instead, he dipped his head and kissed her cheek. “Good night, Anastasia.”
Her breath hitched. “Good night, Sam.” She pulled the door open and rushed out into the freezing night.
For a long moment, he remained where she’d left him, watching her through the glass door until her white coat disappeared into the darkness.
What was it about that young woman that fascinated him so?
Was it her sexy little body? Her lush lips?
He wished the attraction was only physical, but it was more than that. She infuriated him, but also intrigued him and challenged him like no other female had ever done before.
She was contrary, stubborn, and prickly, but also smart, vulnerable, and kind of sweet in the few moments she’d let her guard down.
Could it be the famous affinity that immortals and Dormants felt for each other?
If the voices in Anastasia’s head were real, then she had a paranormal talent, which flagged her as a potential Dormant.
Perhaps that was what he needed to establish first?
26
Eleanor
“The girl is smart.” Eleanor folded her arms over her chest. “You can’t blame her for thinking that you’re full of crap.”
Leon’s lips twisted in a grimace. “Everything I told Anastasia was true.”
“Truth is not always the best way to achieve your goals.” She looked down her nose at Leon. “You should be used to that. You guys lie to women all the time.”
He glared at her. “I don’t lie unless I have to.”
“Right.” She felt like rolling her eyes but stifled the impulse. “Don’t tell me that you’ve never called a plain Jane beautiful, or told a woman that you’d call her with no intentions of ever doing that.”
Leaning against the desk, his legs stretched out in front of him, Peter watched their verbal match with an amused expression on his handsome face. “I’ve done that once or twice or a hundred.”
She nodded. “Thank you for being honest.”
Leon shook his head. “As difficult as it is for you two to believe, I don’t lie about anything other than who and what I am. That’s why I overreacted to Anastasia’s accusation.” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I got so angry that I almost blew the mission.”
“Look at it from her perspective.” Eleanor uncrossed her arms, leaned back on Leon’s bed, and propped herself on her elbows. “You have an ulterior motive to invent relatives with special abilities and occult talents she’s never heard about. Hell, even you, an immortal who lives and breathes the paranormal, wouldn’t have believed a talent like Jin’s existed if you hadn’t known her or seen proof of what she could do.”
“Eleanor is right,” Peter said. “You shouldn’t have brought up Jin and Mey’s abilities at all. Since mediums are common, it was okay to mention Nathalie, but you should have stopped there.”
“What’s done is done.” Leon waved a hand. “I can’t take it back, and I can’t thrall her to forget it either.”
Eleanor turned on her side. “She agreed to see you again tonight, so you can still salvage the situation. We can also fold and tell her daddy that we tried but she stubbornly refused to leave. Turner will get his money whether we get her out or not.”
“I’m sure he gets a bonus for successful retrieval.” Peter pushed off the desk and sat on the bed next to her. “He also has a reputation that he needs to protect. A failure would cost him future business.”
Eleanor shrugged. “That’s his problem, not ours. I’m not saying that we should give up right away, but we might have to eventually. Turner sent us because you guys can thrall, and I can compel. He knew that was the only way to extract Anastasia without too much of a fuss.”
“We still need to find out whether anything shady is going on with this cult,” Peter reminded her. “To thrall some answers from a staff member, I need to catch him or her alone. Except, we didn’t have any one-on-one consultations yesterday, and none are scheduled for today.”
“Thank you for the update, Captain Obvious.” She slid off the bed. “Let’s get some breakfast. I’m hungry.”
“Wait.” Peter lifted a hand. “I’m not done. I have an idea. Which staff member do we know that is alone most of the time?”
Standing by the door, Eleanor put her hands on her hips. “Just spit it out, Peter.”
“The nurse. I’m going to continue complaining about my upset stomach and ask to see her. If I find her alone, I will get information out of her.”
“I can come with you.”
“I can handle the nurse alone.”
Eleanor suspected that he wanted more than information from the nurse, but that was none of her business. Not only could Peter do whatever he wanted, but it would also provide a great cover for him. No one would wonder why he’d spent so long in the nurse’s office.
Regrettably, she couldn’t go snooping around on her own. Her compulsion wasn’t any good for questioning unless she had one of the guys remove the memory of the interrogation once she was done.
The truth was that they didn’t really need her, and she could go home to Greggory. So far, though, Peter and Leon seemed reluctant to let her go, and she couldn’t insist without looking like a quitter. She had something to prove on this mission, and she wasn’t going to achieve her objective by bailing on the guys, even if she was wasting her time.
