Chapter Two: The Guest of Honor

Logan splashed water on his face, and looked at his reflection in the mirror. He was surprised at how little he seemed to have changed in the last few years. He felt so much different, but the picture he'd found in the large gift basket in his hotel room proved that he hadn't changed… on the outside, at least. Sure, his eyes looked a little emptier, and his face was a little thinner, but, for the most part, he looked the same.

With a deep sigh of resignation, he wandered out of the bathroom and tossed the picture back into the gaudy gift basket full of food and reminders of some friend or distant cousin he could barely remember. He really, really didn't want to be in San Francisco, but he couldn't turn down the invitation. His mother would have been so proud if she'd known her charity was spreading down the West Coast. The Montgomery-Cale Society for the Protection of Widows and Orphans – the name made him laugh now. He'd never told Max about the charity, but he was pretty sure she'd get a kick out of the name. His mother had wanted her charity to be simple, exact, unbureaucratic, and the name said it all.

There was a polite knock on the hotel room door – his tux. He groaned and glanced at the speech resting on the bedside table. God, he really hated public speaking. Why couldn't he have turned down the offer to speak in public on the anniversary of his mother's death? Who'd been the genius to come up with the idea in the first place? Hadn't they even wondered if he'd be insulted by the idea? Of course not. He was supposed to be honored. For people who'd been bred to have the best manners, they had surprisingly little tact. With yet another exhausted sigh, he opened the door for his tux, and reconciled himself to the idea of a terrible evening.

As he stepped out of the clean black car, and onto the red carpet stretching out before the museum, Logan was struck, not for the first time, by the way rich people were able to completely ignore the fact that the pulse ever happened. Hell, the very state they lived in wasbankrupt, but they just ignored it. Logan decided, also not for the first time, that deep down, he kind of hated rich people. He didn't mind admitting it, because he didn't exclude himself from the list.

There were photographers on the sidelines, and he avoided them with practiced ease. Logan, and only Logan, decided when his face was going to be in the news. He'd had a rather difficult time convincing the event planners to let him have his own way in this, but they finally relented. He wasn't obligated to chat up the press, and no cameras would be flashing or rolling while he was speaking. That was the deal. He could avoid everything else on his own.

To his left, he saw a familiar face approaching. Ah, yes, Melissa Brown-Littleton. He remembered her - petite, brunette, too perky for anyone to take really seriously, and yet she was the local President of the charity. For her sake, he pasted a small smile on his face. She grabbed onto his arm immediately, and began babbling about how inappropriate it was for the guest of honor to enter alone, and how fortunate it was that she just happened to be there, and how fortunate it was that her husband couldn't attend so that she could grace his arm, and did he get her gift basket? Yes, he had, he affirmed. Of course, then the incessant babbling continued. It was so good to see him again after so many years, she'd heard rumors about him, but they obviously weren't true, and didn't he just look fabulous, but then he'd always been so very handsome. It was a shame she was married. She'd always had such a crush on him.

Logan allowed himself to search the crowd for anything suspicious. He didn't expect any trouble, but being alert was second nature. He scanned the crowd for faces, outfits, and sounds that might be out of place, but nothing struck him as unusual. He'd attended hundreds of these things in his life. He knew what was normal and what wasn't. So far, nothing seemed in any way strange, except for the fact that he was there, but he still couldn't shake a feeling of… not-rightness. Never mind, he told himself, it was just one night. He just had to suck it up.

The tinkling of well-mannered laughter greeted Logan as he entered the festivities. It was a sound he knew all too well – polite enjoyment. No one was having too much fun, but everyone was appropriately entertained. The men all wore tuxedos that were more or less identical, and most of the women wore dresses and gowns of black, red, pink, or blue – all accepted society function colors. Logan remembered grimly that the seasonal balls when his mother had been alive, and for a few years after, had been colorful. Women wore gowns of colors that related to the season. Twenty-five years earlier, the spring ball would have been filled with pastels. Though, he wondered grimly, how many women in the room could still afford to buy four different dresses a year for what was, in effect, one ball repeated four times.

The mingling began slowly. Mrs. Littleton introduced him to a few people, and then she disappeared to do more organizing (the work of a charity head was never done, that much Logan remembered). Then the people he'd been introduced to introduced him to more people, and soon he had a rather large audience, almost everyone asking questions about his mother and her charity work. As he answered their questions, he felt an odd mixture of pride and caution. He loved his mother, and he loved that she had wanted to save the world, but she was his mother, and his memories were sacred. He didn't have many of them, after all.

Suddenly, Logan felt his arm reclaimed by Melissa Brown-Littleton. He recovered his "greet-the-hostess" smile and turned his attention to her. The rest of his audience realized that the hostess had first dibs on the guest of honor, and so they turned their attention to each other, but they didn't move away. Proximity to the guest of honor was almost as good as talking to him.

"Logan, now, I have to introduce you to someone. She joined our organization about three months ago, and she has devoted herself to your mother's cause with such a passion," Melissa suddenly laughed, "I think she'll have my job soon."

As Logan let the woman pull him from his group, and navigate through the crowd, he caught a glimpse of startling, pure, almost blinding white gown among the sea of dull colors. He smiled, and then he caught a glimpse of the shoulders above the snow-white dress, the fall of dark hair...He inhaled sharply. No, it couldn't be... She was in Canada... and she wouldn't be at a ball. It was nothing but wish fulfillment. He'd just been thinking of her, right? Well, he was always thinking about her, so that wasn't different. It was just… those shoulders; he knew those shoulders, and the dark hair that wafted around them. No… it couldn't be her.