“Maybe the Council has made a decision by now,” Lisa said.
“Perhaps. I suppose it is an avenue we should check, but I would rather not get him involved in this.”
“I know you’re upset with him, but…” Lisa bit her lip. “It’s not really my place to say.”
“He wasn’t a bad guy,” Eli said. “He was nice to me.”
“He was nice to me as well, and I did what I could to help him in the end,” Nadine said. “I tried. I risked my own life, and he still went and turned himself in. There’s no telling if he’s been given his power back. If any of our agents have found this information to be true, they haven’t shared it. And why would Centralia give it back? With a power like that, and for them not to be able to control him…”
“It is worth exploring,” Lisa said. “In the meantime, Eli and I should hide somewhere.”
Nadine nodded. “I know of a hostel you two can stay at for the next few days while I try to figure this out. No questions asked. It’s really not a bad place, either.”
“And what about Mr. Roman?”
Nadine smiled at Eli. “Maybe…”
“Maybe you and I can pay him a visit,” Lisa suggested. “After we get settled into the hostel, you and I can go check on him. It will be pretty easy to tell if he has his power back or not.”
“How?” Eli asked.
“His dolls. I mean, the women that usually hang out with him. He gives them power. You remember them?”
“Coma and Celia,” Eli said. “I liked them, too. And Casper.”
“So that’s the plan then,” Lisa said. “We’ll lie low, you can visit us later tonight, and you and I can go check on Roman. If he has his power back, then…”
“No, I’ll reach out to him privately.” Nadine ignored another mental message coming to her from the government representative. “I have to start handling this now. Luckily, I bought a little time through being at the retreat. But if I don’t do something now, they’re going to know something is up.”
“Right.”
“One more thing,” Nadine said to Lisa.
“What’s that?”
“Oscar?”
Lisa shook her head. “As far as I know he was in there too, upstairs making soup.”
“I figured as much,” Nadine said as she got some money out of her clutch. “The hostel is on 58th and 16th. Go there now and pay for the next week. I’ll be there later tonight.”
“I just don’t get him,” Catherine told her friend Anna. It was happy hour, and the two were at a bar near Roman’s flat.
Anna, who also hailed from the Northern Alliance yet was in Centralia legally, offered her friend a firm but understanding smile. “There’s a lot you haven’t told me about him, and I know you said you weren’t going to tell me some parts, but from what I’ve heard, it sounds like he’s not worth it. I mean, who is this guy anyway? You said he worked at a bodega, right?”
“That’s part of the complication…” Catherine downed her glass of wine. “Last one for me. And I’m going to go over there, by the way. I’ve made up my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Catherine glanced from Anna to the bartender, who was coming by with the bottle wondering if she wanted a refill. She politely waved him away. “Because sometimes it just feels nice to be wanted.”
“It doesn’t even sound like he wants you, though.”
“He does,” Catherine assured her friend. “It’s just his nature. You have to meet him to understand.”
“You said he had pretty intense eyes, right?”
“Orange ones, which are at odds with his white hair.”
Anna took another sip from her glass of wine. “And he’s actually from Centralia? It sounds like he’s from somewhere else.”
“He’s definitely from Centralia. He used to work for the government in a position that immigrants aren’t normally allowed to work in.”
The bartender returned with the bill and set it down, thanking the two of them as he turned his attention to another patron, this one an off-duty exemplar by the looks of it, his uniform visible beneath his T-shirt. The exemplar looked over at the Northern Alliance women and offered them a toothy grin, winking as he made a gesture that said he would like to buy them drinks.
“We’re fine,” Anna told him. “And I’ve got this.”
Catherine winced as she watched her friend take the bill. “Next time…” she started to say.
“Don’t worry about it,” Anna told her. “I want you to think seriously about what you’re doing. I mean, it’s your life, so do what you want, but whoever this mysterious Centralian guy is, he doesn’t sound right for you. It sounds like he may even be seeing someone else.”
“I don’t know who would see him in his current state, but maybe…” Catherine’s eyes dropped to the left as she combed through her memory. When she couldn’t find anything aside from the empath she had met, Emelia, and Roman’s fuck dolls, she looked up at her friend and smiled. “I’ll get this figured out.”
“Soon?”
“Soon.”
Catherine gave Anna a hug when they stepped outside the bar, and after making sure she was clear, the wind user lifted into the air. A light zephyr picked up around her, whipping up the red and yellow leaves as she rose higher.
For a moment, Catherine just lazily flew in the general direction of Roman’s home, spinning in the air, watching her reflection on the windows of a tall building, the sun creating a corona of light against her eyes every time she blinked.
Eventually, she lowered to the streets, where she ordered a teleporter to take her into Roman’s home.
She wanted to surprise him, to seduce him before he went to work.
Maybe there was a solution to all this. Maybe Catherine needed to make him desire her more to scratch the itch for him.
Smoke rose from the ground as the teleporter appeared, the man confirming the location and disappearing with Catherine.
