“Don’t stop!” She clutched at his coat.
“I’m sorry. I forgot. It has been long since I had to deal with….” Then he shook his head. “Explanations can wait. First, we must get you some food.”
She couldn’t process his words, for the tidal surges tugging at her body still demanded her attention and stole her senses. “I don’t understand.”
“Find your feet.” He straightened up. “Slowly.”
She realized that he was holding nearly all her weight off the floor. His arm was around the small of her back, propping her up.
Jenna brought one foot back underneath herself, her inner thigh brushing against his leg. She put her weight on the foot. Slowly, he let her stand back on her feet, watching her with a hawk-like scrutiny.
“Lord, I’m…lightheaded.” She clutched at her temple as the room tilted.
“You’ve gone as white as a lily.” He pulled her tee-shirt down and kept his hand on her shoulder a moment longer. “Food is what you need.”
“As long as it’s a whole buffet.” For not only did her head seem light, but her whole body felt hollow, like everything of strength and substance had been scooped out, leaving an empty shell.
“Can you walk?” He was watching her again.
Assessing.
The dark brooding expression was back in his eyes.
Alarm touched her. “What’s wrong with me?” He seemed to know what was happening to her.
He was clearly a long term resident of this strange wonderland she had been dropped into.
“It will take time to explain that to you and you don’t have time to spare. Come.” He tucked his hand under her elbow and walked her to the end of the aisle. She leaned against him for support. All the hard-won strength and energy she had regained since the accident had drained away. A small breeze would blow her over.
He glanced out past the stacks, cautiously rechecking their escape route remained clear, then walked her to the door.
They stepped outside.
The air crackled with cold. While they had been inside, the temperature and the light had both dropped sharply.
It was nearly four p.m. and almost dark. Big fat flakes of snow drifted to the ground.
He stopped and looked up at the thick black clouds overhead. “This isn’t good.”
“Snow? It is winter. It snows in winter, here.
That’s why the tourists come here.” She struggled to do up the unfamiliar fastenings of her coat one-handed, unwilling to give up her support.
“The sky was perfectly clear thirty minutes ago. This is unnatural.” He looked around, then led her toward the mall on the other side of the courtyard. The mall would lead to back to the street.
“What does
that
mean?” she demanded.
“Later. My car is a block away. You’re staying at the Banff Springs Hotel?”
“Yes, but—”
But he hurried her along, back onto the street, leaving her no breath for more questions. His car, when they reached it, turned out to be a big Scout with wide tires, perfect for this sort of driving condition. He helped her up into it and carefully bundled her into the passenger seat and buckled the seat belt.
Then he settled behind the wheel and started the car.
Jenna cleared her throat awkwardly. She sat in a perfect stranger’s car. Yet he didn’t feel like a stranger. “Perhaps you should tell me your name.”
He smiled. It was that same wide, light expression that caught her breath and made her think of the clear ring of trumpets sounding victories, Christmas dinners and every Hallmark moment she had ever seen on television. “And you tell me yours.”
“You don’t know my name?” She paused, surprised. “Why do I feel like you
should
know my name?”
He checked over his shoulder for a break in traffic. “Because just like you think you know me, I know you, too.” He looked back at her.
The smile had faded, but the impression of lightness and spirit was still there.
“I have known you a very long time,” he told her. ”But in a way that doesn’t need names.”
She shivered.
“Now, we need names.” He looked at her, waiting.
There was so much unspoken in his words, so much implied. “You have a lot of answering to do.” She held out her hand. “Jenna MacDonald.”
He shook her hand firmly. “Rhys Cellyn.” He pronounced his last name so it sounded like ‘kellin’ which emphasized yet again the touch of foreignness about him. He made no smart ass comments about her name—no mention of happy meals. Jenna relaxed just a little bit more.
Rhys flipped on the indicator and spun the wheel, easing the car out into traffic. “I have so much to tell you, Jenna.”
Just as they hit the hotel car park, Jenna felt the light-headed hunger return with a vengeance. She groaned and leaned over, clutching her stomach.
“I know. I can fix that in a minute.” He parked the car, climbed out and came around to her side to open the door and help her out. Frosty air washed over her, bathing her face and hands.
With a hand under her elbow, he walked her over to the nearest entrance to the hotel. The weakness seemed worse and she was glad when Rhys’ hand came back under her elbow and his arm braced her back.
The hotel had a big double-doored entrance. Four paces inside the first set of doors hung a second set, providing a baffle against the cold. Between the two sets of doors, pushed back against the wall, stood a pop dispenser.
