Our deepest desires are not always the ones we think they are.

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Sunday morning hit me like freight truck. The first thing that happened was my cell phone went off with an invitation to brunch at the Bell Tree. After I promised Suzu I’d attend, I dragged myself into the bathroom and tried to drown myself. Oh, it was entirely accidental; I fell asleep while sitting on the edge of the bathtub and fell in. When my face hit water, I woke up.

I focused my magic and burned the fatigue out of my system, letting the healing fire wash through me. It was a form of cheating, yes, but I’d not slept nearly enough to offset my tiredness, and I had a brunch to attend. While I was drying off, the phone went off again, this time a notice from Ravenswing that he had a small job for me. On reply, he needed me to collect a parcel that would be coming by Gate and bring it up to the office in the afternoon. Fine, courier duties were acceptable. It was as good as done.

The last thing to hit in the hour since I’d awoken was the arrival of an ambulance for my elderly tenant next door. She had taken a fall, and as she had no family, she had listed me as her ‘notify in case of emergency.’ After a bit of confusion, I promised to visit her while she was in hospital. It made her pat my hand and smile, and she told me I was a good boy before they loaded her into the ambulance and took her away. I wasn’t good at much of anything, but perhaps making little old ladies smile. Maybe that’s why Suzu tolerated me, though if I called her a ‘little old lady’ in any area where she might overhear me, I’d have the dubious honor of seeing just how feisty she was.

By the time I got up to the Bell Tree, I was fifteen minutes late. I let Suzu fuss at me a bit for it, and then followed her into the dining area to see it was set up as a buffet, and that several people were moving about. Xelander looked up from his drink and rose to move towards us, and I looked to Suzu with curiosity. “What in the world is all this, Suzu?”

“It’s a Welcome Home.”

I shook my head. “But I’m not a resident, Suzu. I’m just… I don’t know what I am anymore, to be honest.” I wasn’t her boyfriend, and I’d never truly been a lover. She’d bit me once and only because my sleeping magic had briefly awoken was she still walking the world. I certainly wasn’t a thrall, nor was I a pet. I was just me. Just… the boy who was left over.

Whatever she might have said was lost when Xelander approached, and while Suzu could have told me anyway, she didn’t. It was something else she’d never tell me; just add it to the list. I looked to Xelander and offered him a faint smile in greeting. “Hey. Sorry about that; Ravenswing can be a demanding son of a bitch. Did you get moved in all right?” I ignored the look Suzu gave me. Two could play that game, after all.

“Been living out of a suitcase for so long that I didn’t have much in the way of things to move in.” I could understand that sentiment. "I'm afraid that my meager belongings look a bit... lost in the apartment." I understood that, too, though I was fair certain that he had more in the way of personal belongings than I did.

"What have you decided about transportation, then? Do you intend to walk through Charleston or purchase a vehicle?" I queried, walking towards the table upon which stood several prefilled glasses of ice and pitchers of various beverages. I took a glass and selected the water pitcher, pouring while I waited for Xelander to choose his own glass.

I watched him distribute the ice out of his glass into others on the table before pouring himself some water. "Suzu was kind enough to take me out to a road that seemed to be endless auto dealerships yesterday, and today I will decide which car I intend to purchase tomorrow. I must say that the... sheer number of vehicles for sale staggers the mind."

She took him to the Savannah Highway Automile. I wish I could have seen his face. More than two miles of gleaming enameled metal surface and glass in nearly every size, shape, and color. Hundreds of thousands of vehicles ready to be haggled over at practically any price you can imagine. But that wasn't truly where I wanted the conversation to go, so I waited while he took a sip of his water, and then prompted him.

"Then I guess you've discovered the terror that is Suzu behind the wheel. Ow!” Suzu smacked me in the arm as she moved past me to move a pitcher back on to its coaster, and it was hard enough that if I weren’t a healer, it would have left a mark. "Hey! You drive like one of Hell's bats, Suzu! Not that I drive much slower, but you could give some of those NASCAR boys a lesson for speed."

The look that Suzu gave me could have blistered paint off the wall. I gave her my best ‘what?’ expression and she rolled her eyes at me and turned to Xelander with a smile. “I didn't hear any complaining from my passenger.” There was a moment where Suzu rested her hand on Xelander's arm, and then she patted him lightly before she moved to the buffet to check the food.

It took a moment for my eyebrows to crawl back down into place, and I eyed Xelander for a moment with something approaching jealous respect before stuffing the emotions back down and chuckling. "Looks like she's got the way of you, Xelander." It shouldn't have surprised me; Suzu had a way of taking lost souls in like ducklings and setting them right again. I'm a reasonable example, after all.

"She is a remarkable woman," Xelander allowed, turning to watch the pale elfess as she moved from the buffet to greet an arrival. "I find myself at ease with her companionship." He turned away, heading back towards his table, and I stood there for a moment, completely flummoxed by the wide range of implications.

