Hale did a double take. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this. “Wait a minute. A priest?”
Karissa nodded. “Yeah. This old guy in dark robes walked right up to the house and rang the doorbell. Then he asked for me by name, saying he needed to talk to me about my gift,” she said, and from the distracted expression on her face, it was obvious she was replaying the memory in her head. “My parents weren’t too thrilled about letting him in, but the man—Nicos—wouldn’t take no for an answer. Nicos said he was from a religious order that still revered the old gods, and that I was a Paladin. As you can imagine, that only confused me more than I’d already been before.”
Hale remembered the perplexing time right after Karissa’s sixteenth birthday party, as well as the weird weeks that had followed it. Karissa had claimed she was dealing with family stuff, but he’d felt her pulling away from him more and more. In the wake of their breakup, he’d looked back and assumed she’d found someone else.
But now it seemed clear it hadn’t been that at all.
“Okay, you’re a Paladin, a daughter of Athena,” he said, almost laughing at himself for saying those words out loud. “But what the heck does that even mean? What did this Nicos guy tell you? And how did he teach you everything?”
“Let me start with the second question first, since it’s the easiest,” Karissa said with a sigh. “The rest of it is definitely complicated.”
“Now I’m even more curious,” he said.
Her lips curved into a wry smile. “Unfortunately, Nicos was far from forthcoming with the details, so some of this is stuff I’ve picked up on my own over the years. It turns out that only one Paladin exists at a time. When one dies, another is created automatically. My name and location appeared in an ancient book maintained by this religious order that Nicos is part of. He was selected to come and give me the welcome-to-the-team speech, explain the basics of my job description, and then promptly leave. It was infuriating.”
Hale frowned. “He didn’t give you a way to get in touch with him or this order of his?” Rupert Giles would never have left Buffy in the lurch like that. “You know, in case of emergency?”
“He gave me a card with a phone number on it,” Karissa said. “But on the few occasions that I’ve tried to reach him, the calls go to voicemail. Nicos hasn’t exactly been good about getting back to me. According to him, being a Paladin is my calling and it’s up to me to figure out how to deal with it.”
“That sucks,” Hale murmured. “But back to my original question. What does it mean to be a Paladin?”
“Well, according to Nicos, beyond being associated with wisdom, handicraft, and warfare, Athena was also known as the patron goddess of heroic endeavor,” Karissa told him, as if that explained everything. “That’s where my gifts come in. I help with those heroic endeavors.”
When he only continued to stare at her, Karissa kept going.
“Heroic endeavors as in working for my father’s private security firm,” she said with a rueful laugh “Besides my fighting abilities, the most important gift I received from Athena is an overwhelming need to protect others and a knack for fighting evil—human and otherwise. It sort of goes hand in hand with being a supernatural bodyguard.”
If Hale had thought his head was spinning before when Karissa had talked about Nicos showing up at her door, it was nothing compared to what it was doing now. Seriously, it was like the room was starting to blur.
“So you’re, like, some kind of superhero now?” he asked, even as he realized how ridiculous those words sounded. “You run around saving people from evil villains? With an unhelpful mentor who doesn’t return your calls?”
Karissa laughed again and Hale told himself that the beautiful sound had no effect on him whatsoever, even as he felt his heart thump a little bit harder.
“I don’t really run around saving people,” she explained. “I work for my parents, which means I go where the job takes me. Their company gets hired to protect high-profile people all around the world and they send me out on the jobs that are deemed the most high-risk.”
“High-risk meaning that someone’s actually trying to kill their clients?” Hale said, getting a sinking sensation in his gut.
He’d never liked Karissa’s parents, especially her father. Sure, part of that was because the guy was so cop that he bled PD blue, which hadn’t meshed well with Hale’s particular family background. But more so, it was because her father had always struck him as the kind of jerk who viewed everyone in the world as someone to be stepped on to get where he wanted to be. Hale couldn’t help but worry now that Karissa’s parents were using her gifts to get what they valued most—money. Why else would they send her out on all the most dangerous jobs?
While his mind had been wandering, Karissa had been telling him about some of the clients she’d protected, and Hale quickly realized she hadn’t been exaggerating about the supernaturals she’d gone up against. It sounded like she’d faced more supernatural threats than the Pack had—and that was saying something.
“So you’re fast, strong, good with weapons, and can make a sword appear out of thin air,” he said as Karissa finished a story about facing a half-demented shape-shifter who was trying to kill a client. “What other gifts has Athena given you?”
“Those are pretty much the highlights.” Karissa shrugged. “Other than that, I guess you could say I’m pretty good at reading people. Not like I’m awalking lie detector or anything, but my instincts will usually tell me if someone is trying to play me. Those instincts are also exceptionally good at alerting me when something really bad is about to happen.”
That admission struck a chord and answered a question he’d been meaning to ask for a while now. “Are those instincts the reason you showed up in that alley in the middle of nowhere in time to save my life?”
“Pretty much,” she said, almost seeming shy about it. “I’d been planning to do a sweep of Patterson’s hotel, but my instincts led me across town to that club instead. I saw you running out after one of the shooters and I followed. I didn’t have a choice. My instincts demanded I go after you. You know the rest of the story.”
Hale sat there, replaying the conversation through his head over and over. He didn’t doubt these instincts Karissa had described were real—werewolves were all about trusting their instincts—but he couldn’t ignore the little voice in the back of his head whispering that this was yet another sign of fate taking a hand in his life and making sure he and Karissa crossed paths again.
As if she truly wasThe Onefor him.
“Okay, I’ve told you all about my gifts,” Karissa said, coming into the living room to sit on the arm of the nearby couch. “Maybe now you can tell meabout these STAT people and how they might be able to help me figure out who this hit man is.”
“No chance you might be able to just call up Nicos and get him to help you?” Hale asked, pretty sure he already knew the answer.
“He would never help me with something like this,” Karissa said with a shake of her head. “Not when this is clearly shaping up to be a situation of me against whoever the lone hit man might be. Nicos would probably see any assistance on his part as providing an unfair advantage.”
