[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company

by Tracey Martin

  “And?”

  Devon set down his drink, but he didn’t answer right away. I had to motion for him to get on with it. “I’m trying to decide if this is something I should tell you.”

  “If you’re going to betray Lucen’s secrets…” Well, he shouldn’t and that would make him a very crappy friend, but I really wanted him to do just that, so I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  Damn, first wishing for ghoulish magic and now this. I was truly a horrible person for having all these thoughts about Lucen tonight.

  “It has nothing to do with Lucen’s secrets,” Devon said, “whatever they are. I was wondering if there was a reason Lucen didn’t tell you these things himself. Since I can’t figure out his reasons, I don’t see the harm. You might as well know since you are one of us.”

  “So they’re satyr secrets?”

  “You’re obsessed with secrets.”

  “Well, yeah. Because no one tells me anything. So go on. Why isn’t Lucen telling me about his past?”

  Devon took his time, putting his feet up on the table first. “Because, like most satyrs, he doesn’t remember.”

  “Doesn’t remember?” I repeated stupidly. And then, through my alcohol- or pheromone-induced fog, I got it.

  I didn’t remember either.

  The last time I’d been home I’d found an old photo of me. It was from a camping trip, and in the picture I wore glasses. Glasses I had no memory of ever needing. That was when I’d discovered my childhood memories had become the equivalent of Swiss cheese.

  Together, my mother and I had gone through more photos under the pretense that I was feeling nostalgic, and I’d discovered more and more missing pieces. Yet there was a pattern to the missing information. I remembered people and places just fine. It was my personal history that was screwed up.

  I’d suspected the magic worked on me had something to do with it, and it appeared that Devon was confirming my suspicion.

  I picked up my glass but didn’t drink. “I have a lot of missing memories from before this happened.” I waved my hand over my body to indicate what I meant. “I assumed that it must have been something abnormal about me. Since I wasn’t supposed to be able to turn, the spells had somehow screwed me up.”

  “No, that actually makes you normal. It’s mostly personal details that you lost. Right?” When I confirmed it, he continued. “You lose something of yourself in the process, but memories of other people remain. That’s what’s hard to deal with.”

  There was a wistful undertone to his voice that surprised and confused me. I’d never heard Devon sound…sad? Feeling both alarmed and awkward, I tilted my glass back and sucked on the ice melt.

  Devon snapped out of whatever reverie had brought him down and straightened his shoulders. “Coupled with the agony of having gone through the change, it’s enough for most people to want to forget their pasts entirely. So they ask, and most Doms are only too happy to make sure they receive. I’d say a complete memory wipe is standard. No one, except certain freaks, would want to remember everything, so they don’t.”

  “You mean like me? I don’t think I had a choice.”

  “I mean like us actually, and I’m sure you didn’t have a choice about it given the circumstances surrounding your change. Normal people—stable people—like Lucen, would not have wanted to remember their pasts.”

  I swallowed the feeble remains of an ice cube, hoping I could hold on to each enticing piece of information I’d been given long enough to ask about them all. “But why wouldn’t he tell me that then? Why not say, ‘Hey, Jess, I took some memory-cleansing potion, sorry’?”

  “That much you’ll have to ask him. I’m only telling you stuff that would be common knowledge for all satyrs who came about the usual way. You should know these things if you take up Dezzi’s offer. I guess we expect you know more than you do, but that’s not your fault.”

  “I should know more.” I entwined my fingers and stretched my arms, careful to keep them away from Devon. This space was too cramped. Alas, my shirt slid up as I did, and I could feel his heavy gaze on my torso.

  If you didn’t want guys staring at your stomach and cleavage, you should have worn a different shirt, I reminded myself. But this was different. This was a guy I was attracted to.

  A guy I didn’t want to be attracted to.

  And the reason for that?

  Your sex hang-up. I heard the words spoken in my head with Devon’s faintly British accent.