“Wait.” Rhys dug into his jeans pocket. He bought a can of Coke and popped the lid and handed it to her. “Drink it down. The sugar will help.”
She took three or four deep swallows, even though the chill of the soda hurt her throat, while Rhys led her across the foyer, towards the elevators. The main dining room was on the second floor of the lobby.
Jenna felt so weak and lethargic that she simply stood in the elevator, unable to stir herself enough to pull off her cap and gloves, or even open up her coat, although it was warm in the hotel, and she could feel her cheeks heating.
Rhys wordlessly reached over and slid the knitted cap off her head, then picked up her hands and tugged the gloves from her fingers.
He pushed them into her coat pockets. He did it with no fuss, as if he was used to doing it. He seemed to understand her weakness precisely.
Then the elevator slid open and he led her into the restaurant, propping her up once more.
He arrange for a table with the same quiet tone.
They were given a small table by a window, tucked behind a stone column that supported a higher floor. It wasn’t the best table in the dining room but they were not properly dressed for the restaurant, either. However, the table was extremely private. The two tables closest to them had no diners.
Before the waiter could even take away the wine glasses, Rhys had glanced at the menu. “Could you bring us the pan-fried salmon steak and the green salad, with a flax seed oil vinaigrette, as soon as possible? And two big glasses of orange juice.”
Jenna, in the process of slowly unfolding her napkin and laying it on her lap, stared at him.
“Two, sir?” the waiter asked.
“Yes. And as quickly as possible.” Rhys handed him the menu.
The waiter hurried away, while Jenna let her napkin fall. “Yes, fish! That’s
exactly
what I want. But I didn’t know that until you ordered it just now. How did you know?”
“Your body is screaming for sugar and omega 3 and 6 oil. The orange juice is almost pure sugar.” He touched the back of his head with his long fingers. “So far as scientific investigation has been able to establish, the major source of energy for what we do is generated by the brain, and the brain uses sugar for energy. So you crave sugar. But you’re not just using energy. You’re also stressing the brain cells themselves, and they are mostly made up of EFA’s. Essential fatty acids—especially Omega threes and sixes. Fish and in particular salmon is rich in the stuff. So is flax.”
Jenna stared at him, her stomach knotting and a cold weight settling around her heart.
Please let it be a misunderstanding
, she whispered silently to herself.
She had simply misunderstood.
He really wasn’t taking this conversation in the direction he seemed to be taking it.
The waiter placed their glasses of orange juice on the table.
Jenna picked hers up with a trembling hand and gulped it down. It was cold and delicious—she drained the sixteen ounce glass immediately.
Rhys drank, then reached into the pocket of his coat which was hanging on the chair behind him.
He pulled out a small bottle of tablets. “EFA supplements. They’re mine, but you take them. I know where to get more. Start taking three a day, one with each meal.”
She picked up the bottle and studied it. “Why?” she demanded.
“Because until you get used to it, you’re going to find this sort of hunger draining you every time you extend yourself.” He took a breath. “Every time you use your power.”
She dropped the bottle like it had grown red hot and put her hands in her lap. The bottle hit the table with a dull thud, making the tablets inside rattle. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Jenna…”
“What
exactly
are you trying to tell me?”
His answer was calm, just like the expression in his eyes. He was gazing at her steadily, no quarter given. “I think you already know that.”
She shook her head, denying it. “This afternoon, that man in the coffee shop, the one that chased us, he didn’t call you Cellyn. He called you…A-Aveyon.”
“Avaon,” Rhys corrected. “It’s a name I used once, long ago. That is the name he knows me by.”
It was a perfectly straight forward answer, but the hints of a mysterious past, of different identities, annoyed her. It made her uneasy. “Who is
he
, then? He doesn’t have multiple identities, does he?”
“His name is Clement Hine and no, he uses no other name.”
“Maybe I should have let him help me instead of you.”
His gaze remained steady. “You also know the truth of that, Jenna. You let your instincts guide you this afternoon and you’re still safe. You
knew
without being told so that you could trust me.”
She dropped her gaze to the tablecloth.
She couldn’t meet his eyes.
She didn’t want to acknowledge the truth. She was not willing to let him pull the conversation back to where he had been taking it, so she kept up the attack.
“Where were
you
in the coffee shop, then? I studied every face in that shop, before the coffee thing happened and you weren’t there. Not before it all went down.”
“
Every
face?” he asked, with a small smile. “That’s not a common talent, remembering faces.”
“It’s not talent, it’s training,” she snapped. “And stay on the subject.”
