Grace arrived right on cue, holding two platters. She set them in front of us and was called away before she could blind Crest with another toothy smile.

“The food’s wonderful,” he said after the first two bites.

And cheap, too. I raised my eyebrow at him, meaning I told you so.

“I’ll stop trying to impress you if you promise not to break my legs,” he suggested.

“Alright, where did you learn to speak Spanish?”

“From my father,” he said. “He spoke six languages fluently and understood who knows how many. He was an anthropologist of the old kind. We spent two years at Temple Mayor in Mexico.”

I arched an eyebrow, took a bottle of hot sauce shaped like a stylized figurine, and put it in front of him.

“Tlaloc,” he said. “God of rain.”

I smiled at him. “So tell me about the temple.”

“It was hot and dusty.” He told me about his father, who tried to understand people long gone, about climbing the countless steps to the top of the temple, where twin shrines stared at the world, about falling asleep under the bottomless sky by the carved temple walls and dreaming of nightmarish priests. Somehow his voice overcame the noise of the restaurant, muting the conversations of other patrons to subdued white noise. It was so remarkable that I would have sworn there was magic in it, except that I felt no power coming from him. Perhaps it was magic, but of that special human kind—magic born of human charm and conversation, which I too often discounted.

He talked while I listened to his pleasant voice and watched him. There was something very comforting about him, and I was not sure if it was his easy manner or his complete immunity to my scowling. He was funny without trying to joke, intelligent without trying to sound erudite, and he made it plain he expected nothing.

The lunch stretched on and then suddenly it was close to one thirty and time for me to go.

“I had a great time,” he said. “But then I talked the whole time, so I suppose that’s obvious. You should’ve shut me up.”

“I enjoyed listening to you.”

He scowled at me, disbelieving, and warned, “Next time it will be your turn to talk.”

“Next time?”

“Would you go to dinner with me?”

“I would,” I found myself saying.

“Tonight?” he asked, his eyes hopeful.

“I’ll try,” I promised and actually intended to do so. “Call me around six.” I gave him my address in case the magic knocked the phone out.

I insisted on paying my half of the lunch and declined an offer to be walked to my car. The day I needed an escort was the day I’d turn my saber over to someone who knew what to do with it.