The phone buzzed against his ear and he waited, counting the second between one ring and the next. Then, just as he was about to give up, a click emanated from the device instead.
“Hello?”
“Mom?” Nick leaned back in his chair, pulse racing, and tried not to sound too eager.
“Nick? How are you? I tried calling the other day, but you were out again.”
“I know, Mom—I’ve been really busy lately. How are you?”
“I’m fine—how are you?”
“I’m okay. Classes are going okay. Carmichael gave me a B-minus on my last paper but I’m revising it, so I should still be able to pull an A from him. How’s work?”
“Work is fine—Anne-Marie asked how you were the other day. You should come and visit some time, say hi to everybody. They’d all like that.”
“I will, Mom,” he promised. “Soon—finals are in a few weeks, and after that I’ll have more time.” He sat forward again. “Mom, tell me about my dad.”
There was a slight pause.
“Why?”
“I just want to know—you told me once, a long time ago, but I forgot most of it, and I was thinking about it yesterday. What was his name again?”
“You mean the name he gave me?” After twenty-five years, most of the bitterness had faded. Most of it. “He called himself Luke Rawlins.”
Rawlins? Hm. Nick turned that one over in his head. Taken backwards, it could almost be Sinclair, with a little slurring and a few extra letters. Was he reaching?
“What did he look like?”
He could hear her sigh over the phone. “Nick, why . . . ?”
“Please, Mom. I know you don’t like to think about it, and I promise I won’t ever ask again, but I need to know.”
“All right, all right.” There was another pause. “He was close to your height, a little broader, the same black hair you have but shorter, and almost black eyes. He had a beard, too, a short dark one—other than that, you look a lot like him. Satisfied?”
“Yeah, I am, Mom. Thanks.” They continued to talk for a few minutes, about nothing consequential, and then Nick hung up with a promise to come visit as soon as school was over for the year. The instant the receiver was back in its base he was up and headed for the bathroom.
His height—check. A little broader—check. Dark beard—check. Dark hair but shorter—Nick used a rubber band to pull his hair back into a crude ponytail. Check. The silvery hair could be deliberate, an attempt to look older—it had been almost twenty years ago. Dark eyes—check. Nick stared at himself in the mirror, squinting, trying to picture himself with a beard. No good—he just couldn’t see it.
He headed for the kitchen, rummaging through the fridge and then the cupboard for anything that would work. He finally found an unopened bottle of Hershey’s Syrup hiding in the back of the fridge, and hefted it triumphantly. Perfect. He opened it as he rushed back to the bathroom, glad everyone else was out partying, then applied the chocolate to his face, pausing only for a second as the absurdity of the situation hit him—here he was, a mature graduate student, smearing chocolate syrup on his face to see if his father was a thousand-year old Frenchman who was once considered a mythic demon. Then Nick’s hands finished their task, and he focused on the mirror—to see a thinner, light-eyed version of Daniel staring back at him.
The flung Hershey bottle bounced off the image, sending a spray of chocolate into the air as it rebounded against the towels on the far wall and smeared them brown, sliding down them to fall burbling against the tiled floor.
“Bastard!” Nick grabbed one of the towels and rubbed the sticky syrup off his face, then splashed himself with water to remove the last traces. When he looked up the image was his own again, but he still seethed. All these years he had been without a father, and his mother without a husband, never knowing what had happened to him, who he really was, why he had left so abruptly—one of the reasons Nick had studied genetics in the first place was because he had hoped to learn who his father was by tracing any inherited traits. And all this time, the bastard had been right here in Chicago, watching Nick grow up, waiting to snatch him away and use him as a pawn, an underling, in some immortal power-game!
All these years, and Daniel had never revealed himself, never come to see him—even when he had Awakened Nick he hadn’t told him the truth, he’d said nothing about being related. That presumptuous, overconfident, callous, manipulative. . . .
Nick studied himself in the mirror again, hot anger turning to cold malice, and a smile slowly creased his face—a nasty smile, one he had seen on Daniel before. Well, fine—if that was how it was, so be it. If Daniel wanted to play his little power-games, let him. Tomorrow Nick would confront him with what he had learned, just to show he couldn’t be led about so easily, and then. . . .
Then the games would begin anew, and Nick would see whether he had inherited any of his father’s guile. Already plans were beginning to form, possibilities to suggest themselves, and he smiled again as he flipped the switch and drowned the bathroom in darkness. Oh yes, he was his father’s son, all right. And he was going to prove it to him.