It was only a few moments later that she arrived in Roman’s living room, the teleporter gone before he could say anything about the single sex doll that sat on the couch.
Catherine shook her head at the doll, and she was just starting to pass it when she turned back to it.
“He bought a new one?”
She took a step closer to the doll.
This one didn’t look like the dolls she’d seen before, the woman in the mask and the red-haired bombshell. This doll had blonde hair and wore all black, the tight outfit exposing an insane amount of cleavage.
Curious now, Catherine reached out to the doll’s face, and from there down to one of its breasts. She squeezed it, shaking her head as she judged its buoyancy.
“I don’t know what he sees in you things,” Catherine said to it, shoving the doll to the side so it now lay in an awkward position on Roman’s couch.
Catherine turned to Roman’s bed, remembering the sex they’d had the other night.
That was the part she wasn’t really explaining to Anna, how good it felt to be with Roman, how the almost impassive way he made love to her was a complete turn on.
She got onto the bed and stared up at the crack in the ceiling.
Her mind started to wander, and as it did she returned to the sex she’d recently had with Roman, slowly lowering her hand down and lightly touching herself. She spread her legs just a little, flicking her pointer finger against her clit, imagining Roman over her, his arms holding him up, his white hair in his face.
Catherine felt something.
She started to look down when her neck straightened and her muscles tightened, the bed preventing her from moving.
Catherine felt something wet against her clit.
She panicked, wind kicking up around her until she heard a woman’s voice.
“Move, and I will kill you. Relax, and I will bring you joy.”
Catherine had never heard the woman’s voice before, but when she felt her ribs constrict slightly, she knew the woman meant busine
ss. Able to now move her head, Catherine looked down to see Roman’s doll between her legs, the doll’s dark eyes locked on her as she ate her out.
And as soon as their eyes met, Catherine, or who the world knew as Catherine, ceased to exist.
She never had a memory after that point. Her entire history was erased in a single instant as something came over her, something became her.
“Yes,” she said with a renewed vigor, slapping her hand on the back of the doll’s head and pushing its face in deeper. “Yes…”
Chapter Ten: A Long Time Coming
“You feel naked without your dolls, don’t you?”
Roman ran a hand over his chin, offering Emelia an uncomfortable smile.
“I’m sorry, sometimes I can hit too close to home,” she said, the beautiful empath now in a black dress that looked like it was made of velvet. A dazzling jewel hung from her neck, and it had drawn Roman’s attention several times now.
“It’s fine.”
“And I appreciate you telling me so much thus far. I assure you, I haven’t looked into your mind, not that I would be able to see as much as I would be able to feel, but you know what I mean.”
Rather than respond, Roman pressed his weight forward and went for the wine bottle, filling Emelia’s glass. An appetizer came, grilled chicken wrapped in spinach and sautéed in butter and other pungent spices.
The smell hit Roman’s nostrils and he nodded, ready to dive in.
He was just about to use his fork to take the chicken off one of the skewers when he stopped, then used his power instead.
“I take it you’re happy to finally be able to use your power without being scrutinized.”
Emelia watched as the fork held a piece of the meat, the knife sawing off a more manageable chunk.
“Oh, people still scrutinize me.”
“You know what I mean. It’s quite miraculous, you know, how it just came out of nowhere.”
“The power of a telepath,” Roman said, smiling up at her.
They’d been at the posh restaurant near Emelia’s place of employment for about forty minutes now, taking it slowly, enjoying wine as Roman went over most of the details of what had happened over the last few days, still leaving out the part where he had basically been ordered to go after his former coworker, Kevin.
“To telepaths and their bastard stepsisters, empaths,” Emelia said, raising her wineglass to Roman.
They clinked their glasses together. He returned his focus to the appetizer.
“In a way, this is the last time you and I will be able to be alone for the foreseeable future,” she said, her eyes locking on Roman.
“What do you mean?”
“Your upgraded dolls will be ready tomorrow, and then from that point forward, you will be some sort of secret agent man, who probably won’t make time for an old friend like me,” Emelia said with a sad smile. “At least that is what I’m sensing.”
“We’re old friends now?”
She clucked. “I don’t know what it is about you…”
“It’s definitely my checkered past and my redemption story,” Roman said, the words leaving his lips before he could fully process them.
He nodded at his own reply.
Often times it was true: this really was part of his appeal for some bizarre reason.
“It definitely isn’t that; I’ve never been into fighters and guys who go against their own governments.”
He shrugged playfully. “Well, aside from a humiliating month of working at a bodega—and trust me, it was humiliating—going against my own government appeared to work out in my favor.”
There was another piece of his recent history he wasn’t telling her, his relation to Margo. Roman hadn’t mentioned the terrible woman was back either, mostly for fear of bringing Emelia into the equation.
Maybe it was better if it was just Roman and his dolls for a while, at least until Margo was gone.