  Cringing, I closed my eyes. That shadow of a goatee worked very well for him, indeed. He still had nothing on Lucen, but I had to admit it was sexy. And hey, we were finally having a serious conversation that didn’t involve him being angry at me. Amazing.

  And um…shit. I squirmed in my seat, this time because I could feel my body getting hot. If just Devon’s gaze could do this to me, his touch might make me ignite.

  I shivered with the thought of it. Before Lucen, my sex life had been as nonexistent as my love life, and I rarely spent much time thinking about its lack. Thanks to Lucen, however, I wasted a lot more time with sex on my brain, and oh hell, was it on my brain now. I wondered what Devon’s lips would taste like. I wondered what his body would feel like. I wondered how similar the experience would be to Lucen since I had so few other experiences to compare it to.

  Lucen would like this.

  It was a sobering—cooling—thought. Lucen would like this because it was a very satyr thing to do, and I was a satyr. So I should be okay with it.

  Human Jess would not have been. At least I didn’t think she would have been. She’d been taken from me so long ago it was pointless thinking about it, and anyway it didn’t matter. Satyr, human or whatever I was—I wasn’t the sort of person who could separate sex from emotion. Great if it worked for others, but I couldn’t deal with it. I wanted them to stick together.

  Devon hadn’t taken his eyes off me. How long had my thoughts rambled for? Worse—did he know I’d been thinking about him? He wasn’t smirking for a change. Instead his face was hungry. Predator-like.

  Had he been thinking the same things?

  I had to get this conversation back on track ASAP. I cleared my throat. “You said you remember your past. Why didn’t you get your memories wiped since they bother you?”

  Devon’s eyebrows shot up.

  Oops. Maybe I should have left that bit out, but I’d been thinking of the sadness in his voice. And, well, my mouth was functioning somewhat independently of my brain, which was still fixated on more deviant and tangible things than memories.

  Gradually, the surprise faded from Devon’s expression, and he responded before I could form a less-than-coherent explanation for my poor word choice. “The change wasn’t as traumatic for me as it is for most people. Because of that, I didn’t have the same motivation to forget. I wanted to remember.”

  I chewed on this a moment. Curiosity was a great antidote for unwanted lust. “Why don’t I remember it being traumatic, and why wasn’t it traumatic for you? For that matter, what’s so damn traumatic?”

  “You’re full of questions tonight.”

  “Like I said, nobody tells me anything. Which begs another question of why you’re suddenly being chatty, but moving on. Don’t stop now.”

  “Words I’ve been wanting to hear from you.”

  I flipped him off. “You’re going to tell me, right?”

  He chuckled. “These are things you should know, so why not. I can’t answer the question about you. I can only guess it’s because you’re different. You don’t need addicts like we do. That’s got to be part of it. As for me, I knew what I was getting into, so I was prepared. Dezzi told me everything.”

  Lucen had explained to me that Dezzi had turned Devon, and that was why he was so loyal to her. Why he was willing to remain as her lieutenant instead of moving on to become a Dom himself. “So you’re sa
ying most people don’t know what they’re getting into? Does that mean they don’t have a choice? It’s just done to them?”

  This was the answer I wanted most. To know that Lucen hadn’t chosen this life.

  But Devon’s expression shot down my brief moment of hope. “I’m sure some don’t choose it. Some Doms are cruel like some people are cruel. But no Dom that I’ve ever met tells people what to expect after the change. What Dezzi did with me was an exception because she was trying to talk me out of it. If people knew, I doubt most would go through with it.”

  I should have been sober for this conversation because with every word Devon said, I had a hundred new questions. Trying to keep myself focused on the main point was difficult. “Why not?”

  Devon rested his head in his hands and glanced up at me with an oddly—and endearingly—wistful expression. “You don’t need addicts, Jess. Do you know how lucky you are? Has Lucen ever explained why we need addicts?”

