Aidan stood. “We’ll stop him, Seth. I know we will.”
Seth drew out a pocket watch out and consulted it. “Yes, but he’s been up to more than you know.”
That was unsettling. “What do you mean?”
“You’ll hear it all at the meeting.” Seth tucked the watch away and headed for the door. “Darnell, Tracy, and Sheldon have cooked dinner. You should probably wake Dana and partake before the meeting.”
“Okay.” When Seth opened the door, Aidan stopped him. “Seth?”
Seth paused and glanced over at him. “Yes?”
“We’re good, right?”
Seth smiled. “We’re good.”
Aidan motioned to his head. “You didn’t find anything up there that was as weird as the shite I find in Sheldon’s mind, did you?”
Seth laughed. “No, I didn’t.”
Aidan grinned, happy to have made his friend laugh after such a stressful day. “Happy to hear it.”
“I’ll see you at the meeting.” Stepping out into the hallway, Seth closed the door.
Aidan lost his smile.
What more had Gershom been up to?
He almost dreaded finding out.
Dana stood beside Aidan, her hand tucked in his while they watched Darnell and Sheldon add two new leaves to the already long table in David’s dining room. The house had a fairly open floor plan with a huge living room—sporting a surprisingly modern décor, multiple sofas, love seats, scuffed-up coffee tables, and chairs—blending into a dining room. A bar separated the dining room from a kitchen that boasted two gargantuan refrigerators and so much cooking equipment that Dana didn’t even know how to use half of it.
She thought it was very sweet of David to open his homes (apparently this was just one of many) to immortals and their Seconds and provide them with a gathering place. They really did seem like a family. She wasn’t sure why that continued to surprise her, but it did.
Cheers erupted when the table slid back together.
She smiled.
The table must have sat at least twenty beforehand. Now she watched as they produced extra chairs and slid them up to the table, enabling—wow—thirty-one people to sit at it under Darnell’s direction.
Dana was an only child. Both parents had also been only children, so she’d had no aunts or uncles and no cousins to play with when she was growing up. Her grandparents had passed away so early that she barely remembered them. And now her parents were gone.
What must it be like, she wondered as she watched the men and women around her smile and chat despite the gravity of recent events, to have a family this large? To have this many people you loved and cared about?
I guess I’m about to find out, she thought.
David claimed the seat at the head of the table with Darnell sitting to his left.
Exiting the kitchen, Seth strode over and seated himself at the foot of the table.
Ami smiled and said something to Seth as she sat down catercorner to him. Taking the seat next to her, Marcus scooted it back so his daughter, whom Dana hadn’t noticed until then, could climb up onto his lap.
Roland leaned over Marcus’s shoulder and held a thick coloring book boasting colorful cartoon animals in front of Adira. As her eyes lit up, he seated himself beside Marcus, then opened the book on the table while Sarah produced a box of crayons.
As the other immortals and Seconds converged on the table, Aidan guided Dana to a couple of seats on the side opposite Roland and Sarah.
Wood scuffed across wood as chairs were claimed and bodies filled seats.
As Dana scooted her own chair closer to the table, her gaze touched upon David.
He smiled. “Are you settling in okay?” he asked, raising his voice a bit so she could hear him over the rumblings of the rest.
“Yes, thank you,” she said with a smile. After Aidan had disclosed his age, the two of them had taken a shower together, devoured Sheldon’s sandwiches, then slept deeply. They’d been so tired that they hadn’t even made love. As soon as their heads had hit the pillow, both had fallen into an exhausted slumber.
David nodded, then turned to speak with Darnell.
The seat beside Darnell was empty. Two very imposing immortals claimed the next two seats.
Dana squeezed Aidan’s hand. “Read my thoughts,” she whispered.
Okay.
Who are those two?
Imhotep and Chaak. They are elders like me who have been brought in as backup.
The front door opened and closed. Chris Reordon headed for the table and plunked a battered briefcase down on the seat to David’s right. After returning the greetings offered him, he nodded to Seth.
Seth rose and vanished.
Dana smiled up at Aidan. “I still think that’s cool.”
Across the table, Tracy leaned forward with a smile. “I know, right? When I first started serving as Lisette’s Second, she almost ditched me because every time Richart would come over, I’d pester him into teleporting me to foreign countries.”
Richart grinned. “You still try to pester me into teleporting you to other countries.”
Tracy wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, but you stopped taking me because I started making you take Sheldon, too, and you’re afraid he’s going to spark an international incident.”
“Oh, come on, guys,” Sheldon protested with a grin. “I’m not that bad.”
Everyone laughed.
Seth reappeared with two companions.
One was a slender woman with long, silky black hair and light brown skin, clad in a black business suit that showcased every curve and managed to appear both alluring and all business at the same time.
The other was a man with sandy brown hair who was dressed similarly to Chris in dark slacks and a white dress shirt that was open at the collar and had the sleeves rolled up almost to his elbows.
Both carried battered briefcases similar to Chris’s.
Chris headed down the table with a smile. “Nice to see you again, Alena.” He shook her hand, then shook the man’s. “Scott, good to see you.”
“Good to see you, too, Chris.”
“If you’ll both have a seat, we’ll go ahead and get started.”
Scott followed Chris to David’s end of the table where they sank into the last two chairs on David’s right.
Alena headed for the empty chair across from them, between Darnell and Imhotep. Darnell rose and drew the chair out as she approached. Smiling, she thanked him and set her briefcase on the table as she sat down.
Once Seth reclaimed his seat at the foot of the table, all conversation ceased and everyone looked to him to begin the meeting.
“Thank you all for joining us,” Seth began. “I assume you’ve all heard by now that Gershom escaped us once again.”
Somber nods all around.
“Then you also know that the only reason we had this latest chance to play cat and mouse with him is because he posed as me and attacked Aidan.”