Rhys drank, then reached into the pocket of his coat, hanging on the chair behind him, and pulled out a small bottle of tablets. “EFA supplements. They’re mine, but you take them. I know where to get more. And start taking three a day, one with each meal.”
She picked up the bottle, staring at it.
“Why?” she demanded.
“Because until you get used to it, you’re going to find this sort of hunger draining you every time you extend yourself.” He took a breath. “Every time you use your power.”
She dropped the bottle like it had grown red hot and put her hands in her lap. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Jenna…”
“What exactly are you trying to tell me?”
His answer was calm. “I think you already know that.”
She shook her head, denying it. “This afternoon, that man in the coffee shop, the one that chased us…he didn’t call you Cellyn. He called you…A-Aveyon.”
“Avaon,” Rhys corrected. “It’s a name I used once, long ago. That is the name he knows me by.”
It was a perfectly straightforward answer, but the hints of a mysterious past, of different identities, annoyed her. It made her uneasy. “Who is he, then? He doesn’t have multiple identities…does he?”
“His name is Clement Hine, and no, he uses no other name.”
“Maybe I should have let him help me instead of you.”
His gaze remained steady. “You also know the truth of that, Jenna. You let your instincts guide you this afternoon, and you’re still safe. You knew without being told that you could trust me.”
She could not meet his gaze, could not acknowledge his truth. She would not willingly let him pull the conversation back to where he had been taking it, so she kept up the attack.
“And where were you in the coffee shop, then? I studied every face in that shop, before the coffee thing happened. And you weren’t there. Not before then.”
“Every face, huh?” he asked, with a small smile. “That’s not a common talent, remembering faces.”
“It’s not talent, it’s training,” she snapped. “And stay on the subject.”
“Training?” His eyes narrowed. “Wait…you knew we had lost them this afternoon…” He sat forward, the brows coming together. “You never asked why I bought the coat. You knew. What do you do for a living, Jenna? Whom do you work for?”
“I can’t say.” Wariness flooded her. The SIA’s secrets were not hers to divulge.
“You’ve already said too much.” Rhys leaned back and crossed his arms. “Not CIA or FBI…you don’t have that sharp, PC look about you. Royal Canadian Mounted Police?” He lifted his brow.
“Nice guess, as we’re in Canada. But I’m American. Anyway, I won’t confirm your guesses, even if by some wild chance you guessed right.” Which he would never do. The SIA—the Special Investigations Agency—was called that for a reason. While the CIA cavorted about in public drawing the gaze of civilians and other countries’ organizations, the SIA quietly moved in the shadows, getting the job done. No one knew about the SIA except those who worked for it. And even Jenna didn’t know every facet of the organization, just her small pocket of it.
Rhys’ frown deepened. “Given your appearance, your speech idioms and the hint of West Coast in your speech…all things considered, I’d say you work for the SIA.”
Jenna snapped her jaw shut before it could do more than sag open by a millimeter or two, but it was enough to tell him what she would not say.
He smiled. “Yes, I thought so.”
“How do you know that? How do you know about the SIA at all?”
“Simple. I have done contract work for them. And I know, from that work, that headquarters are in Seattle. I’m familiar with the type of people they employ. And you sound a little like a Seattle native. Add that to your unusual training…” He shrugged. “I won’t pry any more, because I know you can’t tell me anything, but at least we both know that you’re more than capable of looking after yourself if need be. That will help.”
“Help what?”
“For the solstice.” He nodded toward the window beside them, where snow built up against the glass. “They’re already starting to throw their defenses against us. What they will bring to bear on us during the solstice will need all our combined skills.”
The subject was turning back to the uneasy territory she’d nudged it away from. She grasped quickly for a deflection. “So where did you spring from this afternoon? I notice you carefully didn’t confirm that you weren’t in the shop before that coffee thing happened.”
He sat back, and Jenna could almost feel his sudden caution. “Why do you call it that? ‘The coffee thing’.”