  I rubbed my eyes, confused. “I’m not that buzzed, which means you’re not making sense. You need addicts to feed on. Everyone knows that.”

  “No, not just to feed.” He stood abruptly and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Why do lust addicts crave sex all the time? Why do greed addicts covet everything they can’t have? Why do vanity addicts feel so worthless? Why are rage addicts perpetually angry?”

  “Because your addict bond makes them that way so you can feed off their misery.”

  “Partially.” He knelt in front of me. “But we can feed off all kinds of negativity. So why does the bond do that?”

  Devon had gotten way too close to me again, but I did my best not to fidget, and concentrated on his words. “You’ve lost me. I assumed it was just how the bond worked.”

  “You were in that fury’s head, Jess. You know from experience that the bond goes two ways. It’s a circuit.”

  “And your point?”

  He stood once more and moved away. “We don’t just feed on an addict’s emotions. We dump our emotions on them.”

  Devon paused a moment to let this sink into my thick head.

  When I didn’t respond, he continued. “We dump our emotions on them, they chew them up internally—so to speak—and suffer for them, and then we can feed on their misery, as you so eloquently put it.”

  I floundered for a response to that. “So it’s not the bond magic itself that creates the misery. It’s you?”

  He paced against the far wall, seemingly too agitated to sit or stand still, despite the lack of space. “Remember how you felt under Lucrezia’s curse when it combined with the F? You said it was like you were going to tear off your own skin with uncontrollable lust. That’s us, every day, unless we can get rid of it. And we get rid of it by giving it to our addicts. The misery we feed on is, essentially, our own. The magic that created us makes it. We’re the miserable ones, and we need to get rid of that pain to survive. It’s just convenient how we can offload it on others and feed on their suffering.”

  I swallowed and stared at the floor. Needing to tear off my skin with an insatiable lust—that was exactly what it had been like. Not a pleasurable pain, but one so overwhelming and all-encompassing that I could barely think straight. One I’d have done anything to get rid of. Only I couldn’t.

  I was having a hard time comprehending what Devon was telling me because nothing I’d ever learned about preds had so much as hinted at this. It changed everything. Lucen didn’t just need his addicts to feed on. He needed them to take away his pain. To live.

  I wasn’t sure what I felt about that. Pity? Anger? Shock at this revelation, for sure.

  “The Gryphons never taught you any of this, did they?” Devon sounded amused, but his smile wasn’t as bright as usual.

  “Nope. Maybe I’d have learned it if I hadn’t gotten kicked out.”

  Devon sat, rubbing his neck. “Now do you see why it’s so traumatic when you’re first changed?”

  “You don’t have any addicts to take away the pain.”

  “No, you don’t. So you’re so filled with this intense, insatiable lust, and you remember what you gave up to become this way. For what? Power? You have none yet. A longer life? Who wants to live like that? It hurts to remember the past, so people choose to forget.”

  I picked at the seam on my pants. My heart ached for Lucen. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk about his past. I just wished he’d have been the one to explain.

  “Except you,” I pointed out. “You didn’t choose that.”

  “Because I knew what to expect, unlike everyone else. Because I wanted it in spite of that. I wanted to remember because for me, remembering what I left made it easier to suffer through the pain, not harder.”

  “So you’re saying you had a shitty life as a human, huh?”

  Devon’s face finally broke into a real grin. “You could say that. So have I satisfied your desperate curiosity well enough for the evening?”

  “I suppose so.” I had other questions, but he’d given me plenty to think about. Possibly too much, considering I had to research entirely unrelated questions tomorrow, and my head felt stuffed.

  “Good. Then how about satisfying my curiosity now.”

  I quit picking at my seam, a cold dread creeping over me. Please don’t go there. I’d just gotten my body back under control. “About what?”

