“Yes,” he agreed. “I have not always been a lawyer. I only took it up the last century or so.”
She peered at him curiously. “What were you before you were a lawyer?”
Basil grimaced and then smiled and admitted, “I have been many things over the centuries. I was a Rogue Hunter at one time, a warrior, a doctor, a sous chef, a musician, an artist, a—”
“Artist?” she asked with interest. “And a doctor?”
“I was a bad artist,” he admitted, “and just an okay musician, but I was a pretty good doctor.”
“Well, you definitely seem to like variety,” she said wryly.
“It helps relieve the boredom of living so long,” he said quietly.
She nodded and peered out at the passing cars on the street in front of the house for a moment before changing the subject, and asking curiously, “You said run herd on your children. How many children do you have?”
“Twenty-two,” he answered easily.
Sherry froze, and then turned to stare at him wide-eyed. “What?”
Basil glanced at her, noted her expression and said a little more warily, “Twenty-two.”
“You have twenty-two children?”
Basil nodded slowly, appearing perplexed by her dismay.
“Why?” Sherry asked.
His eyebrows rose with surprise. “Why what?”
“Why twenty-two children?” she clarified. “I mean, I can see three or four, but . . . twenty-two?”
“Actually, we had twenty-six altogether, but only twenty-two still live,” Basil said quietly. “And we had so many because . . . well, Mary and I both like children. We are allowed to have one every hundred years, and so we have. Our youngest is twenty-five and just got called to the bar. We are quite proud of him.”
“We are?” Sherry asked with dismay. “Your wife is still alive? I mean I knew you must have been married at one time to have Katricia, but she was born back in—well, ages ago, for heaven’s sake. I thought your wife must have died by now. But she’s still alive? You’re still married?” Sherry was shrieking by the end, she was so horrified at this news. Here everyone was squawking about her being his life mate, and shared pleasure and blah blah blah, and the man was married, for God’s sake.
“Breathe,” Basil said soothingly, reaching out to clasp her hand gently. He allowed her a moment to regain her calm and then said, “Mary and I are not now, and never have been, married or even involved. We are nothing more than friends.”
Sherry blinked repeatedly at that and then snapped, “Friends who have had twenty-six kids together, but you’re not involved? That sounds pretty damned involved to me.”
Basil winced and shook his head. “You have to understand—”
“Understand what?” she bit out, and then said sarcastically, “No, let me guess. She doesn’t understand you. Or she’s cold and won’t let you touch her, but you stay together for the kids. Or, oh, she’s having a relationship with the plumber but won’t agree to divorce because she’s Catholic. Puhleeze,” she growled. “You—”
“We are not married, by law or even common law. We do not now, and never have, lived together. We have only ever been friends and co-parents. The children were . . .” He seemed to struggle for the words to explain, and then sighed and tugged at her hand, urging her to sit beside him. Once she settled stiffly on the couch next to him, he said solemnly, “Sherry, living so long sounds grand and wonderful. No one thinks they want to die, but the truth is, it gets pretty damned repetitive. You get up, you feed, you work, you sleep, and then you get up and do it all over again.”
Mouth tight, he turned to peer out of the window and then said, “I have been alive 3,538 years. That means I have seen roughly 1,291,370 sunrises and sunsets. I have eaten and slept and worked and . . . Quite frankly, it’s boring as hell. That is why some of our kind go rogue and start misbehaving. They are exhausted and bored and need something to make them feel alive again. A life mate can ease that. But waiting to find that life mate is hell. I was in that place. I needed something to give me a reason to look forward, something to capture my interest and hold it.
“Mary and I grew up together. We were more buddies than anything else. We can read each other, and as the older one I imagine I can control her, although I have never tried. So, when she admitted she was growing tired of living, I understood completely. And then when she said she thought having a child might ease that, that it would give her someone to think about and care about besides herself, I thought . . .” His mouth tightened and then he said, “Well, I thought it was worth a damned try. It was certainly better than suicide by Rogue Hunter, so I agreed.
“We did not think,” he admitted quietly. “We did not plan anything, we simply did it. And it worked. Gabriel was our first child, a beautiful baby boy. He gave us both a reason to get up in the evenings. He reinvigorated us. We are both alive and relatively healthy all these centuries later because of Gabriel, Katricia, Crispinus, Marius, Flavia, and all the others. And I did not regret it. I do not regret it. I love my children, every one of them, and I am also grateful to them because they saved my sanity and my life . . . and Mary is too.”
Sherry was silent for a minute, and then asked, “You didn’t live with Mary? Even when the children were little?”
“No,” he assured her. “We are not life mates, Sherry. You do not understand what that means. We can read each other’s thoughts. It is difficult to live with someone who can read your thoughts. You have to guard every little thing that goes through your mind, even one stray thought could unintentionally wound them. You can start the day with everything fine, one stray thought hits, and boom, it is a world war in the middle of your home.”
She smiled faintly and said, “It can’t be that bad.”
“Trust me, it is. Think about some of your thoughts through the day. Is every one of them complimentary?”