by I. T. Lucas
“We need to talk to Mark. Everything else is guesswork.” Syssi turned to Nathalie. “Is there a way you can summon him?”
Nathalie cringed. “I used to be able to do that. But I’m out of practice.”
“Could you at least give it a try?” Syssi pleaded. “This is important.”
“I’ll do it tonight. I need to mentally prepare for it.”
“Thank you.”
Kian didn’t like that Syssi was pressuring Nathalie into doing something that she was obviously reluctant to do, especially since he was convinced that the voice he’d heard had been his own, and Kalugal’s was made up. But since that was such atypical behavior for Syssi, she must be convinced that it was needed.
Bottom line, Kian trusted his wife’s intuition much more than his own, and he was itching to call Sari and ask her if everything was okay. Perhaps he would do it later from the privacy of his home.
If Kalugal was indeed pretending to believe in the ghost idea, he was probably laughing on the inside and thinking that Kian was gullible and was allowing himself to get influenced by supposed ghosts and his wife’s premonitions.
While he didn’t dismiss those things, Kian was careful not to base his decisions on them. Prepping the lots had been a good business decision that in the long run would save the clan a lot of money, and the voice in his head had most likely been his own.
34
Edna
“I need to escort Jacki and Kalugal back to the house.” Rufsur offered Edna a hand up. “If you want, you can come with me, or you can go home, and I’ll join you later.”
“I’ll come with you.”
His handsome face lit up with a big smile. “I hoped you would say that.” He leaned to whisper in her ear, “I want to spend every moment I can with you.”
As Rufsur wrapped his arm around her waist, Edna wondered why he felt the need to accompany his boss home. Did he fear a sudden mental attack by the mysterious ghost?
She stifled a chuckle.
Edna hadn’t mentioned the voice in her own head, and after what Nathalie had said, she was glad about it. Kalugal and Kian’s experience could have been easily explained as their own inner musings, but she had a harder time dismissing hers as her alter ego.
Why would her own inner voice sound male? And what about that ‘you said it, girl’? Her subconscious was a cheerleader? That wasn’t the way Edna talked.
Could it have been Robbie’s ghost?
After his death, she’d prayed to hear from him in her dreams, and she had, but those dreams had been manufactured from her memories of him. In some of them, they’d built a life together, and in others, she’d found out over and over again about his death.
It had taken many years until the dreams had stopped tormenting her, but even before that, Edna had never heard him talking in her head while she was awake.
Besides, she would have recognized his accent and speech pattern. The voice in her head had sounded American.
Robbie, if this is you in my head, tell me something that only you would know.
Her answer was a resounding silence.
Yeah, that was what she’d expected. Evidently, her inner voice was a male, who was also a romantic and an optimist. Edna wondered what Vanessa would make of it. Perhaps she had a masculine side with feminine undertones that needed to express itself?
Edna suppressed a snort. Given the way she usually dressed, that would probably be Vanessa’s conclusion. Her business suits were made for women, but they were shapeless, and the colors she picked were dark and conservative. She also didn’t try to soften the look with makeup or a nice hairdo to make it more feminine.
Nevertheless, Edna had never felt masculine and had never wanted to be perceived as a man. Her goal had been to take gender out of the equation. Even in today’s world, female professionals had to work twice as hard as their male colleagues to prove themselves.
Still, even as a young woman, Edna had never been a girly girl. She’d had no interest in pretty dresses or other frivolities that girls her age had obsessed about. But she’d been all woman with Robbie, and she’d loved that he was hard while she was soft, that he was tall while she was smaller, and all the other ways in which his masculinity contrasted with her femininity.
Gender equality was a goal worth fighting for, and the clan had been striving for it since its very beginning, but blurring the distinctions between men and women was not the same as equality. It was forcing both genders to give up on their individualism and conform to the same ill-fitting mold.
It was a bit hypocritical of her to oppose something that she did herself, but there was a difference between choosing to appear genderless for professional reasons and giving up her gender identity altogether.
Life would be very boring without the yin and yang of dualism. The seemingly opposite forces of the masculine and the feminine were not at war. They were complementary and interconnected, and their dance was the spice of life.
“We are here.” Rufsur’s hand tightened on her shoulder.
“Oh.” Edna lifted her eyes. Apparently, while she’d been deep in thought, their group had reached the house.
As Jacki, Kalugal, and the others climbed the steps to the front porch, Rufsur and Edna stayed on the path.
“If you don’t mind,” Rufsur said. “Edna and I are leaving.”
“Of course.” Jacki smiled knowingly. “Have fun.”
Edna expected either Jay or Theo to follow her and Rufsur, but the two assumed their regular positions on the front porch bench.
“Are you coming back here later?” Kalugal asked.
Rufsur shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
His boss nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
Kalugal didn’t look too happy about their relationship, and come to think of it, neither did Kian, but so far, their bosses hadn’t said anything to that effect. She wondered whether they were waiting for what they thought of as a fling to end.
From their perspective, they were right.
