The Gods Defense (Laws of Magic Book 1)

by Amie Gibbons

  I glared. “Show me the door because I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “We still need to join.”

  I clenched my teeth and pain like a hundred concurrent root canals stabbed my jaw. “Ow!” He reached for me again and I smacked his hand down. “Stop that!”

  “I can heal you.”

  “I don’t want you to. I don’t want anything from you except my mom.”

  “You have her. She’s waking right now.”

  I sagged. “Just like that?”

  He reached for my jaw again and I didn’t stop him as his fingers traced it like I was made of spun sugar. “Yes.”

  The ache in my jaw eased. It didn’t even hurt as I said, “Alright, do the joining so I can go see her.”

  He nodded, fingers gliding up to my eye. He traced a circle around it and the soreness there eased, too. “Normally we have a ceremony for this.”

  “Oh well.”

  He smirked, eyes focusing on mine as his hand slid to cup my head.

  “Wait...” I tried pulling back, not very hard. “What are you...?” My mouth couldn’t quite pull the rest of the sentence out of the mush my brain turned to as Apollo got closer. “I…”

  He pulled me into him, lips cutting off my words.

  His mouth was warm and tasted of lemons as it forced mine open. Why had the flavor changed from the peppermint it was earlier? His lips were demanding as he wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me into him. He forced his tongue into my mouth, then eased up, kissing instead of attacking.

  He made a small noise, tongue finding a rhythm with mine and my eyes slid closed. I put my arms around his neck, angling my hips into his body.

  What? No! I wasn’t going to kiss him back.

  But my mouth apparently had different ideas because I didn’t stop. Warmth seeped into my mouth and crawled down my throat, caressing like soup on a frigid winter day.

  It spread through my belly, making everything tingle. And damn if I didn’t want to jump up and wrap my legs around him right here.

  He let me go and my eyes popped open as I sucked in oxygen. We were standing in a small, flower flooded courtyard right in front of the white door.

  I stepped out of his arms, glaring.

  “We are joined,” he said with a small bow. “Thank you. That was incred-”

  I slapped him as hard as I could. He barely twitched. “Don’t do that again.”

  “You enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have kissed you if you didn’t want me as much as I want you.”

  “I tried pulling away. You know that’s assault, right?”

  “So is slapping someone.”

  “Don’t ever force yourself on me again.”

  “It was just a kiss, it’s not as though I-”

  “I don’t care.” I stuck my finger in his face. “Never. Again.”

  Apollo raised an eyebrow and set his jaw, red flickers of anger mingling with orange confusion around his head, but he nodded anyway. “I swear to not kiss you…”

  “Or try anything else sexual.”

  “Or to try anything else”–he licked his lips–”sexual with you, until you ask me to.”

  “Until I ask you!” I crossed my arms, then uncrossed them again, my hands wanting to talk, too. “Fine. Whatever.”

  “I’ll see you Monday and we’ll talk terms. I’ll be draining magic from you during that time so don’t assume you’ll have it and get yourself into trouble by counting on it.”

  I tossed my hands up. “I can’t up and quit. I have to give notice.”

  “You can give notice, wrap things up at the office. Just make some time during the week to work with me. I’ll talk to your boss. He’ll let you drop your hours the next two weeks.”

  I believed him.

  “I’m going to go see my mom.”

  He held out his hand and a gold, silky bag appeared in it. He handed it to me and I looked in to see my dress, shoes, Pashmina, purse and gun. I didn’t bother getting dressed, just pulled my keys out of my purse, put on my shoes and closed the bag again.

  I’d be a sight, walking through Apollo’s theater in workout clothes and red stilettos, but for some reason I couldn’t care less how I looked like I did earlier.

  “Until Monday, Cassandra,” Apollo said as I opened the door.

  I walked back into the luscious hallway, flipping him the bird as I marched away.

  Immature? Yeah. I’m not sure why I did it.

  My new boss laughed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “You have to close your eyes,” Apollo said, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “Oh, come on,” I said.

  “No.” Apollo grinned, blocking my way. “You really have to close your eyes. Take it in all at once.”

  “Take what in?”

  When I called him, it was to tell him I couldn’t meet tomorrow because I forgot I had the trial. He took the chance to ask me to come downtown to meet today, saying he had a surprise for me.

  At least this time he asked. And he sounded so damn excited. It was cute. Kind of reminded me how he acted when we first met, before I knew he was a god.

  “Your office!” Apollo said, stepping aside.

  “Mine? But…”

  I looked around. We were outside, just down the street from his theater on First Ave next to the river. They built a stretch of about ten businesses that looked like the old houses that’d been converted to businesses over the years. Only these were brand, spanking new.

  They had porches with the roofs held up by columns, small patches of yards, were one or two stories and in different pastel shades. And all had signs saying, “For Rent,” or ones declaring the business’s name.

  The house in front of us was a petite, soft grey one with a wraparound porch and those tapered columns every few feet holding up the overhanging roof.

  It took a second to find my mouth again. “But it’s… I mean… I figured I’d have an office in your theater.”

