By Anne Fraser and Barbara Zuchegna
With assistance from Sharon Pickrel and Jean Lamb
Copyright 1999

Chapter Four

If it was the last thing he ever did, he was gonna get Adrian for this.

Jake, soggy, wind-burned, his feet blistered, stared sullenly into the teeth of the freshening gale as the little sloop tacked against the wind, back toward Centre Island. Up ahead, too damned close, the gray wall of a squall line was bearing down on them, and it was even money whether or not the squall would reach them before they rounded the point into the sheltered channel to the island harbor.

He was gonna make Talbot pay through the nose for this one.

He should be at work. He had been at work. But the Four Seasons Hotel, he found, for guests for whom they chose to extend themselves, had no difficulty tracking down anyone, anywhere. The call from Richard had been graciously commanding, but in the end Jake found he couldn't refuse it. All that "rescue the scruffy puppy" crap that rose up in him every time Adrian turned those great turquoise eyes on him and looked mournful did the same number on him when he heard, underneath the command, the loneliness of a man 500 years out of his time and thousands of miles out of his place ... and look what it had got him into.

Besides, he had to admit that it had sounded great. The hotel, Richard told him, had arranged for the charter of a yacht, and Richard hoped Jake would consent to join him for lunch and a cruise on the lake. A limo would be sent to convey him to the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club on Centre Island, where Richard would meet him. He should, Richard had said, dress casually.

Well, one thing you could say for Richard ... he seemed to go first cabin all the way, and Jake had never even been through the doors of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club, a place so exclusive that movie stars and politicians were turned away from membership. Not ex-kings, apparently. And it was a glorious, clear, brisk, early fall day. The idea of cruising on the lake on one of the great white motor yachts he'd seen out there at the island, with liveried servants hopping to refill wine glasses and light cigars, had seemed a chance too good to miss. So he'd made his excuses at work and went home to change.

"Dress casually." What did that mean, in terms of the Yacht Club? Not his new suit. He rummaged, found his best pair of slacks, not too wrinkled, unwrapped one of the two hideously expensive white shirts he'd bought yesterday with Richard's largesse (he'd worn the other one last night to North 44), and did his best to brush the lint from his one decent sports jacket. He wasn't sure about a tie; just in case, he rolled a quietly patterned foulard into a neat spiral and stuffed it in his pocket. There wasn't a lot he could do for his scuffed loafers but wipe them with a damp cloth to remove the dirt and grass bits they always picked up when he crossed the lawns around the University ... an absolute necessity, to establish one's freedom from the yoke of the "Keep off the Grass" signs posted everywhere ... but maybe the Yacht Club crowd would see the scuff marks as an idiosyncrasy. Yeah, sure.

To give Richard credit, the first part went exactly as he'd said. The limo appeared precisely on time, the chauffeur ushered him into the room-sized back seat with not too much of a smirk, and he was indeed whisked to the ferry pier, where a small electric vehicle quietly emblazoned with the insignia of the Yacht Club waited, with its crisply-turned-out driver, to carry him onto the ferry, which chugged happily across the channel to its slip on the island. From there, the little car zipped along the narrow little drive, past Island Park, toward the great Victorian pile of the Yacht Club headquarters ... and on past it.

Well, okay. Lunch wasn't going to be at the Club. Lunch on the yacht would do just as well. The little car, in uncanny electric silence, zoomed along the main pier, past moorings where the great white yachts sat at elegant rest ... and on out to where the big sailing yachts, naked masts a denuded forest, rode serenely on the harbor swell, bumping gently against the carefully-padded pier. And they went past those, too.

Out to the very end, where frighteningly small sailing boats were clustered, and where, in one of these, Richard Plantagenet, his face more tanned than it had been last night, his dark hair flying free in the wind off the lake, grinned up at him in welcome. "Jake!" he called, his voice cutting over the low thrum of the boat's idling engine, "I'm pleased you've come."

Richard was wearing, of all things, faded denims and a thin short-sleeved knit shirt, and seemed absolutely oblivious to the brisk wind. He was also barefoot, which Jake didn't understand until he saw the man scrabbling over the boat like a monkey later, his toes clinging to spars and rails. He looked ten years younger than he had last night.

Well, okay...the boat wasn't really all that small. It was maybe 25 to 30 feet long...Jake was no judge, and its brass and mahogany fittings, its varnished cedar deck, gleamed with what was surely an unholy expense of maintenance. The name stenciled in neat black letters across her stern, was "Last Chance," a sentiment that didn't do a lot for Jake at the moment.

