by I. T. Lucas
“You are infinitely wise, my love.” He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it.
“Does it mean that you won’t punish Greggory?” she called after him.
“It means that I’ll think about it.”
Shaking her head, Jacki lifted her teacup, took a sip, and put it down. “What do you think he is going to do?”
“Obviously, follow your advice.”
“I don’t know about that. That sounded like a brush-off.”
“He’s just trying to make it look as if it’s up to him to decide. You are the boss, Jacki, and whatever you say goes.”
“That’s not true, and you know it.”
He arched a brow.
“On small things, maybe. But I have no say in the big ones.”
“You underestimate your influence on him.” Rufsur loaded his plate with the fresh scrambled eggs that Atzil put on the table. “And I’m going to exploit that for my own selfish purposes.” He leaned closer to Jacki and whispered, “Edna talked to Turner, and he came up with several excellent ideas regarding our future plans.”
Jacki’s eyes brightened. “Let’s hear them.”
They were alone in the dining room, but Atzil was hovering nearby in the kitchen, and others might join them at any time.
Putting his hand on the back of Jacki’s chair, Rufsur leaned even closer. “Their brilliance is in their simplicity. Kalugal can have an office in the city and conduct all of his business from there. When the workday ends, he and the men will leave their devices behind and switch to clan-issued phones. That takes care of the privacy objection, which was his biggest issue.”
“I like that idea a lot. When he comes home, he belongs to me. But he will not like being separated from me for so many hours.”
“You can have your own office next to his and run your charity work from there.”
Jacki chuckled. “My so-called charity work takes five minutes a month. All I have to do is initiate the wire transfer into the clan’s organization for the rehabilitation of trafficking victims.”
“I’m sure you can find something to do with your time.”
“Yeah, that’s not an issue. What about the compulsion problem?”
Rufsur smiled. “Turner’s second idea incorporates yours. Kalugal will make a pledge not to make a move against the clan or compel any of its members, and Annani will compel his compliance. But since he might not trust her to follow the exact wording of the pledge, it will be done via teleconferencing with you holding your finger over the off button. If Annani says anything that wasn’t agreed upon, you will terminate the call.”
“That’s silly. She can compel him later to do whatever.”
“That’s where the third idea comes in. Kian will make a pledge to Kalugal that Annani will not use her compulsion power against him, Kalugal will compel his compliance, and since it will also be done via teleconferencing, Turner will terminate the call if Kalugal tries anything that wasn’t agreed upon.”
Jacki shook her head. “That’s the weak point of the plan. No one can compel Annani herself, and I don’t know if Kian’s pledge on her behalf would satisfy Kalugal.”
“True, but we can reinforce it by asking Annani to promise Areana that she would never compel Kalugal to do things he hasn’t agreed to.”
“That’s a little better, but it’s still not as good as the other way around. Kian will be a hundred percent safe from Kalugal, but the reverse is not as foolproof.”
“That’s the best we can do.”
“I don’t know if it will be enough.”
Rufsur lifted a finger. “Edna and I came up with something that might bridge the gap.” He lowered his voice even more. “A sales pitch presentation. Edna said she is going to solicit Brandon’s help with script ideas. To seal the deal, we are going to present the two stubborn cousins with a film describing a utopian future of our conjoined communities. I asked Edna to prepare a script for you as well. But it has to be a surprise, so we will need to shoot it when Kalugal is not around.”
Jacki grimaced. “I don’t like doing things behind his back.”
“I don’t like it either, but we are promoting a very good cause. Think of it as preparing a surprise for his birthday. You wouldn’t mind keeping that a secret, right?”
“I suppose. But what will I say in that video presentation?”
“You can talk about raising your children in the village. I think that would be the most compelling reason for him. Not only is a larger immortal community safer, but it also means more children and therefore, more potential friends to grow up with. Maybe if the clan fertility doctor helps many of the couples to conceive, we could have enough children to open a school in the village. That would be a great alternative to sending them to a human school or homeschooling them.”
Jacki smiled. “I’m sold. I want to live in the village and raise my children there, hang out in the playground with the other mothers, go to the café for lunch, stroll through the pathways, go to the movies with friends, invite other couples over, etc. etc.”
“There you go. You don’t even need Brandon to prepare a script for you.”
18
Jacki
When Kalugal came back to the dining room, Jacki did her best not to look guilty. Perhaps Rufsur was right, and she could think about preparing a presentation for Kalugal as a surprise gift, but she still felt uneasy about doing things behind his back.
“How did it go?” she asked.
Kalugal sat down and poured himself a new cup of coffee. “I talked with Greggory, and we prepared several plausible explanations that he could give her for the bite. I already hinted that he has strange fetishes, so he will continue in that vein.”
“What about the girl? Is she still freaking out?”
Kalugal chuckled. “I wouldn’t call her a girl. Gina says that she is over forty years old, but she looks a little younger, I would have guessed mid to late thirties. She’s not a great looker either, and I’m surprised that Greggory was so taken with her that he was willing to bend the rules for her.”
