It did mean he got to see her every day, but it messed with his head that he couldn’t care for her as he wanted to. Because he was back to dragging himself around on crutches. Back to people staring at him, then looking away hastily. He thought he was used to it, but maybe not, because the sinking feeling in his stomach didn’t owe anything to the drugs he was taking.
But he worked better at his doctoral project than he had for a while. Perhaps stress made him concentrate better. Whatever the reason, by lunchtime the following day he’d solved a few of the problems that had been puzzling him up to that point. He’d arranged to meet Faye in the largest cafeteria in the university to try to show himself to the biggest number of people, declaring their status as a couple and showing them what easy prey he could be. After he’d finished, he’d try to visit the suspect vampire group. Andros had taken a deep dislike to Sergiu.
He shrugged and then winced. Those pills emulated his prior condition a bit too well. Everything hurt. Plunging back in to the disease he’d thought he’d left behind reminded him why he’d spent most of every day exhausted. But he couldn’t show it. Ever. Unless the mission demanded it.
Andros swung up on to his crutches and headed for the cafeteria. People stared at him. Some looked away and some smiled. He smiled back when he could and kept the expression of affability on his features. Even if he hated the attention. He’d learned not to hate in the past—people were what they were. But he’d had a therapist then. He’d turned emo to help cope with that feeling. He’d gone the whole way, with the heavy, pitch-black hair, lashings of eyeliner, and suitably slashed, studded and otherwise decorated T-shirts and jeans. At least then he knew people would look at him, crutches or no. Ah, fuck it. He could hate if he wanted to.
But his resentment dissipated as if it had never been when he stepped inside the cafeteria and saw Faye. She made everything better, even this. His smile turned genuine when he remembered last night. He hoped they could share similar ingenious solutions to his disability tonight.
She looked up and their gazes locked. Everything else melted away, nothing else mattered. How did she do that? He made his way to her, heedless of the people who got out of his way where he’d usually have murmured his thanks.
Faye was sitting with three other women. Moderately attractive. He’d certainly have been interested in them, were it not for Faye outshining them. He took her hand and tugged her to her feet for his kiss. At the same time he murmured deep in her mind, We’re being conspicuous, remember?
Yes, but maybe with a little less tongue.
He added some more, just to show her he could. And to enjoy her unique flavor. Nothing this cafeteria had to offer could compare with that. He drew away reluctantly and smiled at her companions as she introduced them. Rina, a curvy African American with stunning olive-green eyes. Lara, a burnished redhead, not a hair out of place. Blue eyes and a very short skirt, he couldn’t help noticing. Across the table sat Cathy, a blonde with dark roots, which was fashionable these days, for some reason he didn’t understand. But he was a man, what did he know? Pretty, though, her blue eyes smiling with her mouth. Not something that always happened. He’d seen plenty of empty smiles.
The tables at this end of the room weren’t so crammed together. He’d often spent time here with a pot of coffee and a laptop, reveling in the life going on around him, but not recently. Not since he’d turned dragon. Maybe some habits were too good to give up.
Faye gave a shaky laugh as she sat. He stayed on his feet. “Can I get anyone anything?”
Rina’s olive eyes opened wider, enormous in her face. “N-no thank you. Do you want to sit and I’ll get you what you need?”
He shook his head impatiently. “No. I’ll be fine.”
He returned with a sandwich and a coffee on a tray. One of the staff had provided him with a small wheeled cart, but she’d done it discreetly, just pushed it to him as if she did it for every customer. Just how he liked it. He exchanged a couple of jokes with her before he took his path around the closely packed long tables to the smaller, more widely spaced ones at the end. Several people stared at him and this time he knew it wasn’t because of his crutches. It was that steamy kiss. Truly he’d only meant to give her a soft kiss of possession, but she did something to his libido. She did everything to his libido.
