Innovation's Muse (Truth's Harem)

by Allyson Lindt

  “Hey.” Cerberus’s voice was kind. He was in front of her, his hand on her cheek, his gaze searching her face. “How are you?”

  “This sucks,” she thought.

  He frowned and didn’t respond.

  Why couldn’t she feel him? The physical contact was nice, but the emotional connection was missing. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Did you?”

  The lack of anything was similar to when he walled her off. “No.” I didn’t tell you about Icarus. But of course she didn’t. There was nothing to tell.

  He glided his hand along her skin, to trace the edge of her ear. That should hurt, shouldn’t it?

  No. Why would it?

  Her earring. She’d ripped it off. Cerberus should be a double-image—hellhound overlapped with man. But there was no three-headed dog.

  It should make sense, but reason was out of her grasp. She fumbled for answers, and they slipped through her fingers.

  The world around her adjusted, becoming solid. She recognized this place. It was Lorelei’s hut in Hawaii. But it was an illusion. It had to be.

  The throw rugs under Lexi’s knees felt real enough, as the weave pressed against her jeans. The song floating through the air was familiar. Comfort and love. She remembered that.

  “Cerberus.” Lorelei appeared at the opposite end of the room.

  Cerberus was no longer by Lexi’s side. He stood in the doorway to the hut. “What?” He sounded gruff. Irritated to be here.

  Why couldn’t Lexi feel him?

  “Come in. Sit. May I get you something to drink?” Lorelei asked.

  Cerberus crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “I’m fine. What can I do for you?”

  “You owe me a favor.”

  “Hello?” Lexi sent him the mental greeting.

  He didn’t even twitch, let alone look at her.

  “What do you want?” He ground the words out.

  Lexi might as well be invisible. How did he not see her in the middle of the floor? She stood, putting herself in his line of sight. “Cerberus?”

  He looked right through her.

  Great. She was trapped in a bad TV episode. The one where she was a dream. Or a ghost. Or existing on a different plane. And couldn’t interact with anyone.

  Lorelei said something about breaking her. That had to be what this was—a twisted series of events, meant to tear Lexi down.

  She wouldn’t let that happen. She’d wait and watch and look for an opening. If this was an illusion, even though it was one she couldn’t see through, she’d find a way out.

  “It’s not so much what I want, but what Hades wants.” Lorelei studied her nails as she spoke.

  “I don’t answer to Hades.”

  “No, but... Favor. And before I ask, I want you to remember you made this promise to me before you formed the bond with Lexi. My request overrides her desires.”

  Lexi’s gut churned at the thought. This was a trick. A literal mindfuck. She wouldn’t be sucked in.

  “That’s swell,” Cerberus said sarcastically. “What are you asking me on Hades’ behalf? I won’t hurt Lexi.”

  Lorelei buffed her nails on her sleeve, then went back to studying them. “I’m not willing to push and see if I can request that or not. Besides, that’s not what Hades is asking. He wants Icarus dead.”

  “No.” The protest slipped from Lexi’s throat, and she clamped her mouth shut. It didn’t matter. No one looked in her direction.

  Mindfuck. It’s not real. She’s trying to break you.

  Cerberus hesitated. “She won’t like that.”

  “You won’t tell Lexi. There are details to this favor. You had to anticipate that. Say nothing to her. Don’t act until I tell you.” Lorelei produced an envelope from nowhere and held it out. “The rest is written down.”

  Cerberus crossed the floor, within inches of Lexi. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t know which would be worse—making contact or passing through him.

  He snatched the letter from Lorelei. “So I just sit and wait?”

  Lorelei handed him a dagger as well. “And use this.”

  “Then the favor is finished? We’re square?” Cerberus had adopted a cool, emotionless tone.

  Lorelei nodded.

  The scene faded, leaving Lexi in a void similar to what she’d experienced when she first entered the labyrinth. Nothingness in every direction, including up and down.

