As much as I want to, I can’t pretend I didn’t notice. “Who was that?” I ask as the two of them hand us our drinks. I take a sip of the golden liquid to try to push down the annoyance that’s rising inside of me. Rayne stands next to me with her arms folded across her chest, always ready to be on my side, which is one of the things I love about her.
Griffon laughs, his dark eyes looking endless in this dim light. “It’s no big deal.”
I’m not sure what to say, because I know what I saw.
Peter grins and shrugs his shoulders. “You might as well tell her.”
“What?” I look at Griffon in confusion, wondering if the woman is Akhet and he can’t say anything. Peter doesn’t know about us. I told Rayne everything when Veronique tried to kill Griffon, but Peter doesn’t have a clue about past lives or Sekhem—any of it.
“She just gave me this.” Griffon digs around in his pocket and holds out a crumpled business card.
It’s thick and has letters embossed in silver. “ ‘Mary Belle’?” I read, and look back up at him.
Griffon rolls his eyes. “She’s an agent.”
“Apparently she owns the biggest modeling agency on the West Coast,” Peter says. He grins. “At least that’s what she said. And she set her sights on your boyfriend here. Practically begged him to come in and see her. Apparently he’s got ‘the look.’ “
I smile, feeling like an idiot. She’s not Akhet. Just a cougar. “I could have told her that.”
“Did you think she was hitting on me?” Griffon grabs my hand and squeezes.
“No,” I say. Rayne shoots me a look. “Yes. Maybe.”
Griffon leans in and kisses me. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no one but you in this place.”
“Smooth talker,” I tease, relief making me relax at last.
Rayne takes a drink and looks around. “Wonder where the people with the teeny tiny food are. I’m starving.”
“I saw some trays near the kitchen,” Peter says, reaching for her hand. “You guys want anything?”
I hold up my wine. “I’m okay,” I answer, watching the two of them disappear into the crowd.
Griffon and I stand quietly for a few minutes, and I can’t help noticing some of the women in the room glancing our way. Or, rather, Griffon’s way. All the eyes on him make me a little jealous, but I get it. With his dark skin and golden eyes, Griffon draws attention everywhere he goes.
Just as I’m starting to get uncomfortable, I feel his hand on my arm. “The guy by the bar told me this place has a great view. Let’s go find it.”
“You can see the boats from this window.”
“Yeah, but he says there’s a better one. Grab your jacket.” Griffon leads me out of the room toward a doorway at the end of the hall. The cold, wet air hits me as soon as we push it open, and I pull my jacket tighter. The fog hasn’t completely rolled in yet and you can still see some stars in the black sky overhead. There’s a set of stairs that snake along the outside of the building, and Griffon heads for those.
“You first?” he asks, looking up.
I turn to him. “Why? So you can watch my butt from below?”
He holds up his hands in surrender. “You caught me. I was going to say that I was just trying to be polite, but look who I’m talking to. The human lie detector.”
I follow his glance up the stairs. They go up three stories and disappear at the roof. “Can’t we just enjoy the view from down here?”
Griffon kisses the palm of my hand. “You know this is a different rooftop. Nothing’s going to happen, I promise.” He makes a big show of looking around. “No Veronique in sight.”
I smile, but it just pokes at the guilt I’ve been carrying around with me, because I haven’t told him about running into Veronique. At first I could never find the right time, and now that it’s been almost a week, I don’t know how to bring it up. It seems like she listened to me, though, because I haven’t seen her since.
“Let’s go check it out,” Griffon says. “And if you don’t like it, we can come right back down.”
I totally agree when people say you should face your fears. I just don’t want to face mine. I hear loud laughter from the hallway on the other side of the door and suddenly, desperately want to be alone with him. “Okay. But just for a minute.”
As soon as we reach the top, I suck in my breath. The view from up here is really amazing. I can see over the Marina Green to the dark water under the Golden Gate Bridge. The cars on the bridge look like a river of light as they flow to Marin, where the edge of the fog licks at the hills.
“There’s Alcatraz,” Griffon says, pointing to some tiny dots of light in the middle of the water.
“Would you believe I’ve never been there?”
“I haven’t been there this time,” he says. “But I visited last time, in the seventies, when they’d just opened it up to the public. It was pretty creepy back then—they did this one demo where they’d lock you in one of the solitary confinement cells for two minutes. It was pitch black and silent, and two minutes seemed like forever. I heard they don’t do that anymore, though.”
I watch Griffon as he speaks, loving that this conversation about a trip he took in a past lifetime seems normal. Our normal. “We should go and check it out.”
Griffon takes a step away from the stairs, and I notice the rooftop deck for the first time. The surface is covered with wood like a regular deck, but it runs the whole length of the roof, the fact that we’re the only people up here making it look even bigger than it already is. Over in one corner are a nice outdoor table and a set of chairs, and closer to us are a thickly cushioned couch and some chaise longues that look like they’d be more at home in a living room than on a roof in the middle of the city. “Hey, a fire pit.” Griffon walks to the big copper bowl by the couch. “And there’s wood.”
I slowly walk over to him, feeling safer as I move away from the edge of the roof. Griffon reaches into his jacket and pulls out a silver Zippo lighter. “And now we have fire.”
“Do you always carry a lighter with you?”
“Habit. I got used to having one.” He gestures with his fingers like he’s smoking.
I make a face, trying to imagine him with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
“Come on,” he protests. “That was, like, forty years ago. Everyone smoked then. It’s not like it is now.” He bends down, flips the lighter around with one flick of his wrist, and holds the flame to the small sticks of wood in the bottom of the pit. “Even in this lifetime, a nice, solid lighter seems like a good thing to have.” He blows on the flame and I can hear the wood crackle as it catches fire, a few sparks shooting up into the sky before they burn out completely.
Griffon flops onto one of the lounge chairs, patting the small space beside him. “Let’s pretend we’re camping. Somewhere high up in the Sierras next to a little lake in front of our roaring campfire.”
We sit quietly for a minute, staring at the flames. “Two truths and a lie,” I say, bringing up the game that made me like him in the first place. “My turn.”
“Make it good this time.”
“I’ll make it easy. I know you stink at this. Okay; I once got attacked by a bear while camping, I’ve been snorkeling with dolphins, and I can make chocolate chip cookies without looking at a recipe.”