Chapter 13

September
Lucy's Age: 18

Venice and I had finally managed to get back together for dinner. We'd eaten out at some pretty lowbrow establishments lately, but this time she'd insisted on somewhere nicer. Thankfully she'd picked a new restaurant this time, so we wouldn't be eating at Calum's restaurant.

Not surprisingly, she beat me there. I looked her over through a window as I hurried to the door. She was tapping her hand against her thigh, indicating that she was getting tired of waiting for me, but that wasn't what caught my attention first.

The entire right side of her back was the angry red of a major sunburn. For once I was pretty sure that the thin, silk tank top she was wearing was more about trying to be comfortable than about her undeniable need to be sexy.

Venice had already worked her magic on the hostess, so we were seated within seconds of my arrival. I watched as Venice settled back into her chair with a grimace of pain.

"What happened?"

Venice did a quick check to make sure we wouldn't be overheard and then just gave up trying to get comfortable with her back against the chair and leaned forward.

"Imastious put us up against one of our own kind. A pretty powerful chick whose gift happens to be lighting things on fire. You should have seen me a few days ago, it wasn't pretty."

There was something about that statement that didn't add up for me, but I'd learned that there were things that Venice invariably refused to talk about. Besides, she'd already started moving on.

"I thought I had her dead to rights and then suddenly my whole side of the room went up in flames. I kept her busy for just long enough for Geoffrey to worm his way inside of her mind though and he put his sword into her a second or so before she would have burned me to a crisp."

Venice took a long drink of water and then held the cool glass against her right arm. "I can't even begin to explain how good that feels."

"Does it still bother you?"

"What, nearly getting killed while doing Imastious' dirty work?"

Even as the words had left my mouth I'd realized that I was headed towards treacherous ground, but it was too late to take them back now. Venice wasn't a mentalist but she was incredibly good at telling when I was lying to her.

"All of the people you kill."

Her jaw clenched slightly, but she took a deep, calming breath before responding. "Every damn day, but not this one. She was bad to the core. The world is a better place with her gone."

I nodded, but she could tell I wasn't convinced. "Look, Lucy. I have a very good idea of just how many people she's killed over the years and the number would shock you. There wasn't a single redeeming quality about her, trust me on this one."

I held my hands up and made a calming motion. "I'm sorry, Venice. I do trust you; it's just still a little hard for me to adjust to. I've led a pretty sheltered life up to this point."

She rubbed the side of her head like she was starting to get a migraine or something and then nodded. "Yeah, I know. Geoffrey has kept you wrapped in cotton for the last decade and a half. I'm sorry too. I didn't mean to bite your head off, I'm just not always comfortable with my actions either."

"That's a good sign, Venice. You don't have a choice about all of this right now, but you will someday soon. We'll get you and Geoffrey out of this and then you'll never have to kill anyone else ever again."

She gave me an odd look, but as well as I knew her I apparently still didn't know her well enough to be able to interpret all of her expressions. "Yeah, that will be nice."

She took another drink of water and then shrugged. "That's all for a future day, though. What about you? How are things going with your boyfriend?"

I once again wished that I'd never told her that I'd gone ahead and gone on that first date with Calum. Even after so many weeks of teasing I still blushed every time she brought him up. Venice took in my red cheeks and smiled even wider.

"Hmm, that's an even better reaction than normal. Did you guys finally get horizontal?"

I hadn't thought it possible for my cheeks to get even hotter. "No! Calum has been a real gentleman. I told him that I wasn't ready for any of that yet and he's respected my wishes."

Venice rolled her eyes at me. "Fine, fine. Have you at least started wearing something more exciting than jeans and a tee-shirt on your dates? I mean, really, the boy has needs."

I actually had started breaking out some of the clothes that Venice had bought me. Only the tamer stuff, but still, it had been nice to see Calum's eyes light up a little when I'd shown up in something slightly sexier than my normal attire. I wasn't going to admit that to Venice though, not when it would just mean I was setting myself up for more teasing down the road.

"No, I haven't. Calum likes me just fine how I am, thank you very much."

It was a lie, but only the first part. Calum wouldn't have stopped dating me because of what I did or didn't wear. He really was amazing in so many ways, which made me feel all the guiltier since I wasn't enjoying being with him as much lately.

"If that's true then Calum is even more boring than you've made him out to be."

Venice had been picking at her food when she'd said it, but she looked up quick enough to catch my expression, which apparently wasn't as controlled as I thought.

"Uh-oh. What's wrong?"

I shrugged, but I knew that I couldn't just leave things there, not after making Venice mad at me earlier.

"It's hard to describe. I guess I'm just not as into Calum as I was back when we first started dating."

Venice nodded gravely. "Does he seem concerned with boring, unimportant stuff? Do you feel like he wastes all of his time?"