She could, however, complain. “Fine. But I have nothing to do other than sitting through those boring lectures and listening to the nonsense they are teaching.”
Peter shrugged. “At least one of us needs to pretend that she’s here to learn a new way of life.”
“What are your plans for today?” Eleanor asked Leon as she opened the door.
“I’ll join you in the classroom, and at night, I’m going to help Anastasia figure out whether the voices she hears are real. I might bring her to my room, so the two of you should hang out some
where else.”
Checking that they were alone in the corridor, Eleanor leaned closer to Leon’s ear. “How exactly are you going to help her with the voices?”
“I don’t know yet. I need to talk to her about them and find out what she hears.”
“And you need to do it in your room?”
He shrugged. “In this place, taking a walk with a woman and just talking is more suspicious than hooking up. In my room, we can talk for hours, and no one is going to wonder what we are doing there.”
“Good point.” Eleanor clapped him on the back. “And good luck.”
He arched a brow. “I don’t plan to seduce Anastasia. She’s off-limits.”
“Right.”
The guy was such a straight arrow. The funny thing was that despite his many years on the planet, he apparently didn’t know much about women.
It was obvious that Anastasia had the hots for him.
Leon could have all the best intentions, but she was willing to bet that the girl would change his mind about that.
27
Lisa
“Syssi said not to use the front door but to go straight to the backyard.” Lisa pushed the side gate and held it open for her mom.
The place was teeming with immortals, all looking about the same age, and it was difficult to guess who were the young couples that Syssi had told her about.
“Ronja, darling.” Amanda took her mother’s elbow. “Come join Bridget and me on the couch. She’s dying to meet you.”
As the two walked away, Syssi threaded her arm through Lisa's. “I want to introduce you to the younger crowd.” She walked her over to a guy who looked no older than eighteen. “This is Roni, our super hacker, and this is Sylvia. She can tamper with electronic equipment with a thought.”
The woman looked older, about twenty-five, and Lisa wondered whether she was wrong about the two. What if Roni was ancient and Sylvia was the young one?
“Hi, I’m Lisa.” She offered her hand to the girl. “That’s a cool talent to have. Were you born with it?”
“My mother says that I started messing around with electronics when I was four, but I don’t remember that. My first memory is of sparks coming off the television, and my mom running to get me out of the house. She thought I’d set the place on fire.”
That still didn’t tell Lisa how old Sylvia was.
Roni put his arm on his girlfriend’s shoulders. “My mate is one of a kind. No other immortal can do what she does.”
“How about you? Is your hacking a paranormal talent?”
“Some think that it is, but it’s not. I’m just brilliant.”
Sylvia smiled apologetically. “And so modest.”
“I don’t believe in fake modesty.”
Next, Syssi introduced Lisa to Tessa and Jackson. The guy’s talent must have been super-hotness because Syssi hadn’t mentioned any other talents. Tessa, his girlfriend, looked like she was sixteen, and she had no special talent either.
“This is Wendy,” Syssi introduced her to a brown-haired girl with an easy smile. “And this is Vlad, her mate.”
The guy looked like a vampire, but the vibe Lisa sensed from him was friendly, even gentle.
“Do you have a special talent?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m a good shrouder. Most immortals can only shroud themselves and sometimes one more person, but I can shroud a room full of people.”
“He can also thrall a bunch of people at once,” his girlfriend added proudly. “Most immortals can’t do that either.”
And so it went, until Syssi had introduced her to everyone she hadn’t met before.
“I still don’t know how old everyone is. They all look the same age to me.”
“Roni, Jackson, Vlad, and Nick are all young. And so are Tessa, Sylvia, Wendy, and Sharon.”
“What about Ruth?”
“For an immortal, she’s considered young, but she’s probably your mom’s age.”
Lisa glanced at the woman and her much younger boyfriend. “I would have never guessed.”
Her eyes darting around the backyard, she looked once more for the only friend she’d made so far, but Parker hadn’t materialized since the last time she’d checked.
Instead, she saw Bowen sitting on the couch next to her mother, with his arm resting behind her along the back of the sofa. Amanda and the red-headed doctor were there as well, so it wasn’t as if they were cuddling somewhere in the corner, but Lisa had noticed the looks they cast at each other when they thought the other wasn’t looking.