Also on the boat was an older man, grizzled and experienced-looking, who eyed Jake, and his clothing, with a jaundiced eye as he helped him climb down from the pier. He squinted into Jake's face with suspicious eyes. "Y've sailed before?" he asked, prepared to disbelieve anything Jake said.

"A little." Well ... he had, as a guest, on somebody else's boat. And it had been fun, sort of.

Okay, it wasn't going to be the luxury he'd expected. But he could deal with it. A sail out on the lake, with this man in charge, a man who clearly knew what he was doing as he fussed with lockers and ropes and unrecognizable other things, might even be fun. And lunch, out on the lake, even out of a picnic basket, would be great.

When it got bad was when the older man said his goodbyes and climbed back up to the pier.

"Sit over here, Jake," Richard said, pointing to the flat top of a locker on what Jake supposed should be called the port side, near the stern. Up on the pier, the old guy was casting off the only line holding them in place.

"Uh ... Richard..."

Richard was digging into a large ice chest stowed and strapped in place to one side, and he came up now with two ice-beaded cans of beer in hand. "For starters," he said, unexpectedly, and tossed one can that Jake snagged automatically from the air. "We'll eat out on the lake, if it pleases you." He turned his attention back to the engine controls, and the sound increased slightly. The boat began to ease back away from the pier.

"Richard," Jake said, more loudly, "have you sailed before?"

Richard took a moment to look over at him with an absolutely expressionless face. "All morning," he said, and turned back to what he was doing.

It was somewhere around that point that Jake promised himself, for the first of a hundred times, that he was going to take this day out of Adrian Talbot's hide.

Well ... all right, at first it really wasn't all that bad. Under engine power, Richard guided the boat east, around the head of Ward's Island and down into the channel that led out onto the lake proper. That part was okay. Traffic was light ... it was nearing the end of Toronto's sailing season, and the day was especially beautiful. So the trip out onto the open water was really very pleasant. Or would have been, if Jake hadn't had the ominous, sick feeling that it wasn't going to stay that way.

He was right. Once out in open water, Richard cut the engine, and the reason for his invitation to Jake became clear. Richard had spent the morning, apparently, crewing for the old guy who had left them alone. Now Richard was the captain. Guess who was the crew?

Happily, Richard seemed perfectly aware that Jake wouldn't know a spinnaker from a spinning wheel, so his instructions, crisply given, tended to be couched in language that anyone could understand. "Break out the big red and white canvas from that locker over there." "Pull in the rope with the black ties on it until the sail tightens." "Use the brown and white stick over there, the one with the brass loop in the end." So okay...he could understand. Doing what he was told to do was something else again.

Richard showed him where he could stow his jacket, in hopes that it would stay at least partially dry. Sailing yachts, Jake was discovering, are set so low in the water that the spray off the bow does not discriminate in what it chooses to soak. His shoes followed the jacket; they were useless on the wet-slick deck and threatened at least twice to skid him overboard.

Richard was everywhere. Shinnying up the mast to untangle a line, zipping past Jake to tie down something Jake was having trouble with, pulling in a line here, letting one out there ... his energy seemed inexhaustible. He sat Jake down in the rear of the boat, hand on the tiller, and told him to stay put and to hold the tiller firm, which seemed an easy enough task ... except that, as the wind took the sails they'd raised, the tiller pulled at his hand until he thought it would come free from his arm. Finally, it took two hands and a lot of upper body strength to keep it in place.

But eventually they were well underway, sails bellied full of the light wind, the sun behind them, the boat riding sweetly low, leaning steeply to the right (starboard, Jake reminded himself), breaking the swell with her sharp prow, and Richard came back to relieve his "guest" at the tiller. "There is a basket in that locker there," he said, pointing, "in which the hotel has packed a meal for us."

So much for liveried servants and refilled wine glasses. Jake looked, found gargantuan roast beef sandwiches lavished with exotic mustard, white meat chicken sandwiches with lettuce and a sauce that seemed to be made of curried eggs, ham sandwiches with layered, nutlike Swiss cheese ... there was enough to have fed the entire Yacht Club, if any of that group had been fool enough to come along. Jake didn't bother to ask what Richard wanted. He grabbed a couple of sandwiches, passed one to Richard, and went back to the ice chest for more beer.

