Kristoff broke off in the middle of telling his friend about how we’d been charged with finding Alec, covering the lower half of the cell phone to ask, “What is it?”
“That phone number. It belongs to Alec.”
He frowned. “Are you sure?”
I nodded, waving at the phone. “The voice mail is his. His voice and everything. Kristoff, what the hell is going on? Alec isn’t the Ilargi. Is he?”
I slid down the wall into the chair that stood next to the phone table, my mind whirling with disbelief.
Kristoff said nothing to me, switched to Italian, and continued speaking to his buddy. By the time he was finished and had come to squat at my feet, his hands on my knees, I was a mess.
Why do you cry?
Because nothing makes sense. Because I was so deceived by Alec. Because nothing is what it seems. You’re not the horrible, evil monster I thought you were, and Alec isn’t the nice, loving man he appeared. Ulfur wasn’t happy we raised him as a lich-he was horrified. Honestly, Boo, at this point, I’m going to expect that Magda turns out to be the new Zenith, and Ray is her hired assassin!
Kristoff smiled into my head as he gently pulled me from the chair and into his arms, cradling me against his chest as I sniffled my tears of self-pity. “I do not believe your friends are anything but what they appear.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know, do you? Look at Alec, Kristoff! Even you were fooled! If he can be your friend for so many centuries, if I can sense nothing bad about him to the point where I slept with him-kind of-and if your whole entire Moravian group didn’t know he was an Ilargi on the side, then how on earth are we expected to know anything about anyone?” I wailed.
“You must trust this,” he said, sliding his hand into my bra, his hand warm on my breast.
“My boobs might like you a lot, but in general they’re not very insightful about people,” I said, sniffling.
“I meant you must trust your heart, which you well know. Being a Dark One or his Beloved does not mean we suddenly possess all knowledge there is to know, Pia. We cannot see the future any more than we know the truth that is in others’ hearts. Alec has served me as a friend for more than three hundred years, and although his actions confuse me, I am not convinced that he has become a traitor.”
I thought about this for a moment, idly kissing his Adam’s apple. “Your brother and cousin didn’t show any faith in you.”
“They must follow their hearts as well,” he said simply, hunger rising swiftly in him as I switched to nibbling his earlobe. “Beloved, if you start that now, we will never get to the Blue Lagoon, and I would very much like for you to see it.”
I sighed and released the earlobe I was sucking. “What are we going to do about Alec?”
He stood up, letting me slide down his body. “Rest first; then we will discuss plans.” He put a finger over my lips as I was about to protest. “Be assured we will take action.”
That was all I got out of him. He refused to talk more about Alec, repeating that I was exhausted and needed some rest and relaxation. So it was that a short time later I trotted down the hotel steps and stared with absolute surprise at the sight that met my eyes. “I don’t believe it. Have we entered some sort of a warp where time is standing still?”
Magda stood next to me and stared at where I was pointing. “Good Lord. I think we have.”
“What’s going on?” Raymond asked, coming up behind us, fussing with a camera. He looked up, a delighted smile blossoming on his face. “Is it another holiday?”
“I don’t know, but look! Dancing! Ooh, Ray! Let’s join!”
Raymond shot me a quasi-apologetic look as Magda grabbed his hand and hauled him off into the throng before us. The strains of “Unchained Melody” filled the soft summer evening air, reminding me of our first night in the nearby town of Dalkafjordhur. There’d been dancing the last time I was there, too.
“I just had a phone call from a friend,” Kristoff said as he emerged from the hotel. “He said that there has been a sudden increase of activity in the reaper headquarters in Los Angeles.”
“Sounds like something is definitely up. Extra security around Alec, do you think?”
He shrugged and tucked his cell phone away in the inner pocket of the soft leather jacket that I remembered him wearing the first time I’d seen him. “Possibly, but that assumes Alec is being held captive. At this point, we don’t have any solid proof either way.”