I nodded, almost in spite of myself. Her level of insight was astonishing. She'd just nailed the heart of my problem with Calum. It wasn't his fault, not really, which was probably part of why I'd had such a hard time being honest with myself about why our relationship had been off lately.

"I guess that really is the main problem. I don't understand it though. My entire life I've been taught that he's the kind of guy I should be interested in. He's nice, he's thoughtful, he's driven, and he's talented. The goals he's working towards aren't anything earthshattering, but they are perfectly acceptable compared to the kind of things that most everyone else wants to accomplish. I shouldn't feel this way."

Venice's smile was sad. "The heart wants what the heart wants, Lucy. The world is made up of all kinds of people and sometimes you're surprised by who you turn out to want."

It was the kind of metaphysical doubletalk that my sensei used to spout as an explanation for what was right or wrong with the world. I'd hated it then, and I didn't particularly like it now. Apparently my unhappiness showed through because Venice patted my hand and shrugged.

"Now that you've identified the cause of your unhappiness you have a couple of options you should consider. You can ignore the fact that you're unhappy and try to make the relationship work despite the fact that you want something different than him. You may tell yourself that you can change, that you can get to the point where he doesn't bore you to tears, but I'm not sure that's possible."

I wanted to object. Everything we were doing with Geoffrey was based on the idea that he could change, either for the better or the worse. It didn't seem fair to just blithely assume that I couldn't change. I opened my mouth to tell Venice she was oversimplifying things, but the words wouldn't leave my throat. As much as I wanted to believe otherwise, something inside me seemed to agree with her, seemed to think that I wouldn't ever be able to reach a point where I wanted Calum in the way that I should want him.

"Ah, good. I thought maybe you'd put up more of a fight than that. Now that we've got that rather stupid option off of the table, we can move onto options that are at least marginally better. You could try to change Calum, try to make him over to something that's more appealing to you."

I shook my head. "I don't think that would be fair to Calum, even assuming it's possible. He likes who he is right now, it seems pretty selfish to try and make him into a new person just so that I can be happy."

Venice tapped the table a couple of times and then nodded. "I have to agree with you, at least about it not being possible to change him. You wanting to avoid being selfish probably rules out the next possibility though."

"What's that?"

"Don't try to change him, don't try to change you, just enjoy the relationship for what it is, or what it could become."

My ears heated up at what she was implying, but I shook my head. "You know that's not me, Venice."

She shrugged. "Then your only real remaining option is just to call it quits. You can be nice about it or you can be mean, but if you're not going to change or try to change him, then eventually you're going to break up, it's just a matter of time."

I put my face in my hands and sighed. "You're right. Why does dating have to suck so bad?"

"You haven't seen anything yet, love. At least this time you're the one in the driver's seat. It sucks a lot worse when you find the one you want to be with but they aren't so sure they reciprocate the feeling."

"Geoffrey still not progressing very well?"

"He's coming back to us and he's doing it faster even than what I've seen in the past, but he still doesn't seem very interested in me. I've done everything but strip down naked and wait in his bed for him to get home."

I forced myself not to blush this time, which still seemed to amuse Venice. She watched for a couple of seconds to see if I'd lose my inner battle and then made a throwing away gesture.

"I tried that a few years ago and it didn't work then, so there doesn't seem much point in trying it again now."

"I'm sorry, Venice. I wish there was something else I could do. I can't exactly push him in your direction given that I'm not supposed to even know you exist."

"I know. It's just one of those sucky things that I'm going to have to deal with for the time being. I'm trying to just focus on the fact that he's progressing in other areas so well. Tell me some good news so I don't feel like throwing myself off of a building."

I frowned at her joke, but she waved my concerns away. "Come on, spill it. I really, really need to hear about some positive developments."

"Well, I'm not sure that there is much to tell. It's mostly just a slow, steady change without much in the way of big developments to talk about. He's more relaxed around me, and I don't get the feeling that he's still trying to decide whether or not to just abandon me to save himself the hassle of dealing with a daughter that he wasn't sure he still wanted."

Venice raised her glass in a mock toast. "Hear, hear. I'm all for him keeping you around. What else?"

"I don't know, he laughs more than he used to and he smiles when he sees me. You know, just the same kind of stuff that you'd expect out of a normal person."

"Anything else? Anything at all?"

Venice looked almost like she was going to cry, which in another girl wouldn't have been unusual. Tears are always a cause of concern, of course, but with Venice it was practically a sign of the apocalypse. Desperate for some bit of news that would cheer her up, I cast about through my memories of the last few days and suddenly I remembered the really odd gift he'd given me just a little while ago.

"Ah, I almost forgot. He gave me a present. It was the oddest thing he could have possibly given me, but he said something about wanting to reward me for all of my hard work lately."

Venice had been shifting around in her seat, leaning back until her skin actually touched the dark wood of the chair and then sitting forward again as the pain reminded her of the burns on her back. She went instantly still at my announcement.

