“Smart girl.” He folded the papers up and, standing, leaned over a part of the bed. I stood and moved away from him, taking a couple of steps toward the door. But all he did was toss the papers toward me and sit back down.
I edged to the bed in small steps, watching him like a field mouse watches a predator circling the sky overhead. But he only sat and settled in the chair, waiting, it seemed, for me to open the two notes.
“Open mine first,” he ordered, and I looked at him. “Please. It’s the one with the wax seal.”
I picked up the note, lifting it in unspoken question. He nodded and I broke the seal, opening the note. Written inside the heavy paper, in flowing script was the following message:
In the lobby
7:00 p.m.
I looked up at him and couldn’t help but smile.
“You expected me to take this seriously? This is stalker material, and I haven’t been here long enough to be stalked. Or to know anyone that would inspire me to respond by showing up.” I snorted, dropping the note on the bed.
Bahlin stood up and growled, literally growled, from deep in his chest. “You do not get to mock me for trying to make this easier, nay safer for you. I made a promise, and I’ll keep it.”
“What promise, Bahlin? We don’t know each other, you are completely unfamiliar to me, and no one knows me here, so there’s no promise you could have kept.”
“Read the other damned piece of paper and we’ll discuss it.” He dropped back into his chair with amazing, unnatural grace for a man of his size.
The hair on the back of my neck began to stand up and the skin underneath got hot. I suddenly didn’t want to open the other piece of paper, but I’ve never been a coward (see above regarding the strange man with the aching balls in my room). I reached across to pick it up and open it. I must have been too tired yesterday to notice that my name was on the outside in small, neat print. I began to unfold the sheet of paper and time slowed to a crawl. I could see everything in slow motion, even Bahlin standing up from the chair as he moved minutely closer to me. Inside was a family tree, drawn carefully and in great detail, with the Niteclif name at the top. I looked at the tree, beginning with the bottom, but most of the names flashed by my eyes without meaning until I came to my name nearest the top, and all by itself, on a defined limb. “Madeleine Dilys Niteclif” was written in, with my date of birth and an open-ended date for death. I raised my eyes and looked at Bahlin, the question evident in my gaze.
“Look three generation down, and read carefully as you go,” he said softly, almost with compassion. Strange.
I saw the names of my parents. Then I saw my grandparents’ names, no surprise. Then I saw my great-grandparents’ names. There was no surprise here, either, since my mom had been an amateur genealogist. Then I looked closely at my great-grandfather’s name: Aloysius S. Niteclif, more famously known as… What the hell? Sherlock Holmes. Wait. Was he telling me my great-granddad was a famous 19th century fictional detective, not a real person? Why was he on my family tree? I knew Aloysius Niteclif as my great-grandfather, but no way was he some fictional icon. That was so far off the crazy scale that it had come back around to probable. No way was this even remotely—
Bahlin interrupted my internal ramblings, my thoughts scattering without pattern or reason. “Aloysius Niteclif was a great man, a great detective, in our world. But he became disillusioned with the constant battles, the killings, and he wanted out. So he met a mundane man that he liked and respected, and they struck a deal. This mundane man was an author, and he would write Aloysius’s memoirs as if they were fictional tales with human characters and human mysteries. In return, Aloysius would give him a peek into the world of the supernatural. It worked well. Three men ended up immortalized, and Aloysius was able to purge his conscience without fear of recrimination.” He paused to look at me. “Do you understand what this means?”
I was sitting there, the family tree hanging from my fingertips. Did I understand? Of course I did. Bahlin was a certifiable