Jo recognized right away the dilemma she was in if she wanted a relationship with Henry: being involved with him would mean never living a normal life again. When he finally confessed to her that he was immortal and over two hundred years old, she'd initially thought that was the end of the weirdness; she knew the big secret and now they could get on with exploring what they meant to each other. How wrong she'd been. First she'd learned that he wasn't the only other immortal out there, and then she'd learned that he wasn't the only type of immortal.

In short order, she'd learned that the most populous group of immortals was engaged in a kind of secret civil war that they euphemistically called the Game. They fought and killed each other, taking as their spoils the defeated Immortal's power. To Jo, they were criminals—guilty of nothing less than organized murder—with a long list of secondary charges ranging from identity fraud to conspiracy to illegal disposal of human remains. To Henry, they were his friends, doing what they needed to do to survive.

And she got it. She did. After centuries of believing himself to be alone in his immortality, he'd found other people with the same condition, who could understand where he'd come from and what kind of life he lived, who shared his concerns and could appreciate his experiences. For that, he was willing to overlook the fact that they were killers; she knew he hoped that she'd be willing to do the same. So he'd taken her to meet an Immortal. She'd braced herself for someone like Kostya—an Immortal she and Hanson had been charged with apprehending after he'd killed two people in the span of a day—or Matt Adamson—an Immortal who had conveniently arrived in town in time to help capture Kostya by manipulating everyone like they were characters in a story he was writing. (She hadn't heard from either of them since then, and sincerely hoped she never would.)

Instead, she'd met Father Liam Riley, a man who appeared in be in his early 40s with curly brown hair he wore on the long side, an Irish brogue, and an intense love of basketball. Liam was thoughtful and deliberate in everything he did, yet also gave generously of himself to anyone who needed it. He couldn't live a more peaceful or caring life. It was easy to see why Henry liked him. Having learned that Liam was similar in age to Henry—similar, until she thought about their birth years and realized that Liam was actually old enough to be Henry's grandfather—made their connection more obvious; Henry had found a much-needed peer. Even better, Liam claimed to want nothing to do with the Game.

She'd also met Richie Ryan. Unlike Henry and Liam, Richie appeared to be in his early 20s—younger when he offered up one of his wicked grins. She'd had no idea that someone's appearance could be frozen at such a young age, and she'd discovered that she was much worse at understanding the difference between physical age and mental age that immortality created than she'd let herself believe.

The reasons for Henry's friendship with Richie weren't so obvious. At times, Richie was impulsive and a fast-talker, which he freely admitted had gotten him into—and out of—trouble more times than he could count. He was knowledgeable about the subjects he cared about, and not at all interested in learning for the sake of learning, as Henry was. But he was also dedicated and possessed a work ethic that belied his age. His apparent age, she reminded herself, yet again.

"You're different when you're around them," Jo had commented after they'd left the schoolyard after that first meeting. Her shoulders ached from the impromptu basketball game she and Henry had gotten suckered into and her face was flushed with exertion. It had been a long time since she'd stepped out onto a court. Next time, she was going to have to remember to wear sneakers. She cast a glance back. The wall around the school kept her from seeing anything happening on the grounds, but she thought she could still hear the ringing of the hoop's chains as the ball rattled through them.

Henry looked at her with the pinched expression of a person who was trying to figure out if he should be insulted. "What do you mean 'different'? If you're referring to my athletic ability—" He twisted the handkerchief he'd been using to clean the playground grime from his hands into a tight knot.

Jo chuckled at the memory of Henry trying, and mostly failing, to score a basket. Fortunately for him, none of the rest of the players had cared about enforcing traveling rules after the first violation, or they'd have spent the whole afternoon arguing about pivoting versus walking. "Henry, I already knew your best sport was speed reading. What I mean is, you're more…I don't know…relaxed?" She knew she wasn't explaining the difference well; she wasn't sure she could explain it better. In his day-to-day life, Henry maintained an air of aloofness; he kept a distance between himself and everyone he interacted with, but it wasn't snobbery so much as fear. She thought she'd seen him let down his guard with her, only she'd had no idea how much further it could drop until she'd seen him with Liam. "I liked seeing that side of you."

