Siren's Mark

Chapter 25

𝔸𝕧𝕒

Four months ago if someone had told me my future would involve dinner at Table, one of the fanciest restaurants in town, with my incredibly gorgeous Siren boyfriend, I would have laughed in their face.

Now, if they had said I'd be wrapped in a comforter on my couch watching my eighth straight hour of Netflix, that I would believe.

Yet here I am, dressed up with Zane, enjoying the best seats in the house yet again.

"So do you use your superpowers to get this table every time or is it just because you know the owner?" I ask.

He smiles and shakes his head. "I know the owner? Is that what I told you?"

"Yesss...?" I say. "That's not true?"

Why would he lie about that?

"Oh it's true. But to be honest love, I'm pretty sure you have more pull with the owner than anyone else."

I have pull with the owner? I don't know the owner... What is he talking about?

"Well, you are fucking him," he says with a smirk.

Wait... What? Either he's accusing me of cheating on him or... Zane owns this place?!?

"Not sure why I didn't tell you the first time 'round," he continues. "I guess I tend to keep my private life to myself."

"You told me you owned some properties around the city, but I didn't realize you owned Table!"

"Well, I had a lot of money and only recently moved to the States. I had to find something to do."

"So you decided to become a professional rich person?"

He bursts into laughter.

"I suppose you could think of it that way," he says, taking a sip of his wine.

"So what did you do in London then?"

"Well uh..." he says, his eyes shifting as he fiddles with the cloth napkin on his lap.

What's with this reaction? He wasn't actually in the mob, was he?

"It's a long story. In London there's a larger, more formal immortal community and my job was to uh... use my powers on people."

Oh. Oh.

"So, you were a sex worker?" I ask.

Is he worried I'll judge him?

"No, love," he says with a bit of a chuckle. "Feeling jealous?"

"No, butthead," I say with a scowl.

"I worked for our kind of law enforcement. There's not really a human equivalent, but I was a compeller."

He takes another sip of his drink. I don't understand what that means, but he's being so weird about it.

"Okay, shifty," I say. "Spill. What does a compeller do?"

"I would touch people and charm them into giving us information or doing things we wanted. Sometimes it felt like the right thing to do but, sometimes they had me do more questionable things. In hindsight, I shouldn't have gone along with everything, but the Immortals I worked for were pretty powerful and I thought I needed to be on the right side of that power."

"Wow, that sucks." I reach for his hand and grasp it in mine. "I'm sorry about that, but I'm glad you got out of there. Why did you move, anyway?"

"Kami caught some heat with the police around there. She may or may not have used her powers on a prominent judge. We decided to move away until everything calmed down a bit."