Once again I got the impression that Taryn knew I was leaving something out, but along with her psychic gifts had come the sort of discretion you usually didn’t expect from someone who was barely twenty-one, so she didn’t say anything. Kelsey was full of questions — wanted to know what Raphael’s ship looked like, what it felt like to be on another planet, whether we could see anything while we were traveling in that strange white light with its power to move people almost instantaneously from place to place.
I dutifully answered everything I could, but when she asked what the Reptilians looked like, I shook my head. “Sorry,” I told her. “That’s not the sort of thing I really want to talk about while I’m eating.”
There must have been something quelling in my tone, because she backed off and didn’t push the issue. Taryn looked thoughtful, though.
“It’s too bad,” she said quietly.
“Too bad what?”
“It’s too bad we’re always fighting with them,” she replied. She’d been holding a half-eaten biscuit, but she set it down then. “I mean, clearly they’re not the good guys, but they’re sentient beings, just like the rest of us. There’s got to be a way to communicate with them, make them see our side of things. There has to be a reason for what they’re doing. Has anyone tried to find out what that reason is?”
“I don’t think they’re big on talking,” I replied, my tone sarcastic…mostly because I doubted she would have said such a thing if she’d seen them in action. Taryn did tend to think the best of people — which surprised me, considering she could read minds — but even she really needed to draw the line at Reptilians. “And I’m pretty sure that if there was a way to negotiate with them peacefully, then my father’s people would have already tried it. I mean, they were pretty hands-off with the Reptilians for a long time, but it sounds as if even they’re getting fed up.”
She didn’t say anything, only fiddled with the stem of her glass, turning it this way and that. From her expression, I could tell she wanted to argue with me but wouldn’t, partly because she didn’t want to cause a scene, and partly because she knew she didn’t possess all the facts. Well, neither did I, but I knew enough to understand that the Reptilians weren’t the type of beings to be swayed from their path, once they’d started down it.
It would have been nice to think that if the rest of the galaxy could only come up with the right negotiating strategy, then maybe they’d have a chance of getting the Reptilians to behave themselves. Unfortunately, I had the impression that just about every diplomatic angle had been tried already, to no avail.
Kelsey broke the silence by commenting that she wished she knew what was going on with Grace and Logan. I wished for the same thing, because now it was getting close to noon, and still no sign of her or her boyfriend, nor of Raphael. Maybe that was a good thing. Over the years I’d gotten fairly good at hiding my emotions when necessary, just because having two quasi-psychic parents could be challenging, but having to conceal my reactions to Raphael when in the presence of such a large group of people might prove to be problematic.
I’d just opened my mouth to tell her the same thing I’d told my parents earlier, that it wasn’t quite noon yet, and besides, it was very possible that Raphael had given the number of twenty-four hours as an estimate, not an absolute, when a flash of bright light reflected off the dining room walls. Almost as one, we all turned toward the hallway.
Standing there were Grace and Logan. Only the two of them, and I had to push away my disappointment. Really, if I thought I’d have a difficult time keeping it together around Raphael, then it was better that he wasn’t there. Or so I tried to tell myself. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how much I really did want to see him again.
My aunt got up from the table at once and went to Logan and Grace. They were both looking a little pale, but otherwise it seemed Raphael had been right — Logan appeared more or less returned to his old self.
“I’m fine,” he said, just as Aunt Kara opened her mouth to speak. Grace was hanging on Logan’s arm, and she nodded.
“That medi-bay is pretty impressive. He doesn’t even have a scar.”
Part of me wanted to ask him to show us his chest and shoulder to prove it, but I figured that request probably wouldn’t go over too well with Grace.
“And once the healing process was done, Raphael sent us back here.”
“He could have come with you,” my aunt said. “We’ve got plenty of food.”
Although she was clearly tired, Grace still shot her mother a grin. “I don’t think Raphael is too much into the whole ‘family togetherness’ thing. Anyway, he made it sound as if he had someplace he needed to be.”
“Oh?” Lance asked. “Where?”
Grace’s mouth twitched. “Like he’d tell me. But I didn’t much care. I was just glad that Logan was all right. And now I think we’d both like some of that bacon.”
Her request made pretty much everyone chuckle, easing the tension in the room. Well, everyone’s tension except mine, I supposed. I felt fidgety, restless. So Raphael had someplace he needed to be? Maybe that was my signal to get out of there.
Easier said than done, unfortunately. It would look strange if I took off in the middle of the meal, especially since Logan and Grace had just shown up. Kara had set places for them, so it was a simple enough matter for them to sit down and play catch-up on their eating. In between bites, Logan offered some information — and berated himself several times for letting the Reptilians get the drop on him. Both my parents told him that was ridiculous, that there wasn’t anything he could have done to anticipate the attack, but I could tell Logan wasn’t convinced.
I agreed with them, although I doubted Logan would care all that much what I thought. He’d have to work through his perceived “failure,” which probably rankled all the more because he’d been created to be a soldier. I was sure Grace would probably point out that he hadn’t gotten all his training, since the Reptilians had bailed on the Sedona base before the training could take place, but the two of them would have to work that out on their own time.
