I spotted a man walking along the reservoir, not far from where I’d walked the night I was attacked. Didn’t he know the danger of walking the park at night?
An oak tree served as a vantage point while I spied on the man pacing back and forth. He seemed to be debating the sanity of continuing across the park in the dark, as I had done. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt with the words SHIVA POSSE in bold letters across the front. Shiva the destroyer, the ultimate outlaw of the god kingdom. Either he knew that, or it was a really cool name for a band.
An odd sense of urgency nagged at me, ruffling my feathers like an itch that couldn’t be reached. It kept nipping at me until it propelled me back into the sky. I reached a spot high above the park as the itch grew stronger and then stunned me. My wings failed in mid-flight, and I descended toward the ground, gazing in horror as my feathers began to disappear into the pores of my skin, turning my wings back into flesh and bone arms. My feet flailed as they untucked from the underside of my tail feathers and went from talons back to toes. But I saw no images of my life flashing before me, or the Grim Reaper waiting below. My descent just slowed, and then my feet gently touched the ground.
The man looked at me with his mouth slack as if he’d seen an archangel descend from the sky. But I was no angel, and based on the thoughts that were running through my head, the decent part of me wanted to scream run! He just stood there, mute, paralyzed with fear as I reached for him and pressed my palm against this chest. His heart beat like a terrified rabbit about to be fed to a wolf.
The smell of his fear incited the strangest instinct. I tried to shake the thought, but the ground lit up in a blaze of blue light, bringing him to his knees. I wanted to straddle him and squeeze him between my legs until he disappeared inside of me, filling me with his flesh and his memories. I wanted to suck the life right out of him.
I heard my name. Someone was calling me, and it was like a light had been switched on. I looked at the silhouette of the trees and the ground under my feet, and I recognized the exact spot where Daemon had held me down. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe. Something was squeezing the air from my lungs. I flew back into the sky, wingless and powerless, into the black hole from which I’d come.
My eyes opened and stung from the brightness of the late morning sun. Constantine was looking at me with a bare smile that seemed to commiserate with my horrified eyes.
“Are you all right?” he asked. It seemed less a question of concern than a confirmation that the catharsis was over.
“What did you just do to me, Constantine? Did you see?”
“It is yours to see. Anyone else is merely trespassing.” He reached down to pluck a blade of grass from the side of the path and placed it in my palm. “Do not allow trespassers to judge who you are, Alex. You’ll judge yourself harshly enough.”
He closed my fingers over the blade and then shifted back into his aloof self. “So, you were telling me about this man you’ve been fucking.” He continued as if he hadn’t just planted a nightmare in my head.
“What?” I’d barely stopped shaking from the hallucination and he was asking me about my sex life? “I wasn’t telling you anything.”
“Well then, out with it.”
“I don’t know where all this is coming from, Constantine, but it won’t work.” It was a strategic move. He knew I was here to convince him to tell me where the vessel was hidden, and sending me on some head-trip vision quest was the perfect way to divert the conversation.
“No, no, Alex. Always in such a rush.” He sighed heavily. “You are one of the most impatient creatures I have ever known. Don’t you think you have enough to explore before we get to that?”
I stopped walking and waited for him to turn around. “There is nothing more important,” I said as he faced me. “I’ll keep asking, so why not just tell me where it is?”
He came within an inch of my face. “You are an extraordinarily special girl. The problem is you don’t know how special. Go home to your man, Alex. Dig deep and find that door. It won’t be pleasant, but when we all gather to play out our little game, you will thank me for my guidance.”
“Guidance? Horse shit, Constantine! Quit playing your game.”
He glanced at his Cartier. “I have thoroughly enjoyed our visit, but I’m afraid I have no more time to chat. I must be off.”
“Off? You must be off? I went to a lot of trouble to get here this morning, and you can’t spare a little more of your precious time?” I glanced at my cell phone. “It not even noon.”
“Alex.” His index figure found the tip of my chin as he raised my face back to his. “You’ve been here since yesterday morning.”
I tried to reconcile the date on my phone. The days were all starting to run together. When I looked back up, he was gone.
My hand—still clutching the blade of grass—opened. In the center of my palm was a tiny black feather.
EIGHTEEN
Greer was going to murder me. I mean, literally end my life for pulling the disappearing act. It didn’t matter that I had no idea how much time I’d lost, and if he found out whom I was with, my retribution would be far worse.
The domains of Greer and Constantine were off limits to each other, which meant as long as I was with one, the other couldn’t see me. As far as Greer knew, I’d fallen off the planet for the past twenty-four hours.
I debated whether to go straight to the club, because at noon on a weekday that’s where he’d usually be. But since he was probably going ballistic, home was a more likely place to find him.
As I turned the corner and approached the steps leading up to the front door, I wondered what he’d do to me this time. The last time I disappeared, he threatened to glue himself to my side and make sure my whereabouts were never in question again. Visions of a tracking device implanted under my skin came to mind. We were past all that, though. Greer would have to accept that I was no longer that helpless girl that stepped off a plane the year before.
