The trip to Nevada had been quick as traveling now was quite efficient and also much faster than in the past. Within an hour they were landing at the Nevada airport and Marcus already had a car waiting on them as he had called ahead and reserved one.
"Well, I see you thought of everything," Emily said smiling as she saw the blue sports car waiting on them along with the car rental employee. "Looks like the newest model too."
"It is," Marcus said.
"Here you go sir," said the employee who got out of the car as soon as Marcus and Emily approached.
The employee checked the bill for the rental that Marcus had printed out then his ID before handing over the remote for the car.
"Thank you," Marcus told the employee politely handing him some cash as a tip.
"You're welcome sir," the employee said serenely heading off to call a cab.
"Shall we go Miss Emily?" Marcus said, even as the doors opened for them once Marcus and Emily approached the vehicle thanks to Marcus now having the control. The control and the car went together.
"We shall," Emily agreed, even as she got into the passenger seat. "I've never ridden in something so fancy."
"Well now, that you're with me, the sky's got no limit," Marcus told Emily with a huge smile. It was the largest smile that Emily had ever seen on Marcus's face as he wasn't the type that was lighthearted or frivolous.
"You know this is really neat," Emily commented. "The car just would've had to be programmed with it's destination and then it would've drove itself here and parked in the first available spot in the parking lot."
"But only if you actually own the vehicle, but since we rented it came along with an employee that made sure the right people got it. Besides, the employee also turned over the control for the car once he made sure we were the ones that had rented it."
"True, but it's still really neat," Emily said and Marcus could only agree.
"It won't be long before you're meeting my parents and my godparents, as they live less than half an hour from here," Marcus said.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Emily said with a smile.
Emily spoke the truth as Marcus always talked about them so affectionately that Emily knew that he loved his parents she doubted very much that his parents reacted as her mother had when Marcus made a suggestion they didn't agree with.
She doubted her mother had ever considered the fact that she had only been 10 or so at the time and that children's dreams changed as they grew and matured. To rant and rave over something their child told them was just beyond the pale.
It was likely that Marcus at one time had wanted to enter the space program so he could explore other planets and she doubted very much his parents had overreacted like her own had. Since a lot of young people wanted to enter the space program it wasn't unrealistic to assume that Marcus had been the same when he had been a child.
At a certain age it was simply the coolest career imaginable, especially for boys.
"Here we are," Marcus said finally, as he guided the car manually into a driveway that was long and sinuous.
"I'm surprised there's not a gate considering the driveway," Emily said. "Don't places like this usually have a gate with a guard or at least an intercom so you can tell someone that you have arrived or who you are?"
"Usually," Marcus agreed with a smile, as he parked in front of the house. "Welcome to my parents home."
"Your parents home? Not yours?" Emily asked Marcus thinking it was an odd way to put it. This house was where Marcus and his siblings had grown up, right?
"Not in a long time," Marcus explained realizing that he had slipped up. "I, no longer, think of it as home, since I haven't lived there since I went to college at 18."
Emily accepted the explanation, but something odd was going on so she couldn't exactly put a finger on what. If his childhood was happy wouldn't Marcus still think of this as his home, even if he hadn't lived here in years? She didn't think of where she had a grown-up as home, but then her mother was nothing like Marcus's parents and she barely remembered her father.
Emily almost expected a butler to answer the door because the house was so nice, but it was opened by a very pretty woman with Marcus's red hair, except she had green eyes instead of brown.
"Welcome," the woman greeted Emily giving Marcus a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "It's good to see you Marcus you should visit more often."
"You know how busy I am with the jewelry shop," Marcus told the woman. "Emily, this is my mother Shonda Hotchner."
"I had to figure that out already, as he resembles you a great deal. He has your hair color, your cheeks, your nose and your jawline," Emily told Shonda shaking her hand.
"So he does," Shonda agreed smiling. "Come inside everybody is waiting."
Marcus and Emily followed Shonda inside the front door shutting automatically as soon as the last person passed the threshold.
