The man disappeared into the crowd, proving that in certain circumstances, rats without tails could dematerialize as well.
Assail's eyes returned to that table. The "gentleman" who had taken a seat across from his burglar was leaning in, his eyes locked on her face even while she examined the menu and glanced around.
Something was going to have to be done about this.
Sola closed the menu and laughed. "I never said that."
"You did." Mark Sanchez smiled. "You told me I had nice eyes."
Mark was exactly what she needed on a night like tonight. He was really easy to look at, super charming, and as long as he didn't make her drop and give him ten thousand, she had nothing to worry about: As a personal trainer? He was a demon. She should know.
"So is this a way to butter me up?" He eased back as the waitress brought them both beers. "Try to get me to go light on you in the gym?"
"I know better than that." Sola took a draw from the thick, ice-cold rim of her mug. "No quarter given. That's your policy."
"Well, to be fair, you've never asked for any special treatment." There was a pause. "Not that in your case, I wouldn't be willing to cut you some slack...in some areas."
Sola ducked the eye contact that was flashing her way. "So you don't date clients, huh."
"No. Not usually."
"Conflict of interest."
"It could get messy - but in certain cases, it's worth the risk."
Sola glanced around the pub. Lot of people. Lot of talk. Air that was hot and thick.
She frowned and stiffened. In the far corner, something...someone...
"You okay?"
She shook herself free of the paranoia. "Yes, sorry - oh, yes, we'd like to order," she said as the waitress returned. "I'll have a cheeseburger. Assuming my personal trainer doesn't throw an embolism from disapproval."
Mark laughed. "Make that two. But hold the fries. On both plates."
As the waitress took off, Sola tried not to look in the direction of that dark, back corner. "So..."
"I didn't think you'd ever take me up on this. I asked you out how long ago?"
As Mark smiled, she noticed that he had fantastic teeth, straight and really white. "It's been a while, I guess. I've been busy."
"So what do you do for a living?"
"This and that."
"In what field?"
Ordinarily, she got pissed quick when people became nosy. But his affect was calm and easy, so this was just date conversation.
"I guess you could call it criminal justice."
"Oh, you're into the law."
"I'm very familiar with it, yes."
"That's cool." Mark cleared his throat. "So...you look really good."
"Thanks. I think it's my trainer."
"Oh, somehow I think you'd be doing fine without me."
As they fell into an uncomplicated back-and-forth, she actually started to relax - and then their dinners arrived and they got another round of beer. It was so...normal being in the bar, doing the one-on-one thing, getting to know somebody else.
The exact opposite of what she'd played witness to the night before.
Sola shivered as images came back to her...the candlelight, that black-haired man looming over the half-naked woman like he was going to devour her, the two of them unleashed and uninhibited....Then those glittering eyes looking up and meeting her own through the glass as if he'd known all along that she was watching.
"You okay?"
Sola forced herself to focus. "Sorry, yes. You were saying?"
As Mark resumed talking about his training for the Iron Man, she found herself back in the cold outside of that cottage, watching that man and that woman.
Shoot. She'd engineered this date only because she'd wanted an outlet. It wasn't because she particularly cared about Mark, as nice as he was.
In fact, maybe she had done this because her personal trainer happened to be really tall, and really well built, with very dark hair and very pale eyes.
When guilt rang her bell, she thought, oh, for chrissakes. She was an adult. Mark was an adult. People had sex for all kinds of different reasons - just because she didn't want to marry the guy didn't mean she was breaking some cardinal rule...except, crap. Her grandmother's morality aside, and his shiny, pearly whites and big shoulders to the contrary, she wasn't actually attracted to Mark.
She was attracted to the man Mark reminded her of.
And that was what made this wrong.
Chapter Fifty-three
Even though Qhuinn was hardly an arbiter of taste when it came to meetings of the Council, it was pretty damn clear to him that the assembled group had come to the house expecting one thing, only to get something else entirely.
Wrath didn't waste or mince words and, after laying the smack-down, wrapped things up within five or ten minutes.
This was a good thing, actually. The faster he finished, the quicker they could get him home.
"In closing," the king said in his bass voice, "I appreciate the opportunity to address this august group."
In this case, "august" clearly meant "a-hole-ish."
"I have other commitments at this time." Namely, staying alive. "So I will be departing. However, if you have any comments, please direct them to Tohrment, son of Hharm."
A blink of the eye later and the king left the building with V and Zsadist.
In the wake of the departure, all the fancy-pants in the dining room stayed sitting in their chairs, shock and now-what playing across their attractive features. Clearly, they had expected more...but also less. Kind of like children who had pushed their parents too far and finally gotten a wooden spoon on the ass.
From Qhuinn's perspective, it was pretty f**king amusing, actually.
The party finally began to break up after the hostess rose to her feet and yammered on about what an honor it was to have had all the yada, yada, yada.
Qhuinn cared about one and only one thing.
And that was the text that came through on his phone about a minute later: Wrath was home safe.
Exhaling slowly, he put his cell back in the inside pocket of his leather jacket and thought about setting off a couple of rounds into the floorboards to get this bunch of stiffs to dance a little. He'd probably get in trouble for that, though.
Bummer.
The crowd started to file out shortly thereafter, to the clear dissatisfaction of the hostess, as if she had gotten dressed up and rearranged her house with the expectation of a long, socially prominent evening - only to find that all she got were two seconds of celebrity and a bucket of KFC for eats.