  “Nice show,” she shouted. “What happens next? Do you show me the day my mother died, on a loop? No. Because you weren’t there. Do you make me think the people I love are dying, over and over?” She didn’t care that there was no response. The siren was listening. “Do you stick me in a combination of kind and cruel loops, until I’m useless and sobbing for you to stop? Because it’s not happening.” Lexi pushed to her feet. “You already told me what you’re up to, and you won’t fucking break me.”

  “I won’t do any of those things.” The music was loud and harsh again, and Lorelei sang her response. “All I have to do is show you the truth. You’re big on that, aren’t you?”

  “Fuck you.” If this was like the maze, Lexi could meditate her way out of it. If she focused hard enough, she could do what she had then, and follow her aura to where it mingled with Actaeon’s and Cerberus’.

  “Cerberus.” The hut was back, and Lorelei stood at the opposite end of the room.

  Cerberus stood in the doorway to the hut. “What?”

  Lexi squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the conversation that was identical to the one she just witnessed. This wasn’t real. There was no truth in it. It was an illusion.

  Just because it’s an illusion doesn’t mean it’s not real.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lexi stopped counting the loops after two hundred. If the scene took about five minutes to play out each time, she’d been in here for...

  Her brain refused to do the math.

  No one stole her mind, damn it. Almost seventeen hours.

  “Bill Murray did this better,” Lexi called.

  “Cerberus.” Lorelei stood at the far end of the room.

  Lexi could get up and walk around in here, without ever running into Lorelei or Cerberus. The furniture was solid, but she passed through the people.

  She’d pulled faces at them. Spent several rounds shouting profanities at illusion-Lorelei. Studied Cerberus from every angle imaginable. Sung over them.

  Her singing tended to make the music louder, and that hurt her head, so she’d given that tactic up quickly.

  “You know what the awesome thing about torture is?” Lexi asked. “You do the same thing enough times, and your victim’s mind becomes numb. They start blocking it out.”

  “This isn’t torture. This is reality.” That was singing Lorelei, not imaginary-vision one.

  She’s telling the truth.

  Nope. Lexi didn’t buy it.

  You feel it. It’s part of you. She’s showing you something that already happened.

  Bullshit.

  Why don’t you believe it?

  Because Cerberus wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  Couldn’t what? You’ve seen him kill. And you know how seriously the gods and their ilk take their barters.

  Great. She was talking to herself, to avoid an illusion meant to drive her insane. Wonderful.

  “Cerberus.”

  The loop started again.

  Lexi groaned and stomped her feet. “Stahp.”

  The behavior wouldn’t do her any good, but it was something different.

  She tried meditating several times and hadn’t felt anything. But there had to be a way.

  The scene had played so many times, she had it memorized. She used the background noise as a rhythm to set her breathing to, and focused inward on her own power. There was nothing else there.

  Then there was a separate glow. Not one she’d noticed in the past, but distinct and bright. She followed it, and it wound deeper ins
ide her head.

  “Thank you,” singing-Lorelei said.

  What?

  “Alexandra.” Dad’s sharp voice startled her, and her eyes flew open.

  The setting had changed. She was in the home she grew up in—the pink house buried in a tiny little Utah town in the mountains.

  She sat on her bed, the ancient Star Wars comforter wrinkling under her weight, and her stepfather was in the doorway of her room.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” His loud words bounced off the wall.

  She shrank back. It was rare for Dad to be this angry. What was she doing? “I wanted to know what the new boy could do.” The voice that came out was small and young. She knew this memory and what came next. “He glows lime green. It’s so pretty, Dad. I just wanted—”

  “We’ve talked about this, Lexi. You can’t do this.” The anger was already fading from his voice.

  But she was upset that she’d made him mad to begin with. Her bottom lip quivered. “I know, but he’s nice, and I wanted a friend, and I didn’t let anyone else hear me ask.”