Shonda led Marcus and Emily to what appeared to be a very comfortably appointed living room. There was no TV in the room just comfortable furniture with a thick carpet on the floor.
"Everyone you all know Marcus, but this is Emily his girlfriend," Shonda introduced.
"Emily, this is my husband and Marcus's father Aaron Hotchner," Shonda continued.
"It's nice to meet you young lady," Aaron said rising to his feet and shaking Emily's hand.
"It's nice to meet you sir," Emily said politely shaking Aaron's hand firmly.
"And these are our good friends and Marcus's godparents Jazzlyn and David Rossi," Shonda continued the introductions.
"It's nice to meet you," Jazz said is she and Dave rose to their feet to shake Emily's hand. "You can call me Jazz though."
"And I'm Dave," Dave added as he shook Emily's hand firmly.
"It's nice to meet you all." Emily said, as Marcus led her over to another couch so they could sit together.
"So tell us about yourself, Miss Emily," Aaron said.
"I'm one of three children I have a sister and had a brother," Emily said. The pain of losing her brother was still fresh and look showed on her face and she mentioned him.
"So what happened to your brother?" Jazz asked seeing the look of pain that crossed Emily's face.
"He was in the Navy SEALs and was killed on a mission less than a year ago," Emily said briefly.
"I'm sorry to bring of such painful memories," Jazz apologized.
"It's OK," Emily said. "It was his dream to be a Navy SEAL so at least he died for a good cause."
"She came into my shop to get a gold chain for her brother's ring that she now wears around her neck in remembrance," Marcus added.
"That is so sweet and sentimental," Shonda declared.
"Maybe," Emily said neither agreeing or disagreeing.
"Lunch should be ready folks," Shonda said looking at her watch. "You might as well take your places at the table while I go check on the food."
"Come on, I'll show you where the dining room is," Marcus offered.
Emily got up from where she had sat and followed Marcus and everybody else towards the dining room where the meal would be taking place.
"So what's for lunch mom?" Marcus asked Shonda.
"Barbecue chicken, since I know that's one of your favorite," Shonda told him.
"Yum!" Marcus said now really looking forward to eating some of his mother's barbecue chicken. It was messy but absolutely delicious.
"There's also some tiramisu for dessert," Jazz added.
"I've heard of that, but never had any," Emily said. "I've heard it's spectacular though."
"Then I suggest you don't fill up so you can have some," Jazz suggested with a wink. "I made it just the other day so it's still fresh."
"I would definitely save the room for that, as my aunt is a great baker," Marcus told Emily. "I've been eating her desserts ever since I was a kid I absolutely love everything she makes."
"So do I. Like father, like son,"Aaron said, as he came up behind his son clapping him on the back affectionately. "Let's eat before the food gets cold, which would be a tragedy."
"Yes, it would be," Dave agreed with his friend. "It was a great day when I met Jazz and found out she was a baker. I have to exercise several days a week just to maintain my current weight."
"That's a problem everybody shares though," Shonda told Dave who nodded.
"True," Dave agreed easily.
"I would gladly exercise if I could have deserts on a regular basis," Emily told everyone. "I love eating stuff that isn't good for me like chocolate."
"We all agree with you on that. You'll fit right into this family, since everybody here loves eating desserts." Aaron said, as they all sat at the dining room table.
"Yes, we do," Dave said. "Considering Jazz is a baker, if I didn't exercise I'd be extremely overweight."
They all enjoyed their food before they retired to the den where they could talk.
"I hope you left room for the dessert," Jazz told Emily, as Marcus and her headed for the den.
"I did," Emily promised. "I'm looking forward to tasting your tiramisu, since I already know from Marcus that you're an excellent baker."
"That's good then," Jazz said. "You and Marcus go ahead and head to the den while me and Shonda bring the desert along with plates and silverware."
Emily nodded without protesting, as she got the impression that she and Marcus would be shooed away if she offered to help bring the desert into the living room, so she followed Marcus to the same room that she had met his family.
