But now he was just Adam. He wondered if she had any idea what she'd just betrayed.
"Circenn was born in 811 AD," he told her. "He lived in his time until the early 1500s, when he met a woman from your century. They now live in your time."
Her eyes widened. "I don't think I even want to know how that happened. It would just give me a headache."
She was silent a moment and Adam fancied he could almost see questions whizzing behind her green-gold eyes as she pondered which one to ask next. He was pleased by what she chose.
"So does that mean any children you have are also immortal, even if they're only half-fairy? Not that I personally care," she added hastily. "I was just thinking it might be interesting to add to our books."
The only person who would be adding anything to those idiotic books was him; it was time the O'Callaghans got a few things right. "No, Gabrielle, only a full-blooded Tuatha Dé is born immortal. I gave my son an elixir that my race created so we could grant select humans immortality." She didn't need to know that he'd done it without his son's knowledge or consent. Or that Circenn had hated him when he'd found out what he'd done. Had, in fact, spent most of the next six centuries or so refusing to speak to him, refusing to acknowledge him as his father. His son could hold a grudge with the best of immortals.
"You can make people immortal?'' she said faintly. "As in, they live forever?"
"Yes. I made his wife immortal too." How long ago had that been? He'd been tripping around in time so much of late that many centuries had passed for him, but for her— three mortal years or so? A distant shadow clouded his mind at the thought. The elixir of life had a particularly unsavory side effect; one he'd told neither Circenn nor Lisa about. Half-Fae children were born with souls (apparently half a dose of humanity was enough to merit the divine), and Circenn, with his more tenacious constitution, had a few more centuries before it would happen. It took roughly a millennium to affect a half-Fae. Pure humans, on the other hand, like Lisa, lasted but a few years. Lisa had little time left at all. The golden glow illuming her would soon sputter out, leaving her as void of a soul as any Fae.
"Did you make Circenn's mother immortal too?"
Abruptly Adam wanted out of the conversation. Pushing himself up from the table, he began bagging up leftovers. What food remained they would eat in the morning before catching a plane. He wanted an early start. "No."
"So she's dead?"
"Yes."
"Why didn't you offer her— "
"I did," he ground out, cutting her off.
"And?"
"And Morganna wouldn't take it."
"Oh." Her eyes narrowed, then widened, as if something had just occurred to her. "When did Morganna die?"
"What the bloody hell does that have to do with anything?" he snarled.
She eyed him warily but persisted, "When?"
Adam shoved the last tray of pasta back in a bag. It burst through the other end. Irritably, he folded the paper over it and shoved it under an arm. "In 847."
She was silent a long, reflective moment, then, "Why wouldn't she— "
He shot her a savage glare, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. "Enough. My life is not an open O'Callaghan Book, Sidhe-seer, to flip through as you wish and make all manner of bloody idiotic interpretations. The Tuatha Dé do not speak of Tuatha Dé matters to"— he gave her an icy sneer— "mere mortals."
"Well, mister-mere-mortal-yourself," she bristled right back at him, "maybe you'd better get used to it, because whether or not you like it, you need at least one of us 'mere mortals' to help you become a pompous-asshole-fairy-thing again."
He tried to maintain his icy stare, but his lips curved despite his efforts and he shook with silent laughter. A pompous-asshole-fairy-thing. The indignity of it. Had any of his race ever been called such a thing? Nothing cowed the woman. Nothing. "Point made, ka-lyrra." he said dryly. As he gathered the bags and turned to head for the kitchen, he added over his shoulder. "For the record, I've just told you more than I've told any other human in a very long time."
"How long?" The moment she said it, Gabby wanted to kick herself. But she wanted to know. Wanted to know who the last woman... er, human, was who had truly known Adam Black.
He stopped and turned back to look at her.
When his obsidian gaze met hers, Gabby suddenly felt a little chill in her blood. Sometimes he looked so human, while at others there was a frightening incongruity to his face, as if something terrifyingly old and completely inhuman were looking out at her from behind a Halloween mask of a youthful human face. And for a brief, strange moment she had the feeling that, were she to somehow lift that mask, she might find something very much like a... like a Hunter beneath it.