"There was nothing unusual in our interaction," he responded, flicking the handkerchief flat before folding it back into a square and tucking it in his pocket. "You have always seen my authentic self, even if I haven't always been able to tell you the complete truth about my actions." A breath, then he snaked an arm around her waist and twirled her close. Jo let out a small shriek at the sudden gesture. "Now I don't have to hide that." He dipped her like they'd been dancing and graced the move with a kiss, suggesting that maybe he did have some secrets left after all.

He was different around them, though. She'd seen it on that first meeting and again on the couple other get-togethers he'd arranged so Jo could learn who and what these Immortals were directly from the source. She still didn't like the answers, but it became increasingly clear that she had to accept Richie and Liam as part of Henry's life—and she'd made the mistake of thinking she could do that by mentally disassociating them from their Game. They were immortal, and that was all.

Then Drake had walked into the diner, and Jo remembered all too clearly the body of Kostya's first victim. A young man, barely out of his teens, who'd died by having his head brutally cut off. The head and body had been abandoned, identity-less, in the wreckage of an office building with no concern for the people who would be waiting for him to come home.

She knew Richie carried a sword, though he claimed he wasn't interested in using it. Jo'd known plenty of guys—especially adolescents—who carried guns or switchblades as part of a fantasy wherein they could become heroes on the inevitable day when they were mugged or caught in a convenience store robbery. Inevitable in their minds only, both because the odds of ever needing to use the weapon were slim and because, if they did, few of them would act like heroes. It was easy to imagine Richie's sword as a weirder manifestation of the same mindset.

Until she recalled Henry's rendition of how he and Richie had met, the awe in his voice as he recounted how Richie—less than a day after losing everything he owned in an explosion—had rushed to rescue a woman he'd never met from a kidnapper. The rescue effort had included a picked lock, trespassing on private property, and, ultimately, assault of the kidnapper. All that could be understood. The part Jo struggled with was Henry's recitation of how Richie had decapitated him. Richie had calmly and easily cut off Henry's head.

That was who they were.

As Jo watched Richie and Liam sink into the stream of traffic outside the diner, it was all she could do not to breathe a sigh of relief.

Through the polarized glass of the diner window, she saw Drake, still seated in his booth. He held the menu open in front of him, his attention on selecting the lunch he said he'd come to the diner for. Her gaze shifted and she found the table she'd been sitting at. A busboy had cleaned the dishes off already and was wiping the surface with a rag. It was too late to reclaim the table, even if she had any desire to stick around. Liam had insisted on the four of them leaving the diner together, and then had promptly left with Richie. She assumed that simply exiting the building didn't end whatever danger Liam thought existed had she and Henry stayed.

"We should get moving too," she stated. She wished she had the weight of the gun at her side to assure her that they hadn't been left vulnerable. "Where are you headed? Is Abe expecting you back at the shop?"

Henry pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time, smiling at what he saw. "Not for awhile. Our brunch was somewhat shorter than I'd planned on, which gives us some time before I'm expected back and before your appointment this afternoon. Hair stylist, right?"

"You remembered."

Henry knew everything, remembered everything, so she shouldn't have been as surprised as she was.

"I do try to take note of the important things," he answered warmly. Jo had suggested the diner because it was only a couple blocks from her salon—another detail Henry had made note of; he glanced around, orienting himself on a street she doubted he'd ever been on before, then pointed himself in the direction she had to go. "Would you care to take a walk?" He held out his arm in gentlemanly invitation and Jo slipped hers through it with a smile.

"I've love to."

She liked these intimate times with him. Though they often saw each other at work, their interactions were mostly limited to the professional. Getting together after work was equally difficult because Jo's hours could be erratic and she often came home with the barely the energy left to eat dinner and fall into bed. Henry's obligations with Abe, the shop, and his research only made it more difficult to carve out meaningful time together. They were lucky to grab an evening or two a week—which had been fine for the first few months as she got used to the idea of dating someone again. Now she was used to the idea and nothing else had changed. Fishing her sunglasses from her purse, she put them on at the same time as she tilted her face toward the sun. After the chill of the overly-air conditioned diner, the warmth of the day swept over Jo and smoothed the goosebumps that'd been prickling along her arms. Here she was with Henry by her side. Maybe she didn't need more.

"So, what happened?" she asked.

"Hm?"

"With the duel you saw."

