Page 51 of Blood Stone

Chapter Eleven

Winter sat back on her chair between Garrett and Sebastian. After a week, she was more used to Sebastian’s mousy long brown hair. It helped that tonight he had tied it back so she could see his normal eyes.

“Done?” Garrett asked.

“He’s tapping the barrel now. It only cost an extra thirty dollars.” She grimaced and shrugged. “Better than running dry, especially right now.”

“How did you know he had a whole barrel stashed back there, anyway?” Garrett asked.

“He was lying when we were asking about his supplies, the other day,” Winter told him. “My ankle was brushed up against his at the time.”

“You can read people with your ankle?”

“Any touch,” Winter told him. “Flesh to flesh. Even a fingertip will do.”

Garrett shook his head a little. “Whatareyou? I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Winter tried to keep her smile professional and calm for anyone watching them. That included Sebastian, who sat out of human earshot and therefore couldn’t react as if he could hear every word they could say, but was probably listening anyway. “I don’t know what I am,” she told Garrett. “Nathaniel has never met anyone like me, either. I guess that makes me a freak. I won the gene mutation lottery.”

Sebastian got up from the other end of the long table where he was sitting alone, the geeky nerd who had made no friends all week, but was suddenly everyone’s best friend as soon as they had computer problems. He stretched and sauntered casually up the length of the table to where Winter and Garrett sat and stood next to her, looking down into his cup of beer. “You’re not a freak,” he said softly. “If I hear that word come out of your mouth ever again in association with your talents, I’ll slap you silly.” He spared a glance at her. His sea-green eyes glittered with dammed-back emotion. “And it won’t be foreplay.”

Winter struggled to keep her face neutral. “Would you like to join us?” she asked, more loudly for the sake of human ears all around them.

“Please do,” Garrett added stiffly. “I don’t think I’ve had a chance to introduce you, Annette.”

“We met back in L.A.,” Winter reminded him. “Very briefly. Terry had to take care of the generator and server trailers.” She smiled up at Sebastian. “I’m incredibly in awe of the fact that you can produce a working hot spot out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s making my job so much easier.”

Sebastian shrugged and sat down awkwardly, in an uncoordinated and clumsy way that was utterly unlike his usual graceful movements, but was completely in character for the geeky Terry she had watched silently lurking about the set all week, nursing his Internet server inside the climate-controlled trailer and babying the power generator devoted to keeping it running day and night.

He put his beer on the table, sloshing some of it, then grabbed the cup and almost knocked it over. He steadied the cup with both hands, then kept them around the cup for a few seconds as if he expected the cup to run away if he let it go more quickly than that.

He propped his head on one elbow, then realized he was sitting at the table withtheCalum Garrett and dropped his hand and straightened up, rubbing his palms on his jeans. He reached for the beer in a convulsive nervous jerk, then clearly decided against risking spilling it for a second time and put his hand back in his lap. He cleared his throat and looked down at the rough wooden surface of the tabletop.

“Computers are easy,” he muttered.

Garrett watched his bumbling with the beginnings of a smile that he tried manfully to suppress. He cocked his head. “Easy for you, perhaps. As long as they behave themselves, I can get what I need out of them but as soon as they misbehave, I’m utterly screwed. And computers seem to delight in misbehaving as soon as it’s most important to you, have you noticed?”

Winter nodded. “I knew a guy – another gee—” She stopped herself, realizing that Terry might find being described a geek offensive. Sebastian, on the other hand, took ownership of the label and wore it with pride. “Another computer whizz,” she amended. “He said that computers always crashed and burned just when you needed them because the average user didn’t know how to take care of their computers, so when they really needed them, they invariably overloaded them – too many programs, too many files, too many conflicting commands at the same time. So the poor, overworked and underfed computer goes belly-up and the user points to the crash and says ‘there, it wiped out just when I needed it.’ But what they really should be saying is ‘There, it wiped outbecauseI really needed it.’”

Garrett raised a brow. “He could be right. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

Sebastian snorted. “Your friend sounds like an idiot.” He glanced at Garrett. “I mean, I’m sorry. It’s just a dumb theory.”

Garrett shrugged. “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions.” He glanced around the room.

Winter wondered who he was looking for. All of the eighteen or twenty long tables were occupied by cast and crew, and there were plenty of them. These were the semi-permanent members. Each day saw busloads of daily extras dropped off just after dawn to be processed for hair, make-up and costuming, before filming started at seven. The set was very large scale indeed.

Garrett’s gaze settled briefly on the table where Patrick Sauvage was holding audience. The largest group of people crowded around this table. It appeared that even the jaded insiders of movieland were not immune to Sauvage’s box office appeal. He was holding court and Winter couldn’t see him for all the people standing around him.

Somewhere in that group sat Nial, playing his role as Sauvage’s body guard babysitter.

“Patrick seems to have settled in well,” Winter observed.

Garrett gave a very small smile. “He’s in his natural element. A universe that centres on him.”

“Isn’t he your friend?”

Garrett’s smile didn’t change. “That just means I know him a little better than most.”