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the platter between them and then took his own chair.
    He picked up her plate and heaped generous portions of everything onto it, more than she thought she could eat and then he filled his own plate.
    She bit the inside of her lip as she poured syrup from a pitcher onto her stack of three medium-sized pancakes. Did she just go along with this? “Are you really over a century old?”
    He looked at her as he set the platter down. “Where did you hear that?”
    She shrugged and picked up her fork. “I read it.”
    “In the book you mentioned?” he asked as he took the pitcher of syrup and poured over his own pancakes.
    The metal fork bit into her skin as she squeezed her hand around it just to see if it felt real. It did. “Yes, in the book.”
    He set the syrup down, picked up his fork, and speared a sausage. “If you believe everything that you read about me,” he said, “then you believe you know all about me.”
    “Not really.” She cut into her pancake as he bit his sausage. “I think you’re probably far more complex than the writer showed you to be. I don’t think he could truly get inside your head.”
    For a moment their gazes met and held and she felt an arc of electricity between them that had the effect of rendering her speechless. When she gathered her composure she said, “The least you can do is tell me about yourself.”
    “All right,” he said before digging into more of his breakfast.
    “So tell me, how old are you?” she asked. “Where do you come from? The book isn’t clear about your origins.”
    He drank from his orange juice then looked at her as she took a bite of her pancakes. “I’m a hundred eighty-three and I was born in Ireland shortly before my parents immigrated to America.”
    “Almost two centuries?” Loni raised her brows. “You were born in the early 1800’s? You look like you’re in your mid-thirties.”
    He stopped chewing and wiped his mouth with his napkin as he swallowed. “My people don’t age physically past thirty,” he said as he set down his napkin.
    “Wow.” She considered what he had said as she ate her breakfast. It was delicious, especially after not having eaten much yesterday. “Were you born a sorcerer?”
    He shook his head. “My father was a shifter and a Dark Enforcer. My mother is a witch.”
    “Your mother is still alive?” Loni asked. “She would be over two hundred.”
    “By marrying a shifter and carrying his child,” Alec said, “her life was extended beyond most witches’ natural lives. Something about bearing a shifter child and the symbiotic relationship, as the younger paranorm doctors put it. She won’t live as long as most shifters, but she’ll probably live another twenty years.”
    “If you weren’t born a sorcerer…” She frowned. “I don’t understand. I saw you with fire like that Dawson guy had.”
    “I’m a mimic,” Alec said. “Whatever type of being I touch, I’m able to take on their abilities until I touch another being and then my abilities mimic theirs. That was why I tackled the sorcerer after I threw the dagger at him. I needed his sorcerer powers to fight him.”
    It was all hard to believe but she went along with it. “I noticed that you talked about your father in the past tense.”
    She wondered if she had crossed a line as his features darkened and he didn’t say anything for a long time and ate instead.
    He finished off his pancakes and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’m surprised you didn’t read about my father in your book.” He dragged his hand down his face then met her gaze. “Dawson murdered him several years ago.”
    “The book didn’t mention your parents.” She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry about your father.”
    “His life was cut short far too young,” Alec said. “He should have lived another century, at least.”
    It didn’t take Alec long to put away the rest of the food on his plate before he served himself more. “Your turn.”
    “I’m thirty-two,