Henry's brow was furrowed, as if he couldn't believe that someone was asking him to tell a story.

"Hey," she answered, reaching up to smooth the line between his eyebrows, "I barely remember anything from my childhood and that was only a few decades ago. If you've held on to the memory this long, it must have made an impression."

A smile tugged at the corner of Henry's mouth. "It did indeed." He took a moment to re-gather his thoughts from where they'd scattered when Richie and Liam had left, standing taller as he began to talk. "When I was young, my father had an apprentice. He lived with us, though we weren't permitted to interact except under very specific conditions. Thomas. His name was Thomas." The corners of his eyes crinkled at the remembered detail. "The young man he challenged was his best friend. His name..." Head tilted, he considered the past again for a moment, before giving up. "Oh, well. I suppose it no longer matters. They had both taken a shine to a young lady in town and decided to settle their dispute with a duel." A bounce in his step gave away his excitement at having an audience for his story. "Are you certain you want to hear this story?"

Jo gave a slight shake of her head. "Believe it or not, I like hearing about your past—especially when we're not standing over a dead body while you're sharing it." She couldn't resist the gentle jab. "The more I learn about you, the more I realize how much there is to learn."

"That is the corollary to a long life," he agreed, carefully.

"That's not what I meant." She brushed her wind-blown hair back into place, swiping at a few strands that had found their way into her mouth. "Some people, what you see is what you get. There's nothing to them. Put 'em at a crime scene and they could list the basic details of what they're looking at, but they can't pull together a big picture because they don't know how to think about how things connect to each other. You're, like, the opposite of that." She hitched her shoulder in a shrug. There'd been a lot of intensity in the day already and she didn't really want this lighter time to get bogged down. "I sometimes wonder how much of that is because of how long you've lived, and how much is because of your experiences."

Construction scaffolding closed off half the sidewalk, forcing Jo and Henry to squeeze closer together as they walked. Their shoulders brushed with each step, and with a start Jo realized that between the brunch and this walk, this was the longest they'd been this physically close in weeks.

"Yes, well…" He scratched at his cheek and glanced away. "You're getting to see the end product of those experiences. The man who had to learn from them is different than the man you know."

Jo gave a mock gasp. "Henry, are you telling me you've changed?" She let their shoulders bump on the next step. "Let me guess: you were so awed at how manly and tough Thomas was, and how he won the girl, that you vowed to become a master gunslinger when you grew up." A vision of Henry as a Wild West cowboy flitted through her mind, an image so at odds with his scarves and refined taste in clothes that she laughed out loud.

Henry shot her a questioning look, but Jo only shook her head; she wasn't going to try to explain it. Fortunately, he let it go. "It was formative," he agreed. "I'm afraid the only person who gained from the situation was me. Despite the issues with accuracy that dueling pistols of the era had, Thomas managed to mortally injure his friend, but not without receiving a wound himself. There was much speculation after the fact as to why these two friends would have aimed at each other instead of firing into the air, which was quite a black mark on my father's reputation. Moral weakness in an apprentice was viewed as moral weakness in his master, you see."

Jo scratched the back of her head. "Do I even want to know how you benefited?"

A twinkle came into Henry's eye. "The shot struck Thomas's arm, became infected, and turned gangrenous. His arm had to amputated. As a lesson to my brother and me about the dangers of dueling, our father insisted on us observing the procedure."

Jo's eyes narrowed as she did the math to get to the year of the story. "This…was before anesthetics, right?"

With a nod, Henry confirmed her fear about the direction of the story. "Considerably before, unless you think a shot of whisky is sufficient?"

She didn't. The grimace she couldn't restrain revealed how inadequate she thought a shot of a whisky was. God forbid she ever have to have a limb amputated in the absence of anesthetics. If it ever came to that, she'd definitely demand the whole bottle, and then probably a second or third so that she was completely insensate for as long as she could manage. The imagined scent of alcohol made her eyes begin to water. A moment later, she realized she was smelling the fumes from the salon and not some long ago operating theater. She looked up, and sighed. "We're here. I should go check in." She didn't move. Henry's arm in hers was too nice, and she still hadn't heard the end of the story. "I need to know: did the amputation go OK?"

