“I’ll see if we have anyone in the area and let you know. I’m sure there’s someone who can keep a discreet eye on her. Just one person, if you like.”
“Thanks.” But the idea didn’t sound so good to him. He wanted to be sure—absolutely sure—she was safe, and in his experience the only way he could do that was to do it himself. “I just feel edgy, itchy, you know?”
Grady chuckled. “I know.” Rhodri suspected Grady knew too well, and he couldn’t let that happen. Perhaps one day when they’d caught that bastard Wilkinson, he could come back and spend more time. If she hadn’t moved on by then. He wouldn’t ask her to wait for him. He might not come back.
But he knew in his heart that he would. Shit, this was getting too fucking deep, too fast. He couldn’t afford for this to happen. “Her situation isn’t right. She has no money, or not enough, and she’s twenty-six.”
“How many lives?”
“I mean she’s twenty-six for real, man. She only knows what her parents taught her. I want to bring her in. It won’t compromise her security here, but hopefully I can give her better skills. And some contacts.”
Grady grunted. “I need to think about that. You’re right. Her anonymity is a huge advantage for her. We don’t want to compromise that. Let me do some research. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“Sure. There’s something else too.”
“Shoot.”
He grinned, a baring of teeth. If anyone bothered him, he would. “There’s a report in the local paper. Five tourists beaten up last Saturday night, late. One of them died. The thing is, Grady, we had something to do with that.”
Grady sighed. “If you killed the man, it’s down to you. If they want to prosecute for violence, that’s yours too.”
“I know that. I’m clean. They followed Cerys after work, hit on her, then tried to rape her. She fought them off. I joined in. We were both hungry, if you know what I mean.”
Another sigh.
“That’s how I know they were all alive when we left them. Feeding off a dead man means death to us. You know that. So I know they were alive when we left them, and neither of us took so much that we put their lives in danger. We didn’t beat them bad, either, not the way the paper says they were beaten. Just a short fight.” He ran his hand through his thick hair. “Nothing lethal. Knocked them out and left them to sleep it off. So somebody was there after we left. Killed the man Cerys fed from and hurt the others. I have no idea why. I might have contact with the local police because I was in the place where Cerys works earlier when they harassed her. I helped her, although she didn’t really need it.”
“You know your problem, Tryfanwy?”
“Tell me.” If anyone else had heard the particularly sugary tones Rhodri used, they’d have backed off. Not Will Grady.
“You’re a knight errant. From a bygone age. People don’t want that anymore. Some consider it an insult. And from what you’ve told me, this girl is from today’s world. You come from a world where women, Talent or mortal, were considered weaker. Watch yourself, Rhodri. Just take care. And don’t forget you’re an agent. A valuable agent. Clear?”
Grady’s equivalent of
look after yourself
, he guessed. He knew others like him, men who wouldn’t dream of telling him they cared but showed it all the time. He gave a tight grin. “Clear.”
He clicked off after Grady disconnected, and shoved his phone back in his pocket. From Will Grady, that was enough. He’d make good on his promise. Grady had a lot of irons in the fire, but not once had he lost sight of any one of them. In fact, Rhodri was thinking of transferring. Not that he didn’t respect his boss in New York, Cristos, who had started the whole Department a couple of generations ago, but he felt restless, wanted a change. Perhaps switching back to the UK was a good plan.
Staring out to sea, he watched a little rowboat heading across the bay. The red flags weren’t up, so it was a good afternoon for sailing. Not too hot, a brisk breeze. He should have hired a canoe, maybe found out if they’d had a speedboat he could borrow. Get lost for a few hours. Back to the merman thing again. Could Talents be created wrongly? He’d been a water lover in his childhood, always.
The guy in the rowboat made good progress. If he closed his eyes, Rhodri could feel the splashes of water on his face, enjoy the sensation of his muscles flexing until he got to the burn. And then some. Tomorrow, he promised himself. Tomorrow he’d look into it. He’d come back determined not to get involved with the life here, to sort out Gareth’s estate and wait on events. But somehow the town had got to him again. He might as well go the whole hog and get into the life while he was here. He should have asked Grady if he was needed yet. No, knowing Grady, he’d order him back anyway. The Department always had something to do.