Richard seemed hardly to notice the sandwich at all. He ate, but with a methodical precision that seemed to indicate that the point of the exercise was to get it over with. He used the napkin the sandwich had been wrapped in to wipe his mouth neatly, and then handed the napkin back to Jake. Well ... it might have been irritating, but Jake really was closer to the stowed basket and there was no graceful way to refuse. He took it and stashed it back in the basket.

That out of the way, he asked Richard, "This is the first time you've ever sailed? The first day, I mean?"

"No." Richard seemed to have mellowed a little. He was content, for the moment, to sit in one place and control the boat. He said, "When I was eight years old, I was sent to Burgundy for safekeeping." He smiled, that odd, small, self-deprecating smile. "Wars are no respecters of children," he said. "I had never been on the sea before, but I was not ill during the crossing, as was my brother George. Ten years later, I sailed for Burgundy again, in much the same circumstance. We made landfall on my eighteenth birthday."

"But that would have been on big ships, right?"

"They seemed so at the time. They were not, of course. Sailing is much changed since those days, Jake. This little boat..." he gestured with his free hand..."is not so much smaller than those we were forced to use then, and much more seaworthy."

"And that was it? That was your entire experience with sailing until today?"

"No." Richard thought about it for a minute. "We returned from Burgundy, my brother Ned and I, some months later." He smiled again, ruefully, "We returned when we were able to squeeze the funds to do so out of our brother-in-law of Burgundy. But we took separate ships on the return, and that on which I sailed ran afoul of a storm off the coast of Yorkshire and was lost. I was one of only three who survived.

"I determined then that I would never set foot onboard a ship again until I knew enough of sailing to manage the vessel myself. I could not abide the helplessness of watching other men try to save what I could not. For some time thereafter, I had no time to devote to sailing, but eventually, I did learn. And the rules of wind and water and sail do not change. Only the equipment ... and it is much improved."

Well, that was some comfort. Jake had settled back, was actually starting to enjoy himself, when Richard said, "If you're through with your meal, we should come about now."

"Coming about," involved taking in sail, swinging the horizontal boom around to the far side of the boat, and letting out sail again. Doing that once, at Richard's calm instruction, wasn't all that hard. Tacking was the problem.

Tacking, Richard explained patiently, was how a boat made headway into the wind, and it involved complex geometry that Jake really didn't want to know about. What he needed to know was that one tacked first to one side, and then to the other, and that each time one changed tack, one did all the taking in and swinging around and letting out again, and one did it smartly, or one got swept abruptly overboard, which Jake promptly did. Never, he learned, turn your back on a boom.

Richard fished him out of the drink with every evidence of sympathy, got towels and a blanket, and then got back to work, doing by himself what he'd been ordering Jake to do all afternoon. And he seemed to manage just fine. Great time to find that out.

Even so, it wasn't too bad. He dried quickly, in the stiff breeze, and it wasn't too cold. He got himself another beer and settled down to make the best of it. At least, they were on their way back. An end, as the fella says, was in sight.

That was when Richard started rummaging in lockers again and began feeding lines hither and yon about the front part of the boat, clearly preparing to hoist more sail. "Why?" Jake asked. More sail was more speed, and they were already flying low.

Richard nodded forward, his face just a little tight. "I would prefer to be in the channel before that hits us," he said.

The gray wall of the squall line. Rain. Wind. Coming right at them off of some god-forsaken Northwest Territory prairie.

Early fall storms weren't unusual. They were generally brief, and they could be surprisingly violent. In the city streets, this meant diving for shelter into the nearest coffee shop or bookstore and whiling away the time until the all clear. No problem. It meant something else entirely out on the open water of Lake Ontario. Even Richard looked concerned.

"If you've warmed sufficiently," Richard said, "I could use some help."

They put out two additional sails at the very front of the boat, triangular sails Jake was sure had esoteric names. They were just triangular sails to him. And their speed increased. Unfortunately, it didn't increase enough to match the speed of the storm racing toward them. They could see the entrance to the channel, were running with their right rail almost underwater in their attempt to reach it in time, when Richard suddenly grabbed Jake's arm, yanked him with merciless force over to the tiller and yelled, "Hold firm!" before scampering off toward the front of the boat.

Sails fell in what seemed wild disorder as Richard frantically loosed lines. The triangular sails up front, the big, wind-belled whatever-you-called-it with the pretty red and white stripes, the huge triangular mainsail. And just as they collapsed, the storm hit.

