by Amie Gibbons
How was that possible? What was she?
Ravena looked at me. “You didn’t know?”
“Honestly, I still don’t…” I waved an arm, “She’s playing that one pretty close to the vest. Whatever she is and whatever she knows, the Greeks want it. I’m sure you caught that part on your bug. They came after us for it. It’s why we have to join forces with you now. It’s the only way to get away from them.”
“But not Apollo?”
“He’s my friend,” I said, figuring that was as close to honest as I could get.
With Ravena or myself.
“He also helped hold the others back subtly so we could make our escape. I don’t want him hurt. In fact, I may be able to talk him into joining us, and by extension, joining you. What is it about psychics? You have to tell me that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Or you can tell me.” Tyler walked around the chair, sliding her hand along its back, like she was stroking something else entirely.
He looked small and meager when she stopped in front of him, fixing her eyes on his.
Tyler’s, “Tell me,” called every hair on my body to attention and I wanted to run.
Ravena said something in another language, making a quick sign with his fingers my eyes couldn’t track. Almost like when humans crossed ourselves.
He stepped back, seeming to collect himself. “What are you?”
“I’ll show you mine.” Tyler tilted her head, smiling wide as she plucked the cherry out of her drink and bit it off its stem. “If you show me yours.”
I squinted. What the hell was she doing to him? Purple light spilled out of her, almost in waves, but I couldn’t see anything more specific.
“You want us on your side, Ravena,” I said.
“I’m not sure I want you alive, let alone anywhere near me,” he said, eyes still on her. “But I’m no fool. I respect power. If you want to join us, you’ll have to prove it.”
“Why?” I asked. “You just want us to stay out of your way, not help the Greeks, right? We were going to offer to help you hide, as long as you helped us, but other than that, why would we need to worry about trusting each other or proving anything?”
“Ah, now that would be telling.” He pulled a card out of his pocket, then shuffled through his pockets again like he was looking for something.
“Need a pen?” Millie asked, pulling one out of her purse and holding it up.
“Ah, thank you.” Ravena took it and wrote something down on the back of the card. He handed it to me and the pen back to Millie. “Meet me there. Go after you finish your drinks. We can talk more there. Don’t tell Apollo about this.”
He pointed at Tyler. “I’ll have taken something to guard against you. Don’t try that again.”
“Try what?” she said, big eyes oh so innocent.
“Whatever that was.”
She shrugged. “How do you plan to take something to guard against me when you don’t know what I am?”
“Tyler,” Millie said, “don’t taunt him.”
Tyler pouted. “Oh, but it’s so fun. And I’m, hungry.”
Ravena grabbed his coat and walked away.
I watched him until his form cleared the wall length window and he rounded the corner.
“Millie?” I asked.
She held up the pen. “Yep.”
“Good.” I bumped Tyler with my elbow. “That was interesting.”
She smiled, sitting back down and grabbing her drink.
“So, my best guess right now on what you are? Vampire.”
Tyler laughed, spattering the table with a gin shower. “You’ve seen me in sunlight. And there would be dead bodies left in my wake, not just tired penises.”
“Well,” Millie said, “depending on the reality’s magical rules, you could just be leaving tired people in your wake.”
Tyler shot her a glare and Millie actually flinched.
“Fine, I’m a dork,” Millie said a little too quickly.
What did I just miss?
“But the rules on magic and vampires and stuff differ between different books and, you know, movies and stuff.” Millie took a gulp of her drink.
I looked between them.
“In some they can go in sunlight and in some they don’t usually kill people from feeding because they can’t eat that much at once. It’s more like milking a cow.”
“Millie, you’re babbling,” Tyler said.
“Yeah, I know.” She downed the rest of her drink in one gulp and pointed at Tyler’s with her empty glass. “Almost done?”
“Should you be drinking?” I asked Tyler. “Considering you’re already about to bone the bad guy?”
“One, you’re right, this makes it stronger.” She took a long sip. “Meaning me more powerful. Two, he’s not that bad.” She gave me a pointed look. “We are working with him, after all.”
“Right.” I scratched Mira’s head. “Oh crap! What do we do with her?”
“We’re not taking her with us,” Millie said, hard and fast.
Oooooookay, can you say mama bear? Not that I could blame her. Mira was basically her baby.
“Anyone we know who can babysit a drunk flying cat?” Millie asked.
“I actually have a friend who has a meowl, he could probably take in another one for the night,” Tyler said. “It’s the photographer I told you about.”
Millie sighed. “I don’t like leaving her with a stranger. What are the odds we’ll be back tonight?”
What are the odds we’ll be back?
I kept that to myself.
# # #
“Is this it?” Millie asked.
I double-checked the card. The addresses matched, but yikes.
The street in East Nashville wasn’t so much a street as it was an alleyway with houses. The squat, one level buildings were a far cry from the neoclassical beauties that dominated Nashville home architecture on both sides of the river.