On the face of things, it looked as if she and Rufsur had nothing in common and their relationship was not going to last. But the truth was that under different circumstances, it could have. Oddly, their pairing worked despite their differences, or perhaps because of them.
A man who was just like her would have bored her, but the question was whether a woman who was just like Rufsur wouldn’t have matched him better.
“You’ve been awfully quiet on the way.” Rufsur gave her shoulder a little squeeze. “What’s on your mind?”
She wasn’t going to bring up her musings about their compatibility, or Robbie, or her plans to go see a shrink on Monday.
Talking about Kalugal and Kian was a safer topic. “I don’t think that our bosses approve of our relationship. I wonder what’s their agenda. Are they waiting for us to break up on our own? And if we don’t, will they intervene and demand it?”
“Not likely. They might not be happy about it, but there isn’t much they can do. Neither of them is a dictator, and ultimately, it’s up to us to decide how we want to proceed.”
“How do you see our future?”
He pulled her closer against his side. “Kalugal’s talk about a federation has given me food for thought, but I’m not smart enough to figure out how it could work for us.” He looked down at her. “But you are a clever woman. If you put that formidable mind of yours to work, I’m sure you can come up with something.”
She chuckled. “It’s not going to work, Rufsur.”
He raised a brow. “Are you giving up already? I thought that you were more tenacious than that.”
“I’m referring to you throwing an intellectual challenge at me, hoping that I’ll take the bait.”
“I know you will. You just can’t help it.” He smirked. “What if I come up with a solution before you do? Where is your competitiveness?”
She shook her head. “I’m amazed at how well you know me after such a short time, especially since mo
st of it has been spent in bed.”
”I’m a good judge of character.”
“So am I.”
“Then you should know that Kalugal is a tremendous asset, and that having him as part of your community would strengthen it, not weaken it. The problem is that he is opposed to it because he likes his independence and he doesn’t want Kian’s nose in his business. And Kian doesn’t want it because he doesn’t trust Kalugal and his men. It’s a damn conundrum that I don’t know how to solve, but I just know in my bones that a solution is possible. If we find a way to form a federation of sorts, and everyone lives in the same place, the whole mess about who is going to live where will become a non-issue.”
Edna sighed. “What you are suggesting would require a major paradigm shift in everyone’s thinking. Things like that can’t happen overnight. Sometimes they take centuries. Just look at Europe, or even the United States. It is both a federation of states and a nation, but it took a bloody war to get there.”
“Our situation is not the same. The north and the south had to overcome a major conflict of interest, and their paradigm shift couldn’t have happened without a war. Only when they realized that they had more to lose by clinging to their old ways than abandoning them were they willing to sit at the negotiation table and reach an agreement. The clan has no conflict with us, and we don’t have one with you. We never did. The only thing we need to overcome is mistrust. The way I see it, with the right organizational structure, both sides will benefit from combining forces.”
35
Vlad
“You make the best steak, Roni.” Vlad rubbed his stomach. “I haven’t eaten that well in a long while.” He chuckled. “It’s good that Bowen and Leon are not here. They would have been offended. Both think that they are barbecue masters.”
“They don’t have the right tools.” Roni patted his egg-shaped grill. “This baby makes all the difference.”
Vlad glanced at the sliding door and the living room beyond. After it had gotten hot outside, the ladies had taken their plates into the dining room to enjoy their meal in an air-conditioned space.
Out of solidarity with Roni, Vlad and Jackson stayed in the backyard to keep him company and to wolf down the remaining steaks.
It was a good opportunity to talk with Roni about searching for Wendy’s mom, but Vlad still wasn’t sure that he should. The problem was that he knew his reason for doing so was selfish, and all the excuses he’d come up with to justify it morally were kind of lame.
If Wendy’s mom was still alive and they found her, they could bring her into the village. She was a confirmed Dormant, and since she’d had Wendy at a young age, she wasn’t too old to transition.
That would be wonderful for Wendy, as well as for some lucky male whose mate she could become. If the mom was half as pretty as the daughter, she would be a great catch.
Even if she was indeed a drug addict, and Wendy’s father hadn’t invented the story to make her seem like a bad person, they could help her with rehab. Many of the trafficking victims that the clan was rescuing were addicted to drugs when they were brought to the sanctuary, and Vanessa had a team of therapists who helped them. Wendy’s mom could start there.
“Do you have a stomachache?” Jackson asked.
“No, why?”
“You’re grimacing.’
“It wasn’t about my stomach.” Vlad patted his belly. “It’s very happy at the moment. I was thinking about Wendy’s mom.” He glanced at the sliding door again, verifying that it was closed, then turned to Roni. “I’ve been thinking about asking you to help us find her.”
Roni paused scrubbing the grill. “Is she missing?”
Vlad nodded. “According to Wendy’s father, who is an abusive jerk, she left when Wendy was a baby because she was addicted to drugs. I have a bad feeling that it was a cover-up story and that he’d murdered the mom. But in case he didn’t, if we find her, she can join the clan. She had Wendy at nineteen, the same age Wendy is now, so she should be only thirty-eight. She could still transition.”
