“What do you want, kid?”
My lip curled. People kept calling mekid. “I need a passport. I know you make them.”
Hallett looked me up and down. “Go to the embassy. They’ll sort you out.”
He started to close the door, but I stuck a foot in, thanking the lord that I bothered to lift a pair of loafers and was not still wearing the toe shoes when it slammed against my foot. “Problem with that plan. I’m legally dead. It would bring up far too many questions.”
The door opened again. “Interesting. How did you find me?”
I figured the truth, or at least as close as I could come to it, was the best bet. “Tonkitgrol.”
Hallett’s eyebrows rose. “You know Tonkitgrol?”
“Intimately.”
Hallett shook his head and gestured me in. “Go stand against the blank wall. I need to take your picture.”
I did as he said, and Hallett snapped the picture.
“Name for the passport?”
“Christopher Patrick Mitchell.”
I spentthe next five days dicking around London, waiting for my passport. I went to the other poker game I was invited to and walked away with another five hundred pounds. That should be enough.
My clothing was dirty, so I stole some that smelledslightly better from the lost and found at the hostel. Green corduroy pants and a black-and-yellow striped shirt. The height of fashion.
When I could finally pick up my passport, Hallett held it out to me but snatched it back before I could take it.
“I tried to reach out to Tonkitgrol, ask him about you. Nothing. No one has seen him in two weeks.”
I stiffened but played it cool. “How odd.”
“Indeed.” He handed over the passport and added slyly, “You seem familiar.”
“Perhaps we knew one another in a former life.”
The corner of Hallett’s mouth curved. “Perhaps.”
forty
. . .
Present Day
Kit’s headleans against the seat as he speaks, his eyes growing heavy. “So, I caught the first plane I could to JFK, headed to Grand Central from there, planning to catch a train to Connecticut, but found you there instead. Which was fate.”
My voice cracks as I whisper, “So, it worked on our second try?”
He nods, picking up my hand to kiss the bandages on each of my fingers, knowing why I have them.
An overwhelming weight of distress presses down on my chest. “I’m so sorry. I cannot believe you went through all that. I wish I knew you would end up where your ashes were scattered. I thought you’d appear in the circle with me. Or at my apartment. Or in Sacramento with your family.”
He shrugs. “So did I.”
My hand cups his cheek, and I press a hard kiss to his mouth before pulling away. “You went to literal Hell and back for me.You struggled for two weeks in a foreign country with no money, ID, phone, anything, just to get back to me. You could have drowned or froze to death. Or starved. Or been hurt in a thousand other ways. I don’t deserve you.”
With his eyes still heavy, he tugs lightly on one of my curls. “You do too.”
