Grand Central Station.
Rhys didn’t believe in that type of coincidence. Lider was right: Wade had known what train they were on.
Kloptik Pharmaceuticals would have spies, security personnel who could track down a Catholic priest and canon, but Rhys checked the obvious explanation first. Occam’s razor. Conspiracy or no conspiracy, people were lazy. They took the easiest route to information. Rhys called his superior at the Vatican.
Turned out, Archbishop Tennyson—or his staff—had given Rhys’s location and schedule to Wade, which was how Wade was able to intercept Rhys and Lider on their return from Schenectady.
“Mr. Purvis was on your list of authorized contacts,” Archbishop Tennyson said in sleepy bewilderment.
Rhys and Lider had returned to New Amsterdam from Northumberland on a same-day shuttle. It was a trip that Lider swore used to take as much as seven hours. It took less than an hour if one ignored the lines. It didn’t alter the time difference between Vatican City and New Amsterdam. Tennyson has likely gone to bed several hours earlier.
Rhys didn’t apologize. They couldn’t complete their current investigation, couldn’t make a decision about Jupiter (he could make a decision about Jupiter) until he had all the facts.
He did apologize about the confusion. He had forgotten about the list. If he had remembered, he wouldn’t have done anything about it. The possibility of Wade forcing a ten-year reunion had never entered Rhys’s mind.
“I should have updated it,” he admitted to Tennyson. “I want Mr. Purvis removed.”
“Absolutely. Done. Uh, he wasn’t unfriendly? Combative?”
“Simply unwelcome.”
“I see. He belongs to your former life, before your ordination.”
“Before Lider. Before Mars.”
Before everything that truly mattered.
“Yes. And before your side hobby. Speaking of which, how close are you to—shall we say, closure?”
“I would guess a week or so. Not much longer.”
“Have you thought about Jupiter?”
“Not yet.”
“I see, I see. Soonish—yes?”
Rhys grunted and ended the call.
Was St. Patrick’s a reminder of the ethereal in a different way? One walked through the city and came upon it suddenly. As its white marble caught the light, a passerby’s thoughts flew upwards.
That was the kind of idea Lider would ponder. Rhys was far more mundane, not a passerby comforted by the sight of lofty arches but a worker struggling to find the door.
Rhys said, “Wade got our location from the Vatican. And our schedule. That’s how he found us.”
Lider looked up from his seat on the apartment’s couch. He’d already changed out of his suit into cargo pants and a sweater. Lider had discovered a preference for hiking-type clothes when he reached full corporeality.
“You and I have been in the news forums lately,” he said. “What with a Vatican wedding and helping an Anthros prince.”
“Why didn’t Wade crash the wedding then?”
“Too many other people,” Lider said, pulling on heavy socks. “He wanted to make a singular impression.”
“His appearance didn’t upset you?” Rhys said.
Lider stilled, one boot in his hands.
Rhys said, “What about Kloptik Pharmaceutical? Brae’s hunt for a seamless solution to his life?”
“Kloptik Pharmaceuticals supplies drugs to experimental clinics, places that carve up sentient bodies, undo their physical inheritances. Your phrase.”
“You don’t think Wade was merely curious about you? About me? People do that—look up exes. What are they doing now? You don’t wonder what Wade’s significant other looks like?”
“Never occurred to me,” Rhys said.
They eyed each other. Lider’s gaze dropped. Reddish-brown hair fell into his eyes. He juggled the boot between his hands.
Rhys said, “Is this jealousy? From you?”
Voice muffled, Lider said, “Why not?”
“Of Wade?” Rhys said incredulously.
Too incredulously. He heard the disdain in his voice, the implication that Lider was unreasonable, pathetic. Lider didn’t respond.
Rhys groaned and rubbed a hand across his face. “You know, this conversation would be a lot easier in my dreams.”
He wished instantly, desperately, frantically that he hadn’t said what he said, that he could go back a half-hour and stop the line of thinking that led him to suspect Wade, to call the Vatican, to march out of the communications alcove loaded for bear.
I had a goal to focus on, a problem to solve.
And then Lider reached corporeality. He and Rhys married. Things were good. They were good—
Except, now that he could relax, Rhys found he missed Lider in his dreams, their easy, constant communication there. The major hurdle conquered, now, Rhys had regrets.
How was he better than Brae, demanding uncomplicated, properly labeled, meet-my-needs perfection?
Rhys dropped into an armchair and pressed a half-fist to his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want us to go back. I honestly don’t. We are better now. Everything is better. I don’t think the things I said.”
Silence. And maybe this would be the moment when Lider finally got fed-up and left. He waited so long to become corporeal. Why should he settle for Rhys as his consolation prize?
Lider set one knee on the deep cushion to Rhys’s side. He nudged Rhys over and wriggled in beside him, legs over Rhys’s. Rhys sat back, taking the gift, Lider’s chin against his shoulder, Lider’s arm across his body.
“I figure some regrets are part of our story,” Lider said. “Sentient beings get used to things. We want life to go on the same. Not because it should. Not because we would want the result. Just—that’s what’s comfortable. When things change, we feel loss.”
“I should know better.”
“I don’t think adapting to change happens on a schedule. Lack of sure answers is the sentient experience.”
Rhys turned his head, close enough he could see the faint wrinkles around Lider’s eyes, the grayish circles that rimmed the lower lids like kohl. He brushed lips across Lider’s cheek and the corner of his mouth. An awkward angle but they were soon sweaty and laughing.
“My sage,” he said fondly,
Lider pressed a hand to Rhys’s chest, fingers dancing the way his feet did.
He said, “You know how long I took to embrace my corporeal form, how much I wavered and held back.”
“Observation matters. Judicious reflection. The collection of information.”
“It can’t replace actual experience. That’s what I’m jealous of—that Wade knew you, did things with you, all before I found you.”
“You found me before I left Earth for Mars. Maybe Geo is right. Maybe we were fated to meet.”
“Geo likes to be clever.” But Lider sighed. “I am upset by what we’ve learned. I hate to think Brae might have done something irretrievable, altered his body to meet the mind’s demands. And Wade is at Kloptik. Still—”
“You don’t think Wade was horning in on our investigation.”
“He’s in sales, isn’t it? Not the science side. I think he gave you up, Rhys, and he’s the kind of guy who wants to prove he didn’t make a mistake.”
Rhys shook his head and pulled Lider closer.
What a lucky man I am—to have a partner who values me so highly.
“Wade annoys me,” Lider confessed. “Any stake he thinks he has in you. You are mine.”
“I am.”
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