“Marguerite.”
It was Rafe. Sara tried to suck in a breath, blinking back tears. She had no idea how Marguerite had grabbed her so quickly, but she had given her a brutal smackdown. Every inch of Sara’s body hurt and she couldn’t seem to speak, no matter how desperately she wanted to get Rafe’s attention. She could see his legs as he moved into the room, closing the door behind him. That door closing bothered her. She wanted out. So she forced herself to press her hands to the floor and sit up. Everything spun for a second, but she swallowed back the nausea and tried to get her bearings. She was a good five feet from the door, but Rafe and Marguerite were behind her.
Rafe was talking in a low voice to Marguerite, and he was rubbing her arms in a soothing manner. She was shaking her head. Sara couldn’t hear what Rafe was saying, but she really didn’t care. She was just relieved for the distraction and whatever form of assistance Rafe could offer. Grabbing the leg of the end table, she heaved herself to her feet, shaky and nauseated, wondering how in the hell she was going to get Jocelyn out of the house. She was going for her purse with her cell phone inside it when the front door exploded, flying off the hinges.
Sara let out a yelp and jumped back, stumbling over the coffee table. A man fell backward onto the floor, skidding on top of the now horizontal front door. It was Alex, and the man who obviously had shoved him was Gabriel, out of breath, fists raised, blood all over his yellow T-shirt. What did Alex have to do with anything and why was Gabriel so angry with him? With no clue what was going on, Sara stepped onto the couch, away from the fray, intending to avoid contact with everyone and go quietly down the hallway to Jocelyn. She was going to force Jocelyn up and they were getting the hell out before she really stopped to think about what she was seeing and she absolutely and utterly lost it.
“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked her, glancing over, worry on his face even as he dodged a vicious kick aimed at his shin from Alex’s left foot.
She nodded. It was startling to see Gabriel, who she thought of as such a quiet, artistic, non-confrontational man, in a brutal fistfight. Alex was back on his feet and they were exchanging blows, without any sort of regard for the rules of good sportsmanship. When Alex landed a hit to the kidney Gabriel winced in pain, but came right back at Alex with a punch that collided with Alex’s skull with such force Sara actually heard the crack.
Jesus Christ. They were going to kill each other. Sara ran past Rafe and Marguerite, purse in her hand, her goal to get to Jocelyn and then call the police. They needed help, because while Gabriel looked like he was holding his own, she didn’t like the ferocity of his fight with Alex. Someone was going to wind up with a concussion or in a coma and she sure in the hell didn’t want it to be Gabriel.
The shadow rising on the wall in front of her as she stumbled down the hall had her instinctively turning to see what had caused it.
Then wishing she hadn’t.
Because what she was seeing didn’t make any sense. It was completely illogical. Insane. But there it was—Rafe and Marguerite embracing, his arms around her patting her back, her head on his shoulder. Three feet off the floor. They were hovering in space, in air, in nothingness, their feet flat like they were standing on solid ground, only they weren’t.
Sara squeezed her eyes shut hard. Reopened them. They were still floating like human helium balloons. Beyond them, Gabriel and Alex continued to grapple with each other, and Gabriel rammed Alex into the wall so hard that when he pulled back there was a hole in the drywall from his elbow.
It wasn’t right. None of it was right and she wasn’t seeing what she was seeing.
Afraid that she was on the verge of going down, her head swimming, mouth hot, stomach churning, Sara whirled and went for the bedroom, slamming and locking the door behind her.
Gabriel was glad Sara had finally left the room. She had lingered longer than he was comfortable with, given that Marguerite was a loose cannon and Alex hell-bent on beating the shit out of him. It made him feel better that she was in another room with the door closed.
Alex taunted him. “Your girlfriend doesn’t know anything about you, does she? She doesn’t know you’re a drunk and a drug addict.”
“Actually, she does.” Gabriel ducked when Alex swung to him in the face. “So no need to run off and tell on me. She’s perfectly aware of my flaws.” He didn’t bother to argue that he was no longer a drunk and a drug addict since he had been clean for seventy-five years. He didn’t need to explain himself or justify anything to Alex.