  “What? No. Those are taken by people who are involved with the theater. You are a separate entity and you get your own space. I thought you’d like that.” He stared at me, all wide eyes and big smile. “Do you want to see inside?”

  “Oh hell yeah.” We walked up the stairs onto the porch. It wasn’t decorated yet but I could already see porch chairs.

  “Close your eyes.”

  He slid his hands over my eyes and I sighed an acceptance as we started walking forward. I heard the door open and didn’t need either of my sights to tell it was opened magically.

  “Step in,” he said and I lifted my foot a bit to get over the door jam.

  He took his hands off my eyes.

  The front room just off to the right was obviously meant for reception. It had a curved desk with a computer already perched on it. To the left was a large, bare room perfect for conferences.

  I went down the hall beyond the receptionist’s desk. There was a little bathroom, a kitchenette, and the two rooms in the very back were offices. They didn’t have any furniture either, not yet, but were decked out with multiple electric outlets and phone jacks.

  It was perfect.

  “There’s also a storage room on the other side, by the big room,” Apollo said. “Do you like it?”

  “You remember that whole kidnapping thing?”

  “Like it was two days ago.”

  “Yeah, you’re forgiven.”

  He grinned and wrapped me in a hug before I could protest.

  Eh, screw it. I hugged him back.

  “You forgive me for dragging you all the way out here on a Sunday?” he teased as he let me go.

  “Yeah, yeah. I was going to be up here to visit my mom anyway,” I said. “They won’t let her out of the hospital for a while. Want to make sure everything’s working, get her stomach going on food again, start her on rehab because her muscles haven’t been used in so long. So I’m going to hang with her.”

  “The change in you since Friday is palpable. You’re so much ligh
ter. Everything in your being…” He smiled, looking down. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Thank you.”

  He jerked up, surprise little licks of white around him.

  “Yes,” I said. “I said thank you. And I mean it. I was so angry with you on Friday after everything. And I didn’t… even leaving you on Friday, when you said she was awake, I didn’t believe you. I couldn’t believe it until I saw her. Part of me still doesn’t.”

  When I got to Green Hills Home on Friday night, the long term care facility was closed to visitors since it was near midnight. I talked the night guard into letting me in. When I got to my mom’s room, she was up and surrounded by doctors and nurses. I hugged her for an hour, making them ask her questions, to determine if there’d been any brain damage and such, around me.

  She couldn’t hug me back with such weak arms, but she tried. She kept telling me she was fine, wanting to know how I dealt these past years without her, apologizing for leaving me, still being a mom even though she was the one who’d lost seven years of her life and needed the comforting.

  She was so proud when she heard I’d grown up to become a lawyer.

  “What was it like?”

  I shook my head. It was too new. Too raw still. I couldn’t even remember most of Friday night. I stayed up with my mom and we talked our way through Saturday. I didn’t leave until night when I desperately needed sleep and a shower.

  “Surreal. Like she’s back from the dead. I never pulled the plug because there was always this chance she’d wake up. She wasn’t brain dead. But… I thought for years she’d come out of it, and the doctors said she could, but it didn’t happen. I kept hoping, but she never made it back to me. And somewhere along the line, giving up was easier than hope.”

  “But you still didn’t pull the plug?”

  “No. Because that was more difficult than both. I didn’t believe she’d wake up, but I couldn’t kill her. So I left her in the home, brought her with me when I moved here, visited when I could. She became this thing… like a photo album pushed to the back of the closet. And now she’s back and she’s my mom again.”

  Tears stung my eyes and I turned my head like I was looking into the other room and wiped them.

  We walked out the front door and Apollo closed it behind us.

  “Was it worth it? Coming to work for the big bad heathen god?” He grinned as we started walking back to his theater, the December day cool and bright.

  “Yes,” I said, stopping and looking him in the eyes so he’d know I was being a hundred percent serious. “Completely.”

  He stared back, taking a step forward.

  “As long as you keep your hands to yourself and stop trying to sleep with me.” I pointed, getting him in the chest.

  “Oh.” He put a hand to his chest in mock pain as I took my finger away, stopping mid-step. “And she ruins the moment.”

  “Yep. So, you said on the phone we needed to meet? For more than seeing the office, I mean.”

  “Yes. We’re going to discuss our… issue,” Apollo said, looking around.

  First Ave was pretty much deserted but there were probably people down by the water and who knew when you’d run into an invisible person or one with super hearing, so I couldn’t blame him for the secrecy.

  I was having a hard time blaming him for much of anything now.

  Honestly, if he’d have pushed, I probably would’ve slept with him out of sheer gratitude for giving me back my mom.

  Apollo smirked.

  “Did you hear that?” I thought at him.

  If he heard, he didn’t answer.

  # # #

  It was a quick trip through Apollo’s door into Olympus. We emerged back in the garden I left through Friday night. When I wasn’t desperately scrambling to get the hell out of there, it was actually beautiful.

  I followed Apollo on a paved path through the garden to a break in the hedges circling it. The world on the other side kind of looked like Vandy’s campus, if Vandy went Greek and not in the frat way. Tons of trees on manicured lawns, classical style buildings stretching above them.