  She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone she could see auras. According to Dad, it was because people still resented the gods, and it was dangerous to admit she was affiliated with them.

  “There it all is.” Lorelei’s song danced along the tension of the dream.

  Looking back, Lexi understood Dad’s point. When she was six, this had been worse than being grounded. “He can make the water dance,” she said. “He promised not to tell if I didn’t.”

  Dad settled on the bed next to her. “But he did tell. And you just did, as well.”

  “But...” She didn’t understand his rules. “Do you want me to keep secrets from you?”

  “I want you to not put yourself in situations where there are secrets to keep.”

  The scene faded, but it left a new ache behind. An emptiness, that one of her strongest memories of Dad was when she disappointed him.

  She’d learned her lesson. For a few years, anyway.

  And here she was, lying in the bed of a battered old pickup, next to the hottest guy in school. Everyone wanted to know Connor, and so many girls were jealous he’d gone straight for Lexi.

  Lexi fell hard and fast for his stunning dark eyes she could drown in, his body that looked sculpted from stone, and the gorgeous aura of gold and silver weaving around him.

  She was no longer a casual observer in these memories. She was reliving them, as her old self. She knew what was coming next, but no matter how hard she willed herself to leave, teenage-Lexi was content here, under the stars.

  Conner propped himself up on one elbow and trailed a finger down the middle of Lexi’s chest. The woven blanket they’d tossed over themselves was too heavy in the summer heat, and she was tempted to kick it off.

  The twinge of pain between her legs was a pleasant reminder of what they’d done. He took her virginity, but she had a feeling she was nowhere near his first, though he was her age.

  She didn’t care, because she had him now. This stunning specimen.

  “Is it your dad or your mom?” he asked.

  They’d stayed away from the topic of their parentage so far, but she trusted him.

  You shouldn’t, she screamed in her own head.

  “My dad,” she said. “You?”

  He laughed. “Dads.”

  Both parents were gods? Surprise and awe spread through her. “You’re a god?”

  That smirk of his was enough to make her squirm in anticipation again. “I guess so. Who’s your dad?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.” She might be okay sharing a little information, but she’d seen enough of Hades in the history books to know it wasn’t a good idea to admit her bloodline.

  “None of the gods are dead.”

  Lexi shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. That’s how it is.”

  “How have you survived for so long in this place?”

  “What do you mean?” She liked it here. It was lonely, but she suspected anyplace would be, and there were fewer people here, so it wasn’t as obvious.

  “It’s so boring here. These people survive on loyalty and hard work and that kind of no-one-really-buys-it bullshit. You belong someplace like New York or Berlin. The pantheon would love you.”

  Lexi giggled. “That’s not what your grandma says. She says if I ever met one of the originals, I’d roll my eyes so hard, they’d pop out of my head.”

  Oh fuck. Realization spread through her as she re-lived the memory. That was the other reason she’d trusted him—he was Dottie’s grandson, visiting grandma for the summer.

  Aphrodite. Her first boyfriend was a child of Eros. No wonder she’d been smitten.

  It was surreal, having access to so long ago and feeling it as if it happened now, while her current thoughts overlapped. Was this anything like what Cassandra went through? Seeing multiple threads of time simultaneously?

  “I’m serious.” He skated a hand up, to tease her nipple, and brushed his lips over hers. Each touch danced through her veins like the brandy in the liquor cabinet that Dad didn’t know she’d tried.

  “When summer gets here, I’m done in this place. You could come with me,” Conner said.

  “Dad would never. He loves it here.”

  He stared at her, brows knitting together. “I didn’t say him. Just you. Leave it behind. Come see the world.”

  “I couldn’t. I can’t. He’s my dad.”

  “No. He’s your stepfather. In fifty years, he’ll probably be dead, and he’ll most likely forget you twenty years before that.”

  The words hit hard, and Lexi’s euphoria vanished in a gasp. “No, he won’t.”