“What the hell else should I call it?”
“What happened?”
“Then you weren’t there.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged. “I overheard a man ripping a woman to shreds—verbally, anyway. Then she…I dunno.” In her mind, she saw again the woman’s hand swivel around, the big coffee cup in it. The woman’s eyes widening in surprise—even before she tipped it upside down. “She got fed up with it. Got pissed off. Something. And she dumped her cup of coffee in his lap. Serves him right.”
“Is that what really happened?”
She felt the little jump of nerves inside her. “Of course it is!”
He lifted his fingers a little. A calming motion. Peace.
Screw that. She glared at him. “So if you weren’t in the shop when the coffee got dumped, then where were you and what made you decide to step up and help me?”
He studied her. And with the same certainty she had felt over his caution, she now knew he took her measure. His gaze did not fall away from her face by a millimeter as he spoke slowly and clearly. “When you dumped that woman’s coffee into her partner’s lap, I was a quarter of a mile away.”
His gaze wouldn’t release her, wouldn’t let her shy away from the bald fact he had just given her.
She realized her hands trembled and put them flat on the table, to hide the tremble. “Goddamn it…” Her voice was hoarse, and she cleared it. “What did I do to that woman? I sat a table away from her.”
“You did exactly what you’re beginning to suspect you did, Jenna. You made her dump the coffee.”
The surge, the mental thrust as she had silently shouted at the woman…
She touched her temple, felt the clamminess there. Cold sweat. “You can’t know that. You weren’t there.”
“I felt it, Jenna. Even from a quarter mile’s distance I felt it. You can’t control it properly yet, so you push the field too hard. I’m surprised Hine didn’t break out with a nosebleed, sitting that close to you.”
She recalled Hine’s face when she had first seen him. The etched brow. “He had a headache.” Then meaning of it hit her, and the trembling worsened. “Oh shit.” She realized she was rubbing her own temple, and dropped her hand. “No, no, no…this is…too bizarre. It’s a fairy tale, Rhys.”
He exuded calm, a stoical patience. “You haven’t asked yet how I got to the coffee shop so quickly.”
But her mind slid away from contemplating that poser. The potential answers disturbed her too much to consider too closely. She shook her head. “Rhys…what have you got me mixed up in?”
He covered her fist with his big hand, and squeezed to keep it still. He looked at her steadily until she calmed down.
“I teleported.” The two words were soft, but perfectly clear.
She shook her head a little. “No.” It couldn’t be possible.
He gave her answers she didn’t want to hear; yet she knew he told the truth, the impossible-to-encompass truth. And he sat there, calmly waiting for her to take it in. To accept it.
“Okay, then. Teleport us to Florida. Out of the snow, away from Clement Hine.”
“I can’t do that.” He sat back once more. “The more powerful lords can teleport themselves over short distances. Only the most powerful
amongst us can transport other people at the same time. There hasn’t been one with that sort of power for…centuries, that I can recall.”
Us. She shivered. Did he include her in that pronoun? “That you recall? What are you, some kind of historian?”
“Something like that.”
She pushed her glass away from her. “I can’t…just accept this…this fantasy. Not like this. For god’s sake, Rhys, I’m an agent. I move in the world of the real. I deal with facts, with harsh realities.”
“This is real. Believe me.”
“Take it on faith?” She grimaced. “I’m atheist. I don’t believe a thing about this business of yours, Rhys. It’s all fairy stories for little kids. In the real world there’s a reason for everything, and nothing goes bump in the night unless someone pushes it.”
He smiled. “That sounds like something someone else said once, that you’ve remembered.”
The sadness that seemed to permanently hover nearby these days descended over her like a pall, along with the pain and the fury the memories delivered each time she recalled them. “Yes, someone else did say that once.” Sudden tiredness drained all the resistance in her.
“Someone close.”
Tears pricked at her eyes, and she wiped them on her sleeve with an impatient movement. “Let’s change subjects.”
