“I’m feeling so reassured right now, Patrick. Thanks for that.”
“You wanna hear what I came up with or not?” he asked, gliding over to the wall of windows.
“Since I don’t really have any other options at the moment,” I replied, gazing longingly into the fireplace.
He crossed his arms behind his head and stared at the snow-blanketed mountains glittering in the morning light. “I’ve got a theory as to what triggers your gift. I don’t have anything scientific or historical to back it up, it’s just a hunch.”
His words were slow, carefully selected. So unlike Patrick that I knew whatever path we were going down was nothing short of legendary.
“That theory being?” I asked, eager to hear an outsider’s perspective, but dreading it at the same time. Nothing could be worse than the conclusions I’d arrived at . . . hopefully.
“So both times—that we know of—your gift manifested itself was in the Council chambers at Townsend Manor and that day in the clearing back home.”
Hearing him say home made something deep within ache. “Yeah. So?”
“What do both of those instances have in common?”
“Other than me killing, or nearly killing, a handful of Immortals?” I asked darkly.
He looked back at me. “On both occasions, your life was threatened.”
My brows wrinkled.
“If I’m right, and I often am,”—he grinned—“your gift is triggered when your life is threatened. Like it’s some kind of self-preservation thing hard-wired into your system. At the first sign of danger, it activates”—he smiled apologetically at me—“and eliminates the perceived threat before it can do the same to you.”
I stared back at him, letting this simmer. I suppose it made sense, but I’d never thought of my gift that way. It seemed more dark and evil to me than something that was for self-preservation purposes.
Self-preservation . . . I couldn’t escape selfishness. As if it was embedded in every pore and was now so extreme it exterminated anyone who threatened me.
“What do you think?” he asked me when I stayed quiet. “Sound logical?”
“I guess so,” I said, sounding more doubtful than certain. “But where does that put us? What good does a theory do us when there’s no way to test it? And even if we could test it, what good does that do us if I can’t train it?” I was growing more crazed sounding over each word, so I decided now was a good time to shut my mouth.
“I need you to take a deep breath and promise you’ll stay sitting right there,” he said, raising his finger.
“What—”
“No questions. Just promise.”
I rolled my eyes, my legs already bouncing. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
He blew a loud breath through his mouth. “There actually is a way we can test my theory out,” he began, sounding careful again. “Since I have experience compacting and generating energies from my glamorous stint at Townsend Manor, I’ll attempt to pull energy from you.”
“Are you crazy?” I said, my eyes popping in horror.
“Only the tiniest bit imaginable—just enough for your body to switch into self-preservation mode.”
He’d misunderstood where my fear was directed. “I could kill you,” I shouted. “Or at the very least put you into a coma for a few days, just in case you don’t remember the last time your skin came in contact with mine when it was buzzing like a downed wire.” I shot up, not caring if I was breaking my promise of staying seated. “If you think I’m going to go along with this, you must have been lobotomized at the same time you were zapped by John’s men.”
He put on an unimpressed face. “Thanks for the concern, but I can handle myself. Especially against a newbie. Besides, I’ve got a theory about that too.”
“What a relief!” I said, throwing my hands in the air. “Is this one as asinine and crazy as the first? Because you’ve got the market on stupid cornered today, Patrick.”
“You’re just a barrel of monkeys when you’re upset, you know that?” he asked, looking as if my pacing and nail-biting were as amusing as a one-legged duck swimming in circles. “If you care to know, I don’t think you’ll be able to give me more than a quick zap, if anything.”
“You ever heard that saying that goes, ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me?’ . . .”
He smiled tightly at me. “I’ll be expecting it. I believe being able to anticipate it will give me the edge I need to break contact as soon as I feel your inner terminator charging ahead.”
“I don’t see how you think anticipating death will help you stop it, but we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things.” I narrowed my stare at him.
“That’s an understatement,” he mumbled, his eyes creasing in the corners. “Listen, I don’t have all day to go round and round with you—entertaining as it is. I’m your instructor and this is my plan. Either we do this”—he took a quick look at his watch—“now or you’re on your own.”
My feet, fingers, and legs were tapping and swaying from the nervous energy begging to be released. “Can I at least think about this? Call me nuts, but I need more than a few minutes to agree to risk both our lives.”
“No time for that,” he said, putting the frame he’d “tossed” at me back in its place. “Besides, I’ve got a tee time in an hour and I’ll need a few minutes to recover from your electric touch.”