"What was the gift?"

"He gave me an old samurai sword. It had a certificate of authenticity and everything."

"It wasn't any kind of gag gift if that's what you're thinking, Lucy. A sword like you're describing is worth millions of dollars and in fact it may very well be priceless."

I felt like I'd been hit. Somehow I'd never realized the sheer value of what Geoffrey had given me.

"Why a sword? If he was going to spend that kind of money on me why didn't he just buy me a car or something else more practical? I know that we've been studying kenjitsu together, but I still don't understand why he'd give me a priceless sword."

"Think of it as being a kind of odd graduation present. It means that he thinks you're accomplished enough with a blade to avoid hurting yourself, but more importantly it means that inside of his head you've moved out of the liabilities column and into the assets column."

My earlier words to Venice came rushing back at me and I looked down and realized that I was shaking.

"I don't want to kill anybody, Venice. All of the unarmed combat is okay because I can defend myself in such a way as to not kill my opponent. The kenjitsu is okay when it was just learning in the abstract, but I don't want to be dragged into your world, not like that."

Venice gave me a reassuring smile. "You're not in any danger yet, at least not in any more danger than you've been in all along. I expect he's viewing you as more a financial asset than a combat asset. I've been through the process Geoffrey uses to turn someone into a fighter and you are still only skimming the surface."

A part of me wanted to ask her what she meant, what kinds of things Geoffrey would expose me to once he decided to start preparing me for combat operations, but I already knew. She'd avoided getting into the specifics on a lot of things, but I had a pretty good imagination.

I was still shaking, but Venice reached across the table again and took my hand in both of hers. "You don't have to keep doing this, Lucy. You could walk away tomorrow if you wanted to. Take whatever money he's left there at the apartment and just disappear. I've got some money saved up that Imastious doesn't know about that I could give you too. Odds are that Geoffrey never implanted the kind of captivity protocols in your mind that Imastious put inside of mine."

"What if you're wrong? What if I run away and then just go exactly where he programmed me to go? He'll find me in a matter of days."

Venice bit her lip. "It's a possibility. I don't think it's likely, but things could happen that way. Even if he did find you again though, I don't think that he'd be nasty to you, not if you played things like you were just some troubled teen who wanted away from home."

"That's predicated on him still caring about me. If he has to sanitize his memories for some reason then all of that would go out the window."

Venice's nod was slow, like she wished that she didn't have to agree with me. "Yeah, there is that. Look, I don't think that you need to be worrying right now anyways. This present is a good sign; it means that Geoffrey is trying to reconnect with you in a whole new way. I was actually starting to worry that he hadn't given one of us a gift before now."

"What do you mean?"

"Geoffrey tends to come back from being a cold, emotionless bastard in a regimented set of steps. One of the milestones is a gift to someone he cares about. Usually he finds a way to rationalize it away as something non-sentimental, but the fundamental truth is that he wants to connect with people. It's his basic nature, and even after his emotions have been wiped away he still finds ways to continue to interact with people, he just justifies it all as being pure self-interest."

Venice let go of my hands and gave me a smile that did a good impression of being heartfelt, but wasn't quite convincing enough, not to fool me.

"This really is a good thing."

Her words and her expression didn't quite match up. It took me a couple of seconds to put together the pieces that had been there staring me in the face during the entire conversation.

"He usually connects with you. You're the one he should have given this gift to, not me. I'm so sorry, Venice. I'll go home and get it right now. It should be yours, not mine."

Venice grabbed my arm, pulling me back down into my seat in a casual display of strength that still seemed unnatural regardless of how many times I'd seen her do something similar.

"Sit down, Lucy. You need to keep that present and you need to display it prominently somewhere in your apartment so that Geoffrey knows that you still have it and that you value it."

She let go of my arm and looked away from me for a moment. "Look, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I'm overjoyed at the fact that Geoffrey is so much closer to you than he is to me, but the truth of the matter is that I want him out from under Imastious' thumb and if that means that he bonds with you instead of bonding with me, then that's a price that I'm willing to pay."

"What if I'm not willing to pay it?"

"I'm not asking for you to sleep with him, Lucy. Just keep doing what you're doing. Interact with him, help him with his business ventures, be someone he can trust. I really should have seen this coming. Geoffrey's need to be close to someone is so intense that it is sufficient to even overcome his inherent distrust of anyone who's a…anyone who's in our line of work. It only makes sense that this time around he's going to become closest to you. He can trust you. Becoming close to you is straightforward and uncomplicated. "

She looked back at me and I saw utter conviction in her eyes, but there was nothing inside of me that even began to approach her level of certainty. I couldn't help but feel like my whole world was balancing on the edge of the precipice. I couldn't stop moving, but each step carried with it the chance that everything I knew would come crashing down.