“Training?” His eyes narrowed. “Wait…you knew we had lost them this afternoon….” He sat forward, the brows coming together. “You never asked why I bought the coat. You
knew
. What do you do for a living, Jenna? Who do you work for?”
“I can’t say.” Wariness flooded her. The SIA’s secrets were not hers to divulge.
“You’ve already said too much.” Rhys leaned back and crossed his arms, studying her again. “Not CIA or FBI.
You don’t have that sharp, PC look about you. Royal Canadian Mounted Police?” He lifted his brow.
“Nice guess, as we’re in Canada. But I’m American.” She shook her head.
“I won’t confirm your guesses, even if by some wild chance you guessed right.” Which he would never do. The SIA—the Secret Intelligence Agency—was called that for a reason. While the CIA cavorted about in public drawing the gaze of civilians and other countries’ organizations, the SIA quietly moved in the shadows, getting the job done.
No one
knew about the SIA except those who worked for it. Even Jenna didn’t know every facet of the organization, just her small pocket of it.
Rhys’ frown deepened. “Given your appearance, your speech idioms and the hint of west coast in your speech…all things considered, I’d say you work for the SIA.”
Jenna snapped her jaw shut before it could do more than sag open by a millimeter or two, but it was enough to tell him what she would not say.
He smiled. “Yes, I thought so.”
“How do you
know
that?” she demanded. “How do you know about the SIA at all?”
“Simple. I have done contract work for them. And I know, from that work, that headquarters are in Seattle. I’m familiar with the type of people they employ. You sound a little like a Seattle native. Add that to your unusual training…” He shrugged. “I won’t pry any more, because I know you can’t tell me anything, but at least we both know that you’re more than capable of looking after yourself if need be. That will help.”
“Help what?”
“For the solstice.” He nodded toward the window beside them, where snow was building against the glass. “They’re already starting to throw their defenses against us. What they will bring to bear on us during the solstice will need all our combined skills.”
The subject was turning back to the uneasy territory she had nudged it away from. She grasped quickly for a deflection. “So where did you spring from this afternoon? I notice you carefully didn’t confirm that you weren’t in the shop before that coffee thing happened.”
He sat back, and Jenna could almost
feel
his sudden caution. “Why do you call it that? ‘The coffee thing’.”
“What the hell else should I call it?”
“What happened?”
“Then you weren’t there.”
“Tell me.”
She shrugged. “I overheard a man ripping a woman to shreds—verbally, anyway. Then she…I don’t know.” In her mind, she saw again the woman’s hand swivel around, the big coffee cup in it. The woman’s eyes widening in surprise—even before she tipped it upside down. “She got fed up with it. Got pissed off. Something. And she dumped her cup of coffee in his lap.” She grimaced. “Serves him right.”
“Is that what really happened?”
She felt the little jump of nerves inside her. “Of course it is!”
He lifted his fingers a little. A calming motion.
Peace
.
Screw that. She glared at him. “So if you weren’t in the shop when the coffee got dumped, then where were you and what made you decide to step up and help me?”
He was back to staring at her again.
She knew he was taking her measure. His gaze did not fall away from her face by a millimeter as he spoke slowly and clearly. “When you dumped that woman’s coffee into her partner’s lap, I was a quarter of a mile away.” His gaze wouldn’t release her, wouldn’t let her shy away from the bald fact he had just given her.
She realized her hands trembled. She put them flat on the table, to hide the tremble. “Goddamn it.” Her voice was hoarse and she cleared it. “What did
I
do to that woman? I sat a table away from her.”
“You did exactly what you’re beginning to suspect you did, Jenna. You made her dump the coffee.”
The surge, the mental thrust as she had silently shouted at the woman….
She touched her temple and felt the clamminess there. Cold sweat. “You can’t know that. You weren’t there.”
“I
felt
it, Jenna. Even from a quarter mile’s distance I felt it. You can’t control it properly yet, so you push the field too hard. I’m surprised Hine didn’t break out with a nose bleed, sitting that close to you.”
She recalled Hine’s face when she had first seen him. The etched brow. “He had a headache.” Then meaning of that hit her and the trembling worsened. “Oh shit.” She realized she was rubbing her own temple and dropped her hand. “No, no, no. This is too bizarre. It’s a fairy-tale, Rhys.”
He exuded calm, a stoical patience. “You haven’t asked yet how I got to the coffee shop so quickly.”
But her mind slid away from contemplating that poser. The potential answers disturbed her too much to consider too closely. She shook her head. “What have you got me mixed up in?”
He covered her fist with his big hand and squeezed to keep it still. He looked at her steadily until she calmed down.