~~~Marcus and Emily~~~
Emily ate her dessert with relish, as it was rich and chocolatey with just a hint of a coffee taste. It was seriously great and she could see why Marcus had raved about his Aunt Jazz's desserts if this was any example.
"This is fantastic," Emily told Jazz.
"Thank you, all compliments are appreciated," Jazz said smiling.
"You definitely deserve the kudos," Aaron told Jazz, as he finished his piece. "I know you don't often get thanked for the desserts that you sell to other people, but you certainly deserve those compliments."
"I totally agree with that," Shonda said, as she put her plate and fork on the table in front of her. "Now, Emily, we have something serious to discuss with you," Shonda added as soon as Emily had finished her portion.
"Why do you all suddenly look so serious?" Emily asked.
"We have a story to tell you, even though it seems like fantasy, it's the truth," Dave added. Dave begin his tale and took Emily through the story about immortals and mates.
"The tale you just told me is impossible," Emily told everyone. "I know this is a very advanced society but immortals? Really?! And magic? Unless you're talking about stage magic and it's not real."
"We can prove it to you," Aaron offered seeming calm.
"How exactly?" Emily asked Aaron.
"It's simple," Marcus finally spoke up. With those words Marcus showed Emily his empty palms and then simply flicked his wrist and a little blue globe appeared over his right shoulder.
"Go ahead and touch it. It won't burn you," Marcus said. "This is what is known as a witch light. It's similar to a flashlight, except it's produced by magic instead of technology."
Emily tentatively touched it and then took it in the palm of her hand when it didn't burn her. It was simply a globe of light. Emily looked at the other adults in the room and Jazz and Shonda looked at each other before also producing globes of light the exact same as what Marcus had proven to Emily that it couldn't be an illusion of some kind.
"This is the simplest of magic that every magical child can produce by the time they're five," Marcus explained. "Some do it earlier of course."
"I don't know how I can disbelieve that," Emily said, as she still held the globe of light Marcus had produced in the palm of her hand.
"As for the immortality we can demonstrate that to," Dave offered.
"How exactly?" Emily asked with a raised eyebrow. Her skeptical tone spoke for her. She was prepared for anything considering she had sworn that magic wasn't real and yet here she was holding what was known as a witch light in her hand. She had never seen anything like it before.
"One of us will simply cut ourselves deeply enough that we'd have to use a healing wand over it multiple times and wrap it up in between treatments if it didn't heal immediately," Shonda offered.
"I'll do it," Dave offered and everybody in the room nodded not seeming worried something Emily definitely noticed.
Jazz handed her husband the sharp knife she had brought to cut the tiramisu and Dave took it. Nobody protested what Dave was about to do, though Emily wanted to because immortality wasn't possible. On the other hand, three people in the room had produced what they had called a witch light and she had never seen anything like it. They claimed it was magic and maybe they were right.
Emily watched avidly, as Dave cut a deep gash on the palm of his hand deep enough that he certainly would have needed the healing wand run over it several times over several days.
Nobody else in the room seemed worried for Dave, as his hand was bleeding rather heavily. Emily watched in amazement as the deep cut on Dave's hand healed right before her eyes to where all that was left was blood. There was no sign of even a scar.
Jazz immediately handed him some paper napkins that she had brought in from the kitchen to go with the desert and Dave wiped his now healed hand thoroughly before turning it over to show his palm to Emily. He crumpled the napkin into a ball and put it in the middle of his plate. Absolutely no sign of the injury remained.
"OK, I don't know how you could fake that," Emily said finally finding her voice. "I've never heard of any kind of technology that would heal anybody that fast, especially since I saw nothing in your hands when you cut your palm. I suppose it could be some kind of nanobots..."
The disbelief at her own explanation was clear in Emily's voice.
"Not even nanobots could heal Uncle Dave's hand so fast," Marcus finally spoke up.
