Geometry

Chapter 18

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Ray sat at the dining room table with Fraser and Saladin and watched Mina cook.

She refused everyone's assistance making dinner -Fraser and Saladin both offered- but Methos got around that by asking what she was making, nodding, and hauling stuff out of the pantry, the fridge and the cupboards without having to ask where anything was. Mina stared at him a minute, smiling in a way that was sad, happy and achingly painful all at once; then shrugged and let him help. She put a skillet with oil, a pot of water and a rice steamer on the stove, turned the gas on under them and started tearing plastic off the package of chicken Methos pulled from the fridge and tossed to her.

"Want a beer, Salah?" Methos asked, rummaging through the fridge.

"Sure."

Methos looked over the open fridge door. "You guys want one?"

"No, thank you kindly," Fraser answered automatically.

"I'll take one," Ray said morosely. He'd stopped shaking but he'd been through enough dicey situations to realize he hadn't come off the adrenalin rush yet, and he was due for one hell of a crash pretty soon. A beer and something to eat would cushion the shock when it hit.

Jesus, Ray just didn't know what to think. He boiled it down to the essentials. Mina was alive. That was good- that was fucking great. Mina had lied to them- well, sort of. A lie of omission, Fraser would call it. That was bad. But Ray and Frase lied to her the same way and pretty much for the same reasons; so they were kind of even there. Mina... was 109 years old and unless you hacked her head off, could apparently live forever and look hot as hell while doing it. Fuck, Ray just didn't know where the hell to put that... was it good? Bad? Something to blow off like Fraser's weird licking thing or the wolf being deaf? Or something like Stella not wanting kids when he did, something doomed to split them up no matter what they did, an inevitable consequence of their differences?

"Still buying Duncan's favorite beer?" Methos teased, pulling three beers, a vanilla soda and a bottled water out of the fridge and distributing them. Fraser blinked and accepted his water without demur.

"Can't break the habit," Mina admitted, tossing flour, salt and spices into a bowl and giving it a quick stir with a metal whisk. She tossed the chicken breasts into the flour, coated them, and laid them in the olive oil that was just starting to sizzle.

Ray popped the top on his with a morose thanks to Methos and sucked down the first cold swallow, staring at the label moodily. He was getting answers to all kinds of stuff he'd wondered about Marina- why she kept beer in her fridge when she didn't like it, why someone who barely ate had a huge pantry and all sorts of expensive cooking gear, why someone who lived alone was so oddly comfortable having a couple of guys hanging around- in her apartment, in her bed, in her life. Too bad the answers were depressing the shit out of him.

"So start talking," Ray said, jump-starting the conversation. "What the hell's really going on here?"

"I've had a rough day," Mina turned the chicken to brown on the other side and smiled thanks to Methos when he handed her a bowl of washed mushrooms. "You guys mind doing the background briefing?"

Methos twirled a chef's knife carelessly on a fingertip, making the blade flash in the kitchen light. "If you please, Salah?"

"Of course, my lord." Saladin cocked his head and regarded Ray and Fraser, the pity in his dark eyes disconcerting but not overtly threatening. "There is only one rule to being an Immortal, and that is 'There can be only One'..."