Page 3 of Calling All Angels
He shook his head, confused, taking one more step in her direction, his voice a hoarse, familiar if disbelieving whisper. “Violet?”
Emma blinked as something like lightning scored through her—a memory, a flash of something searingly hot and far away.
Then, everything went black.
*
“Ye should’a warnedme it was her,” he growled, staring at the woman lying on the ICU bed across the hall. “’Twas wrong of you, Marguerite. You know it.”
“Je suis désolé,Connor? Who exactly?”
Marguerite Ciel, Connor’s erstwhile mentor and overall pain in his arse, feigning innocence at his question with her Cajun charm, would be amusing if it wasn’t so predictable. Over the last few centuries, she’d had her hand in every turn of his development as a guardian. But mostly she’d thrown doors in front of him disguised as walls. Most of those doors had opened peacefully. With this one, however, she’d gone too far. Clearly, she knew it.
“Violet,” he answered. “MyViolet.” No, not his—ever actually—but at least a woman who was the image of her.
Corralling her small, fluffy dog, Enoch, Marguerite lifted him into her arms and tucked him against her, possibly as protection from Connor’s wrath. Glancing toward the bed that held the woman from the accident last night, she replied, “I believe her name is Emma. Emma James—”
“Ye know it’s her as well as I do. Or some twenty-first century version of her.”
“You know it’s her because…?”
“Because I’d know her in the dark,” he snapped. “I’d know her in any century or on any continent. Whether we understood each other or not. I’d know her.”
“Ah.” Marguerite sniffed. “Your point is…?”
“My point is ye had no business pairin’ me up wi’ her when you know my feelin’s on the subject.” He stalked past her down the hospital corridor of St. Elias, contemplating all the ways in which walking away from this assignment—as he should, by rights, do—would burn his chances for the Council seat he’d been eying for longer than he cared to recall. Not that he gave a flyin’ flock about that now. Not when he’d found himself face-to-face with Violet again. Whether she remembered him or not wasn’t important. Though, for the briefest of moments out there in the dark last night, he imaged she had.
Marguerite was tight on his heels. “Roland approved the assignment. How was I to know Violet—or who this Emma person once was—was still such apeekonin your side?”
A thorn, indeed, that still poked him under his skin after all these years. Marguerite knew full well, of course, his feelings about Violet. If this was some kind of test, then he was bound to fail it. Because he wouldna be paired up with the likes of that woman again. Even if it was merely to escort her home, deposit her at the Gates, and bid her a fare-thee-well.
“As a third degree,” he argued, “I shouldn’t have to—”
“You’ll have to take that up with Roland, you know,” she interrupted, knowing Connor would get nowhere with the senior head of the Council. Roland was fair but famously unmovable when it came to changing his mind.
He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “Aye, I’ll do that. Then I’ll take a sharp stick to the eye. Just to prove I enjoy losin’.”
Enoch barked in his direction, a yippie little sound that Connor interpreted as opinionated. He narrowed a glare at the little dog. “Did I ask for your thoughts on the matter?”
“Roland’s not all that bad,” Marguerite pointed out, peering over Connor’s shoulder at the woman. “Why, look what happened with Elspeth Aloysius.”
Elspeth. Elle. A guardian/friend several ranks below him who had recently taken matters into her own hands and gone against every rule Roland had set up for her. Connor had to admit, he admired her for that. He secretly envied her outcome. But on this matter, he felt certain that if Roland had deemed it so, there would be no recourse. Even when he’d gotten the assignment, there had been a crimson flag of urgency attached to it. To turn it down could only hurt him in his quest for a Council seat.
“Fine,” he bit out. “I’ll escort her. But I’m not doin’ a lick more than is required of me. Don’t expect me to do orientation or take her through first steps at intake.”
She pressed a finger to her lips and glanced toward Emma’s room, where she lay surrounded by beeping machines and tubes. “Bein’ sure of yourself has always been one of your greatest strengths. But also one of your basic weaknesses, Connor. Who said her outcome is already determined?”
Not determined?“Isn’t it? Don’t play with me, Marguerite. We know each other too well.”
“This is no game, Connor. Our path—our job—as guardians is as deep as the bayou is wide. It’s filled with things that’ll either eat or sustain you. You get to choose which.”
A sigh welled up from inside him. “I know I’m in trouble when you begin talkin’ in metaphors.”
A smile eased the serious expression on her face. “’Twas you who said you wanted that seat on the Council, no? Do this, I can pretty much guarantee you will get what you need, Boo.C’est’ tout. It’s time for me to go. Be seein’ you soon, eh?”
“But wait!” he said. “What about—?”
Too late. She was gone.