Eventually the meal wound down enough that I thought it was safe to get up and take my plate to the kitchen. While some of the others were doing the same thing — over my aunt’s protests that she could manage just fine — I went over to my parents and murmured, “I’m going to head out. I’ll see you back at home after I run some errands.”
They didn’t look too thrilled by my defection, but neither of them tried to stop me, either. I waved goodbye to everyone, thanked Kara for the breakfast, and then got the hell out of there. Good thing, because even though people were clearing away their plates, afterward they went to get themselves more drinks — coffee or tea or mimosas — which signaled to me that they planned to hang out there for some time.
I slipped away, retrieved my coat from the rack in the entry, and headed out to my car. It started up once I was within a foot, the door opening and letting out a welcome waft of warm air. This time I did take manual control of the vehicle — after blowing into the built-in breathalyzer and confirming that the one mimosa I’d drunk wasn’t enough to put me at even half the legal blood-alcohol level. Then I guided the SUV back out to the highway, heading toward town, although right then I still wasn’t sure of my destination.
Once I reached uptown, I hesitated, but something didn’t feel right about stopping there. So I kept driving, negotiating the traffic circle where Highways 89A and 179 joined before heading south. Just as I was approaching the Tlaquepaque North shopping center, I felt it — a distinct tingle at the back of my neck.
Because of the center divider in the road, I couldn’t just pull into the parking lot. I had to head a little farther south to slingshot around the next traffic circle and come back to the shopping center, where I pulled into one of the few remaining parking spaces. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d decided to get in a little New Year’s Day shopping.
However, none of the shops appeare
d to be my destination. I passed them all by, wandering between the buildings and the bare sycamores on the property, my feet taking me along a path that led down toward Oak Creek. I’d walked here before, but not for some time. Still, even with the bare trees, it was a pretty spot, the creek flowing fast because of the runoff from the snowpack in Flagstaff.
I stopped near the bank of the creek and looked around. No one else appeared to have ventured down here, probably because the air was fairly chilly. I tucked the wool scarf I wore a little more securely into my coat and shoved my hands into my pockets. What the hell was I doing here? If I had any sense, I’d be up in one of the shops, trying to decide what I wanted to spend my Christmas money on.
A crunch of dead leaves made me turn.
Standing there in the middle of the path was Raphael.
CHAPTER SIX
My mouth went dry. The robes were gone, as was the jumpsuit I’d last seen him wearing. Now he had on a long wool coat over a dark suit and white dress shirt, although he wasn’t wearing a tie. Even so, the ensemble was about as out of place in casual Sedona as a pair of board shorts would have been on Wall Street.
Regardless, Raphael looked the most human I’d ever seen him — and the most amazing. Anyone else who’d seen him right then might not have mistaken him for a godlike alien, but definitely a vacationing actor or model.
Somehow I found my voice. “Hello, Raphael.”
A grave nod. “Callista.”
An awkward silence fell after that exchange. He seemed content to merely stand there and look at me, and I had to resist the impulse to reach up and smooth my hair, or touch a finger to my mouth to make sure the lip gloss I’d hastily reapplied after breakfast hadn’t gotten smeared out of place.
I cleared my throat. “So…I have a feeling that my impulse to come down here really wasn’t an impulse at all.”
“No.” Even though the day was cloudy, the light here was still bright enough that I was able to see his eyes clearly, their brown a few shades lighter than I had previously thought, striking against his black, black lashes. “I hope you don’t mind, but it was the simplest way to get you here so we could speak to one another.”
Did I mind? It was odd to think that he’d been exerting some kind of outside control over me, making me think that driving over here and then walking down to the creek had all been my idea. Harmless, I supposed, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much influence he really did have on me. “I don’t mind,” I said, then added, “as long as you don’t do it again.”
“I will not. After we have spoken, then I think many things will have changed.”
“About that….” My words trailed off as I tried to figure out the best way to proceed. Even standing this close, with only a few feet separating us, was enough to get my heart racing again. He seemed so much more real in that moment, with the heavy dark wool overcoat hanging from his broad shoulders and the warm-toned skin of his throat contrasting with the bright white of his shirt front. A normal man would probably have worn a scarf or muffler against the cold, but Raphael didn’t seem to have any need for one.
Damn, he was making it awfully hard for me to concentrate.
I found myself clearing my throat again. “You knew, didn’t you?”
He didn’t ask what it was that I thought he knew. Warm brown eyes fixed on mine, he said, “I had an idea. I don’t know how much your parents have told you about me, or about my abilities, but — ”
“They told me a few things,” I broke in. “Most of which you probably don’t want to hear.”
Surprisingly, he smiled. “I suppose that is to be expected. We did not exactly part on the best of terms. Anyhow, the main reason I was assigned to Persephone Oliver — although of course she was Persephone O’Brien back then — was that I have a keener sense than many of my people as to how the time streams may slip. It is not exactly what you would call precognition, but it did enable me to advise her with more accuracy than others might.”