Rufsur huffed. “The guy wasn’t even aware that he was breaking the rules. Greggory is a good man, but he is not the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“Looks are not everything.” Jacki crossed her arms over her chest. “What about charm and intelligence?”
“Gina isn’t charming either. She’s intense and manipulative, and the vibe I got from her wasn’t good. I’m not very empathic, but even I sensed that she harbors a lot of anger and resentment.”
Jacki rolled her eyes. “Are you surprised? She hooks up with a guy who seems perfectly nice and even insists on her calling a friend to let her know that she has a man in her house. Then she wakes up locked up in a basement, remembers being bitten, and thinks that she’s been drugged. Of course she is resentful and angry. And as for manipulative, that makes sense too. She’s trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“Perhaps. She tried to flirt with both Rufsur and me, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.”
Comments like that reminded Jacki that her husband was much older than he looked.
“You are both handsome, and neither of you wears a wedding ring. So why not? This is the twenty-first century, and women no longer wait for guys to make the first move. They take the initiative.”
Rufsur shook his head. “I don’t mind females flirting with me when they want my body, but I don’t like when they do it to gain an advantage, and that’s what Gina was doing. Besides, she’s not my type. I like women with a little more meat on their bones and softer expressions on their faces.”
“First of all, you are in love with Edna, so no other woman looks attractive to you, and that’s how it should be. Secondly, you are both clueless about women. Gina is scared and desperate, and while she is freaking out, she is using every trick she can think of. Can I talk to her? Maybe seeing that there is another woman in the house would make her less fearful.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Kal
ugal poured himself another cup of coffee. “She is an immune, and I don’t want her to see you. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with her.”
“Send her to the island,” Rufsur suggested. “Lokan can take her there on his next mandatory visit.”
Jacki gasped. “That’s horrible. How can you even think that?”
“Relax. I was joking. Gina knows where the mansion is, and she saw Kalugal’s face. She could potentially rat him out to Navuh. Besides, she’s not pretty or young enough to work in the brothel. She would be sent to housekeeping, and that’s not as bad.”
Jacki found it hard to believe that the woman was as unappealing as Kalugal and Rufsur were making her out to be. If Greggory was attracted to Gina, she couldn’t look like the hag they were describing.
“I really want to see her. You make her sound like a gorgon.”
Kalugal put a hand on her knee. “I’m sorry if my description of Gina sounded chauvinistic. But the reality is that we are visual creatures, and our first impressions of people are based on their looks. I’m sure that Gina has many positive qualities, which Greggory appreciates.”
“I would still like to see her if that’s possible. I want to put a face to the stories.”
“As I said, I don’t want her to see you, but I don’t mind you seeing her.”
That gave Jacki an idea. “Are you monitoring her room?”
“Naturally.”
“Can I see the feed?”
“That’s a good solution.” Kalugal pushed away from the table. “We can watch her from my office.”
“Perhaps now is not a good time for that.” Rufsur rubbed the back of his neck. “If you sent Greggory to talk to Gina, they might be busy doing things that we don’t want to watch.”
Jacki doubted that. What sane woman would have sex with the guy who bit her and abducted her?
Kalugal wrapped his arm around her waist. “He is not with her now. I sent him to retrieve her suitcase from the house first.”
19
Kalugal
“Take a seat, my love.” Kalugal pulled out his office chair for Jacki. When she was seated, he leaned over her and brought up the feed from Gina’s room. “Here she is.”
The woman was sitting on the bed with her head bent down over a magazine.
“I can’t see her face, but she looks in good shape,” Jacki commented. “Her arms and legs are well-toned.”
It was so like Jacki to find something positive about everyone. She was the same with the men, focusing on their good qualities and largely ignoring the not so good. Since Kalugal was the opposite, her attitude balanced his nicely.
He smiled. They were a good team, as a couple as well as partners in leadership.
On the screen, he watched Gina close the magazine, drop it on the bed, and get up.
When she turned her face to the camera, Jacki gasped. “Oh, my God! That’s Marisol. She changed her hair, and she’s a mess, but I would recognize that face anywhere.” She swiveled the chair around to face him and Rufsur. “How did she find us?”
Gina was Marisol? Kalugal straightened up and started pacing. How did she find them? What was her agenda? Was she a lone wolf? Or was she working with someone? Could it be Roberts?
Not likely. The guy had responded very well to compulsion, both in person and over the phone.
“Damn.” Rufsur scratched his stubble. “She must have been the snoop. But if Roberts destroyed all the documents pertaining to us, she shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
Jacki threw her hands in the air. “Evidently, he didn’t destroy all of them, or maybe she made copies before he had a chance to do that. But the bottom line is that we are not safe here, and we should evacuate immediately. Call Kian and ask if we can move into the village until we find a different solution.”