I was Fitheach. I was a Raven.
Why I bothered I don’t know, but I quietly turned the key in the lock and listened as the deadbolt disengaged and receded from the doorjamb. No matter how discreet my attempt to get past him, if he was in the house, he’d smell me before I made it past the foyer.
I slipped inside. The faint sound of a spoon or a knife came from the kitchen, and I assumed Sophia was busy prepping for dinner. She normally didn’t cook lunch for Greer because he usually wasn’t home during the day. But I guess today was as good a day as any to break that routine, an idea that proved correct as I slowly turned my head toward the living room and looked into his face.
“Jesus, Greer.” He didn’t move as I jolted from the surprise of seeing him standing a few feet away. “You’re like a ghost sometimes.”
He covered the space between us in two steps and reached for me. Before I could react, he wrapped his hand around my head and pulled me into him. The heat of his chest enveloped me as my cheek rested against his crisp shirt. I could feel his heartbeat accelerate as he gripped me tighter, and just when I thought he might cut off my air supply and put an end to all this nonsense about amulets and scavenger hunts to save the world, he pressed his lips to my head and asked, “Are you hungry?”
I hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours, so a piece of cardboard would have been appetizing.
“Starving.” I pushed away and scrutinized his face. “Why did you do that?”
As if I hadn’t just asked a perfectly valid question, he took my hand and led me into the kitchen.
“Sophia has made us a beautiful lunch.”
It was more than lunch—it was a feast. I scanned the excessive amount of food spread across the kitchen island and glanced at Greer, wondering what all the fuss was for. “How did you know?”
“Know What?”
“That I’d walk through the door just now?”
I glanced at Sophia, who was finishing off a ripe strawberry and watching our exchange. Her usual aloo
fness was replaced with genuine interest as she hung on Greer’s next words.
He gazed at me for a moment, like I’d asked him a difficult question. “I could feel you. Now, I feed you.”
The strawberry slipped from Sophia’s mouth as she expelled her captive breath. A smile breached her lips but quickly disappeared when I didn’t respond.
Greer’s face went cold. The gesture deserved a response. But all I could do was stare at the enormous meal on the counter, thinking about the juxtaposition between the girl who stepped off a plane last fall and the one standing over a man in the park, meaning to do him harm. Dream or not, it felt real enough to make me wonder who I was becoming.
“Thank you,” I glanced back and forth between the two of them, “but I’m not hungry anymore.”
Sophia gasped as a cold veil fell over the room. Greer didn’t react at all, and I knew if I touched his face it would feel like a hard, lifeless stone.
I opened my mouth to take it back, but before I could speak, the sting of Sophia’s words stopped me.
“You ungrateful girl!”
“Sophia!” Greer’s eyes shot to his housekeeper.
“Sophia, I didn’t mean to—”
“You got no heart, Miss Alex.” Her head slowly shook as she wiggled her index finger in front of my face. “You better be careful. Life don’t give you too many of these.” She motioned toward Greer.
“That’s enough, Sophia.” He laid his hand on her wrist to put an end to it, and with a firm nod and a bitter glare, she punctuated her point and walked out of the kitchen.
“What the hell was that all about, Greer?”
He glanced at the mountain of food on the counter and then back at me. The look on his face triggered a swelling in my chest. As I recovered from the humbling, he headed for the elevator. I considered asking him to stay, but the growing feeling of shame wrapped around me like a dirty blanket, severing my right to ask him for anything. I’d managed to offend them both and wasn’t quite sure how. But I knew one thing: it was the first and last time I’d ever refuse one of Sophia’s meals.
I went upstairs and changed into fresh clothes. I came back down, hoping Greer had decided to go to the club after all. It was bad enough that I had to face Sophia, but the thought of facing them both was overwhelming. Besides, there was no time to try to make things right. If I got to Shakespeare’s Library before half the day was over, I might be able to salvage my job with some fabricated story about why I’d been MIA.
Greer’s distinctive scent hit my nose before I made it to the bottom step. Sophia was working over the stove when I walked past the kitchen. She turned her head slightly but wouldn’t look at me, not quite ready for pleasantries or forgiveness for whatever I’d done.
He was looking directly at me as I walked into the dining room and took my usual seat at the table.
“I’m sorry.” Inconsiderate and rude I was not, so the idea that I’d been both of those things sat on my heart like a brick. “Will you let me explain?”
He shook his head. “You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re a grown woman. You can come and go as you please. No more smothering.” He got up from the table. “I have to take care of some business at Crusades, but I’ll be home in a few hours. We can get back to business then.”
The last few days had been scattered, and we were losing precious time to find the vessel before someone else did. Constantine was a dead end. Even though I was convinced he knew where it was, getting the information out of him had proven futile because of some stupid sense of loyalty to keep cosmic secrets.
Some things are not mine to tell. That was Constantine’s perennial response to everything.
“Balance, my ass,” I muttered as I recalled my conversation with him in an apartment in Paris a few months back. He’d been referring to the code of ethics he lived by; some mumbo jumbo about universal balance.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
His eyes kept lingering on me until I felt uncomfortably exposed, like I was standing in front of him naked.