It annoyed the crap out of her.
Her mother should be still mourning her father, not showing interest in a hot guy who looked half her age but wasn’t.
It was so confusing. No one seemed to care about age in the village.
“Where is Parker?” Lisa asked.
Syssi smiled knowingly. “Parker is inside. He’s helping Ella with the salads. Do you want me to take you to him?”
“I can find my way to the kitchen.”
Syssi walked over to the sliding doors and pulled them open. “Go ahead. It’s across the living room.”
“Thanks.”
Ella and Parker weren’t the only ones working in the kitchen. Kian’s butler was there as well, and another guy who looked like his fraternal twin.
“Hi.” She smiled at the brother and sister. “Can I help?”
“Yes.” Ella handed her a big salad bowl. “You can take it outside.” She handed another one to Parker. “Come back when you’re done.
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, boss.”
“You bet I am.” Ella flicked his butt with a dishtowel.
He didn’t seem to mind.
“It’s cool how well you two get along.” Lisa followed him out. “Was it always like that?”
From what he had told her, Ella had been to hell and back. He was probably cutting her some slack.
“Pretty much. Ella thinks that she’s my second mother, and I pretend like I don’t mind because she means well and because of what she’s been through. But sometimes she gets really annoying, and I tune her out, which annoys her even more.”
Holding the huge salad bowl with one hand, he slid the door open. “After you, my lady.”
She cast him an amused smile. “If you plan on rejoining young human society, you need to drop the gentlemanly style and omit the lady part.”
“I’ll try to remember that. I guess I’ve been hanging around Magnus and Merlin for too long.”
Lisa wanted to ask him about Merlin, who hadn’t come to visit yet, but there were more pressing issues she needed to talk to him about. “Have you decided about high school?”
“Not yet, but my mother and I are going to accompany you and your mom on the tour tomorrow. I’ve never seen the school, and I want to check it out before I give up my freedom.”
It hadn’t occurred to her before, but he was right. Freedom was the main advantage of being homeschooled, especially when the parents weren’t too involved.
Parker could study at his own pace, and no one was telling him when he could go to the bathroom or take a snack break. Perhaps she shouldn’t go back to school either?
Her mother would have an issue with that, but Parker’s example proved that it was possible to excel and even skip grades while studying at home.
But that wasn’t the only reason to go to high school. Socializing was important too. But then how was she supposed to do that if she couldn’t invite anyone over?
“Are there any clan members who live outside of the village?”
“Very few.” Parker opened the sliding door and waited for her to go in. “Why?”
“What if we want to throw a class party? Or just hang out with friends from school? We can’t invite anyone here, but if we have relatives in the city who will let us use their place, we could actually socialize with people.”
Parker’s eyes sparkled with interest. “The clan has apartment buildings in downtown Los Angeles. Maybe Kian would let u
s use one of them. With parental supervision, of course.”
“I doubt that he would do that for us.” She followed him to the kitchen. “Those apartments are probably rented out for a lot of money.”
“We can ask. The worst that could happen is that he says no, right?”
“I guess.” She cast him a sidelong glance. “Do you have the guts to ask him?”
“When the time comes, I will. Right now, I’m not even sure that I want to give up what I have here just to socialize with a bunch of snobs.”
“What about me?”
He arched a brow. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not a snob, and I could use a friend in the new school.”
His eyes softened. “That’s why I agreed to check it out tomorrow.”
28
Anastasia
“Hi, Gustav.” Ana pushed her full cart into the retreat’s laundry room.
“You are done early today.” He leaned back in his tattered swivel chair, causing the thing to groan in protest.
“I am.” She cast him a tired smile over her shoulder as she put her cleaning supplies away.
“Do you have plans for this afternoon?”
“Yeah. I’m helping Margaret with her workshop,” Ana lied.
At fifty-something, Gustav was one of the older community members, probably one of the founders, but instead of spending his time in Emmett’s inner circle of advisers, he chose to be in charge of the laundry room. The place also served as the staff coatroom, which was probably why he’d taken the job. He got to flirt with all the newbie females working as maids in the lodge.
The guy was a poster child for Safe Haven’s philosophy of free love. His main goal in life was to charm every female member into extending him an invitation.
Gustav pushed to his feet and walked over to her cart. “Let me help you with that.” He started unloading the dirty linens into one of the huge laundry machines. “What about tonight?”