While the east side was definitely the bad side of town, it was undergoing major revitalization in chunks and had become the home of the cool, hipster artist scene.
Streets of dilapidated houses with bars on the windows snuggled up to ones full of cafes, boutiques, and craft beer slinging bars.
This street was definitely the former.
The houses were rectangular blocks with cheap siding plunked on swaths of dead grass the size of postage stamps. Mobile homes with foundation and a patio here or there more than anything else.
No columns and wraparound porches on this block, no siree. But crooning and guitar strums drifted onto this street from a café we passed a block over. Leave it to Nashville.
Without the gentle bluegrass, the street would’ve been a scary dump, the type of place a woman didn’t walk alone at night or maybe even during the day. With it and the promise of a nice street mere minutes away, it was charming with a hint of likely to get mugged. Kind of like dating a “dangerous” guy.
I’d always liked the good guys myself.
“Yeah,” I said, taking the first step up to the house like it was going to eat me. Or like the rotting wood was going to break under my weight. Honestly wasn’t sure which was more likely.
I paused, looking back down the street to the church holding vigil at the corner. It was Catholic.
“Cassandra?” Millie asked, turning to follow my gaze.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure I can explain it.”
“Try?”
“I don’t know if I can go to church if I really am a god.”
“Of course you can,” Millie said in her patented ‘you’re being stupid’ tone.
I closed my eyes, just for a second. “I know you don’t believe. But I do. And-”
“That’s my point. Remember what you told me once? Magic is about belief. You believe in a one true god. If it’s up there, wouldn’t it appreciate that you believe no matter what powers you have? Wouldn’t that god be the one who gave you powers in the first place?”
Millie walked past me on the stairs, standing on tiptoe to get a better look at the church.
“Way I see it,” she said, “even if there wasn’t a god, there’s some greater power now, if only by virtue of belief. There’s billions of people that believe in some greater god. And in the end, I don’t know if it matters that god made people or people made god, long as he’s up there and gives a shit about us.”
Tyler snorted. “What makes you think belief is that powerful?”
“Me.” Millie shrugged. “I wanted magic so bad when it woke up that I tried at least a hundred spells others came up with, with no results.”
She held up a finger. “Until my wings popped out when I was scared. After that, I knew I had magic, so suddenly I could do every spell put in front of me, and a few I just made up. Cassandra, you believe. In the end, I think that’s all that matters.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if God doesn’t want u… gods.”
“Well, I don’t believe I am.” She grinned and turned away.
I cleared the steps behind her without incident, looking around again. Not sure for what.
I knocked on the door. Trying that first seemed safest. You don’t bust in on people with an arsenal waiting for the feds to attack, and you don’t bust in on gods waiting for the world to end.
We waited, at least a minute, maybe more.
Tyler came up the stairs. She must’ve been waiting at the bottom for something.
“This is ridiculous.” She tried the handle and it turned so she pushed the door open, drawing her gun before poking her head in. “All clear.”
I walked in, Millie taking up the back.
I would’ve felt better with her in the middle.
Millie was definitely the brains when it came to magical showdowns, having the potions on hand proved that, but in a fight she was like me, just with wings instead of speed. A martial artist, black belt but out of practice, and had never been very good.
We all first met One-L and became friends because we did martial arts, went shooting and played Poker. We were the girls who did guy things. Not uncommon in modern America, but still stereotypes prevailed.
And now? These girls with my mom and my dogs were family. The only family I had within a thousand miles.
How did I let myself drag them into this?
They should’ve been home, working or reading or watching TV and playing with their cats. Not here. This wasn’t their fight. It was ours.
Did I just think of the gods and me in one category?
Well, shit.
We tiptoed through the house, Tyler taking point, looking around each corner with her gun first, held close to her body. It looked awkward but it was actually a better way to keep control of the weapon.
The living room and kitchen were the entire downstairs, the darkness flavored with mold, but otherwise an ordinary, poorly kept up house.
We walked upstairs, still in our line. I slid my hand under my jacket and rested it on my gun, ready to pull it if something tried to surprise us, only keeping it hidden so I could surprise anyone who thought I was unarmed.
I glanced back. Millie’s hand was under her jacket in a similar way, but the thing concealed under hers wasn’t a weapon, at least not any that existed in this world before two years ago. Potion or spell of some sort. But what?
With Millie you never knew.
I focused on the walls as we tiptoed up the stairs. Patches of lighter colored paint obvious even in the dim light showed where pictures used to hang. The sagging furniture downstairs suggested this place wasn’t abandoned, but the lack of upkeep said something else.
The walls were a dingy yellow, almost like someone though it would be cheery and someone else came in and chained up that cheer so it died a slow death by neglect.
Dear God I was scared.
My eyes danced around, looking at everything so fast I couldn’t process it all. Then again, the mind rarely could.
Dammit! I need to focus.
This wasn’t okay when I did it in court or in front of judges and it certainly wasn’t okay now.
I focused on the world in front of me, mostly Tyler’s ass, and made my mind stay in the moment.