Logically, it was understandable… he’d lived a lonely life from what I knew, and she was an incredibly beautiful woman. Elf. Vampire. Oh… crap. I had two distinctly different reactions to that thought, and while one was to run for the nearest exit, the other was to calmly walk across the restaurant and attempt to discern if Xelander was in thrall or not. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Suzu, I was more concerned that it had happened without either knowing it.

I managed to take a seat beside Xelander without knocking anything over in the process and looked at him thoughtfully. “So then. Suzu. Really?” He turned that pale blue gaze to me, and I lifted an eyebrow. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it; God knows that I’d not have let her get away if I could have kept her. But you just met, Xelander.” Oh, I was one to talk, considering Tania.

“You are, of course, correct. She and I have just met, but I feel as if I have known her for far longer.” His voice grew soft with consideration, and he looked at me in all seriousness and spoke again. “Did you know that she’s an elf?” I stared at him for a long moment, and then I saw his expression shift slightly, as if he were judging my reaction. My eyes narrowed, and he burst into laughter.

The last time I heard him laugh like that was at his wedding. It made my heart constrict for a moment, the scar bursting into painful life that caught my breath and making me catch my hand up against my chest to ease the spasm of magic. The levity broke and he moved to catch my upper arm and hold me firmly. “Teimhean, what is it?”

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I closed my eyes and forced myself calm, forced my magic to ease and settle within my chest. It took some focus, and once I got my heart settled, I opened my eyes and lowered my hand. “I’m… all right. It’s… it’s passed now.” I lifted my gaze and saw Suzu across the room, watching me sadly. I tilted my head at her and looked to Xelander. “That was a good one. You had me going there for a while, I was worried.”

“And besides all that, what was that?” He wasn’t meaning the joke; he meant my reaction. “You were in pain, Teimhean, real pain. I haven’t seen you in pain like that ever before.” He was switching into doctor mode, searching my eyes, touching my wrist and feeling my pulse racing from the physical reaction to the magefire pain. I drew my hand free from his and shook my head. He reached out and caught my wrist in a firm grip. “Teimhean, if there is something wrong, tell me?”

I sighed and looked away from him, away from Suzu, letting my gaze focus on the white curtain that hung before the window next to the table. “It’s an old injury, nothing to worry about. Sometimes it hurts. I… I keep it there as a remembrance.” I sat up straight, taking a long slow breath and holding it for a moment before letting it out in one exhale. “Really, there’s nothing that your medicine can do for it, so don’t let it concern you.”

He drew away from me, and I could have sworn I felt something shift and a part of him closed off as I looked at him. “Xelander… wait. Don’t do that. No, really. Don’t do that. Don’t shut me out. Not… not after I just got you back.”

Again, there was a strange feeling of magical silence, and I turned to look to him, watching as his gaze hardened and his lips thinned. He knew I was lying, knew that I had been in real pain and that I was trying to deny it. It flared against me once more and I rose, moving away from the table quickly. “I’m sorry.” My voice fell, because I knew then what had happened, and that I couldn’t stay.

Offering a wincing smile to Suzu, I left the Bell Tree. I couldn’t have explained any of it, didn’t know how I knew what Xelander had done, but I knew that he’d put the puzzle pieces together and knew more than I’d wanted him to ever know. I shoved the pain aside and fled towards my car.

In the parking garage, I stood by the rental car and shoved my hands in my pockets, drawing the keys out of one and my phone out of the other. It was eleven, not quite time for the various churches to be out yet, so I could get out of Charleston with relative ease. I’d go up to the office and hammer out some of the details in the contracts before Monday morning, and then-

A hand fell on my shoulder and my stomach sank. Xelander walked around and looked at me, his hand sliding down to rest centered on my breastbone. “Teimhean, I was there when they brought you in to hospital. I saw the scar; I know what it’s from, and I accept that it’s my fault. You don’t have to try to hide that. Just tell me why it’s still there, after all this time, and with all your power to heal it.”

“Xelander, I can’t. Ask me anything in the world, ask me for the moon. I can do that, but I can’t do this. I can’t stand here and tell you why that scar stays on my chest, and why the pain tries to stop my heart when I remember things.” I stepped backwards from his touch, placing my hand over the scar to hold it to myself and try to ease the pain that had flared again at his touch. “I’ve done too much, changed from the man you knew.”

“How, Teimhean? How have you changed? How can I know who you are now if all you give me are half-glimpses? How many times through the years do I have to see your shadow slipping away from me, leaving me to wonder if I’ll ever see you again? Do you know how many times I wanted to catch you and just talk to you? Why the first thing I gave you was my apology that was years past due? Because I was afraid I’d lose the chance again!” He was a tempest of emotion, a fierce strength within those words compelling me to listen and holding me by some power as yet unnamed. It burned me with its intensity, and combined with the pain of my scar, I was overwhelmed.