“Your lover.” Rhys frowned. “What happened, Jenna?”
She stared at him, and the full force of her fury and helplessness surged anew. “He’s dead, okay? He was on assignment with me, and someone screwed up and Kevin died. Now let’s change the goddamn subject.”
It was the first time she had managed to speak the words aloud, in the three months since Kevin had died. Her eyes swam with searing hot tears, and the lump in her throat threatened to tear out her esophagus, so hard and big did it seem. But she managed to ride out both tears and hurt, until she sat looking at the tablecloth, back in focus, the sting in her eyes clearing. Only then did she dare look at Rhys.
He sat very still. “Kevin Allen?”
This time she made no attempt to support her sagging jaw. “You knew him?”
“We…worked together a couple of times.” Rhys spoke as if his mind drifted elsewhere. Then he shook his head and gave a small gusty laugh. “Stars above, now it becomes so clear…” He spoke to himself. But then he focused upon her again. “Is that why you’re here in Banff, Jenna?”
“Sort of. Here…there is no one I know. Nothing I’m familiar with.”
His eyes narrowed a little, the ridiculously long lashes lowering. “Running away?”
“I prefer to think of it as detox and rejuvenation.”
His stare would not let her go. “You were injured? When Kevin died, you were injured, too.”
“Yes.”
“You’re mended, then? Physically?”
“The doctors tell me I’m well again, but I get weak. I still don’t feel…right.” The confession provided a surprising relief. The lag in her recovery had bothered her, even though she had not spoken of it to any of the doctors assigned to her case. She had dismissed it as simply the physical manifestation of her grief over Kevin, and conveniently ignored the small voice of denial inside her.
“It’s not just the altitude here?”
“It’s not the altitude. It’s a…weakness. I don’t like it. It makes me feel unsure of myself.” She stopped herself from revealing more, from speaking of the odd little things that had been happening lately that made her feel unsettled and adrift. Like the coffee thing.
“Yes, I can see how someone like you would find that disconcerting. But if you don’t like the unsettling feelings, then why come here, where everything is new and unsettling?”
“I don’t…I can’t stand the idea of waking up at home, Christmas morning. Alone.” She pushed away the wail of self-pity with a mental shove.
“Ah…of course.” He grimaced a little. “I’m sorry, Jenna.”
She shook her head. “We both knew the risks. Accepted them.”
“But it doesn’t take away the pain.”
“The guilt,” she amended, surprising even herself with that revealing word.
Even Rhys veered away from it. “Kevin Allen was a cynic of the first water. He had no time for anything he couldn’t put his finger upon and identify.”
“He was an engineer. A geek.” It seemed disloyal to use those words to describe him that way, but even Kevin had called himself a geek. He had got a perverse delight out of the title. She suspected that at times, Kevin had maintained his ‘show me the evidence’ attitude out of sheer stubbornness, and a contrary need to show how insubstantial and pathetic beliefs grounded on faith really were.
“How much of your inability to swallow the truth now is simply you clinging to his attitudes, Jenna?” His tone had softened.
“Truth?” She pushed the bottle of pills a little, making them tip and roll across the table with a small rattle. “All of what you’ve said is hearsay. And parlor tricks. There’s no evidence.”
“Today wasn’t enough evidence for you?”
She couldn’t hold his gaze. “She dumped the coffee because the ‘prince’ she sat with deserved it. Every woman in that shop wanted her to do it.”
“You made her do it, Jenna.”
He didn’t emphasize the words in any way, but she jumped all the same.
“No, I didn’t.”
He stood the bottle of pills back up. “That’s why you have this uncontrollable need for omega 3s and sugar right now. You’re not used to it. Your brain needs the restoratives, the energy.”
“No.” She was just tired. It had been a long day so far, and she still hadn’t recovered from the accident properly. That’s why she had this need for food and was lightheaded.