Richard was back at Jake's side, snatching the tiller from his hands. "Secure the sails, if you can," he said, his voice raised over the howl of the wind, and the tone of his voice sent Jake running. Amazingly, he seemed to manage it fairly well. They weren't trying to free the sails or stow them; just secure them well enough to the rigging that they wouldn't pick up the wind, and both sails and rigging came equipped with myriad small lines with which this could be done. Doing it in a pouring rain and a wind that was trying its best to drive him overboard again was the problem. But it was a problem to which he gave his best efforts ... since he was reasonably certain that if he went into the water again, Richard was going to be way too busy to come after him.

Finished at last, he worked his way back toward the stern and found that Richard had started the engine and the boat, with difficulty, was making headway into the teeth of the storm toward the channel. Richard, drenched to the skin, flesh visible through the thin white shirt plastered wet against him, his hair in rats'-tails of dark tangles, was grinning hugely. "Excellent, Jake," he said. "Good work. We'll be in the channel in moments, only. But it was a close thing there, as the weather hit. Thank you."

Dammit. He didn't want to be pleased with the man's praise. And he was. He found himself grinning back at Richard, and realized, with some surprise, that he was having one hell of a good time.

But he was going to take this out of Adrian Talbot's bloody hide anyway.

Adrian roused himself from bed, showered and dressed. He pondered the upcoming evening's agenda.

Tonight they were to go and root T'Beth out of her seclusion. If seclusion it was ... no, stop that train of thought. Of course she was fine. Richard would demand it. He really wanted to meet T'Beth and get to know her ... better.

Adrian hid his grin by hunting for his other set of keys, the ones he was forbidden on pain of ... well, pain, to use except in an emergency.

And T'Beth. Adrian tossed that problem over in his mind. Not a word from her since Gabriel had gone. Was she off stalking him? Was she still pursuing Kariel for Toni's sake? Was she just angry with him, Adrian, personally? It was most unlike her to keep it to herself, if so. But calling her number only got her answering machine, her gruff voice saying "I'm out, deal with it." The lady was not returning her calls. Even Jake had tried.

Adrian checked his own messages, finding one from Gabriel and one from Jake. The one from Jake blistered his answering machine. Oh, dear. They were going to have this out, but not tonight. Tonight he was going to go pick up Richard at the hotel, and they were driving to North York to find T'Beth. Maybe.

Adrian got into the Miata and headed for the Four Seasons. The sight of the hotel made him briefly think of Melantha, but he carefully steered his mind away from that particular morass. Deal with one fuck-up at a time, he told himself wryly. Richard was waiting for him inside the lobby, and walked to the car as quickly as dignity would allow. Adrian pulled away from the hotel and concentrated on getting them safely out of Bloor and Yonge traffic.

They were out of the downtown core now, into a lesser-populated area. Richard was still watching the scenery with interest, filing his impressions away. Adrian felt a stir of empathy for the man. How very displaced he must feel.

The Miata turned off into an area of mixed buildings -- a few small shops and services, a warehouse or two, some private homes.

"Where are we?" Richard asked.

"Near the north end of Toronto," Adrian replied. "This area is called North York." He grinned at the irony. "A lot of British roots here," he explained.

"Yes, I had noticed that with place names." A pause. "Perhaps it bodes well that at least it is not called North Lancaster."

"Well, there are a few places called Lancaster, but not nearly as many as York."

Richard just smiled.

Adrian turned down an even quieter street. "Toronto means ‘the meeting place' in Algonquin or Iroquois or something," he said. "Let's hope it's right." He stopped the car in front of a dark building that looked like a small warehouse.

"This is where the lady dwells?" Richard asked, looking at the unpromising building.

"It's private," Adrian replied. "T'Beth likes privacy." He took the keys from the ignition, unclipped his seatbelt, and got out of the car. "Coming?" he asked his passenger.

Now that they were here, on a dark night, a dark street, in front of a dark building, Richard was just as eager to continue. He seemed more gung-ho than his companion. He noticed Adrian's hesitation. "Should we intrude?" he asked.

Adrian carefully did not say what he was thinking: that T'Beth would kill him, slowly, if she was fine. "I'm worried about her," he admitted instead. "It's not like her to have been this quiet."

"Very well, lead on." Richard followed the vampire to a side door of the structure.