Breathing in the aroma he’d never known anywhere else, he wondered if he’d made a mistake leaving this place. Sea air tinged with the tang of vinegar from the fish and chips they sold from the stalls on the front. At the time, his leaving had seemed inevitable, but he could have come back, could have returned after a generation and settled here. His family knew about him, and by then he’d have learned enough to stay hidden and live a quiet life.
Nah, who was he kidding? He needed his life. This might seem like an idyllic place to be and to live, but he’d be bored silly in twelve months. Unless he had something to do, something to strive for. So while Talents had enemies, avowed and otherwise, he had something to do. A way to live.
He stood at that rail and watched. Just watched. Let himself enter the rhythm of the place, sink down and in. A dangerous thing for Talents to do, because they could lose themselves, spend decades contemplating and wondering. Too easy to do. Not so easy to get out of. But he wasn’t exactly a Talent right now. The only Talented attribute he had currently was telepathy. He could communicate mentally with someone else. But that wasn’t something exclusive to Talents, and it could be learned. As far as they knew, every person—mortal or Talent possessed—had that gift, so it wasn’t exclusive. It didn’t define him. He was a mortal who had worked on and developed his telepathic ability. That was all.
He’d take her on the Orme tomorrow, the funicular that ran from the cliffs to the beach. Essential for tourists. One of his ancestors had operated it once. He wondered if it was still the same. He had a hankering to see it before he left. Again. He’d spent his early life leaving and returning, and then he hadn’t come back at all. The only reason he’d been contacted about Gareth’s death was because he kept it legal. Working for the Department meant they gave him new identities every so often, new papers. He’d chosen to remain a Tryfanwy, so they’d obligingly invented fake cousins and sons to give him an identity when he “died.”
Shit, being a Talent was complicated sometimes.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, but the air darkened and flattened when clouds floated before the sun. He looked up, grinned. That was one reason he didn’t stay here. He didn’t like tropical climates, but rain didn’t please him much, either.
His phone rang. Glancing at the caller ID, he was impressed with Grady’s efficiency.
“Tryfanwy?”
“Who else?”
Grady grunted. “Just making sure. Listen, I don’t have any details for you, but I can tell you one thing.”
“So don’t keep me on a string.” He felt the tension. A note in Grady’s voice told him something was wrong.
“Her parents? We didn’t know about them. No records at all. They never asked for new IDs from us. They must have managed all that on their own. If they were nomads, that made it easier. They probably bought false IDs on the black market when they needed them. Are you getting me, Tryfanwy? Nothing. No records.”
Nobody accused Rhodri of being slow on the uptake. “You mean the Department didn’t find them on the street on the day they died?”
“Nope. I’m still investigating, but even under another name, there’s no reference. Because of the information you gave us, we could place the family sigil. Your Cerys has relatives, very distant, living in the US, but they’re there. So we have records of the family. Not her parents. I’m looking into it. We’re checking the media and the government records in other places.”
Officially Department 57 in the UK was part of the intelligence network. They had discreet offices in the MI6 building, even. So they had privileged access, and if they were anything like the US setup, they had geeks who could get in anywhere they wanted to. “Thanks. Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
No record.
Fuck. That meant someone else had scooped them off the main street at the demo. If that had actually happened. She said a member of the Department had visited her, which was how she’d known how her parents had died. Looked as if there was an ulterior motive going on. He didn’t like it—didn’t like it at all. In his bones, he itched. His skin crawled. This was too close to things he knew too much about. The laboratories that captured Talents to experiment on and sell. Geoffrey fucking Wilkinson, who was king of the labs right now. Something.
He needed to make sure Cerys was safe. He could be called back at any time. He was still officially on duty, still waiting for Wilkinson to make a move. He didn’t want to leave her unprotected. Couldn’t.
He turned and strolled back to the main road, ignoring the car that blared at him. Bloody tourists always thought they owned the place. He decided not to give it the finger, start something that might just liven up his afternoon. He’d damaged enough tourists. Even though he was certain he hadn’t dealt a deathblow to any of them, one had ended up dead. And since he’d definitely rendered them unconscious, that was partly his fault. Whoever came after him and Cerys had found it easy. It could have been drunks, someone looking for a punching and kicking bag. It had happened before. Or it could have been someone who wanted to silence at least one of the five.
