were hard to follow. “You don’t know with what you deal. We leave this place tonight!”
“Eleisha?” Rose questioned softly, still standing by her door.
Philip turned on her, his lips curling up in snarl.
Eleisha grabbed his arm. “Philip, stop. Listen. . . .” Trailing off, she looked toward the guest room. “Come with me.” She pulled him toward it—and again, he let her—taking him inside and closing the door. Wade could hear Philip’s low, angry voice on the other side, followed by Eleisha’s softer, comforting one.
Suddenly, Wade was completely fed up with Philip.
How nice, how very nice it would be to throw a temper tantrum, wave a machete around, and have Eleisha drag him off to the bedroom to calm him down. Maybe he should try it sometime and see what happened?
But Seamus and Rose were both watching him with uncertain eyes.
Wade sighed and shook his head. “No, he isn’t.” He walked over to Rose. “Don’t worry. Eleisha will get him to agree.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she always does.”
Eleisha spent the remainder of the night in the guest room talking to Philip, listening to him, trying to reach common ground and still do the right thing for everyone involved.
She felt bad for just leaving Wade out in the sitting room, after he’d been drugged and was still recovering, but somehow, she believed Rose would take care of him. Later, she heard the television come on and the occasional murmur of male voices over what sounded like an old western, and she knew he would be okay watching TV with Seamus.
She didn’t want to leave Philip, and she didn’t want to bring him out among the others yet. He was still too upset.
But there was more to his heated reaction to Robert’s existence than fear for her and Wade. She just didn’t know what it was, and she wasn’t sure how to ask him.
When she felt dawn approaching, she said, “You should get comfortable. The sun will be up soon.”
He took off his shirt and his boots and stretched out on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She climbed up on the bed next to him, kneeling to look down at his face. “You know this Robert . . . don’t you?” she whispered.
“Angelo believed that John, Julian, and I should know of all the elders. He wrote a book called The Makers and Their Children, with their names and their histories. Julian knew the book better than me, but Angelo taught me things about Robert Brighton. I remember the name. I know he was a soldier.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
He hesitated and then answered quietly. “Only once, not long after I was turned and I was still with Angelo. Robert came to visit . . . with his maker.”
“His maker?”
“Her name was Jessenia, and she looked like a gypsy, but she was not. They both hated me, would not be in the same room with me. I stood in a hallway outside a door, and I heard Jessenia tell Angelo that I should be destroyed if he was not going to teach me, and that Julian should be destroyed if he did not develop his abilities. I didn’t know what any of this meant then. I didn’t care.”
Eleisha remembered Robert’s harsh words about Angelo letting Philip run wild and kill whomever he pleased.
“Telepathy?” she whispered.
“I think so now. I think maybe they all hunted as you do, as you taught me, and they blamed Angelo for the way I hunted then.”
His voice held an edge of pain. Everyone changed over decades and decades of existence. Eleisha knew that for all his temper and selfish behavior, he’d learned to care what others thought of him.
“But it’s all different now, Philip. Once he knows you, he won’t hate you anymore. And we can’t just leave him to go on existing alone—not if he wants to join us. Besides, he can tell us so much about what really happened. We’ve been in the dark for a long time.”
She could feel her eyelids growing heavy. Although the windows were completely covered, the sun outside must be rising.
Philip reached up and pulled her down against his shoulder. “Sleep.”
By the following night, everyone’s mood and attitude had altered somewhat. Although Rose and Philip didn’t speak, they seemed at least resigned to tolerate each other. Eleisha couldn’t help feeling relieved by this.
They arrived at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park just over an hour past dusk. Seamus was