  “Zee...” He dragged a thumb along her bottom lip. “I’m not trying to be mean. You know these things. Love, devotion, commitment—they’re all lies and illusions.”

  The pain that rocked inside teenage-Lexi mingled with the denial and reality of now. “Not with Dad,” she said.

  “With everyone. It’s why I like you. You see that. You know we don’t love each other.”

  It was true. She’d never thought that for an instant, though looking back, it felt like a callous thing for a fourteen-year-old to recognize. He wove a spell around anyone who caught his attention, and she never understood why they didn’t see through it.

  It was because his affection was an illusion.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I have to think about it.”

  He kissed her again. “You’ve got two weeks. The instant school is out, I’m done here.”

  He took her home a short while later. She crept into the house, careful not to wake Dad, and lay in bed for hours, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the conversation.

  This wasn’t right. That wasn’t how the night went. She’d gone home and slept.

  Hadn’t she?

  Murmuring from the front of the house drifted into her room, and she strained her ears, to hear. One voice was Dad’s, and the other was female. She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. She crept down the hall, careful not to make a sound.

  “I don’t know how. But he came home and told me he was bringing the child of Death with him when he went back to Berlin.” Dottie.

  Lexi didn’t remember any of this. It wasn’t part of her past. This had to be part of Lorelei’s attempt to break her.

  But it’s real. There was the fucking logical voice, trying to change her mind again.

  “Come on out, child,” Dottie called.

  Teenage-Lexi didn’t know how she’d been caught, but she stepped into sight.

  “Why did you tell him?” Dad asked.

  “I didn’t... He saw what I was. I didn’t give him any names. I just told him my dad was a god. I never said who. And I didn’t say I was going with him, either.”

  Dad frowned and looked back at Aphrodite. “We can’t stay here anymore,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No. He’s a good kid, but he’ll talk. And I can’t keep you
safe anywhere else.”

  “It’s all right. We’ll figure something out.” Dad looked at Lexi. “You have half an hour, and you can fill two suitcases. Make it count.”

  “But—”

  “Now, Alexandra.”

  She scurried away at the anger in his voice, and shoved as many books, memory sticks, and figurines as she could into her luggage. She tossed a few changes of clothes in as well.

  “Lexi.” Dad’s voice boomed through the house. “We’re leaving.”

  She sniffled away the regret and guilt building inside, and hauled her things into the living room. Aphrodite was still there, waiting by the door. She crossed to Lexi and rested a hand on her cheek.

  “I’m sorry this is where we part ways,” Aphrodite said, “but it was going to happen. Sleep in the car. Your stepfather will take you someplace safe. When you wake up, this will all feel like a bad dream. Connor brought you home at the end of the night, and you slept until your dad woke you up and said it was time to go.”

  Lexi gasped as the living memory vanished, leaving her in the void again.

  “Oh, you’re all sorts of interesting,” Lorelei sang. “Not a martyr. Just a self-centered child, who would rather use the world around her and lie to them, to feel better about herself, than face the truth. Who knew that mark on your neck was ironic?”

  Ambulance sirens blared, filling Lexi’s thoughts and making her gut churn. She was in the living room of Dad’s townhouse, staring at the splatters on the wall, unable to move.

  No. Please, don’t make me relive this.

  Dad lay on the ground, his gut slashed open, and things that were supposed to be inside spilling out.

  “No. Please.” The words choked from her throat. “He can’t be.”

  A paramedic knelt next to the body and pulled a sheet over him. “I’m sorry. We can’t fix things like this.”

  “No-no-no-no-no.” Lexi begged through her tears. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t be dead.

  Someone rested a hand on her arm. “Miss? Did you call 9-1-1?”

  She vaguely remembered doing that. She’d come home to find Dad eviscerated. But he couldn’t be gone. They had to save him. “Please, do something?” She looked at the detective.

  “There’s not much to be done, in cases of ritual sacrifice.” The officer sounded sympathetic.