It was his duty to report it, but he hoped it wouldn’t lead to anything else. Not here, not in the town he’d regarded as a comfortable backwater, somewhere to come and recharge his batteries, a place where nothing happened. He liked it that way.
The picturesque bay was fringed by Victorian houses, most of them hotels. Tall buildings with double bays on the ground floor, painted faded pastel shades or white. Not like the lurid and vivid shades of San Francisco’s Painted Ladies. He liked it like this. Familiar, very British. Very Welsh. He stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered to her lodging. He wouldn’t put his senses out to her. He’d do it the mortal way. He pulled out his phone and hit her number—like Grady’s, on speed dial. After a week. She answered. “Hi.” Her voice, soft and intimate, warmed his chilled skin.
“It’s me. Are you home yet?”
“Yes, I just put the kettle on. Do you want to come up?”
He paused. So tempting. “Not today. I’m outside. Unless you can’t wait for that cup of tea, come down. I want to show you something.”
She laughed. “Mysterious much?”
“Call it a surprise. So how about it? If I come up, you know what will happen.” The main reason he hadn’t made it to his hotel much this week, except to change. He grinned. He couldn’t deny it tempted him now. They could always walk later. No, they wouldn’t. “Come on. Grab an umbrella.”
She came down five minutes after, leaving the house, which opened with a waft of the damp, cabbage smell he couldn’t like, no matter how much it was coming to mean to him. But it also meant her discomfort, and he definitely didn’t like that.
Chapter Five
When Rhodri kissed her, Cerys felt complete. He enveloped her, and his gentle kiss invaded her slowly, as if she were made of cotton wool. She loved it, but she’d never admitted it to herself before. Men often treated her like she was delicate, but that didn’t mean as much to her as when Rhodri did it. He knew what she was, and he knew she wouldn’t break easily. Yet he still treated her like something precious.
She loved that.
But he gazed down at her for a moment before he swung away, though he ran his hand down her arm until he found her hand. He threaded his fingers between hers. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Gareth’s.”
She hadn’t known Gareth Tryfanwy. Now she knew why. Perhaps he preferred to keep himself solitary, not to contact other Talents, as she did. Strange to think that another Talent was living so close and she’d never known it.
They walked to the next road, crossed it, and passed in front of the big hotel there. The Excalibur. Never full, its heyday had been in the years of Victorian splendor, when holidaymakers had come to ride along the promenade in their best crinolines and frock coats, showing off to their neighbors and friends. When going abroad hadn’t been something most people thought of. The surge to Spain in the seventies, the advent of cheap air travel to places that could guarantee sunny weather, had almost killed places like Llandudno. Now they had a resurgence for weekend breaks, secondary holidays. She’d been delighted to see the refurbishment of the great hotels. The Excalibur’s pristine white paintwork gleamed in the light of the intermittent sun, windows glittering, and the drains a crisp black. She remembered rust on those drains, patchy paint on the exterior, and a faded sign missing letters.
“You’re staying at Gareth’s?”
He shook his head. “I’m staying here at the Excalibur. It was more convenient.”
“Oh, I see.”
They crossed the road and walked a little farther, almost to the end of the parade, where they faded out to less grand, more homely looking places. These were more lodging houses and moderately priced bed-and-breakfasts rather than full-fledged hotels with licenses to serve drinks and en suites in every room. Traditional boarding houses. They had small front gardens, most of them paved over to provide parking areas.
He tugged her toward one at the end of the row, a semidetached flanking a small side road. “Here we are.”
“A change of scene?”
He slid the key in the lock. It opened easily. That should have been her first clue.
She’d expected a run-down house with old-fashioned furniture, perhaps infested with the curse of the seaside home: damp. Maybe a rash of brown and orange, carpets with brash patterns dating back thirty years or more. Pictures of the Tretchikoff green woman or a child with a single tear running down his face. That kind of thing. The house had been owned by someone who had, she’d heard, died of old age.