Fantastic Hope - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,82

effective. They (or possibly he or she, because Asil wasn’t convinced two or more people could keep themselves secret from him, and he had not been able to discover who was at the heart of this) knew what moved him. Most people wouldn’t have thought he would care that people’s feelings would be hurt.

Even so, he was pretty sure that no one but himself knew the biggest reason that he’d accepted.

Inshallah.

Asil had, in his very long life, accepted that Allah sometimes made use of his most disobedient servant. This game had, from the first, felt like one of those times. The first two dates had done nothing to disabuse him of that notion.

The water had barely come to a boil when his computer chimed again. He waited until his tea had steeped before going back to his desk.

Dear Asil,

He smiled and sat down.

We admit your second date did not turn out quite as we expected. We had no idea that the “must love cats” woman meant loving cats in the biblical sense.

“I hope not,” murmured Asil. “Or we really will need to have a talk when this is all over and I find out who you are, my friends.”

To be fair, the dating site (when we contacted them) also had no clue that a certain subset of the population had begun to use their site for such meet-ups. We had a nice chat and we feel certain that, in the future, they will actually do the background checks that their website promises.

May we say that while we owe you apologies (again) for the unexpected way that one turned out, you once more managed to stay within the bounds of our bet. You were with your assigned date for four hours and twenty minutes. It did expose a loophole in our rules; we did not state that your date must be conscious for any of the time, let alone all of it.

There were, somewhat to our surprise considering the circumstances, no dead bodies. There is a slight possibility that Aaron Marks might not make it. We debated, but decided that since he has survived forty-eight hours after your date ended, and the damage he suffered was from the lioness and not you, we will grant that you have met the “no dead bodies” portion of the agreement.

Since everyone involved was unable to run by the time the date ended—the lioness excluded—it could be argued that you were cheating. But wiser heads prevailed and gave you the nod. However, you are establishing some odd precedents and we don’t think that we would let anyone we cared very much for date you.

The Seattle Zoo accepted our anonymous donation for the care and welfare of the lioness and informed us that you had done the same. That was well done of you. Someday you will tell us how you managed that drive with an unhappy lioness in your backseat.

Asil smiled. Maybe he would tell them. Maybe not.

And that brings us to your next date.

We will restate the rules you have agreed to. You must complete one date with your next victim . . . er, our selected person from an online dating site of our choice. That date must be at least two hours long—and you must spend at least an hour and a half of that with your date. No dead bodies, and neither you nor your date can run screaming out into the night.

For your third date we found a person who sounds very normal on PlatonicPlantophiles—a Meeting Place for Plant Lovers. We would accept credit for this, but there were only two people listed on the site who were within a reasonable distance of your home. After the oddities involved in the first two dates of our bet, we did a thorough background check on both and chose the one we thought would be the least trouble. We trust that Tami will be less dramatic than your last date.

* * *

Tami Reed tapped her foot nervously and looked around the restaurant she had picked. Spokane was a foodie city. There were literally dozens of good restaurants that she could have decided upon; this one had probably

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