Chapter 7: A proposition

I missed my regular breakfast at Café Du Monde for the first time that morning. By the time I got to sleep again in my own hotel room, it was nearly dawn, and I didn't open my eyes until mid-afternoon.

My stomach was growling. The bread pudding I'd eaten over twelve hours before had been delicious, but I'd expended a lot of energy since then. There was a small diner on the edge of the Quarter that made amazing burgers. I decided to head that way, grab a meal and then hit my favorite bars hard. Drink the memory of Joss out of my system. Find some girls who were in town for a good time and give them what they were looking for.

I pulled on jeans and a black polo. My pants and shirt from the night before were still crumpled at the end of the bed, and I picked up the shirt. Running my fingers over the missing buttons, I remembered the look on Jocelyn's face when she ripped it open. I swallowed hard and rolled the material into a ball before I tossed it into the trash.

The halls were deserted except for a few lingering housekeeping carts, and I had the elevator to myself. It slid down and opened to the lobby, where I blinked into the light from gleaming marble floors and huge crystal chandeliers.

I took one step out and almost tripped. In front of me, seated on one of the round cushioned benches between two huge white columns, was Jocelyn.

Her hair was pinned up into some sort of deal on the back of her head, smooth and sleek, not at all like the tumbling curls from last night. She wore a white shirt tucked into black pants, matched with shiny black heels, and she looked very professional.

She smiled up at me, amusement and understanding dancing in those brown eyes.

"Hello, Rafe. Good morning. Or should I say, more correctly, good afternoon?"

I knew my mouth was hanging open; for one rare time in my life, I was well and truly surprised. Rooted to the spot, I could only gape at her.

"You look as though you didn't expect to see me here." Joss uncrossed her legs and tucked her feet under the bench. "Now let me see, why would that be? Could it be because you thought I wouldn't remember you? Wouldn't remember last night? You don't give yourself much credit. I thought our time together was fairly memorable."

I moved at last, stepping just close enough to lean over her. "What are you doing here? How—" I clamped my mouth shut. From what she'd said, I suspected she already knew much more about me than I could have guessed.

"The hows and the whys are a little complicated. And I've noticed that this lobby is pretty cavernous. And it has an echo. I can hear what that couple way over are talking about. So maybe we should go some place a little more private." She glanced around. "I'd be happy to invite you back to my room again, but yours is closer."

I pivoted back toward the elevator and spread my hand in a be-my-guest gesture. Joss's heels clicked as she joined me, waiting for the doors to open again.

"Not as quick as my elevator was last night, is it?" She smiled again, and I caught the tease in her eyes. I was still too far into shock to appreciate the joke.

I recovered a little by the time we were in my suite with the door closed. I turned the deadbolt and turned to face Joss, hands clenched at my sides.

"Okay, enough with the games. I want to know who you really are and what you're trying to do here. What do you know? Who sent you?"

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, moving across to the sitting room. "I hope you don't mind if I sit down, Rafe, even though you didn't invite me. I'd suggest you take a seat, too. This could be a little involved."

I gritted my teeth before heaving a sigh and following her. She sank into the overstuffed chair, kicking off her shoes and folding her legs beneath her. I perched on the edge of the sofa, facing her, my back straight.

"Rafe, please. Look at you. You're tense, and you're frightened. There's no need. I'm not here to hurt you or to blackmail you or any of those other things that are running through your mind right now. I'm here to offer you an opportunity."

"An opportunity." I repeated the words. "Well, of course you are. That makes perfect sense." I leaned back against the cushions. "How much is this opportunity going to cost me, Jocelyn? If that is your name."

"It is. I haven't lied to you, Rafe. Well, except just a little yesterday at the café. I knew my wallet was back in my closet. I'm sorry about that, but I needed to do something to get on your radar."

"My radar, huh?"

"Yes. We've been following you for some time now, waiting for a good chance to make contact. You've been cutting quite a swath across the city, you know. All those girls. I wasn't sure I'd be able to work myself in between your conquests if I didn't finally take drastic measures."

"You've been following me? For how long?"

She took a deep breath. "Let's start at the beginning. My name is Jocelyn Pennell, and I really am a recruiter for a consulting firm. It's just that we offer consulting of a sort of unusual nature. We find people with particular talents, and we match them with our clients whose needs fall into their special categories. We facilitate that relationship, so that our extraordinary people can put their gifts to good use, helping others and making money, too."

She leaned forward and laid a thick, cream-colored business card on the coffee table between us. I picked it up and examined it.

Carruthers Institute Initiative

"Carruthers? What's that?"

"That's who I work for. And they are very interested in you, Rafe. They'd like you to consider working with us."

I dropped the card and leaned back again. "Start at the beginning and tell me how you found me. How long you've been trailing me. I want to know everything."

"Sure." Joss looked completely relaxed as she cast her eyes toward the ceiling as though she were thinking. The fact that she was so calm only infuriated me more.

"The truth is, Carruthers has been watching you, in some capacity or another, since you were born. They tried to recruit your father when he was in college, and he turned them down. So they kept their eyes on you, since we know that with King families, the gift is usually hereditary."

"You knew my dad?"

Joss shook her head. "Of course not. But other people at Carruthers did. I've only been working for them a little over two years. I told you, I didn't lie about anything. I'm just nineteen, like I said."

I looked at her, my eyes narrowed. "And how did you end up working for this company?"

"You really want to hear that now? I thought you wanted me to start at the beginning and tell you about our interest in you."

