Hirut said, “While you are there, you might offer us the benefit of your expertise. There is a priest in Lalibela who has been studying a newly found manuscript of the Gadla Lalibela.”
“The hagiography of King Lalibela?” Giovanni asked.
“Yes, exactly. He might benefit from your expertise in some regards,” Hirut said. “Since we have an expert on ancient manuscripts visiting, it would be delinquent of me not to ask on his behalf.”
“I would be honored to help in any way I can.”
“And Beatrice?” Hirut turned to Beatrice. “I know your reputation as a scribe. If there are manuscripts you would like to study while you are here, I can try to arrange it.”
“Obviously, the Garima Gospels are compelling, but I understand the difficulty at the moment.”
“You are correct.” Hirut nodded. “It is not currently possible, but at another time this can be arranged.”
Giovanni continued. “The trip to the north is the primary reason for our visit. Beatrice hasn’t seen the historical sites, and our daughter is old enough now that she can appreciate them as well.”
Hirut turned to Ben. “And you? What is your aim? Do you and your partner have a client?”
The plan had been for Ben to avoid answering anything close to Hirut’s question directly, but he glanced at the woman under the tree, then back to Hirut. “I do.”
Giovanni and Beatrice froze.
Ben looked Hirut directly in the eye. “I cannot tell you her identity, but I can confirm everything my uncle promised: There will be no artifact taken from your country by my partner or me without Saba’s permission. We are not here to steal; we are here to restore.”
A hint of a smile touched Hirut’s lips. “Your honesty and directness do you credit, son of Zhang. I am glad you were truthful with me; I would not have believed you otherwise.”
The woman under the tree returned with small cups of strong coffee, but again she was obscured by the brazier of charcoal she put in the center of the table. The scent of frankincense overwhelmed him as Hirut offered sugar and honey around the table to sweeten the coffee.
Was he imagining things? Was his memory tricking him? What was going on? Still, no one other than Ben seemed to even notice the woman, and there was no hint of amnis coming from her. She moved like a ghost in the night.
His memories of Saba from when he was human were of a being of immense power. Even as a teenager, he’d been able to feel how completely inhuman she was. Was his mind playing tricks on him? Or was Saba hiding in plain sight and somehow fooling his aunt and uncle?
“Ben?” His uncle’s voice brought him out of his reverie.
“Yes?” Ben looked up. Everyone was looking at him.
Hirut appeared amused. “Do you not like the coffee? It’s very strong. Some young vampires don’t care for it. I can get you some warm water if you’d like.”
“No.” Ben sipped the traditional Ethiopian buna, double boiled in a clay pot until the taste reminded him of dark chocolate. “I love it actually. Much smoother than espresso.”
“Thank you.” Hirut finished the coffee in her tiny cup and set it down. “Before we go, is there anything I can tell you about immortal resources in the city that you don’t already know?”
Ben wanted to return to the compound immediately after the meeting with Hirut broke up, though Giovanni and Beatrice accepted the woman’s offer for a tour of the garden. As he was walking back to a shadowy corner of the garden to take to the air, he scanned the area, looking for the woman in white, but he saw nothing.
Questions swirled in his mind. Had that been Saba? How had she seemed so human? If she was in Addis, why wasn’t she meeting with visitors herself? And if that had been Saba and she’d cloaked her power so effectively from Giovanni and Beatrice, why had she revealed a whisper of it to Ben?
The last thing he’d expected to run into as he was descending into the compound was Tenzin and Sadia flying up through the trees.
Both of them froze when they saw Ben, staring at him with wide eyes.
Sadia was not supposed to be flying. Tenzin had done it when she was a toddler, and it had been quickly outlawed. Not that anyone really thought Tenzin would drop Sadia, but the sensation of flying made the baby puke more often than not.
Also, it just freaked Beatrice out.
Sadia stared right at Ben. “I asked her.”
Ben looked at Tenzin.
“I said yes.” Tenzin was wide-eyed but clearly unapologetic.
He was not getting in the middle of their terrifying girl gang. “Okay, you probably have about thirty minutes before Giovanni and Beatrice are back. I don’t want to know.”
He floated down to the courtyard and sat under the mango tree where Dema was lounging with her feet on a footstool and her hands around a large cup of tea.
Ben glanced up at the sky, then to Dema. “So you’re not worried about—?”
“Do you actually think anything would happen to Sadia when she’s with Tenzin?”
Ben considered it. “Intentionally? No.”
Dema shrugged a little. “It’s not my job to protect her from accidental bumps, bruises, or a scratch from a random tree branch that Tenzin gets a little too close to. If anyone came after that girl, that vampire would flay the skin off their bodies without a second thought.”
Ben nodded. “You’re not wrong.”
“How did the meeting go?”
He decided to keep his suspicions about the strange woman under the tree to himself. Until he could speak to Tenzin. “It went well. Her main concern was me and Tenzin stealing stuff, and I think I reassured her well enough.”
“If anything, you’re putting things back, right?”
Except a superdangerous object of immortal power. “Yep. That’s absolutely what we’re doing.”
Dema stared at him as she sipped her tea. “The number of words you took to answer that tells me you’re definitely stealing some stuff too.”
Yeah, he couldn’t lie. Even after he’d become a vampire, Dema was scary.
15
Ben lounged in a pair of loose shorts, enjoying the promise of rain in the air. Tenzin hated the rain, but he was enough of a Californian that he loved it. He loved the smell of it in the air and the heaviness of the clouds. He loved it when the clouds broke open and the sky poured down.
He watched Tenzin change from a pair of leggings and a loose tunic into a clean shift that drifted to the middle of her thighs. Before the shift fell, he noted the delicate line of tattoos that arced across her hip bones and the dots down the back of her legs.
Those were secret things that no one saw but him. Precious insight to her habits and eccentricities.
She was meticulously clean, never letting the clothes she wore out in the world even touch the bed they shared. Unless they were stuck in a cave somewhere, she had never deviated from that.
She didn’t sleep, but she always lay with him until he did. She pressed herself to his body from breast to foot, twining herself around him like a vine. She said far more with her body than she ever did with her mouth.
“You’re staring at me.”
“I like to look at you.” He’d missed looking at her for two years. There was a knowledge between them now, a realization of what they had lost and what they had gained. Beyond the newness of their sexual relationship and their deepening intimacy, there was a realization they had both learned in the most painful way.