Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

His words brought an ache to her chest and a lump to her throat. She wished that she could love Arlan. Wished that she could let him be to her what he wanted to be. He was such a good man. He would be good for her.

But she wouldn’t be good for him because she would never love him the way he deserved to be loved.

“Come home with me,” he urged her.

She rested the flat of her hand on his chest. “Not tonight, Arlan.”

“You sure? Just a little release?” He lifted her hand to his mouth. “I’m not asking for anything more.”

“Good night, Arlan and thanks.” She stepped toward the door.

“Change your mind, stop by.”

She chuckled as she watched him morph into a sleek gray cat and slink down the porch steps. “Good night, Arlan.”

Upstairs, on the third floor, Fia lay down but she didn’t sleep. She listened to the rumble of Glen’s voice for a long time as he talked on the phone. She didn’t hear him speak Stacy’s name, but she knew he was talking to his fiancée. Eventually he hung up.

She imagined him on the other side of the wall, stretching out on the bed, reading for a while. And after he shut out the light, she imagined him lying in the bed with the blue ruffles, nude. She imagined herself lying beside him. She remembered Ian and the taste of his skin, the feel of his body against hers. She wondered if Glen would feel different.

Okay, so obviously she was attracted to him. There was no sense denying it any longer.

Fia thought about what Arlan said. Obviously the initial attraction, subconscious or otherwise, had to be about Ian, but was this just about her past lover? Did she just want to have sex with Glen, to taste his blood, so that she could feel her Ian inside her again? So that she could pretend for a short time that the only man she had ever loved had not betrayed her, causing her to betray her family? Or was there something else going on here?

Fia didn’t care what Dr. Kettleman said, anonymous sex was beginning to seem appealing again….

They had agreed to meet at 2 A.M. Fia had wanted to wait until three, but Little Johnny, Fia’s seventy-seven-year-old great-uncle, had insisted that some people were too old to be staying up half the night. Some people needed their sleep.

Walking to the museum, she took shortcuts through yards and back alleys. It was still hot during the day, but nights were beginning to cool and there was the faintest hint of the coming fall in the air. A tiny sliver of a moon cast dim, white light. As Fia made her way across town, dogs and cats that prowled the neatly cut backyards ignored her. At this time of night, only humans would have disturbed them; they were used to sept members moving after midnight, especially in the summer when they were forced to be more careful. Everyone kept supplies of blood in their freezers, but occasionally even the most disciplined felt the need to hunt.

As she walked alone in the dark, she wondered if she should be afraid. What if someone was hunting them? Could she be a target? Were they all?

At the museum’s rear door, Fia punched a series of numbers into the security keypad and let herself into the rear hallway. As a teenager she had dreamed of being one of the honored eleven members of the high council, which also made her a member of the larger, general council which was meeting tonight. The high council’s sole responsibility was to make decisions concerning the humans they watched, hunted, and sometimes executed. The general council was responsible for the more mundane, but no less important, day-to-day running of the town and governing the sept.

Fia entered the main room of the museum. The room-darkening shades had been drawn, unlike the last time she had been here for high council, when ceremony had to be adhered to, and tonight the room was blazing with fluorescent light. Someone had made coffee. There were donuts and other snacks set out on a tray and instead of sept members being dressed in hooded robes, they sported shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops. The chieftain wore plaid pajama bottoms and a Captain Morgan Rum T-shirt with a bikini-clad girl and a pirate on it.

“Gair.” Fia acknowledged her grandfather as the sept’s leader as she entered the room, as was proper.

He nodded, shuffling toward the snack table. “There’s banana-nut bread. You should try it.”

In a rare impulse of affection, she kissed his weathered cheek.

“Been a hard day,” he acknowledged, piling slices of sweet bread on a napkin.

She could tell he was pleased by the kiss, even if he didn’t say so.

“You see cream for the coffee? I hope the hell it’s decaf or I never will get any sleep tonight.”

Fia gazed around the room. Council members were filing in, breaking into groups, chatting quietly. “Doc coming tonight?” she asked, her glaze flicking from one face to the next. The people in the room were nervous, scared. It didn’t take ESP to figure that one out. She could see it in the tight lines around their mouths, hear it in the laughter that wasn’t quite genuine.

Gair shook his head, carrying his coffee and napkin of sweets to one of the folding chairs set in a circle. “No, but he says he’ll have the autopsy report by morning for you, all official, i’s dotted. t’s crossed. Toxicology reports and such will take longer.”

She sat down beside him, taking a deep breath. “I’m not expecting any surprises.”

Gair blew on his coffee. Slurped it. “Me either.”

She sat back in her chair and gazed around the room. The museum had been built in the late sixties to encourage the town’s burgeoning tourist trade. Portraying Clare Point as a pirate’s den in early colonial days, the museum mixed fact with fiction, displaying many objects