I focused on my ears, on every detail breathing through the house, on sending my psychic ability spreading out, searching for the reason we were here.
While my nerves sparked their protest, screaming we were here for a trap.
I pinched myself, making sure I was really awake, this was really happening.
It was.
We cleared the stairs. I listened with everything I had. Scuffling so light I didn’t know if it was in my head or the house came from the left.
“You made it, wonderful.”
“Ah!” I screamed, jumping back.
Ravena appeared in front of us, like… like he just walked through a door.
“There’s a doorway there,” I said.
“Yes. Come with me.” Ravena turned, walking through air and out of sight.
“How?” Millie started. She cleared her throat. “How do they have a doorway here into their place? Aren’t we just supposed to be able to connect this world to the corresponding point in theirs?”
“And?” Tyler asked.
“And, the Greeks have the U.S. Anywhere in the U.S. should tie to Olympus, as in, the Greek’s territory. So, are the defectors set up in the Greeks’ territory? Or can they somehow circumvent that rule and get themselves into their part of the gods dimension from other parts of the world?”
“Only one way to find out.” Tyler walked straight for where Ravena disappeared. “Wait for me to say it’s safe,” she said before plunging into air.
We waited.
And waited some more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Do you think she’s dead?” Millie asked after an eternity. In real time and not panicked and about to charge in there time, about thirty seconds.
I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t breathe enough to answer.
Tyler’s head popped back out. “It’s gorgeous. I want to move here.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. “You couldn’t have said you were safe before admiring the décor?”
“I did soon as I could, not my fault the décor took my breath away.”
“Tyler, you are going to be the death of me. It took my breath away, too.”
“I have that effect on most people.”
She winked and pulled her head back.
“Alright,” I said, resting my hand on the butt of the gun like I was just propping my hand on my hip. “Let’s go.”
We walked through.
The light blinded me for a second and I gave up all pretense, grabbing my gun and pulling it out. Not that it’d do any good without me being able to see to aim it, but still, it made me feel better to have some line of defense.
“Whoa,” Millie breathed.
I opened my eyes, blinking to get them adjusted faster.
“Yeah,” I said as soon as I could speak.
Whoa pretty much covered it.
We were in a circular room about the size of a grand hotel’s lobby. The walls were draped in green silks of varying hues and making countless patterns with lines of gold.
The carpets were gold and as decadent as anything in Apollo’s theater. In the very middle, the carpet gave way to black onyx circling a pool of water.
As far as I could tell, nothing was holding the pool in. It rose above the floor level, but stayed as though there was an invisible wall around it.
It was maybe big enough for one person to stand in, two if they were models. I couldn’t focus my eyes on it. I tried. It was like it was pure light or the sun, and I wasn’t ever going to be able to stare directly at it.
Benches of alternating black onyx and white marble lined the room. Twelve benches, all perfectly spaced apart. If I measured, they’d probably be exact to the centimeter. The room was circular, again, probably mathematically perfect, but niches carved into the walls like a giant t
ook symmetrical bites out gave it a decorative effect. Again, twelve of the things, all spaced evenly between two benches.
“The OCD in me is so happy right now,” Millie said, a huge grin making her face light up and her cheeks look round and rosy like a happy chipmunk. “It’s perfect. Everything is symmetrical and in twelves. Even the tapestries’ designs are in a pattern.”
I looked at those again. I hadn’t noticed that. Huh, the gold and the different shades of green really did form a wave pattern throughout the room. It was repeated a few times on each tapestry, making forty-eight if I was counting correctly.
“No wonder Tyler loves it,” I said. The girl definitely had a fetish for green.
“I want this exact room in my house someday,” Millie said, still staring.
She yelped, stumbling over her own two feet, and caught herself with spread out arms.
People turned to look at us, smirking at Millie like she was a hobo who just came in smelling of the streets and yelling about tacos.
It was pretty, yes, but I refocused on the people in the room. Ravena was talking with Tyler a few feet away. Beyond him the others were scattered here and there, ruining the symmetry of the place.
Ruining the peace too, if they bothered to ask me.
The air had a taste to it. A rich, dark chocolate almost, of bad will and malevolence that coated the back of my tongue. These people weren’t happy. Weren’t going to take whatever crap they’d been taking anymore. They were ready to rumble.
And they weren’t happy to see any of us.
The glares from the cluster of five nearest to us were solid knives of resentment.
Millie hunched her shoulders. She may not have been able to read people a lot of the time, but even she caught the hatred here, and it was making her bunch up. When she did that, it wasn’t because she was afraid, or trying to make herself less threatening like a dog in trouble, it was more like a cat coiling up to pounce at the right moment.
If she didn’t have potions in her hands right now, I’d eat my boots.
“What’s going on here, Ravena?” I asked, putting on my best dancing for the jury smile. All sweet and big and no way would I ever lie to you.
“A meeting of the minds,” he said, smiling back. Just as shiny and empty as mine.