They were both out of breath and seemed to have reached an unspoken agreement to pause in pummeling each other, because they were just circling, fists up. Gabriel flicked his hair out of his eyes and watched Alex warily.
“This is nothing personal, Gabriel.”
“Then what the fuck is it?”
“I just want my daughter happy.”
“Your daughter shouldn’t have hurt those women.”
“What women? I don’t know anything about any of that. I just know she wants Raphael and I’m here to ensure she gets what makes her happy.” He tilted his head to the side, where Raphael was hugging Marguerite. “So now that they appear to have worked something out, I suppose you and I can cease this nonsense.” Alex wiped at his bloody nose.
“You started this nonsense.” Gabriel wasn’t sure he could in good conscience just let Marguerite walk away, not after what she had done, even with Raphael willing to sacrifice himself to act as watchdog.
But then he heard the sound, the click of a lock once, twice, and he and Alex both turned to Raphael and Marguerite. Raphael had bound her hand and foot to him with the power of punishment, chains that usually only demons and angels could see, but a bond that couldn’t be broken until the last days of the earth. It was more than Gabriel would have expected Raphael to do, condemning himself to an eternity as security guard.
Alex made a sound of rage in the back of his throat.
When he would have attacked Raphael, Gabriel stepped in front and stopped him, putting his hand on Alex’s chest. “Don’t. She looks pleased, and this will keep her from harming anyone. It’s for the best.”
Marguerite did look satisfied. She had gotten what she wanted—Raphael.
Now Gabriel was going to go and determine if it was at all possible for him to have what he wanted.
Chapter Twenty
Gabriel found Sara in the bedroom on her cell phone talking to the police.
“I’m not sure what the address is, but I’m in the Harper’s Landing apartment complex.” She was biting her fingernail and staring at her friend, who Marguerite had clearly put into a sleep state.
Gabriel reached out and took the phone from Sara and pushed the End button to hang it up.
“What are you doing?” she asked, startled, glancing at the door in fear.
“We don’t need the police. It’s all under control.”
Her eyes went wide. “What do you mean? She . . . I saw ...”
Sara looked panicked, and her fear wasn’t just for what she had seen in the living room. She was afraid of who and what he was. He could sense it, see the goose bumps on her arms.
“Raphael took care of Marguerite, and Alex left.” With a warning from Gabriel to stay a hundred yards or more away from Sara or he would vanquish him. The demon version of a restraining order. “Everything’s okay, I promise.”
He reached for her, but she took a step back. “What do you mean, took care of Marguerite? Explain to me what is going on. They were floating in the air. That’s not possible. And you and Alex . . . those punches should have knocked you both unconscious.”
This wasn’t how he wanted to have this particular conversation, but he didn’t really have a choice. “Sara, I know this is going to seem crazy, impossible, but just listen to me and trust me. The truth is that Alex, Rafe, Marguerite, and I are all immortal and have known each other for hundreds of years. We don’t age. Alex is Marguerite’s father. Rafe is Dr. Raphael from the old court records.”
She shook her head. “What? That’s insane.”
“No. It’s true. And I am Jonathon Thiroux—the painter, the pianist, the addict.”
Those three words summed up the entire length and breadth of his existence.
Her face drained of all color. “Oh God, the hair. The DNA . . . Jocelyn said the two hairs came from the same man, but I thought it was a mistake. That I had mixed up the samples somehow. Because it can’t be possible.”
“What hair?” He had intentionally refused to give her his DNA because he had known what she would find. But apparently she had found precisely that—that he was a match to John Thiroux—and she had chosen to believe it couldn’t be true. She had chosen to accept the more logical explanation that there was a lab error, which he had to admit was probably what the majority of people would conclude. The truth really was unbelievable when you didn’t come from his world.
“One of your hairs was stuck to my pillow so I took it. I had Jocelyn compare it to Thiroux’s hair, and she said it was from the same man. A perfect match.” She shook her head. “I thought I had goofed somehow, but now you’re telling me it’s true? That’s crazy. Just crazy.”
