Chapter Sixteen: The Globetrotter

Rei really hadn't meant to knock him out.

Well—she had, but that was before she realized it was Sébastien Barret climbing through her damn window.

What did one do with an uninvited, and now unconscious, visitor? Tie him up? Yes, probably. Calling the police would also be a reasonable response, but Rei wasn't sure she wanted to be found yet.

However, tying him up would be a good start, a sign that she was serious and not to be trifled with.

Rei didn't have any rope on hand, though. The best she could manage was pulling the laces out of her gym shoes. Just as well. She hadn't exactly gone running during her self-inflicted exile.

The next step was more awkward. She knew him. Rei wished she didn't. It would've been much easier to ruthlessly tie up a stranger. Yes, he broke into her apartment and all that, but it still felt intrusive to touch him, like she wanted permission.

There were two things wrong with that: a, she rather doubted he'd grant her permission to tie him up and b, she'd knocked him unconscious and he was rather incapable of giving permission.

After too much deliberation, Rei just got on with it and gingerly shifted Sébastien.

Hell.

Rei hadn't expected the bicep she found. Thank God she knocked him out and he wasn't witnessing her flounder. She held her breath and didn't breathe again until she'd securely tied his wrists together, positioning him into a sort of sitting position against the wall instead of the window.

Now what?

Rei got to her feet to pace. Did she find some way to get him to come to? Throw some cold water on him? Wait? Watching too many action movies growing up had led Rei to believe she would have a lot more fist fights over archaeological digs and yet, Rei had zero practice interrogating anyone. It turned out in the real present day, the biggest obstacles between her and digs were funding, visas, and bureaucracy.

She took a pillow from the sofa and sat cross-legged in front of Sébastien.

He disappeared mid-semester while she was still an undergrad only to turn up out of the blue in her secret apartment, dressed suspiciously covertly for the occasion.

She understood him even less than she had in university. By the time they shared a classroom, Rei already naïvely thought herself Dr. Monroe's favorite. She was smug and smart and too eager to please.

Sébastien Barret had sat in the third row, reading during the lecture and wearing the (in Rei's opinion) obnoxious logo of the Faraday Athletics department emblazoned across his chest. Some full-ride scholarship jock, Rei assumed, taking art history for a presumably easy A. No one who had actually taken a class with Monroe before would make that mistake.

Monroe called on him, much to Rei's sick satisfaction, posing a question on pre-history art discoveries in Europe. Rei awaited her moment to shine, so sure he would fumble for an excuse, turn red at being caught inattentive in front of sharp, stern Dr. Monroe...

He recited a passage from Amédée Lemozi's publication on cave drawing discoveries. In perfect original French. Without looking up from his book.

Rei could just imagine how her face must've dropped in that moment of realization. It was less tacky to be quietly brilliant. He didn't turn up to classes to prove to anyone how smart he was until someone intended to make an example of him. For the first time, Rei realized how infuriating she must've been in classes, always desperate for the opportunity to prove to everyone that she belonged there, that her family's money hadn't just bought her a spot into the program, that she was in fact good at something, despite the way her parents rolled their eyes at her passions.

Rei pushed harder to do well in that class just to reach the standard he set, not just in excellence, but in humility. When he left, Rei became top of the class. It was somehow an empty victory in a competition he probably never realized they had. She assessed him differently after that, considering the dedication it took to major in art history while the athletics department was on another campus entirely. Of course, through careful anthropological observation, Rei all but confirmed he had to be on some kind of team. In short, she spent too much time studying the curve of his biceps while he casually read in the middle of class.

Maybe now he'd reveal his damn mysteries to her.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them as she waited.

He stirred, shifting against the wall. Rei sat up straight. A million questions waited on the tip of her tongue.

He blinked awake slowly. Sébastien had an innocent kind of face. It might've been his brown eyes. Maybe it was just how wide and bewildered they became when it he realized she was staring at him.