"A valid point. I know they're really useful and wondrous devices in this century, but no technology could've healed Dave's injuries so fast," Emily said. "So my question is, why tell me it's got to be the greatest secret in the world."
"There is a reason," Aaron offered looking at his son who nodded.
"You see, Uncle Dave briefly touched on mates," Marcus explained. "Every immortal supposedly has one. When you walked into my jewelry shop it was like being struck by lightning the moment I looked into your face. That's why I was so insistent on asking you out for the date as I know I would probably never see you again once you left my shop. I couldn't allow that to happen. Luckily, you agreed without too much trouble. Normally, I wouldn't have been in such a hurry, as I knew you were still grieving for your brother, but on the other hand, I didn't want to lose my chance."
"Your chance of what?" Emily asked.
"Of getting married, having a family," Marcus said honestly.
"You could do that with any woman. Alright, I admit the most of them wouldn't have believed your explanation, but still, you could do that with anyone."
"You might think that, but it's not true," Aaron told Emily gently.
"Why isn't it?" Emily asked with a raised eyebrow. The question was clear on her face.
"Because once you meet your mate, the one person that can love you no matter what, that's it," Dave explained taking over for Aaron. "No other relationship will ever compare and that's even if you trust in someone enough to tell them your secret. Think about the consequences if you told the wrong person. So many people can be duplicitous that they can fool you, even someone as old as I am, if they're good enough at lying."
"A lot of people would go blabbing about what they had been told and immortals would be hunted," Shonda said. "That's not to say they would capture immortals, just regular folks, but it would be chaos all the same."
"There would likely be hundreds of deaths, maybe thousands before all was said and done and then the government would know that immortals exist," Jazz added. "Alright, it's likely they will just dismiss it as nothing more than someone's delusions, but you never know what people will do or believe. Some people believe in the supernatural because they've had an experience with it and it couldn't be explained scientifically."
"That doesn't mean that someone in the government wouldn't be looking for proof that immortals were real and we'd have to be even more careful than we are now," Dave said.
"Every immortal with an ounce of sense live quietly for a reason Emily," Shonda said.
"The same is true of magicals as well," Jazz added. "Magicals went into hiding a very long time ago and they've basically been forgotten about not that many people knew but still..."
"The town that Jazz and I were born in was originally built as a haven for magicals of every stripe," Shonda continued. "However, by the time Jazz and I were born there were only a few families left that had magic, as those families with magic had either moved away or had bred with regular humans often enough that the talent become dormant. The Walters and the Lincolns were two of those families."
Emily assumed that had been the two women's surnames before they had married.
"I met Dave first, as he came into my bakery," Jazz said.
"I knew immediately that she was my mate and was determined to get her to agree to a date," Dave continued. "It took me awhile to break down her resistance, as she had given up on dating completely due to a bad experience in college but she finally gave in."
"I have never once regretted getting involved with Dave," Jazz added kissing her husband's cheek. The love was obvious in her expression. "Within a few weeks I knew he was 'the one'."
The way Jazz emphasized the one let Emily know that she had known that Dave was the one she would marry.
"It wasn't until three years later than I met Aaron," Shonda continued. "I always knew it was unlikely that I would meet my mate in the small town that Jazz and I grew up in because the population was less than 10,000 people. Jazz was just lucky that Dave was passing through and that he happened to stop at her bakery. Luckily, I traveled quite a bit, because of my family's antique business and I met Aaron in Houston Texas. I met him at an important auction where antiques were being sold and I wanted to get some things for the shop.
"While I hadn't had Jazz's bad experience in college I was always more careful when I wasn't in Moonlight Gorge all the same, because I knew that the world was a dangerous place. In Moonlight Gorge, me and Jazz knew the people, who we could speak casually to and who it was best to avoid or if you couldn't avoid them because it was a small town then you were polite no matter what you thought of that person personally," Shonda said.
"Also, I absolutely had to get back to Moonlight Gorge and couldn't afford to be gone too long," Shonda added.