“It’s not crazy. It’s true, Sara, I swear to you.” He had no idea how to convince her. He had never told anyone the truth of what he was. So what he did was instinctive, the only way he knew to show her so she could believe. He reached out and took her hands, opening his mind and projecting it onto her, letting her see his thoughts, feel his emotions, trace his life back to the beginning. Back to when he was Jonathon Thiroux and Dauphine Street was filled with brothels and drinking holes.
He opened himself and showed her the truth.
Sara felt it the second Gabriel’s hands touched hers. It was a tingle, a static shock, the sensation of electricity rushing up her arms and vibrating in her shoulders. She would have jerked back, except that his grip on her was tight, and his deep brown eyes were drawing her in, holding her in place, mesmerizing. It should have frightened her, the intensity, the gleam, the depth in his eyes, but instead, she was reassured. This was Gabriel. This was the man she had fallen in love with.
And he was letting her into his thoughts. She could see and feel them, wrapping around her, whispering in her ear, his fear that she might have been hurt by Marguerite, his desperate relief that she wasn’t. His powerful and honest love for her, the surprise he felt at the depth of his emotion. She felt the struggle it had been for him to not touch her, how much he had wanted to make love to her fully and completely, and how torturous his restraint had been.
She would have spoken, would have questioned why he couldn’t touch her, share the pleasure of their bodies together, but he put his finger on her lips. The
shhh
reverberated in her brain, as clear as if he’d spoken it, but he hadn’t.
Just watch,
he said into her consciousness, and she barely had time to register the wonderment of having him inside her mind, his thoughts blending with hers, when she saw it.
It was the years clicking backward, like pages in a calendar, until she saw Gabriel in the same apartment, wearing clothes with an odd seventies cut, quiet and alone, resigned but in control, the French Quarter outside him dirtier than what she had encountered. Lonely, both the man and the street, shabby and knocked around a bit, bleak, but calm. It shifted, blending and blurring until he was writing on a typewriter, and walking dark streets crowded with mid-twentieth-century cars, women in voluminous skirts and bright lipstick rushing by in pumps, Gabriel’s demeanor cautious, brittle, a residual hardness lingering as he refused to make eye contact or speak with anyone. Then she saw him in a smoky bar, women with short capped hair and straight dresses laughing and dancing, the atmosphere secretive, seedy, seductive. Gabriel was watching the piano player croon to the crowd with a longing to touch the keys himself. But mostly he watched with loathing. There was a drink in Gabriel’s hand, several empty glasses in front of him, and his mood was bitter, dark, desperate. He wanted to fling the glass at the piano and make the halfhearted, unimaginative music stop.
Then suddenly he was lying in the gutter, filthy and bruised, his hair caked and crusted with grime, sweat, an empty bottle clutched to his chest. People walked over him, sniffing in distaste, someone stealing his boots right off his feet while Gabriel sang quietly to himself off-key, his eyes closed, heart screaming with a pain so violent that Sara wanted to weep for him, for all he had been, all he had lost.
But the image shifted again, and she was there. In that tiny room. Seeing through Gabriel’s eyes the loveliness of Anne’s arm in the moonlight, his desire to capture her. She felt the fuzziness of his mind, understood the languor, the sharpness, the pleasure of the powerful absinthe-and-opium cocktail. Then the confusion, the sharp shock when he realized that Anne was dead, her blood on his fingertips. The shift from pleasure to horror in the minute it took his fog-filled brain to process what the smell, the wet feel on his fingers was. The smack of death, harsh and ugly, ripping into his daily stupor.
The vision cut off before she could see Anne’s face, but it was enough to understand the horror of the moment, the self-hatred, the grief, the guilt.
Sara whispered, “Gabriel. I’m so sorry.”
It wasn’t possible that he was immortal, not by the standards of the reality she had always lived in, but she knew it was true. She had seen it, felt it. However it was possible, whatever it meant, he was the same man.
He squeezed her hands. “So it was me who found Anne Donovan dead. She was the girlfriend I told you about who was murdered, and for a hundred and fifty years I wondered if I could have done that, if I could have been hallucinating, blacked out, and taken a knife and killed her. I had to know. I had to find some way to deal with the answer—to make it right, for Anne.”