"Rei?" he asked, one realization quickly followed by a second. His hands were tied. He struggled only a moment. "You tied me up?"

"You broke in through my window!" Rei exclaimed.

Sébastien pursed his lips. That was a rather inarguable point. He had to at least know that.

"Did my brother put you up to this?" Rei asked.

"It's—no. Maybe? It's a long story," Sébastien replied.

"You're not going anywhere any time soon," Rei insisted, "and I have nothing but time."

He sighed. Now that he was conscious, the tiredness in his face was much more pronounced. Under those big brown eyes were even darker circles.

"I think Cheng's going to frame me for your kidnapping," he said.

It was Rei's turn to blink in confusion. She'd knocked him out. How was she supposed to believe he could kidnap her? How was anyone else supposed to believe it?

"I think that might be a relatively difficult crime to accuse you of, seeing as I'm here and you're the one—"

Sébastien shrugged his shoulders. He wriggled a bit before deftly bringing his hands over his head and in front of him.

Rei stared in awe. Her shoelace bonds were half-undone, knots still tied at his wrists, but a longer stretch of string bridge the gap from wrist to wrist. That kind of flexibility wasn't fair.

"Do you mind? I can't get the knot undone," Baz asked.

"You're not human," Rei said, but begrudgingly untied the shoelace bonds. They clearly weren't holding him captive. It was probably better that he wasn't. Rei wasn't acting as a very intimidating interrogator. She would much rather have a conversation about why he was in her apartment.

"That's a hell of an accusation," Sébastien said. He rubbed his wrists as she freed him, pink lines where the laces had been.

"Well, what are you made of? Bronze?" Rei gave him a light shove, her hand on his chest. Just as firm and startling as his arms. Jesus. Maybe Rei should've expected as much from a man who had somehow scaled her building to break in through the balcony.

He turned endearingly sheepish. The blush flooding his face was far too innocent for someone dressed all in sleek black.

Rei softened a little. She tossed her pillow back to its rightful place on the couch and rose to her feet. If he wouldn't agree to being her prisoner, she'd just have to settle for treating him as a sort of unwelcome guest. Best to put the water on to boil.

"You said it was a long story," Rei said, filling her electric kettle.

"What?" Sébastien followed unsteadily.

"My brother plans to frame you for kidnapping?" Rei said, fetching a teapot from the cupboard.

It really was hard to consider him a threat. For one, Rei already demonstrated that she was fully capable of incapacitating him. For another, he didn't move in the kind of way that could be interpreted as threatening.

Rei was slight. She had her mother's misleading build, her delicate silhouette. More men than she could count came at her aggressively, aiming to intimidate her in countries where women weren't allowed to be nearly as brazen as Rei. For a person who was allegedly meant to be framed for her kidnapping, Sébastien was deliberate when he moved, but not sinister.

"It is. That was the short version," Sébastien said, "I was working for someone who wanted your puzzle box."

She'd emptied the puzzle box long before she left. It was a gift, the box itself and the necklace, will, and key inside.

"Wanted it?" Rei deadpanned, "so... were you meant to acquire it?"

Sébastien froze under her hard stare. He certainly dressed the part.

"Well... I did acquire it," he admitted, the flush returning hotter and redder.

She looked him over once more, the sleek black line of him down to his gloves and strange shoes. Feeling her eyes on him, he hastily stripped off his gloves, laying them on the kitchen island.

"You're not the art thief, are you?" she asked, suddenly so sure even as the question came out of her mouth. Cheng needed someone for it, and here was a fit candidate for breaking in. Clearly, since he'd found his way into her apartment.

"I would prefer the term outside contractor," he said weakly.

"You quit art history to take up a life of crime?" Rei said, leaning against the counter. She couldn't quite wrap her mind around what it all meant.

Without even speaking to her, Cheng took jabs everywhere he could. For the sake of their business, he had someone take artifacts from the rich just so Sundial could return them. For an added gut punch, Cheng hired this young man that she knew, that she admired, to do the job.