  Apollo veered left and I followed. We passed flower beds, sculptures and fountains, all bathed in that unnaturally glowing soft light. Kelsey would give her left arm to do photo-shoots here.

  “Apollo?” I asked as we passed a fountain of three nymphs seeming to play in the water. “Why is there a fountain in your room that looks like me?”

  “You’re asking this now?”

  “There was a lot happening on Friday.”

  “I don’t know how to answer that to your satisfaction.”

  “Try the truth? I know, concept.”

  He rolled his eyes towards me before returning them forward. “She was a girl I loved. I had a sculpture made of her to go in my bar.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She died.”

  “Five-thousand years ago? Before you went to sleep, I mean?”

  “Give or take.” He shrugged. “I know she looks like you, but obviously she isn’t.”

  “It’s a coincidence? You expect me to buy that?”

  He smiled. “Well, I think one of the reasons I like you is you look like her. I always have had a pretty consistent type.”

  Something about the way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck come to attention. My friend Millie would say my Spidey sense was tingling.

  “Do you? Like me, I mean.”

  He stopped. “I thought I made that quite obvious.”

  “No. Your liking me seems to be contingent on if it’s convenient at the time. You have a bad habit of acting like you want to jump me, only for it to turn out you’re testing me or my magic.”

  “I did that once!”

  “No. You trying to kiss me in your room on Friday was the latest in a pattern of this.”

  His forehead creased. “What do you…” His eyes flew wide. “You… from your point of view… you think I was lying to you back then.”

  I crossed my arms. This wasn’t exactly the time to drag up the past. “You lied to me. It’s not that I think you lied. You did.”

  “That’s why you stopped taking my calls. Why you suddenly seemed to hate me. And you didn’t take the job.” He chuckled, but there was no mirth to it. “I thought you were biased against gods. I should have known.”

  I walked past him, suddenly feeling less warm and fuzzy towards him. “Water under the bridge now, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I shrugged. “I do.”

  “I never lied to you.”

  I walked faster. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

  “Of course it matters, you… Cassandra,” Apollo said from behind me. “This is it.”

  I turned around and he was pointing at a path cutting through a wall of hedges taller than some buildings. I’d walked right past it. Whoops.

  I followed him through the hedge break. Roses everywhere. Red, pink, yellow, white, orange, even some so deep red they looked near black. They lined the outer hedges like shelves on a wall and perfumed the air with their sweetness. The center was a carved, polished stone patio with a glass table and six wicker chairs.

  Hades sat in a chair facing the entrance, Persephone and Henry flanked him. Artemis sat next to the other woman and they whispered as we approached. Apollo held out the chair next to Henry and I took it. I didn’t want to sit next to his sister.

  Especially since she was glaring arrows at me.

  “Welcome!” Hades had never sounded so happy. “Cassandra, I don’t think you’ve been properly introduced. This is Artemis and my wife Persephone.”

  Actually, Artemis and I had already met, but hey.

  Persephone pushed up from her chair and held out her hand for me to shake. I did quickly so she’d sit back down. I guess I didn’t notice on Friday, but the poor woman looked about ready to pop.

  “Twins,” she said, lowering herself back down with a flinch. “They better be damn cute, that’s
all I’m saying.”

  I laughed. She had no discernable accent, could’ve come from any city in America. And she seemed so normal, not god-like at all, except for gorgeous hair and beautiful, delicate features. She was nearly as short as me, with straight golden brown hair falling to her waist, and wearing a light blue and pink sundress and flip-flops.

  “What?” she asked as I sat down.

  “You seem so American.”

  “Us younger gods have an easier time blending into the new world. It’s these old fuddy-duddies who can’t adjust their voices, or clothes, as well.” She elbowed her husband in his naked side and he grinned. “I mean, look at Apollo. You’d never tell he wasn’t any other yuppie.”

  “How old is he?”

  “No,” Apollo stopped Persephone with a held up hand.

  I waved him off. “Okay, fine. What about you, Persephone? How old are you?”

  “I’m thirty-five.”

  I blinked at her. “Like, physically, orrrrrr…”

  She pouted playfully. “I’m more like twenty-five physically.”

  “I just assumed. I mean, you’re gods. You should be hundreds of years old, at least!”

  “I will be. We have to start somewhere.”

  “Okay, you’ve got to tell me.” I turned to Apollo. “How old are you? My age? Maybe a few years older?”

  “You know my terms. That question is answered only with a little quid pro quo.” Apollo leaned in, giving my nose a quick tap. “You-”

  “Can we get to work now?” Artemis snapped, making her brother jump back in his chair.

  She had on her usual wilderness meets biker babe clothing. Brown leather pants, tight black tank top, utility belt with a holstered gun on her left side, a knife hilt sticking out of her lace-up boots, her bow propped up next to her.

  She’s as tall as Apollo and has similar features to her brother, only pale and black haired. She’d cut her hair pixie-short since I first met her so now it was punked out and spiked up.

  “Hi to you too, Artemis,” I said. “How are your dogs doing?”

  “I’m out of here. I have a hunt in Utah.” She stood, and said to her brother, “We need to talk.” And disappeared before he could respond.