“I have the late shift. I won’t be home until after nine.”
He looked disappointed. My pesky job was getting in the way again.
He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and cupped my cheek with his other hand. “So much unfinished business. You exhaust me, Alex.” He caught me off guard with a kiss to my cheek, and an image flashed in my mind. I was standing in front of him, and he was on his knees. I pulled away sharply as the image vanished.
He straightened and pulled his hand back. “I’m sorry.”
“No. It’s not that.”
“Then what is it, Alex? Have we gotten to the point where we avoid each other in our own home?”
Our home. He’d never said that before, and neither had I. It was all too much for one day, and I could barely catch my breath.
“I’ve got to get out of here.” I stood up and walked out of the room without looking back. “I’m probably already fired.”
I’d lost an entire day, and Apollo probably already called that temp back to take my job.
The sign for Shakespeare’s Library came into view. I’d disappeared for an entire day without so much as a phone call to feign an illness, and if Apollo hadn’t already fired me, I was prepared to grovel and make up an elaborate lie to justify my carelessness. What was I going to do, tell him the truth? I’m sorry Apollo, I was sent on a vision quest by an arrogant satyr with a penchant for tough love.
My stomach knotted as I pushed the door open. The shop was empty except for a girl on a stepladder with a pen in her mouth.
“Inventory. Shit.” I’d forgotten about that. I hadn’t just disappeared for a day; I’d disappeared for a day during inventory week.
The girl turned to look at me when she heard the door chime. She hopped off the ladder and laid her clipboard down. “Sorry for the mess. We’re in the middle of inventory.”
I was about to introduce myself when Apollo came out of the back room. His shoulders sagged when he saw me. “Alex, what the fuck?”
I’d never heard Apollo swear before. His head shook as he held his palms up in a what-gives motion. His overgrown head of curls looked messier than usual, and he looked as tired as a student during final exam week.
“God, I’m sorry, Apollo. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry.” I had no idea what to say. The truth wasn’t an option, and I’d failed miserably on the way over to come up with a plausible lie.
“A death,” I blurted. “I had a death in the family. My…uncle. I had to go upstate for the funeral.”
Unlike Katie, Apollo knew very little about my background, so a dead relative in upstate New York wasn’t completely out of left field.
“And you didn’t think it was necessary to let me know?”
“Didn’t I?” I looked around the room for Katie. She’d back me up on the lie and ask me for the real story later. It would be her ass for not relaying the information to Apollo, and God knows I felt like shit for that.
“No. I don’t believe you did.” There was just a hint of sarcasm in his voice, another side of him I’d never seen.
“I told Katie. Is she here?”
Apollo squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the sockets. “Well, you see that’s the problem. Katie’s not here either. Apparently, she’s been ill for the past three days.”
“Um…should I go back and…” The girl grabbed her clipboard and pointed to the ladder.
“Yes, Erica. I would appreciate it if you could finish sci-fi before you leave this afternoon.”
I waited for her to climb back on the ladder and then continued with the lie. “Three days? That doesn’t make sense, Apollo. She was here the day before I left.”
“Yes. That was Tuesday—three days ago. And you were supposed to open this morning.”
The date on my phone confirmed that it was Friday. I did the math. We came back from Cornell Monday night. Isabetta Falcone and Templeton showed up
at the shop the next day. It was the day after that—yesterday—that I went to the park to find Constantine and ended up staying until this afternoon. Today should be Thursday.
I flipped through my incoming call log and found four missed calls from the shop, three on Wednesday and one yesterday.
My conversation with Sophia yesterday morning suddenly came back to me. She said we went shopping and had lunch. That must have been Wednesday. I was so confused with my days, I was afraid I’d bungle my own lie. At least Katie’s absence bought me time to get my story straight. Now I just needed to talk to her before Apollo did.
“Give me two minutes, Apollo. I’ll have a clipboard in my hand and we’ll get this done.”
When I got to the back room, I dialed Katie’s number. On top of all the lying that made me sick to my stomach, I worried about what illness could keep the unsinkable Katie Bishop home in bed for three days—three days. The message on her voicemail said her inbox was full.
“Alex. Please!”
I shoved the phone in my pocket and grabbed a clipboard. “Coming.”
We spent the next seven hours counting books, recording each one until our fingers burned. “This is nuts, Apollo.”
“Agreed, but it’s better than flipping burgers until two in the morning.”
He looked exhausted, and I had a feeling he hadn’t had much sleep with two people out and one temp to pick up the slack.
“Alex,” he began with a serious face, “I need you to tell me you’ll never disappear like that again. If you’re sick, you call me, not Katie. Understood?”
“Completely.”
I apologized like a broken record about twenty more times until we finally flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED. I’d tried Katie’s number several more times throughout the day, but each time I was sent straight to a full mailbox.
“I’m worried about Katie,” I said. “She isn’t answering her phone, and it’s not like her to be out for three days in a row.”
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 17