As much as he liked to flirt, and as distant as he could be at times, Roman didn’t want to see anything happen to anyone else he cared for, including the empath with the violet eyes sitting before him.
“How is the chicken?” she asked, noticing that Roman had rolled another skewer on his plate. His knife and fork were currently animated, cutting the pieces into smaller bites.
“Would you like to try some?”
“I thought you would never ask.”
Roman’s fork bent over at the waist and slowly formed legs to lift a nice piece of chicken. It walked to the other side of the table, making a show out of it, acting like it was bouncing something incredibly heavy on its head.
Emelia laughed, as did a little girl who was sitting at a table near them, her eyes locked on Roman’s creation.
“You know,” Emelia said as she grabbed the fork by its stem and lifted it to her mouth, “if this whole spy thing doesn’t work out for you, you could always join the circus.”
“Yes, I could.” Roman grinned over at the little girl, who immediately looked away with embarrassment.
Their main courses came, as did another bottle of wine.
Roman received a message from Ava telling him that the Centralian government had arranged housing for him and she would check on him in the morning.
She gave him the address, and even though it was a mental message read to Roman through a totally neutral voice at the back of his head, he sensed a longing in the way it had been dictated, like Ava was actually asking him to come to her.
He quickly replied and returned to his conversation, Emelia now discussing her job and occasionally flirting with Roman.
The attractive empath explained how she had recently upgraded her apartment. Her new place apparently had an incredible view of the city with a balcony that had sparkling lights strung through its railing, and she said he would enjoy the view.
The waitress came by after they were finished and asked if they wanted dessert.
“Dessert? Or should we take this back to my place?” Emelia asked. “I have some treats there.”
A mental message came in.
Roman felt his heart contract, the nerves in his legs tensing.
“Not tonight,” he said quickly.
Emelia’s smile faded as the empath read the look on his face, and quite possibly the thoughts spiraling through his mind.
“We’ll just take the check,” she said, almost as an afterthought.
Roman’s form took shape at a pleasant hotel in the eastern part of the city, the street lined with trees and discarded banners from a recent festival. At first he didn’t think it was the place, but then he saw the red flags, just as she had described them.
They really did look out of place, but they served as a recognizable landmark.
He entered the hotel, the heels of his shoes clicking loudly on the marble floor, where he was greeted by a thin man with dark skin who made a polite gesture indicating the bar was to the right.
For a moment he thought the front desk clerk was a telepath, but then Roman realized he wasn’t the first guy this man had seen show up here late at night with a hungry look in his eyes.
Roman found the woman sitting at the bar with one leg crossed over the other, staring down at cocktail.
Her hair was in a bun as it had been the first time he’d seen her, and she wore a tight green dress that matched the color of her eyes, eyes Roman was now locked onto through the floor-to-ceiling mirror behind the bartender.
He took a seat next to the woman. She didn’t take her gaze off his reflection, nor did he look away from her, both of them just staring at each other through the bar’s mirror for a moment before their strange spell was interrupted by the bartender.
“We’re open for another hour,” he said as he wiped his hands on his apron, “but the kitchen’s closed.”
“I’ll have what she’s having,” Roman said.
“Will do.”
The bartender slipped away. Still looking at the woman through the mirror’s reflection, Roman fina
lly mustered the courage to speak. “It has been a while.”
“It has.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nadine didn’t respond; instead, she drained her cocktail, finally breaking eye contact with Roman to look over at the bartender and indicate she wanted another as well.
“Is this where you’re staying now?” Roman asked.
“Temporarily.”
“How do the rooms look?”
“Comfortable, but the art on the walls is terrible.”
The bartender returned with their drinks, and Roman broke eye contact with Nadine so he could lift his cocktail by the stem and take a sip from it. “That’s strong,” he said with a wince.
Nadine shrugged. “It has been one hell of a month.”
“For you too?” Roman asked, returning his focus to Nadine, both of them still not officially looking at each other even though they sat next to one another, their shoulders just a few inches apart.
“Let’s finish these cocktails and go to my room,” she said, taking Roman by surprise. “You have to see for yourself how bad the art is.”
Their cocktails finished, the two left, both lost in their own thoughts on how this was going to play out, what it meant, and for Roman, why she had contacted him in the first place.
Their cocktails finished, the two left, Roman following behind Nadine and definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol he’d consumed over the course of the evening.
They came to her door.
Nadine quickly opened it, ushering Roman inside, where he found a single bed and absolutely no art on the walls.
The only other decor aside from a nightstand was an outward-facing couch on the other side of the room, which provided a decent view of Centralia. Nadine instructed Roman to take a seat on the couch, and after a moment to freshen up in the restroom, she joined him.
They still hadn’t really looked at one another, and now, sitting next to each other, Roman was again presented with Nadine’s reflection in the glass of the window, her face harder to read due to the lighting.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, the words tumbling out of his lips meant to cover everything that had happened between them, even the parts he might have purposefully forgotten in the Eastern Province.
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