He couldn’t feel sorry. Her embrace had lifted him out of his self-pity into happiness. Now he could look people in the eye, smile, and know that part of his problem was his introspection. Stupid mood to get into.
He took his seat and propped the crutches next to him. “Had a good morning?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I guess. A couple of students tried to catch me out, wanted to know if Dickens had a mistress. They thought I didn’t know. Maybe they thought I was dead from the neck down.”
“They know better now,” Rina commented.
Lara leaned back and pushed her salad plate away. From what was left, she’d hardly picked at it. “You could get into trouble.” She gave him a hard glance. “It’s against the rules to mix with students. Hell, it might be against the law.”
Andros kept her stare while he finished his bite of sandwich. “Neither against the rules nor the law. I’m a doctoral student, postgraduate with an MA. And I’m not a member of the arts faculty. It’s all fine. I checked.”
Lara humphed and fished a piece of green leaf from her salad, studying it as if she’d find the secrets of the world there. “Still, Faye’s students will know for sure that she knows all about mistresses.”
“I should hope so.” He refused to allow the sour one to poison his mood. He had a lot to look forward to. And a job to do. Part of the reason for the kiss was to stake his claim, to see if anyone reacted. Because he had a theory, one he was still turning over in his mind. The old weapons—too much of a coincidence for his liking. He needed to discover how rare those particular weapons were—the navy Colt that had killed Faye’s parents and the Schofield Nordheim had used. Then he could work out some statistics, maybe construct a filter and find out how many collectors had both models. Narrow the field a bit. Find out which collectors were associated with cults or societies concerning Talents. He could think of several possibilities, and not all of them included Faye. There were some weird cults about, including the one that had nearly killed him last year. They loved Talents, centered their efforts on them in one way or another, wanting to worship them, experiment on them or just destroy them. Nordheim had sold them. He hoped the bastard would rot in hell for a very long time.
“So when did you two meet?” Cathy grinned and reached for her coffee. “What’s the story? C’mon, Faye’s hardly told us anything.”
That sounded more like it. He indulged her, telling the story they’d agreed on, that they’d met in the library when she’d offered to climb the footstool to get a book for him that was shelved too high. Then she’d told him about her class’ study of Dracula, then he’d taken her into STORM to meet a real-life vampire. That introduced STORM naturally into the conversation. “She thought I was a vampire,” he said with a grin. “I ask you, do I look like a vampire?”
Rina shrugged. “I have no idea. To my knowledge I’ve never seen one. Unless I’m looking at one now and it was a double bluff?”
His guffaw would have done Santa Claus proud. “Hardly. They’re usually a bit bigger than me, even by day.”
“What are you then?”
The question was extremely bad manners among Talents, but he couldn’t say he cared about etiquette right now. “I’m like you. Do you think I’d still be using these things if I had a Talent?” He touched the crutches, the metallic roughness marred by dents and scuffs, so familiar he could have put them on without looking.
“I guess not. Then why don’t you get converted?”
He kept the smile, although it grew somewhat stiff because he forced it. “It’s not that easy. Talents have a list, in case a Talent offers, kind of like organ donation. I’m on that.” Unless anyone had taken him o
ff. He should really ensure his name wasn’t on it anymore. “I’m okay for a few years yet. And I want to finish my thesis.”
“Can we ask what you’re doing?”
He didn’t mind telling them. It was the techniques he was developing that he was keeping under wraps, not the item itself. “A keyboard, to start with. Something that paraplegics and quadriplegics can use their minds to control.”
“Wow.” Cathy flicked back a wayward strand of hair. “Amazing. So you want to give them telepathy?”
He gave a crack of laughter. “Not give it to them. Everybody has it. Do you realize that a few years ago we’d be laughed at as crackpots? But I don’t have to give people telepathy. We all have it. We just have to develop it.”
“And you’ve done that?”
“For sure.” To demonstrate, he touched their minds. The four women sitting around the table, no one else. The playful touch gave him a way in, and from there he could explore. So he gave them a tickle, a thrill.
