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she stood, thencarried her plate over and rinsed it off before setting it in the dishwasher. Her gaze then moved to the coffee pot and she brightened on seeing the full pot of black liquid.
    “Oh Tiny, you’re a dream,” Jackie said with a smile as she found one of the new mugs and poured herself a cup of the black gold. “Does anyone else want one?”
    “I’ll have one please,” Tiny said as he finished his dinner and stood. “I made ice cream for dessert.”
    “Really?” she asked with interest, peering around for the ice cream maker.
    “I’ll get it,” Tiny insisted, moving to the sink to rinse his own plate. “Take the coffees to the table.”
    Leaving him to it, Jackie carried the coffees over. Vincent hadn’t asked for one, so she hadn’t poured him one.
    “Here you are.” Tiny placed a small dish of ice cream before her, and announced, “Chocolate with cherries.”
    Jackie picked up the spoon and scooped up a bite, moaning with pleasure as it hit her taste buds.
    “Good?” Vincent asked with interest.
    Jackie nodded and swallowed, then taunted, “No dessert until you finish your dinner.”
    Honestly, the man looked as crestfallen as a child at her words and continued determinedly with his meal.
    “He doesn’t have to finish his supper. He took too much.” Tiny whisked Vincent’s half-finished plate of stir-fry away, replacing it with ice cream. “Eat up.”
    Vincent beamed at the man and set to work on the ice cream.
    Jackie made a face as he sighed with pleasure.
    “Ms. Morrisey?”

    She shifted in her seat and glanced over her shoulder at Allen Richmond as he poked his head into the room.
    “A car followed one of the men through the gate as he returned from his break. There’s a woman out here looking for Mr. Argeneau.”

Three

    Jackie stood to investigate the woman looking for Vincent, only to pause as a tall, curvaceous, brunette urged Allen Richmond out of the way and stepped into the kitchen. Jackie stared. The woman was beautiful. She also looked extremely familiar. However, Jackie didn’t understand why until Vincent moved forward saying, “Aunt Marguerite!”
    This was Marguerite Argeneau, Bastien’s mother and Vincent’s aunt. There was a painting of her in the living room of the apartment in New York where Bastien stayed when in the city. Jackie had met him there a time or two over the years and always found the woman in the portrait fascinating with her medieval gown and faraway look. She was even more beautiful in real life and—despite knowing as much as she did about immortals—Jackie still found it difficult to accept that the woman was over seven hundred years old.
    While Marguerite Argeneau was older than Vincent, shewas still very young as far as immortals went. Their history went back before the beginning of written history, to the existence of Atlantis and—according to her father’s files—there were at least a handful of immortals who had actually fled the fall of Atlantis.
    It seemed the mythical land truly had existed, and it had been technologically advanced as some people suggested. So much advanced, in fact, they’d been able to combine nano technology with bio-engineering to create specialized nanos. These nanos, when introduced to a body, used the blood of the host to repair damaged tissue and fight disease as well as to reproduce and regenerate themselves.
    They had been programmed to shut down and disintegrate once finished with their work. However, the human body was constantly under attack from sunlight, the environment, or simple aging. There were always repairs to be done and so the nanos didn’t shut down, but continued to regenerate and reproduce themselves to keep their host at peak condition. Those nanos were the equivalent of drinking from the fountain of youth.
    Unfortunately, there were some drawbacks. The nanos used more blood than the human body could produce, and so the nanos altered their hosts to allow them to get the blood they