Rei bristled at the thought. Did Cheng need to taint everything for her?

"No, that's not—I never meant to end up in the business. It happened by mistake," he protested.

The kettle whistled and Rei cursed under her breath as she turned to retrieve the hot water and two tea bags out of the cupboard, dropping both in the teapot.

"Sébastien..." she turned back to him, finding his expression oddly knit. For the briefest moment, she considered that she didn't have the right person at all, that she'd somehow misremembered the disappearing classmate of that single history class.

"What?" Rei asked.

"No one's called me that in awhile," he said.

"Oh, have you got some witty code name now?" Rei asked wryly.

She regretted her tone immediately as he shook his head earnestly.

"No, everyone calls me Baz. Easier for most people to pronounce." He shrugged.

Rei wanted to scoff a little at anyone who couldn't get their tongue around the Frenchness of it, but maybe that was just her pedigree talking. She wasn't the one who had to do the correcting.

"Well, if you'd prefer..." though, Rei had always liked the cadence of it. Learning his name had made sense of his perfect French recitations from class.

"No, it's fine," he said, "you say it right. Not like I'm an animated crab."

"An animated crab from Denmark," Rei added, though all she could imagine was the bronze Little Mermaid sitting primly in the waters of Copenhagen, far from a cartoon princess.

She supposed Baz suited the sporty side of him, but Rei had known the academic, not the athlete.

"So, Sébastien, how does one end up a thief by mistake?" Rei asked.

He toyed with something under the cowl around his neck, looking off in a direction that was decidedly anywhere but where Rei stood.

"That's a longer story," Sébastien said.

Rei pursed her lips, taking two cups down from the cupboard. She poured him a cup of tea, slipping it in front of him.

"It would take one phone call and a bit of tearing up to convince the police that you've been holding me hostage here," Rei said.

Finally, he met her gaze. God, did the shadows under his eyes look worse up close. The threat didn't alarm him so much as invoke a kind of resignation. Tiredness prevailed over all other emotion.

He sighed, peeling off his cowl layer and the sleeves that stretched up his arms. Underneath, there was in fact skin, not the bronze Rei suggested. Sébastien was more than just a shadow with a face.

"Broke into a pawn shop. Got caught. I was offered an ultimatum: be turned in or break into this mansion up the hill in Britannia and take an ivory figurine out of a china cabinet."

Rei didn't know what she expected, but it definitely wasn't the cavalier response. It came either out of defiance or out of having something else to say.

"It's always that first time, isn't it?" Rei mocked.

"You asked," Sébastien replied.

"So why are you here?" Rei asked. "So I can be the answer to all your problems?"

Rei couldn't even face her own problems, let alone magically cure anyone else of theirs.

Sébastien blinked at her, both hands curled around his mug. "Trying to figure out why you're hiding," he said.

That was a question that loomed ominously over her, but she hadn't been forced to hear out loud until he appeared.

Sébastien Barret, returning to her life to force her to question her own behavior.

"Because I can," she said. She swallowed that bitter pill with her tea.

"What the hell is in that will that makes people want to steal it and destroy your room?" Sébastien asked.

Rei knew the answer to that. It wasn't so much that they wanted what was in the will, they just didn't want her to have it. Rei counted herself among them.

"Control over Sundial," she said, "heirloom necklace. A couple hundred thousand dollars in assets."

Rei never asked for any of it. It was too much paperwork, too many dirty looks, too much responsibility.

"That's what this is about?" Sébastien looked incredulous. "Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Rei mused. Cheng gave her a unique opportunity. She was already missing. Why not just... vanish? In a few years, she could resurface, maybe after a few months in the Amazon. Her family had always been good at enigma. Rei could simply become eccentric.

Legal matters would sort themselves out. Cheng could simmer down from his boiling point.

"Well, now seems as good a time as any to take a holiday, doesn't it?"

_________

A/N: Baz and Rei finally interacting! Is it what you expected?