“Amazing.” Rina gave Faye a sly grin. “Now I’m starting to understand what you see in him.”
He waggled his brows. “Go to a few classes. It’s like when Windows first came in—people thought it was hard until they went to a few classes or picked it up. Now we all have computers. Using telepathy could become common in a few years. It’s a technique, that’s all. Babies are all born with the ability to communicate telepathically, but only Talented parents help their kids develop the gift. For some reason the rest of us build a wall and block it out in the first month or so of life. But we can contact the sense, if we work at it. At least, most of us can.”
“You really believe that?” Rina, bless her, the cynic. The world needed cynics. Just not an awful lot of them.
“I know it. STORM sponsors classes for people who want them. Why don’t you put your name down?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, sure.”
He tickled her again, just for the hell of it. She looked startled, didn’t laugh. “That isn’t you.”
Yes it is.
He was delighted to startle a squeak of alarm out of her.
Leave her alone.
He grinned at Faye’s censorious tone. It’s fun. He paused. It’s also effective.
She sighed and touched his hand where it lay on the table. They exchanged a smiling glance. She made him so happy. Simple happiness, an emotion people often denigrated or ignored. Fools. He sensed the tension in her and tried to ease it a little. Hey, we’re doing okay. The sooner we get this done, the sooner I get you to myself for a while.
He’d made her happy, saying that. He felt it.
Fuck, they were getting in deep. And he couldn’t feel sorry about it.
Faye worried. She worried all the time, especially now he seemed so vulnerable. She watched him shake out a few pills, blue ones, white ones, and toss them back with a practiced hand. He swallowed them with a bare sip of coffee. Then answered the girls’ questions about his condition and the pills as if he still had the mentality of a disabled person. In a way, he did. Maybe he always would, and maybe that could be a strength. It brought him understanding and a gentleness belied by his lean but powerful figure, one only she could see properly right now.
She felt the gentle, persuasive effect of fuzzing, recognized it as other Talents here today would, if he directed it at them. But he was doing something very clever, something Talents had developed to a fine art. People saw what they expected to see when they looked at Andros. If they expected him to have thin wrists, wasted muscles, then he’d have them. A sense of fragility that was more than physical wreathed him too.
But he’d spread the news in the most effective way, in the busy cafeteria at the most crowded time of the day. He worked at STORM and he was weak, someone who might be approached if anyone wanted anything from STORM. Or if anyone wanted to attack STORM. They could use Andros the cripple, the weak spot, the man with a high security clearance because of the computer work he did—he managed to slip that into the conversation too.
She worried about him, that someone would attack him. If she were attacked, she’d go immediately into dragon mode, have to force herself not to shape-shift if it wasn’t appropriate. Andros would have to think about the shape-shift and work hard to force it, due to the cephalox in his system. That split second could cost him. And her. Especially with someone who loved old weapons running around.
She had her own ideas about that but she needed to research some before she could put it forward as a definite possibility. Just as well she was dating someone who knew exactly how to do that research.
After conversation turned to the shocking events of the last few days, she took a backseat and listened. Yes, the professor’s sudden turnabout had appalled everyone. But nobody knew about the murder yesterday, at least no one was talking about it. That room had been shut off with some excuse about the heating, and the investigating officers had come in the small hours and done their work.
Later today, Nick would arrive in style and take that office, or one nearby. A temporary replacement for the position Nordheim, and then Serena, had left vacant. That should take attention away from Andros and Serena. Nothing like a roc on the roof to distract people.
*
After work, Andros came to her office and after a kiss or two, ones she’d thirsted for all afternoon, they went to her small car. Andros leaned back and closed his eyes while Faye put his crutches in the back seat. She took the driver’s seat and strapped herself in then glanced at him, waiting for him to follow suit. He let out a deep breath and put his hands on his knees, gripping them tightly. “I hate using my condition like this.” He turned his head and snared her gaze in his, blue eyes capturing her in laser-beam sharpness. “It was true, at least some of it. I was in a wheelchair, but I was close to dying. It was killing Ania to watch me, so I didn’t let her know just how bad I was. Only one person realized. The person who converted me.”