"I don't see her car anywhere around," Adrian was frowning. "If she was inside, surely she would have heard us by now." Still, he knocked on the door. "T'Beth?"

There was no answer, only the faint, omnipresent swoosh of traffic. Adrian knocked again.

"T'Beth, if you're in there playing silly buggers, give it up!" he called out, his voice taking on a sharper, less cultured tone.

Nothing, not even a cricket chirp, answered him.

"Damn." Adrian reached for that other set of keys, then noticed the man behind him. "There's a flashlight in the glove compartment of my car," he said. "You'll probably need it."

The king paused for a moment, unused to receiving orders. He decided, though, that Adrian meant no insult. Without a word, Richard went back to the car, fumbled with the glove compartment catch, retrieved the flashlight, and returned to Adrian's side.

"Good," the actor nodded. "I just hope the batteries aren't dead. I only keep it in case I have a breakdown."

Richard correctly deduced that this referred to mechanical problems rather than mental ones.

"What now?" he asked. He was content to follow Adrian's lead, since a wise man knows when to allow one with more expertise to take command.

"Let me go in first," Adrian said. "We're entering a vampire's sanctuary without her permission, and that's a very serious thing."

The yellow beam of the flashlight made Adrian blink and nearly drop the keys. "Not in my eyes," he hissed, his tension showing.

"My apologies." Richard immediately turned the light away from the vampire's face.

Adrian unlocked the door and slowly opened it. He ascended the stairs carefully, each footfall exaggeratedly cautious. Indiana Jones scaling a mountain covered with snakes could not have been more paranoid.

"This lady," Richard said from below, "you did say she is a friend, did you not? Then why expect traps laid out for you?"

"Because she's not expecting us," Adrian replied, but he did stop walking as if tarantulas lurked beneath every footfall. He finally reached the upper door, and unlocked it, as well.

"T'Beth?" he called out into the echoing darkness. He could see the details of the room, and there was nobody home.

T'Beth's apartment was all one room, loft-like in its layout and dimensions. A small kitchenette occupied one wall--a fridge, a sink and counter, and a tiny stove that, as far as Adrian knew, had never been used. A long, low table with some cushions around it served as focal point of the "living room". A row of shelves placed on bricks to make a student-style bookcase occupied another wall, but this was stocked with assorted weapons and the occasional souvenir rather than books. T'Beth was not a literary woman. The few small windows were well-hidden behind boards, shades and drapes. A second floor had been constructed out of lumber. Wooden stairs led up to a platform on which a low bed, the covers in a jumbled heap, declared this the bedroom. A dresser and a wardrobe also occupied space on the platform. The wall under this structure was hidden behind an enormous cabinet that was securely locked.

"Her weapons store," Adrian said, seeing Richard play the flashlight beam over this. "No, I don't have the key, and it would be worth your skin to so much as touch that cabinet."

He was despondent. He had expected T'Beth to be here, ready to beat him to a pulp for his temerity. Instead, the loft was dusty, neglected. T'Beth's one plant, a fern, was definitely dead. He wandered over to the fridge for lack of any better ideas, with a vague thought of checking the contents. She usually had wine on hand, sometimes goodies for rare human guests.

Something about the fridge door made him stop before opening it. Something was out of place. T'Beth wasn't the sort who collected cute things; the souvenirs on her "book shelves" tended to be ritual masks, ceremonial knives and the like. Yet there was a magnet on the fridge, a cute cow magnet holding a note in place.

"Have you found something, Adrian?" Richard asked, coming and beaming the flashlight towards the fridge.

"T'Beth never had a cute cow magnet in her life," Adrian pointed at the offending plastic bovine. "I think that note has been left there to be found."

He reached out and removed the cow, returning it to the fridge. He showed Richard the note and they read it together.

"Adrian. About bloody time you got around to it. I'm home, and I'm in trouble. Get your butt over here. Bring help. T'Beth."

There was silence in T'Beth's dusty kitchen. Then Richard offered, "But is this not her home?"

Adrian was shaking his head. "Why would she do anything so fuckin' stupid? Pardon me, Richard. No, when a vampire says they're going home, they mean 'home'. The home soil. It does have a certain pull, even though we don't really have to sleep with it in coffins. You go back to where you were born to regroup, to think things through, to lay low and hibernate for awhile. But for T'Beth to do that ... she should have known it was too dangerous."

"I don't understand. What is so dangerous about her home?"