I shrugged. "I changed my mind. Humor me."

"Okay. Well, I told you, I was kind of a prodigy. But what I didn't say was that my other, um, talents impacted my life. And how I ended up here."

"What can you do?" I looked at her speculatively. I was usually pretty good at detecting supernatural gifts in other people, at feeling power, but I hadn't noticed anything extra in Joss.

"I'm a mixed bag. I'm a perceptive, so I can see very easily when other people have abilities. That's what landed me in talent acquisition. But I also can broadcast, sometimes, under the right circumstances. Like your cousin Lucie."

I frowned. This chick really had done her homework on me, and on my family.

"And I can do a little telekinesis. Again, only under the right circumstances. It's tied to emotion, and that makes it...unpredictable."

"And other people's powers don't work on you?"

"What? Oh, your mind altering stuff. No, it can, but I've learned to block and protect. I knew what was coming last night, and I was prepared."

"Hmm." I'd never known anyone who could block me. Even Tasmyn...no, I wasn't going there. Not now.

"Anyway, I started being able to do things when I was about nine, and it scared the hell out of my family. They weren't as supportive as yours. And between that and everyone at school thinking I was a freak, because I couldn't really control it, my pre-teen years were pretty much hell. I was on my way to juvie or the psych ward when Carruthers rescued me. One of my teachers knew a recruiter, and they came to my parents, offered me a full education. My mom and dad didn't think twice. They jumped at the chance to get me out of the house, and I wasn't unhappy to leave, either."

Despite my fury at being played, I felt a pang of compassion for Joss. I'd hated how my stepfather treated me, but I always knew I had a place to go, family who accepted me.

"So they put you through school?"

She nodded. "Yep. Found out I was smart enough to go through an accelerated program, and I started working for them part-time in the last two years of college, went full-time after graduation. We'd hoped I could learn to develop and control my other talents better, but even working with their best people, I couldn't do it. Not well enough to be useful, anyway."

"So that brings you to me."

"Yes." She had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. "Carruthers was monitoring you after you left Florida. But they didn't have anyone on the ground until it became clear you were going to stay here for a little while. That's when they sent me in."

"Do you usually seduce the people you're planning to recruit?" I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it didn't work.

"No." She grinned at me, and I noticed she didn't bother to deny the seduction part. "That was just a really nice fringe benefit to this job. It has nothing to do with work."

"So you won't get in trouble for sleeping with a potential co-worker?"

Joss lifted one shoulder. "Nah. I mean, it'll definitely go better if you decide to work with us. Cathryn will just shake her head and say, 'Oh, Jocelyn,' but there's really not anything she can do."

"Who's Cathryn?"

"Cathryn Whitmore. My boss. Kind of. Anyway, I don't want to say anything else until you've made your decision. You can understand, the Institute has to protect itself and its clients."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "So you're allowed to know all kinds of shit about me, but I can't ask any questions?"

"Rafe, I've answered your questions. What else do you want to know? I can't go into details about our operations or our clients, but I can give you a vague idea of how it all works."

I studied her, thinking. I'd grown up hearing stories from other people in King, about how we had to protect ourselves, hide what we could do. My grandparents hadn't been too bad about me using my power—not like Tasmyn's folks, who'd tried to make her bury her gifts—but they'd advocated for caution. I didn't go around bragging, and I was careful how and where I used my mind bending. Never had I considered that someday I might make it my career.

"Have you recruited anyone else from King? From a First Family, I mean?"

Jocelyn was taken aback at my question, but she recovered fast. "We've reached out to certain people from your town, including your father, as I told you. But no one from the original families has worked for us."

"My dad never mentioned it to me." I stared down at my hands. "He never told me anyone had tried to hire him for his abilities."

"Rafe." Joss leaned forward and laid a hand on my knee. "I'm sure he would have said something eventually. Clearly he didn't expect to get sideswiped by a semi right after his fortieth birthday. He probably thought he had plenty of time."

"Yeah." The sympathy in her voice overrode any irritation I might have had that once again, she knew more about my history than I did.

"Look, I'm going to leave you to think." She slipped on her shoes and stood. "I know this is a lot to take in. You were probably planning to go out and bag another girl tonight, and I don't want to get in the way of that." I detected an edge to her tone and bit back a smirk.

"So take your time. Mull it over. Call your grandparents, get their take. We're not some kind of cult trying to pull you into our web, Rafe. We're here to help you, to make it easier for you to use your talents. But it's got to be your decision. I'm here until Friday night. We've got a job here that day, and if you decide to join us, it would be a good way to get your feet wet."

"So, should I call you?" I picked up the card she'd left, turned it over in my fingers.

Joss paused, tilting her head. "Let's have dinner together Thursday night, at my hotel. Seven o'clock. That gives you two days to make your choice. If it's yes, I can brief you, get you started. If not, then at least we get to enjoy each other's company one last time."

She moved past me toward the door, and I caught her arm. She glanced up at me, her eyes unreadable.

"Just so you know, Joss, last night was not just another conquest to me. I came very close to not erasing your memory. Or trying to. And I'm not going out trolling for girls tonight. It wouldn't..." I tried to think of how to express what I wanted to say. "It wouldn't work. Not after you."

Her lips curved, and she touched my cheek with the back of her fingers. "Thank you for that, Rafe. I appreciate it." She stood for a moment more, as though not sure of her next move.

Finally, she kissed my cheek and left without looking back.