“Not without risk, but yeah.” Roni resumed the scrubbing. “Give me any information you have on her, and I’ll do some snooping. Does Wendy have a picture of her mom?”
“No. But I thought that maybe we could access her high school yearbook and get it from there. Maybe Dalhu could draw an age-adjusted portrait based on that?”
“Dalhu can’t do that, but Tim can.” Roni dipped his brush in a cleaning solution and went back to scrubbing. “He’s a forensic artist from my old office, and he charges a lot for his services, but if anyone can draw a portrait that a facial recognition software can identify, it’s him.”
“No problem. I have the money.”
Roni shrugged. “But I can also use a computer application that takes a photo and ages it. Maybe it will do the trick even better. Tim’s method is asking someone who knew the person a million questions, and he draws the portrait from their memories. Wendy probably doesn’t remember her mother.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Give me the mom’s name and anything else you have on her.”
“I’m afraid that it’s not much.” Vlad pulled out his phone. “I don’t want Wendy to know that I’m looking for her mom, so I can’t ask her too many questions without her becoming suspicious. If we find out that her mom is dead, I’d rather not tell her. Besides, she doesn’t know much. All I have are the mom’s married name and her maiden name, provided that she really was Simmons’s sister, and he didn’t make it up. I’ll text it to you.”
“I’ll do what I can.” Roni dropped the brush in the solution bucket and examined his work. “Good as new.”
“Do you always clean your grill so meticulously?” Jackson asked.
“Of course. It’s my baby.”
Vlad chuckled. “I can just imagine how you’re going to treat a real baby. It will have the cleanest bottom.”
Roni picked up the bucket with the cleaning solution and started walking toward the house. “No babies for Sylvia and me. We are not jumping on Merlin’s loony wagon anytime soon.”
“Why loony?” Jackson arched a brow. “It gives many couples hope.”
“First of all, Sylvia and I are too young, and secondly, I think that Merlin is a quack. His potions are just snake oil.”
Vlad hoped that Roni was wrong, but he had been suspicious as well. Merlin had delivered a contraceptive potion less than an hour after Vlad had mentioned that he and Wendy needed protection. Since no one else in the village used birth control, Merlin had no reason to formulate it ahead of time. How had he done it so quickly?
Then again, Merlin used to treat humans, and he might have developed the potion for his patients a long time before contraceptives were invented.
Nevertheless, even if Merlin’s stuff worked, it tasted awful, and they should visit Bridget and get a prescription for proper birth-control medication.
36
Eleanor
“Thank you for lunch, Bella. It was very kind of you to invite me.”
“Nonsense, dear. It’s the least I can do for you after all the hard work you are putting in. It never occurred to me to scan all of Edgar’s handwritten notes onto digital files. In time, the paper would have faded and crumbled. This way, his work will be preserved.”
Eleanor nodded with a fake sad smile. “His life-project shouldn’t accumulate dust in the basement or a self-storage facility. It would be a shame if no one ever saw or appreciated his ground-breaking research.” She pushed to her feet and took her plate to the sink. “If I want to be done today, I’d better get back to work.”
“You can come back tomorrow. No need to rush it.”
So far, no one had shown up to arrest her or drag her away, so it was safe to assume that the house wasn’t being watched, but Eleanor didn’t want to push her luck.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather finish everything tonight. Do you want me out of here by a certain time?”
The woman was so nice and
accommodating that Eleanor didn’t need to use compulsion to get her to cooperate. So far, she hadn’t refused a single suggestion that Eleanor had made.
Bella waved a hand in dismissal. “Stay as long as you need. I’m going to bed around nine, but you are welcome to continue. If you get hungry or thirsty, just help yourself to whatever there is in the kitchen.”
“Thank you.”
After finding nothing interesting in the safe, and no journal lying around or hidden in one of the boxes, Eleanor had come up with the idea to scan everything and make a flash drive copy for herself. The information she was looking for was probably scattered between the boxes, but there was no way she could read everything even if she took a week to do so.
Simmons’s home office had a printer that was also a scanner, and she’d found a new flash drive in one of the desk drawers that was still in its original store packaging.
She had all she needed to walk away from there with all of Simmons’s years of research.
It was a treasure trove of information.
Despite what Simmons and Roberts had thought, her reason for joining the government program hadn’t been the money. That was only what she’d told them so they wouldn’t watch her too closely. She could have made millions on the stock market, or even billions by selling high-ticket items like enriched uranium to the Russians or technology to the Chinese. With her talent, she could easily get the supply and just as easily create the demand.
Hell, she could have become the next President if she wanted.
The sky was the limit.
But knowing where her talent came from was more important to her.
What made her different?
And the only way to find out was to have access to others like her. Regrettably, Simmons had been immune to her mind tricks and had kept her on a tight leash, and Roberts had gotten rid of her at his earliest convenience.
Damn. She should have anticipated his move.