"It happens to be in Iran."

It had taken a bit of explaining to make Richard understand why Iran was dangerous. Political upheavals had not captured his interest for many years. And there had been no Iran in the world in Richard's time.

But he was a quick study, and by the time they had reached the hotel, he understood enough to have decided that a trip to Iran, wherever the hell that was, was definitely on the agenda. Adrian's quick protest that it wasn't Richard's problem met with Richard's usual determination. "You have given your word to present me to the lady," he said, as if it were the most logical thing in the world. "If that is where she is to be found, of course we will go there." When Adrian tried to say something about cost, Richard's smile had been bitterly rueful. "I have the means," he said simply, "and no reluctance to use them. It is often so with that which we have not earned." And he would not elaborate.

He also understood the peculiar problems that Adrian would encounter in world travel ... specifically, sunlight. "I will take that into consideration in my arrangements," he said solemnly. They were stopped, in the porte-cochere in front of the hotel, and Richard was clearly impatient to get out of the car. Finally, he said, "Adrian, trust in me, I beg you. I have moved armies across the sea. I can move you and myself. Call me tomorrow, as soon as you awake, and be prepared to leave at once."

There really was no way to argue with the man, and in all honesty, Adrian had to admit that he was beginning to think that there was little, if anything, that Richard couldn't arrange if he wanted to. He was also beginning to wonder if, when Richard met T'beth at last, he would think it had been worth all the bother. But then again, he wasn't sure that Richard's motives had all that much to do with meeting T'beth anymore. There had been no possibility of mistaking the way his interest had sharpened at the idea that going after her would be dangerous. And Adrian wasn't all that sure he was looking forward to going into the nuthouse of modern Iran with a man who found the idea of danger so appealing.

But he gave Richard the name of the nearest city to T'beth's birthplace, and then the name of the nearest village he knew of, and watched Richard scratch the odd names down on the back of an envelope he'd dug out of the Miata's glove compartment. "Richard," he said, finally, "T'beth is a very old friend. And I really am worried about her. So I want you to know that I appreciate all you're doing. It's very kind...”

"No," Richard interrupted. His eyes were very serious. "Adrian, believe me, please. I would be pleased, if I could, to do something for you that was kind. But this is not. I needed something to do, and your friend's problem has provided me with that. It is myself I am serving, and not her or you."

He meant it. Adrian found himself wondering, again, just what in the hell had happened at the Refuge, and then shut it out of his mind. He didn't want to know. And Richard didn't want to tell him. Fair enough. He said nothing more as Richard got out of the car and left him.

Richard stopped at the desk on his way to the elevator to inquire as to when the hotel manager would arrive in the morning. Told that this would happen at eight o'clock, he left orders that the manager was to present himself, in Richard's suite, immediately upon arrival. The desk clerk was making polite protestations that she doubted that this would be possible when the night manager hurried up, hustled her out of his way, and assured Richard that his message would be delivered and his instructions followed. He also shot the dumbfounded clerk a look that said she was an idiot for not realizing that this one guest was paying as much for the hotel's services as an entire floor full of ordinary guests. Richard reached out and caught the man's arm in an unpleasantly firm grip. "The lady," he said quietly, "was doing her best, only, and is not at fault." And with a smile for her, "Be assured that the manager will receive my good report of your diligence."

Jake Fowler, still sore from exercising ordinarily unused muscles out on Lake Ontario earlier in the day, had taken advantage of the opportunity of having not much to do to go to bed early. Just as well. The phone woke him just before midnight.

He grabbed it almost eagerly. There could be only one person who would be calling him at this hour, and he had a few things he wanted to tell that one person. "Talbot," he seethed into the phone, "if you ever..."

"Jake." It wasn't Adrian. And it was too late to pretend he wasn't at home. "Jake," Richard repeated, "do you hear me?"

Impending doom opened its gargantuan maw before his bleary eyes. What now? "Yes," he said wearily.

"Come to the hotel in the morning, as early as possible. I need your help."

“Richard...”

"You are T'beth's friend, are you not? She and Adrian need your help, and mine. Come to the hotel in the morning."

Richard hung up.

Oh, that was a neat goddamned trick. Hang up before he even got the first little groan out of his mouth. Hang up before he had a chance to say just what Adrian and T'beth and all their damned royal friends could do with themselves and what they needed. Hang up before he bitched and moaned and said he wouldn't ... and before he finally said he would. Dammit.