She searched her mind, but couldn’t recall who that was. She raised a brow in query.
“Ricardo Gianetti’s partner, Kristen Turner. She guessed but I made her keep my secret. Later, it was let me die or convert me. I’ll always be grateful to her, even though she made the final decision on her own.”
He smiled when she gasped. Conversion had to be with the permission of both parties, not just one.
“I was in no state to speak, but she knew I wanted it. So now you know about all the important women in my life. Ania, my sister, Kristen, the woman who saved my life—and now you.” He reached for her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it.
Faye melted. “You don’t know me,” she protested. “You can’t know if I’m important or not.”
“Yes I can.” He smiled. “Don’t disappoint me. And throw your cell away. Now.”
“What?”
He grimaced. “Sorry. I got a call from Ann this afternoon, asking you to do it. She’ll send you a new cell, but you were close to Nordheim, so she doesn’t want to take any chances with you.”
“Chances how?”
“You can be tracked by your SIM. Mine is protected, and she’ll send you a similar one. GPS is blocked, unless we choose to enable it.”
“And now I’m an agent, albeit a temporary one, I have to toe the line?”
“Just get rid of your cell.” He gave her an apologetic grin.
She took out her phone, removed the SIM card and exited the car to drop the cell in a nearby trashcan. She thought about keeping it, but it wasn’t an expensive model and it might be better just to make sure. Then she broke the card into pieces and threw one of the bits away. She’d jettison the others from the car en route and give an offering to the gods of litter another time. She hadn’t gone to the lengths she had to be outed by a fucking cell phone.
Back in the car, the moment was lost, for now. And she felt reluctant to pursue it here, in the unromantic setting of a car lot.
Only when she’d pulled on to Fifth and passed several streets did he notice they were not going to
STORM. “Do we have an errand?”
“No,” she said. “I’m taking you to my place. As far as the university knows, I live in a tiny apartment in the Village. That’s my official address, but it’s not where I live.”
“Wow.” He leaned back, smiling. “And you want to take me to your home?”
“Yes.” Now more than ever.
He watched the scenery as they turned at Washington Park and headed down toward her real address, in Tribeca. “I don’t know this part of New York at all.”
“Not surprising. You live and work in the swanky part. This is different.”
“You have two addresses yourself. I’d call that pretty swanky.”
“I bought my loft apartment in the early seventies, when it was still a pretty rough area. It didn’t matter to me, but I got space relatively cheaply in Manhattan. I got the feeling the place would get popular. I kept my tiny studio apartment in the Village, at the time worth far more than the Tribeca apartment. I’d just started to make good money after a few investments had paid off and I started to make more. Yuppies are history now. But I was one, for a time.”
“Faye—”
Time he knew something else about her, something she’d been hesitant to tell him. “My parents were killed in 1933.”
“When you were ten years old. That would make you—”
“Yep. It would.” Hearing the difference between their ages didn’t appeal to her. “So you’re screwing your grandmother. Or maybe your great-grandmother.”
He shuddered. “Impossible. She lived and died in Poland. Aren’t you as old as you feel, or something like that?”
“Sometimes I feel hundreds of years old.” Particularly now. She took a left, trying to concentrate on the traffic.
“So do I. Especially when I wake in the morning and my body won’t do what I tell it to.” He gave a short laugh. “One thing’s for sure. I’m so going to learn to drive when this is over. I couldn’t when I was ill, and then when I could, I didn’t have the time. And everybody tells me that if I live in New York, I don’t need to drive. But I might want to go to Los Angeles again, and it was a pain in the ass not being able to drive there.”
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