  “At the meeting when you told us what you were and what you could do, you mentioned that you were largely immune to our power these days. That explained a lot, and it certainly seems to be true. You were sitting so close to Angelia and her bodyguards, and yet I didn’t notice an effect on you.” He crossed the space between us in less than a heartbeat and stood inches away. The heat from his body radiated onto mine.

  My breath caught in my throat. I could close that last amount of distance just as fast. I could feel how hot his skin truly was. My lips were dry, and I struggled not to wet them. He could do that for me.

  But I didn’t move. I was determined to keep a nonchalant expression even though my body betrayed me.

  “So why is it—” Devon didn’t move either, yet I could have sworn he was touching me, “—that I can sense so much lust in you when we’re together these days?”

  Don’t twitch. Don’t flinch. Don’t give in.

  “Wishful thinking?”

  In the second it took Devon to think of a witty reply to that, I darted around him, banging my shin on the table, and re-entered the VIP room. There, I took a deep breath of Devon-free air. I could hear him laugh behind me.

  On the sofa, Angelia was talking with one of her dealers, so I waved good night and got the hell out of Purgatory before anyone tried to stop me.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I was hellaciously tired the next day. On the way home from Purgatory, I’d stopped by The Lair, filled with the delusional hope that I might grab a moment with Lucen to discuss my conversation with Devon, but the place was jammed and he was busy. Apologies and a quick kiss were all I got. I went to bed frustrated, mentally and physically.

  Armed with coffee, I’d arrived at Gryphon headquarters this morning and checked my inbox. But although I’d been cc’d on a bunch of emails so I knew Bridget and company were busy shaking down their pred informants, there was nothing for me to do.

  From my computer, I went straight to the library, which was where I’d been hanging out for the last several hours. When I wasn’t thinking about everything I’d learned from Devon last night, or how close I’d come to kissing him, my eyes were glazing over as I searched the Gryphons’ database for anything to do with Gunthra’s Vessels.

  Tom had told me once that World had storage rooms full of books, manuscripts and equipment that was too rare to keep in the regular collection. Not all of it was even catalogued. If he were here, I might have asked him if he’d heard of the Vessels, but he was still gone.

  Mostly,
I was grateful for that, but I was becoming less so as the day wore on and my search proved fruitless. Logically, it shouldn’t matter if I learned nothing. Gunthra had worded her end of the deal so poorly that if I found nothing and told her that truthfully, it ought to count as upholding my end. But deep down, I wasn’t satisfied with nothing, and maybe Gunthra had me figured out well enough to know that I wouldn’t be. She’d put me on the hunt, and it had become a mission. I had to know why she wanted to know.

  The single history book I found that actually contained a reference to the Vessels in its index treated them more like a legend than a fact. They were, apparently, the Holy Grail of the magical world.

  According to the book, the Vessels of Making were five objects of such significant power that their very existence had been deemed a threat thousands of years ago. A group of magicians had once created them to do “great works”, whatever that meant, and had then destroyed them.

  Or that was one theory for the reason of their disappearance.

  Other theories were that they’d merely been lost. And still others were that they’d never existed in the first place, and this had become the dominant theory. They were a legend, something to drive fortune hunters and conspiracy freaks mad with over the millennia.

  And just who were these magicians alleged to have created the Vessels anyway? The book didn’t say, although the way it was written suggested they were either gifted humans or magi. Maybe both.

  I slammed the book shut in annoyance and checked my coffee cup, but I’d drunk the dregs a while ago. It was time for more, but first a phone call. Thinking about magi had given me an idea. The last time I’d gone looking for information that didn’t exist in the Gryphon library, I’d checked in with Olef. Granted, he hadn’t been able to help then, but that was Gryphon-specific information I’d been searching for. These Vessels sounded more like general folklore, and general folklore sounded right up Olef’s alley.

  I got out my phone and jumped when it rang in my hand. As my heart returned to normal, I frowned at the caller ID. Unknown number. Probably it was a telemarketer, but I picked up anyway. “Hello?”