We hit it off immediately. He was involved already, but that didn?t stop him from being a terrible flirt with me and just about every other pretty girl who walked through my club doors some nights. Now, don?t get me wrong...he didn?t just flirt with anything with two legs. He has his standards. But the women just gaggled at him like little schoolgirls most of the time. I wonder if he ever tired of it sometimes back then.

I never realized then just what a good friend he would turn out to be.

Thinking back, I realize now that William was too much for New Port. I think he knew it. I think Ian knew it. Ian... poor Ian. He was always so quiet about everything. He was so tolerant. Really, back then, they were such polar opposites. I guess they still are, but it was very noticeable back then. William was so outgoing, so flashy, so much in the public-eye. Ian was more reserved, more quiet, and selective about his public appearances.

Really, looking back, we were terrible to Ian. I feel guilty about it, but I suppose I can only take half the blame. William and I got very close ? intimately close. We still are, but just not on that level. I don?t think I truly realized at first what the relationship between Ian and William was, but it became evident over time. That?s when I started to pull away from William in that respect. The attraction was still there between us, but we cut our relationship down to something much more plutonic.

But we had a lapse when Ian torpored. William was so devastated, so alone. He would come to my office looking so wretched that I would just hold him and let him speak, cry or rage. He feared Ian would never wake up. So, he found comfort in my arms for a short while. But only a short while. When it seemed Ian would not wake up on his own, I resolved to try to help the two of them and bring Ian ?home?.

I didn?t know if I could do it. In truth, I doubted my abilities immensely. The risk to me was great, but I felt I owed it to Ian to try. I had to enter the Astral Plane and try to find Ian?s severed psyche. It was an exhausting and sometimes terrifying experience under the best of circumstances, so I had to make sure I was truly ready to do this. Every time I entered that state, I had to realize that anything could happen and there was always a chance I could get lost, unable to return to my own physical self.

In the end, I was successful, and was left exhausted and nearly attacked by the hungered, waking Ian. In truth, if he had diablerized me right then and there, I would have accepted that ? atonement for the wrong I?ve committed against him. But, the others intervened, as well as my own sense of self-preservation. Whether he knows it or not, I still feel that a boon is owed to him. It?s why I later refused the boon he offered me. He owes me nothing.