Imprinted Hearts

Chapter 4: The Three L's

Looking in the mirror at his blond hair and brown eyes, Lucien frowned. Leaning back, he examined the scars just below his pecks - mirrored on either side, which had faded considerably since their creation. He wasn't extremely muscular, but he had a decent figure. A healthy one. He'd worked hard at that. But the dark circles under his eyes persisted. Probably because he spent the night-time hours cursed to roam as a wolf by a witch who hated people like him.

Whatever that meant.

Only, he didn't really care about any of that right now. There was only one thing on his mind, and that was Hope Barnett.

"Did you find anything?" he asked the phone sitting on the counter of the bathroom sink.

There were some clicking noises as someone typed.

"Pulling up the final reports now," came Leonardo's voice from the speaker. "She looks just like some ordinary person, from what I can tell."

"Details, Leo," Lucien demanded.

He was in a foul mood from yesterday and lack of sleep from dealing with his numbed arm. The doctor had merely stated it was probably nothing but to monitor it to see if it cleared up or not. His heart was perfectly healthy, and nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. He'd finally gotten the feeling back in it this morning, but it had been pins and needles for hours.

"Grew up not far from here in central Alabama, her immediate family is still alive from what I can tell, and she graduated from a local high school before leaving the state and never coming back," Leo responded.

"Until now," Lucien noted, glaring at the mirror.

"Until now," confirmed Leo.

"What made her come back?" Lucien asked, half to himself, half to Leo.

"Hell if I know. According to Facebook, her parents disowned her years ago. But her and her sister seem to still keep in touch. Perhaps she's visiting her for a while?"

"What about the sister?" Lucien asked.

He himself didn't have siblings. Being their only child, when his parents died in a car crash, they left him their fortune and business. They passed when he was fifteen years old. Leo kept the business from failing by enlisting aid from other lawyers that worked for their firm. They became rather successful, and when Lucien was old enough to run it himself after years of college and schooling, he was now on his second year of running the law firm, rather successfully too, with the help of Leo and his employees. It's surprising how many supernatural and mythological creatures sought a lawyer capable of guiding them through the legal system without revealing their true identities.

"Three children, one deaf," Leo reported. "The youngest. Sister works with autistic kids for a living."

"What does Hope do for a living?" he asked.

"All I can tell you is her work history from delivery driver to call center associate," Leo said. "She's worked customer service most of her life, but doesn't have her current job listed... Wonder if it's new? ...No that can't be right," Leo muttered to himself.

"What's not right?"

"Every picture of her is from different places throughout the country. Whatever she does for a living, it has to pay well for her to travel so much," Leo surmised. There was a moment as he scrolled through the web pages. "She must travel miles out the ass."

"What else have you found?" Lucien asked, picking up his phone and walking into his bedroom.

There, he pulled on a button-up shirt with cuffs, put on a tie, then pulled on the jacket of his fitted suit. He fixed his thick hair in a neat side curve, half tucking the longer locks behind his ear. It was nearly time for a haircut.