Kalugal stopped next to Jacki and put a hand on her shoulder. “No need to panic yet. According to Roberts, she didn’t have access to the information about the escaped trainees, but she might have been spying on Simmons and Roberts all along and taking notes. Once she got fired, she might have decided to investigate, but I have no idea what she hoped to gain by that. I need to interrogate her.”
His words seemed to have the opposite effect on Jacki of what he’d hoped.
She shook her head vehemently. “If she knows where we live, others might as well. The smart thing to do is to move out of here as soon as possible and disappear, and the village is the best hiding place there is.” She lifted a pair of teary eyes at him. “Why are you so opposed to the idea? The village is a lovely place to live.”
Kalugal squeezed her shoulder. “This is not the time to talk about it. I need to interrogate Marisol, and without my compulsion, I’m not sure how I’m going to get her to talk. I don’t want to resort to torture, especially since she’s a woman.”
“Call Kian. From what I was told, they got her to talk by tying her up and not letting her go to the bathroom. That was enough to get her to reveal where they could find Jin.”
Rufsur shook his head. “She seems tougher than that. Why didn’t she just pee her pants?”
Jacki shrugged. “She thought that Jin wouldn’t go with them because she was under compulsion to avoid contact with people outside the program. It’s also possible that they did more to her and just didn’t tell us.”
Kalugal nodded. “They didn’t want to offend your and the other ladies’ sensibilities.”
Jacki chuckled. “At the time, my sensibilities were offended because they didn’t let me interrogate her. I would have had no qualms about slapping her around a little.”
Kalugal doubted that. Jacki was fierce, but she wouldn’t have been able to strike a defenseless woman, which Marisol had been at the time. “Do you know how they made her forget the abduction and interrogation?”
“Some kind of drug, I believe. You should ask Kian about that too. Julian was part of the group, so he must have been the one to administer it. But I still think that we should evacuate first, and then interrogate her once we are in a safe location. When the clan captured Marisol, she was alone, and she didn’t know where they were holding her. This time she might have others working with her, and they might know where to find her.”
Kalugal smoothed his hand over his chin. “I don’t think so. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have pressed so hard to be allowed to stay. She couldn’t compel Greggory, Rufsur, or me, but she doesn’t know why. She assumes that we are immune. The reason she wants to stay is so she can try her luck with others. If she was working with someone, she would have accepted the money I offered, pretended to be happy with the settlement, and left to regroup and come up with a new strategy. But since she is alone, the only way she can get information about us is to stay in the house.”
Jacki let out a long-suffering breath. “You are making a lot of assumptions. Are you willing to put everyone at risk based on that?”
He cupped her cheek. “You are forgetting an important fact, my love. Marisol’s immunity is rare. Whoever she is working with, if she is working with others, are most likely not immune, and I can handle them.”
“You should call Kian first,” Rufsur said. “Or Lokan. They have experience in handling the woman.”
20
Kian
As Kian’s phone flashed with Kalugal’s contact, he hesitated for a moment before activating the translation application. At this point, he no longer feared Kalugal using compulsion on him, but he figured that it was better to err on the side of caution.
The main advantage of using the app was that it nullified the compulsory component of Kalugal’s voice. The main disadvantage was that all tonal nuances were lost in translation, and those were no less important than the words themselves.
“Good morning, Kalugal.”
“Good morning. I have interesting news for you. Remember the snoop we were worried about? Turns out, it was none other than Marisol.”
Kian straightened in his chair. “How did you find out?”
“Her next move was to infiltrate my house as a restaurant delivery girl. No one thought anything of it, and one of my men gave her his phone number. They hooked up, and naturally, he couldn’t thrall her to forget his bite. He called asking what to do, and I told him to bring her here so I could compel her to forget. Since none of us knew what Marisol looked like, we only found out who she was when Jacki recognized her by looking at the surveillance feed this morning. I need to interrogate her and ask how she knew where to find us, and who else knows our location. Any suggestions on how to go about it? I don’t like the idea of torturing a woman for information, but my compulsion is ineffective on her. I tried last night when she woke up from the venom trip.”
“What did you tell her? Does she know that the man who bit her is an immortal?”
“She remembers being bitten, but since there’s no mark left, she suspects that Greggory drugged her. I told her that he has a strange fetish and that I’m willing to compensate her for the scare she had. She didn’t want money and asked to stay in the house instead. Now that I know who she is, her request makes perfect sense. She assumes that Greggory, Rufsur, and I are immune, and she hopes to find someone else who isn’t.”
“She probably still thinks that everyone in your house belongs to the paranormal organization that Roberts and Simmons believed you were.”
“Right. Which is a good cover story, but it is still worrisome. What if she is not alone and there are others who know about us?”
“Is it possible that Roberts broke through your compulsion?”
“I don’t think so. But I need to make sure. Jacki said that you got Marisol to talk by preventing her from going to the bathroom.”