"Oh why?" Emily asked curiously.
"Because my father was very ill," Shonda explained candidly. "My mother had already passed shortly after Jazz married Dave. My father at that time was the only family I had left and I knew he wasn't long for this world. I also had Walters Antiques to consider."
"Also, Jazz was pregnant with our first child and Shonda had been named the godmother so she wanted to be back for that as well," Dave added.
"True that," Shonda agreed with a smile.
"We named the baby Shawnda after her godmother and I thought at the time that was pretty good, considering Shonda is such an unusual name with no variations," Jazz said. "The two names sound similar, even if they mean two totally different things."
"I understand," Emily said thinking about the information she had been given. "I hadn't thought about the fact that a lot of humans are not trustworthy, because if they were we wouldn't have so many criminals, drug dealers, drug lords, those that murder and not in self-defense and so many more. So if I'm understanding you right, I'm your mate?" Emily added looking at Marcus who nodded.
"Yes you are and I could never marry another, even if we had never met," Marcus said. "I would have simply continued doing what I did every day going to work, coming home, shop for groceries that kind of thing. My life has gotten very boring, as it was basically routine.
"No immortal settles down unless they've met their mate," Aaron told Emily his tone and expression deadly serious. "That's not to say that they don't date they just never settle down never get married or have families. I knew I was lucky when I met Shonda and I was centuries old when I did."
"I can say the same, as I was even older than Aaron when I met Jazz," Dave added. "An immortal just knows when they have met the person they're supposed to be with. Our biology just wakes up I suppose you could say, letting us know that this person is the one."
"An immortals mate has to be trustworthy and at least mostly honest," Aaron continued. "They have to know how to keep a secret and not tell that secret to anyone no matter the situation at the time. They also have to have at least some of the same personality traits that the immortal does. The same moral and ethics for example. As Dave explained our biology simply knows when we've met the right person."
"But I'm not immortal," Emily said.
"Neither was I the first time I met Aaron," Shonda told Emily gently. "Do you think my mother would've died if she been immortal or my father been so sick that he died shortly after our first son was born? No both and Jazz and I were just as mortal, as you are now. We were simply two small town girls that had been best friends all their lives. Immortals can't get illnesses of any kind. They are always healthy."
"But how...?" Emily begin to ask.
"It has to do with DNA," Marcus said letting Emily work that out for herself, as she was a smart lady.
"Oh," Emily said in a quiet voice blushing when she had figured out what Marcus meant and Emily Prentiss never blushed.
"I believe she's worked out what Marcus meant," Jazz said amused.
"It's not that hard to realize what Marcus meant," Emily shot back her embarrassment fading. "It does explain some things though."
"I suppose it does," Aaron said also secretly amused, as he knew what Emily meant, even if she was too polite to say so. Everyone had relaxed now that Emily had seemed to accept that immortality and magic were very real.
"I think we've given you enough information for now, but if you have any questions you can ask Marcus and if he doesn't know the answer then we probably will," Dave said. "You're free to visit us with or without Marcus, as you now know our secret."
"I take it you given this explanation before as it all seemed very smooth when you each took up part of the explanation."
"Multiple times," everyone said at once.
"We've gotten quite good at giving the mates of immortals this explanation," Shonda added.
"We definitely have," Jazz agreed with her best friend.
"We'll be here for a couple of weeks seeing some of the sites so we can have dinner again before we head home," Marcus told his family.
"I took a couple of weeks vacation, as I had certainly had it coming," Emily said. "I've never been to Reno so thought I should take advantage of the trip. I mean why come only for a few hours and waste the money on a shuttle to get here when you can stay for a week or more."
"It's what I would've done in your position," Shonda told her with a warm smile. "Welcome to the family Emily. I'm looking forward to getting to know you better."
"I can say the same, even if I do have a lot to think about," Emily said before she and Marcus left the family to head to the hotel room.
~~~Marcus and Emily~~~