“It wasn’t Hine, Jenna. And it certainly wasn’t me. We were both surrounded by temporals and therefore under the injunction of Erceldoune’s Precept—but you don’t know the laws yet.”
“What’s a temporal?” The question spilled from her before she reconsidered the wisdom of following Rhys down this conversational path. Her curiosity, her need to know it all, prompted it.
“Human. Not one of us.”
“A muggle?” All her defensive energy suddenly drained, like air from a tire. This time she knew he included her in the “us”.
He grinned. “I wouldn’t have thought, given your cynicism about this, that you’d watch that sort of movie.”
“It’s just fun.” Then she amended herself. “I thought it was just fun.”
“That sort of stuff is just fun. Toads and wands.” He pushed the pills towards her again. “Take them. And you should eat more oil for a while—lots of polyunsaturates and monos. Olive oil. And up your water intake. Three liters a day, for someone your height and weight.”
She looked at the bottle, and heard Kevin’s voice in her mind, a voice from the past. All that hocus pocus stuff is such bullshit. Only idiots who need to prop up their egos with the idea they have a more important role in life than the one they currently own will swallow it. Anyone with any sort of self-respect can only laugh at it.
Oh, how he would have skewered Rhys had he been sitting here listening to this! He would have slivered him into small pieces, all with a polite smile and irrefutable logic.
She looked at Rhys, shaking her head a little. “I can’t.” It was far too much to swallow right now. “I can’t…accept this.”
“You can’t accept what you saw with your own eyes? Felt?”
“Kevin—”
“Kevin would have accepted it by now. He worked on a scientific basis. Empirical evidence. You got all the evidence you could ask for today.”
She bowed her head. Rhys was right.
Again she saw the woman in the coffee shop, her eyes widen with surprise as she watched her own hand swing around with the coffee cup in it. It didn’t matter how much she tried to rationalize it, that one image would destroy her every argument. It was evidence. Unsavory evidence she couldn’t
make go away. She had to accept that something had happened in that shop that resided outside her experience to date. Something had made that woman act. Someone had influenced her. But how? And why?
Rhys’ explanations made a superficial sense. They fit with her own sense of rightness. But the facts supporting his reasons were the stuff of fantasy. Fairytale logic. And that’s the point where her defenses rose. To go against the ingrained attitudes of a lifetime…
She was saved from having to answer right away by the arrival of their food. She fell on hers, cutting into the salmon straight away. Rhys, too, tackled his plate with gusto. Well, he would need the EFAs, too.
She sheered away from that line of thought, and pondered instead the question Rhys had raised. Would Kevin have accepted what he had seen if he had been there tonight? She looked at Rhys. “Did Kevin ever see you do…anything?”
He shook his head. “The law, the precept, prevents us—any of us—from using powers or displaying talents where a temporal will see them or be affected by them. The whole Corpus Temporalty was built around that precept. Temporals must never know, guess or even suspect our world exists.”
She continued eating, mulling it over.
They were drinking coffee before Rhys spoke again. He tapped his spoon against the side of the cup in a thoughtful way, then put it down. “Let me give you a demonstration.”
“Here?”
“Why not?”
“Won’t the brimstone and smoke draw attention?”
He rolled his eyes a little, then settled back in his chair, studying her, his long legs stretched out before him. The silence lengthened.
“And?”
Finally, he spoke. “In the coffee shop, you heard me when I told you to keep walking.”
“Well…yes.” She shrugged.
Yet I didn’t speak. The words echoed in her mind as if she had heard them, yet Rhys’ lips had not moved.
She swallowed. “Ventriloquism?”
He shook his head, almost smiling, and sighed. “Cognitive dissonance. You have a vested interest in not believing what you saw and heard today, so the details will already be hazy in your memory.”
“Am I really being that stubborn?”
“You’re not the worst case I’ve come across.” He smiled a little. “Let’s try something else. I want you to close your eyes, and…have you ever meditated?”
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