“Xelander, please… whatever you’re doing, stop. It’s hurting me… can’t focus my magic.” I felt my strength slipping away from my grasp under his power, my head spinning and my knees buckling. I reached for my power, felt for the fire that lived within me, and found only depths of blackness into which I fell.

Opening my eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling seemed to be the course of my week. I had no idea where I was, though the room seemed pleasant enough, and the bed was rather comfortable. I wasn’t certain how long I’d been out, but my phone, wallet, and keys were on the small table next to the bed. I picked up the phone, looked at the time, cursed quietly, and sat up. On the plus side, I wasn’t under the covers, and I was still dressed. On the minus, I had no idea where my shoes were. A quick look about found them at the foot of the bed, and I snagged my wallet and keys while I toed on my shoes.

Neither Suzu nor Xelander were in sight or hearing, and I slipped out of the room, coming to recognize the baby grand piano that Xelander had played the day before. Okay, he’d brought me back to his apartment, I could deal with that. I knew how to get out of the building, and I did by way of the private access to Market Street. I moved back around to the parking garage, got in the rental, and headed for my pick-up point.

Thankfully, my contact was running late. Even better, it wasn’t anything living that I was picking up. The white box was nondescript, and no bigger than a breadbox… not that anyone knows what a breadbox is nowadays. Think of an oversize shoebox, maybe one for a basketball player’s shoes, and you get the general size idea. I didn’t know what was in it, didn’t want to know what was in it, and honestly, I didn’t care what was in it. I just knew that I had to take it up to North Charleston and put it in Ravenswing’s office. On a Sunday.

My phone rang while I was driving, and I’d kept meaning to get a new Bluetooth headset, but you know what they say about good intentions. It wasn’t a number I knew anyway, so it was likely Suzu or Xelander. I didn’t want to talk to them anyway, so I let it go to voice mail. It rang three more times before I got up to the office, and twice again as I was walking the package to Ravenswing’s office. Whoever it was got points for being persistent.

I tossed the ringing phone on my desk and spent the next hour picking through contracts and sending emails to Legal to make sure that they were aware of the agreements. My cell phone had rung off and on through the hour and as tempted as I was to turn the thing off, I left it on just in case. The last thing I wanted was to need the thing and have to wait for it to turn on.

Another two hours were spent reviewing the other applicants and signing off on the ones that looked like they’d offer the most back to the Ravenswing Corporation’s invested time and laboratories. Once that was done, the clock read nearly on to four in the afternoon, so I shut things down and headed out. I owed Everton a visit, and I knew just the place to stop off and grab some food along the way.

Now, admittedly, I grew up Irish, and spent many years in France afterwards, but the love of Italian food came early and stayed late. Yes, I’d had vegetable lasagna for lunch recently, but five o’clock found me collecting take out from the Italian place up the way from the Medical University. At five-thirty, I was walking into Everton’s office and grinning when he looked up at me in surprise. “Hadn’t had a chance to do dinner with you lately, and since I know you’re basically in residence on Sunday, I thought why not?”

“One of these days, you’re going to tell me you’ve finally caught a socialite and that you won’t be randomly turning up anymore, and I’ll be all the worse off for it. I think this is what, the eighth time you’ve saved me?”

“Oh, I caught a socialite Friday night. Unfortunately, she was just a little too young to keep, so I sent her back on Saturday evening.” That set him to laughing, and I dug the cartons of food out and set them on his desk. “How’s the Princess today? I looked in on her as I walked in, and she seemed to be resting.”

“It’s been one of her better days. Some Candy Stripers came by and spent an hour reading to her and then they played some games. Medically, we’ve made some progress, but no breakthroughs.” He turned the container closest to him and popped it open, looking at the manicotti for a moment and shaking his head. “I know you keep telling me that in all your abilities mind reading isn’t among them, but you still manage to bring the right thing every time.”

“I’m just that good,” I quipped, and after we shared a laugh, he ate while I pushed my food around in companionable silence for a while. It was a matter of course that I’d silenced my phone, and while I felt it vibrate in hopes that I might answer it, I ignored it. “Sorry I didn’t stay the other day; it looked like you had your hands full.” It was the closest I could get to acknowledging that I had seen how ill she’d been.

He nodded, resting his fork against the Styrofoam. “I’d thought it had been you. That rabbit gets the place of honor on her pillow. Did you see it?” I hadn’t, but I’d not been looking for it. I grinned and took another bite of eggplant, and he continued. “She always asks if you’ve been by; and while I wouldn’t normally suggest it, I think it would be all right if you woke her for a short visit.”

I knew a not-so-subtle hint when I heard one, and I could understand. No father wanted to admit that he was losing his child, no matter how hard he fought on her behalf. I’d been there, done that, and still lost mine. I could sympathize, but I’d never told him about my Lucie. Instead, I nodded and left the half-eaten eggplant where it sat. I’d had enough anyway.