“So you knew about” — I made a sort of half-hearted flapping gesture between the two of us — “this thing we both felt?”
“‘This thing.’ Yes, that.” He hesitated, finally glancing away from me and up at the bare trees that surrounded us, as if looking for enlightenment in the patterns their branches made against the gray sky. “That is to say, I didn’t know exactly what was approaching in my future, only that it would change my life irrevocably. And when I could see that the patterns were once more converging on this place, I guessed it must have something to do with your family. But when I came to your aunt’s house and saw you, I knew.”
“You did a pretty good job of hiding it.”
His left eyebrow took on an ironic tilt. “We were all rather occupied at the moment. But I knew this connection between us was not something I could avoid indefinitely.”
Not much liking the clinical tone he’d adopted, I crossed my arms. “So would you have preferred to avoid it if you could have?”
“That’s rather a loaded question.”
“Maybe. But, considering the things I’ve heard about you, one that I sort of needed to ask.”
From the way his face went still, I could tell he didn’t much like my reply. He looked as if he was about to say something else, but I heard more leaves crunching, followed by the high-pitched, excited voices of a couple of small children. A second later, a family with two kids who looked like they were maybe around four and six came down the path toward the creek. Their mother, who didn’t seem to be that much older than my cousin Grace, paused when she saw Raphael and me standing there, but the kids were already running toward the water, and the woman and her husband had to hurry to catch up with them.
So much for privacy. Gathering a breath, I went over to Raphael and took his hand in mine, saying in a carrying voice, “Come on, sweetie. I want to show you that one necklace I saw in the shop back there.”
Startled, he allowed himself to be led away. Once again I’d felt that pulsing heat go through my body the second I touched him, but this time around it seemed muted somehow. Maybe because we were both wearing gloves?
After we were out of eyeshot of the family, though, he looked down at me and said, “‘Sweetie’?”
“Well, I had to do something to get us out of there gracefully.” As much as I really didn’t want to, I let go of his hand. “Privacy is going to be a problem, you know. I live at home, and when you grow up in a town this small, everybody knows you.”
“I don’t think it will be as much of a problem as you think,” he replied, a small smile playing around his mouth.
And in the next second, we were standing on the bridge of his ship.
I gasped. Had there even been a blue-white light? I couldn’t recall for sure. One minute we’d been standing in the shelter of a wall overgrown with frost-brightened ivy, and the next we were here.
“You might want to warn a girl when you pull something like that,” I told him, my tone almost but not quite scolding.
“My apologies.” But he didn’t sound at all contrite.
I pulled my hand from his. Nothing seemed to have changed up here, except the planet filling the view-screen was a serene blue-green Earth, and not warm-toned Mars. “All right, it’s private. I’ll grant you that.”
And much warmer than the chilly forty-something degrees we’d been standing in a few minutes earlier. I drew off my gloves and stuck them in my coat pockets, then unbuttoned the coat and unwound the scarf at my throat.
“If you’ll come with me,” Raphael said, “I’ll take you someplace where it’s more comfortable to talk.”
That sounded…problematic…because being alone with him in more intimate surroundings might do a real number on my self-control. But we really did need to talk, and I’d much prefer doing so in a place where I could sit down and focus. That view of Earth was gorgeous, but also distracting.
“All right.”
He took me from the bridge and down the same corridor I’d traversed previou
sly, with its gleaming walls and oddly soothing banks of lights. If I was counting doors correctly, then we had already passed the room where we’d all been outfitted with jumpsuits for our rescue mission on Mars. It seemed as if we were going some distance, and I wondered why Raphael hadn’t simply energy-jumped us to our destination. Maybe he wanted me to become more familiar with the ship, but as far as I could tell, one section of hallway looked just about the same as any other.
At last we did come to a room where the door opened before us. Inside, I got a brief impression of cool shades of blue and green, seeming to mimic the planet we now orbited.
“Please,” Raphael said, indicating that I should go inside.
I went in and found myself in what looked like a lounge of some sort — chairs and couches were organized in the kind of groupings intended for conversation, although I wondered what the point was when the ship only had one crewman. But then I remembered how Raphael had said the ship could have a crew of up to eight. Even so, the vessel seemed awfully large for a crew that small.
“Some refreshment?” he asked. “I have several types of mineral water, or there are fruit juices — ”
“Water, please,” I said. “Whatever you think I’ll like best.” I noticed that he hadn’t mentioned anything alcoholic, which was probably just as well. I needed my wits about me. Anyway, did his people even drink? My father certainly did, but maybe that was because he’d spent decades here on Earth and had “gone native,” so to speak.
Raphael went over to a space on the wall that opened up to reveal a refrigeration unit. He extracted one of the bottles — which was tall and thin and squared off — then poured its contents into a set of matching glasses. Or at least, they looked like glasses, albeit ones with subtle glowing patterns apparently embedded into their material. They didn’t feel exactly like glass, or plastic, but something somewhere in between.
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