I stared at him, not able to understand how he could look so at ease with this whole thing. From his relaxed posture and expression, you’d have though we were going to be doing nothing more exciting than studying books all day.
I didn’t want to do this, not even in the slightest, but I knew Patrick was as stubborn and strong-willed as I was. If I didn’t play by his rules and go along with this, he would walk away and I’d be left to figure this out on my own, which would never happen.
“I can’t believe I’m going along with this,” I said, hanging my head.
“I can. I’m impossible to say no to.” He winked. “You wouldn’t be the first woman to think so.”
It was infuriating, he was making jokes now. Death was waiting to meet him, a mere few minutes away. He was as crazy as an inmate whistling Zippity-Do-Da en route to the lethal injection chamber.
“So how are we going to do this, Professor?” I asked, rolling up my sleeves.
His face flattened minutely, as if he was relieved. He hadn’t been as confident I’d go along with this as he’d acted. He was a good bluffer.
“Why don’t you lie down on the sofa since you’ll feel pretty rough when this is done and I’ll sit on the coffee table next to you.”
“Why don’t you take the sofa?” I said, moving towards the doomed furniture with heavy feet. “I think you’ll be worse off than me when this is over.” I made a silent wish that he’d still be lucid enough to feel pain when this suicide mission was finished.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” he replied, removing his wide leather-banded watch. “I don’t want to be stuck on a couch with no where to move—or collapse—if that’s the only way I can break contact.”
I bit my lip, taking a seat on the edge of the sofa. “That makes sense. You really have thought this through.”
“Was that a hint of a compliment I just detected, Miss Dawson?” he asked, tipping his ear dramatically towards me. “Couldn’t be.”
“Can we just get this done?” I closed my eyes and laid back on the couch, crossing my arms over my stomach. “Because I really can’t take any more of your sarcasm.”
He kneeled beside me, shrugging out of his jacket. “A woman of action . . . a girl after my own heart,” he said, thumping his chest with his fist.
I sucked in a breath and held it in while Patrick situated himself on the edge of the coffee table. He tossed one of the couch’s pillows behind him. “To break the fall, if need be,” he said, answering my silent question.
“I thought you were tough.”
“I am on the inside,” he said, reaching for my arm. Out of instinct I flinched away, but he caught it and pulled it towards him. “On the outside, I’m a delicate flower. You think I’d look this good if I let myself take a serious beating whenever the occasion arose?”
“Stop stalling,” I said with an edge, already damp from the clamminess coating my skin. “Let’s do this.”
“Commencing ignition sequence,” he said theatrically, lowering his voice an octave. His fingers ringed around my trembling wrist. “Ten, nine, eight, seven—”
“Patrick,” I said, my voice breaking. “The instant you feel anything—ANYTHING!—you break contact. You hear me?”
He leaned his face over mine, so close I could feel the warmth of his breath breaking over my face. “I’ll be alright, don’t worry. I can recover from your touch. It’s my brother who can’t.”
My skin prickled as he looked to the side. Before I could ask for further clarification, his voice boomed. “Three, two, one. Hang on.”
I felt a dull ache, something that was exponentially less intense than how it’d felt when John and his six other Council members had been pulling my energy from me, but it was still severe enough I couldn’t think about anything else. Severe enough I felt like I was watching the scene from an outsider’s perspective.
Patrick’s furrowed brow, his body shaking in its effort, his forehead beading with sweat, my entire aura emitting desperation that whatever was deep within wouldn’t roar to the surface and vanquish the life of the man sitting beside me, who was trying to help me—everything played like a slow-motion movie, reel for reel.
Seconds passed, or minutes—it was impossible to know—and nothing changed. Patrick’s brow stayed concentrated and my teeth stayed gritted . . . and nothing. The dull ache moved up a few notches to where it was a debilitating kind of pain, but still nothing like what I’d felt a few months back—and my monster didn’t excise itself.
Patrick’s face flattened at the same time his eyes opened. He leaned back, removing his hand from my arm and studying me like I was something as confounding as an ancient rune.
“Are you alright?” I asked, popping up. I wanted to run a hand over him, but I didn’t dare. I hadn’t killed him during our experiment; it would be my luck I would now.
He surveyed his body, side to side and up and down, like he couldn’t believe he’d made it through whatever we’d just agreed to unscathed. “Impossible.”
I shook my head. “I’ll take impossible if it means you’re alright.”
He shot me a look. “I meant impossible in that, impossible I was wrong. I’m never wrong.”
I heaved a sigh, running my fingers through my hair. “Thank goodness you were wrong.”