In the wash of noon sunlight, Henry seemed to pale and lose some of his aplomb. "Let's just say that the surgeon's performance is what inspired me to pursue studies in medicine. Some people are inspired by observing masters, and some..." He grimaced, and in the look of pain Jo could almost picture him as a little boy, being forced to watch the butchery of another person and vowing to do better.

"And another piece of the mystery that is Henry Morgan falls into place," Jo quipped. She pointed at him. "I will eventually get all your secrets, not just the big ones."

"If you ever do desire a conversational centerpiece, I do know a couple people who are quite capable of becoming corpses with no lasting ill effect."

"What?" Jo blinked as what Henry was suggesting sunk in. Ew. Besides which, there was no world in which she wanted to know how that favor would be requested. "You know, I think we've past that step. There are plenty of much more normal storytelling outlets we have yet to share." Such as more walks like this one, coffee dates, meet-ups at the bar.

Henry smoothly turned the courtly arm-lock into a hand-hold, and took her other hand at the same time. "That does bring us to something else I've been wanting to discuss with you. Since we have a few minutes, now would appear to be an opportune time."

The abrupt shift in topic and mood flummoxed Jo. "What's wrong?" She scrutinized Henry's expression for hint of what was happening, but he'd collected himself and was now studying her back as she was studying him. Jo shifted on her feet. "Henry?"

He stopped to take a breath, and a strange tightness gripped Jo's heart. In her experience, people only sounded so serious when they were about to deliver really bad news. This wasn't a breakup speech, was it?

"As you know, Abraham is about to depart on a rather lengthy cruise, leaving me alone for the duration. I will, of course, be assuming responsibility for running the store in his absence, which will cut into my free hours."

"Oh." Jo bit her lip, certain that she now knew where this was leading. She knew how to lock her emotions down, to don a completely objective mindset for dealing with crime scene where emotions would only be a liability. The walls started to click into place before she'd finished exhaling. "Well, then I guess I'll still see you at work. No problem. We can maybe go for dinner when Abe's back?"

Henry's gaze softened while his hold on her hands tightened. He pulled her fractionally closer. "While I do plan on taking you to dinner after Abe returns, I had something else in mind for the more immediate future. We have been seeing each other for more a year now, and I thought…"

The tightness in her chest spread, freezing her whole body. Don't get down on one knee, she thought, followed immediately by get down on one knee, already. The last year hadn't been casual dating, as she'd understood it; it had been courting, as he did—because he was two hundred years old and he had been brought up with different manners. And now he was going to propose. She wasn't ready for this.

"I would like to spend more time with you, Jo, not less. I'll have the apartment to myself, and while I will miss Abe's company, I would be very glad to have yours."

The relief melted her. "So Abe's gone, time to have the girlfriend over? When the cat's away, the mice will play? The good news is that if you're planning on throwing an epic party, you have an in with the police." She bit her lip again, this time to stop a further barrage of words before she said anything she'd actually regret.

Henry ducked his head like the weight of his gaze had suddenly become too heavy to bear. "Some things are much easier to conduct when a man's son is not in the next room." His ability to look simultaneously shy and pleased with himself told her everything he wasn't saying.

"Henry, are you talking about sex?"

"I don't want to make any assumptions. However, it would be nice to share some things that can't be said over a dead body."

Jo opened her mouth to say something, then shut it, in case she said the wrong thing. Their anniversary, as marked by the day Henry had told her the truth about himself, had been two weeks before. Henry had taken her out for the kind of steak dinner she couldn't afford on her own salary—candles, live orchestra, an appetizer she couldn't pronounce, and the kind of steak she'd only heard about on cooking shows—and had not given any hint of wanting to change the status of their relationship. He couldn't have asked her this, then? Why hadn't he asked her this then?

He was asking her to move in with him, sleep in the same bed as him, have sex with him. All at once. This wasn't the slow progression of an overnight stay turning into a planted toothbrush, a drawer, half the closet, and then a serious discussion about how to merge the DVD collections. He wasn't asking her to marry him, but he still could. He might, if this worked out.

Jo swallowed, and then swallowed again, her throat suddenly too dry for words. He wasn't breaking up with her, and he wasn't proposing. All she'd been able to imagine were the two extremes, and now that those were off the table, she didn't know what to think.

And she really didn't know what to say.