“All right. We can do that.”
Chapter Seven
Taz didn’t know what she expected. Rafe owned a two-bedroom condo in a small, upscale gated private complex south of Atlanta, not too far from I-75. Matthias shut the Hummer off and touched her leg. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” She worked Rafael’s ring on her right hand. He noticed she did it, but wasn’t sure if she did. It had become an ingrained tic.
Just like Rafael.
Matthias nodded, and she followed him to the front door, then took a deep breath before walking in behind him. The condo was bachelor neat. Rafe had an assistant at work, but at home he preferred to be alone. It was smaller than she imagined, with a tidy eat-in kitchen and a small great room instead of separate living and dining rooms.
One bedroom was obviously his, with a small master bath. The other bedroom was storage with a futon for the occasional guest.
She closed her eyes and reached out, trying to feel Rafe, to sense him, to see if there was any residual essence of him left in the rooms.
Nothing.
“What are we looking for?” she quietly asked.
“I need to find his paperwork.” Matthias sat at a desk in the living room and searched it. “Deeds, titles, all that. I have to process it. He preferred to keep his private paperwork here instead of at his office.”
She examined a low shelf on one side of the room, no different than any other home. A few pictures, some of Rafe and Matthias, the colors faded with age but their faces unchanged. One taken last year, according to the time-date stamp.
Rafe had a playful smile and intense blue eyes, like he was planning the next practical joke he’d play on you while you talked with him. You couldn’t not like him. He had a brooding humor unparalleled in anyone she’d ever met.
All part of his act, she now knew, his defensive barrier hiding a sensitive, intelligent soul.
She walked into Rafe’s bedroom while Matthias worked on his desk. On his dresser were assorted items—a watch, a small bowl with loose change, a couple of gas receipts. Dated two weeks ago. God, had it just been eleven days since his death?
I won’t cry…I will not cry.
On his bedside table were a few books, one on crystals, perhaps the one he’d mentioned loaning to her. Their dinner conversation replayed in her mind, when she’d asked him about his citrine ring. When she realized there was a lot more to him than met the eye.
“What does it signify?”
He shrugged, and when she released his hand she sensed his regret. “Protection. At least, that’s what the lore says. It’s always brought me good luck. It has a lot of properties, emotional and physical healing, psychic warning system. Heck, one book I’ve got says it even clears constipation.”
He smiled as she laughed. Alone like this, she knew she was privileged to see the real man, not the mask he wore for everyone else. And he was sweet.
“Remind me, I’ll loan you my book on crystals. I’ll bring it to the house next time I come down.” He paused. “When I say I don’t remember how long I’ve had it, that’s a fib. It’s over two hundred years old.” His voice was unusually quiet, sad. “I know I’m a pain in the ass but this was from the one person who could tame me. She knew she was dying. She was worried about me, what I’d do when she was gone, wanted me protected. She knew what I was immediately when we first met.”
Taz sat on his neatly made bed and picked up the book. From its well-read condition, he’d spent plenty of time paging through it. When she thumbed through the book to the page on citrine, sure enough, constipation was listed as one of the issues supposedly remedied.
Inside the bedside table she found an unopened box of condoms and a very, very old journal.
She removed the journal and stroked the cover. She couldn’t begin to guess its age and part of her was afraid to open it. From the binding it looked to be well over a hundred years old. Taz finally worked up the nerve. Tucked inside the front cover she found an old, well-worn, laminated piece of parchment, with what looked like quill pen writing.
My Dearest Rafael. I was afraid to tell you too soon for fear of your reaction. I do not wish for you to die, but to live after I go on. My spirit will always travel with you. Take this ring as a token of my love and faith and devotion to you. We always knew this day would come, although I never realized it would seem as if the years flew so quickly. I wish I could have more time with you, but please find someone else, love again. It is what I wish. One day, in spirit, we will be together again. All my love—Your Catydid.
“She died of cancer.” Matthias startled Taz. She hadn’t heard him in the doorway.
Taz closed the journal, nodding. Rafe had shown her at dinner.
“She was a beautiful woman, outside and within. Losing her nearly killed him. With—” He stopped. “It was quick when my wife died. Rafe watched Cassandra slowly waste away. At the end…”
Rafe had shown her that, too. She was wracked with pain, and Rafe released her from life the way only he could—painlessly, and with love.
Matthias’ voice sounded so low she strained to listen. “I don’t know if I could have done what he did. Everyone saw the prankster, the clown, the irrepressible flirt. He was the strongest man I’ve ever known. She didn’t want to kill herself, but he’d found the poisons she collected. He wouldn’t let her take her own life for fear of what it would to do her soul.”
“I thought you said what we are isn’t supernatural?”
“Rafael was raised Catholic,” Matthias said. “Back then, he hadn’t yet learned enough of life to realize there is more to the hereafter than the church’s opinion. At the end she begged him to let her take her life. She wasn’t religious, obviously, so she didn’t have the same reservations. She just wanted to be out of pain. He was torn because he couldn’t stand to see her suffering, and asked her if she wanted him to take her pain away. She knew what he meant and finally she agreed to let him do it. She didn’t want to at first, afraid for what it would do to him. It got to the point where she hurt so bad she couldn’t take it anymore.”
Taz thought back to the night she saved Matthias, after he nearly died from his fight with the Other. Even then, before they had an emotional connection, the feel of his lips on her wrist as she let him feed, how immediately the pain of slicing her flesh open was replaced by mind-blowing pleasure—
She shivered just thinking about it. All Rafael would have had to do was keep going, keep feeding, not stop until she was gone. She would have died painlessly. On the contrary, it would have probably felt like the best thing in the world, the best feeling in months, no doubt. To die like that, feeling pleasure in the arms of the man she loved—well, there were worse deaths.
Much worse.
“And that’s what nearly drove him crazy?” she asked.
Matthias nodded. “He took her life. She wanted it that way, and he understood it was the kindest thing. It’s not like today. We still lived in Britain then. There were no doctors or medicine. There was rum and whiskey and for those lucky ones who escaped arrest and torture as witches, herbal remedies. I got there just before she died. I had to stop him from killing himself. I knew from my own experience if I could get him through the first few months that he had a chance of making it.”
“There’s nothing else he could have done? Turned her or something?”
“We’ve talked about this. We’re born this way, it’s genetics. It’s not a bacteria or a virus that can be passed to others. She was human, with none of the line in her. You must have the correct genetic markers to heal from feeding.”