Chapter Ten #2
The wine gave him something to do with his hands and his mouth that wasn’t talking. He could stand at the edge of a conversation with the glass raised and nobody expected him to contribute, because drinking was apparently an acceptable substitute for having opinions.
A waiter drifted past with a tray of smoked salmon and cream cheese on tiny rounds of bread, and Cassian intercepted him with a confidence that would have been unthinkable a month ago.
The first one was excellent. He ate three more in quick succession, and then a miniature quiche that was almost as good as a turnover, and then a tart involving goat’s cheese and beetroot that stained his fingertips pink.
A woman with cropped silver hair told him she’d cried during his interview segment, and Cassian thanked her, because Lysander had explained that when strangers told you things like that, you said thank you and moved on.
A man with round glasses said he’d grown up a Jehovah’s Witness and that he understood, and Cassian had talked to him for ten minutes about what it felt like to learn that not everyone ate dinner at the same table.
The young alpha appeared at the edge of Cassian’s vision as he was finishing up a mini sausage roll.
His dark hair was piled into a knot on top of his head, and he had on a denim jacket with pins on the lapels.
He introduced himself as Cory, and his handshake was brief and careful.
He stood back and gave Cassian his space.
“I really liked what you said up there,” Cory told him. “About exploring. The café thing.”
“I’ve been to eleven cafés,” Cassian boasted.
“Eleven! Okay, so you’ve got to try Piccolina on Rathdowne Street if you haven’t already.
” Cory bit down on his bottom lip, then went on.
“It’s here in Carlton, just off the main strip.
I go every Saturday morning. Eight o’clock, without fail, every single Saturday.
They do this ricotta and honey on sourdough that genuinely changed my life. ”
“Ricotta and honey,” Cassian repeated, not exactly clear on what ricotta was, but staying intrigued because it involved honey.
“I’m there every Saturday,” Cory said again. “Eight AM. I’m always there. It’s kind of my thing. I just sit there with my coffee and my book, every Saturday. At eight.”
“It must be wonderful,” Cassian said, “if you go that often, every Saturday at eight.”
Cory smiled at him, his dark eyes steady on Cassian’s face, before someone called his name from a few metres away, and he excused himself with a wave.
Cassian finished his wine and set the empty glass on the nearest flat surface. His bladder had been getting progressively harder to ignore during his conversation with Cory, and he scanned the foyer for Lysander, who was leaning against the far wall talking to Yumi.
He could go and ask Lysander to come with him to the toilets.
The thought arrived and he examined it the way Lysander had been teaching him to examine his impulses.
He didn’t need to ask whether the thought was right or wrong, but whether it was his.
Did he need Lysander to walk him to the bathroom, or did he want Lysander to walk him to the bathroom because the Family of Light had never let him go anywhere alone?
Cassian turned away from Lysander and went to find the bathroom by himself.
The corridor beyond the foyer was quieter, carpeted in a dark industrial weave that muffled his footsteps.
He passed two doors that were locked and a third that opened onto a supply cupboard full of mops, which was not what he needed.
A man in a Cinema Nova polo shirt was stacking boxes near the fire exit, and Cassian crossed the corridor towards him.
The man was an alpha. Cassian could smell it as he got closer, the sharp musk beneath deodorant and cardboard dust, and his body did what it always did around unfamiliar alphas. His shoulders drew in and his chin dropped. He caught himself mid-tilt and forced himself to straighten his spine.
“Where are the toilets, please?” His voice came out at an unremarkably normal pitch.
The man pointed down the corridor without looking up from his boxes. “End of the hall, on the left.”
Cassian found them where the man had said they’d be. He used the facilities, flushed, which he still found privately miraculous after twenty-two years of composting toilets, and crossed to the bank of sinks.
The mirror above the basin was wide and fluorescent-lit.
Cassian turned on the tap and worked soap on his palms, watching his own reflection without particular interest. His cheeks were flushed from the wine, his hair had fallen across his forehead in a way that made him look younger than he was, and there was a flake of pastry on his collar from the miniature quiche.
He rinsed his hands and pushed his hair back from his face with wet fingers, smoothing it behind his ears the way Lysander always did with his hair when he was preparing to step out of the house.
A shape materialised in the mirror behind him.
Cassian’s hands stopped moving. The water ran over his wrists, cold and steady, and in the glass he watched the figure resolve.
He took in the height, the breadth of this man’s shoulders, the light-brown hair swept back from a high forehead, and the blue eyes that found his in the reflection were achingly familiar.
“Uriel,” he gasped.