by Sierra Dean
Yeah, playing therapist totally wasn’t a job I was equipped for.
“Leo, I really don’t know what to say. My parents dumped me at Seth’s temple on my seventh birthday because I was born with his mark. I haven’t seen them since. I have…” I stopped myself short. His emotional outburst had pushed me to a point where I almost said more than I meant to. “I don’t have a family. I don’t have friends. Not normal friends anyway. So I don’t know how to make this better.”
“As if you could fix it with a couple nice words? Lady, you are fucked in the head.”
“Yeah, and you’re kind of an asshole when you’re emotional.”
He pulled himself up to his whole height, projecting menace from every pore. It took him one big step to stand in front of me and look down on me with a menacing glare. His anger was like a weight trying to force me down, but as of this moment I was done being pushed around by outsiders. I had enough of that from Seth, and I wasn’t going to lie down and take it.
“Get out,” he snarled.
“No.”
“Get out, or I will throw you off the fucking balcony.”
This guy was a big fan of the physical-violence threats, wasn’t he? Like I was so imposing he needed to resort to convincing me how tough he was. I was totally quaking in my boots.
“I’m not going anywhere without you. Someone wants to kill you, and it’s my duty to make sure that doesn’t happen. Your hurt feelings don’t factor into my job performance. Seth doesn’t care, he just wants you safe.”
“Safe.” He snorted. “Like that matters to him.”
I was already missing the nice guy from the bathroom. That Leo had been a lot more reasonable.
“You’re an idiot. The goddess of death herself wants you dead, and you’re going to cry about your daddy issues. I should let her have you.”
Leo eyed me warily, seeming to weigh the merit of my words. For the first time since I’d mentioned the night road in the bathroom, he looked rightly nervous. “You’re not a very nice person.” The deep, intimidating bass of his voice was gone, and the soft, charming accent had returned.
“No, I’m not. Didn’t you hear the part where I said I don’t have any friends?”
“Not all that surprising if this is your approach to socializing.”
“Are you going to let me help you?” I asked.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Then can you at least take me for beignets while you mull it over?”
Chapter Seventeen
My fingers were so coated with icing sugar it looked like I’d gone on a cocaine bender with Pablo Escobar.
Leo, for his part, was somewhere between impressed and appalled while watching me eat.
I got that a lot.
“I’ve seen linebackers who eat less than you. Like…NFL linebackers.”
“I doubt any linebackers you know made a three-hundred-and-fifty-mile trip in five minutes flat. Don’t food shame me.” I licked the film of sugar off my fingers and pushed away my second plate of traditional beignets. After taking a sip of my chicory coffee, I let out a small, contented sigh.
At least now I wouldn’t slap him upside the head without really good cause.
“Yeah, about that…” He toyed nervously with his coffee mug. His big body looked incredibly out of place on the small chair, like he was an adult at a child’s tea party. I’d thought Cade was a big guy, but Leo would make him seem average-sized at best.
We were seated across from each other at a small green metal table at Café du Monde, the air around us abuzz with friendly conversation. Tourists snapped photos of the famous patisserie, and pigeons wove their way under the tables hoping for bits of dropped dough. Judging by their round, feathered bodies they must have done well for themselves on a nightly basis.
I waited for Leo to finish his thought. The last time I’d offered him any information he’d threatened to toss me off a balcony. Maybe that was the godly half of his temperament flaring up, or maybe he was just a shitty dude. Either way I didn’t feel like pushing his buttons again for the time being.
“You said you were on the night road.” He drank slowly and met my eyes. His expression was imploring and needy, but I wasn’t sure what it was he was hoping to get from me. The truth was all I had to offer.
“I did.”
“Were you being metaphorical?”
“No. Hecate told me she’d show me where you were, and she did me one better, it seems, by dropping me right into your bedroom. Sorry about that, by the way. And for all the puking.”
He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “If I had a dollar for every time a girl threw up after seeing me naked…”
I snorted into my coffee, bubbles of hot chicory water spraying up my nose, making me cough in an incredibly unladylike manner.
As if any woman in her right mind had ever turned him down.
If someone told me his father was Eros instead of Seth, I wouldn’t second-guess them for a second. The man was a brick wall of stud muffin, and if it turned out my first impression of him was the right one, he might actually be a nice guy too.
Deadly combination.
I hoped Seth wouldn’t ruin him.
“You were telling me about the night road,” he reminded me.
Had I been staring? Drooling? Either was possible, but if it was the latter, I could play it off like I was still hungry since he already thought I was a human vacuum cleaner.
“Hecate told me about you. About your time there, if that’s what you’re worried about.” I realized as soon as I said the words that I could have been a bit more delicate about the reveal. Social interactions weren’t my strong suit, and that wasn’t altogether my fault. But I could have played those cards a bit closer to the chest, I suppose.
“Ah.”
“She was impressed with you.” Like this would boost his mood. Hey, you tried to kill yourself, but at least the goddess of ghosts thought you were a pretty neat guy.
I really never wondered why I was single.
“Anyway…it’s not the point of all this. She isn’t interested in you, just in me. Getting me here was an efficient way to get what she wanted from me.”
“Which is?” His attention was temporarily distracted by a group of middle-aged women at the table next to us. One of them laughed boisterously, and the purse balanced on the back of her chair fell on the ground. Leo darted in quickly, picking it up and dusting it off. He tapped her on the shoulder and handed it to her.
The look on her face when she saw him was priceless. She thanked him about a hundred times, touching his arm for emphasis.
“It was nothing,” he assured her, blushing sweetly.
When he turned back to me, I saw the woman look at her friends and make a fanning gesture.
I also saw Leo slip a credit card into the breast pocket of his button-down shirt. Smooth like butter. He must have realized he’d been made because he winked and held one finger to his lips in the universal symbol for shhhh.
Perhaps I should have cared and made him give the card back. But the woman was probably traveling. She likely had insurance. How much harm could he do? Besides which, if I had my way, he wouldn’t get a chance to use the card before I got him back to the temple. Seth or Sido could deal with his little kleptomaniac routine. I wasn’t here to be the guy’s caseworker. My only job was keeping him alive.
“That what landed you in prison?” I kept my voice quiet, but he heard me just fine.
Leo bristled. “Is there anything you don’t know about me? Seems like you know more about me than I do at this point.”
“I know what I need to know.” I stuck my finger in the mounds of leftover sugar on my plate, my gaze locked on him. “Anything else doesn’t matter.”
“I went to prison for forging checks, if you must know.”
“And stealing credit cards is a step up?”
“Whatever pays the bills, right?”
“I hear they have these wonderful things calle
d jobs.”
“I have a job. You think living in New Orleans is free?”
I grunted. There were plenty of sassy suggestions I could make, but he hadn’t asked for them, and his financial situation wasn’t my primary concern. Or any of my concern. Besides which, as soon as he was under Seth’s wing, he wouldn’t have any more financial worries for the rest of his life. Temple tithes kept Sido living in style, and I wasn’t about to complain about my own downtown Seattle apartment. Except that I never got to see it.
If that was the card I needed to play to convince Leo to come with me, I’d play it, but for right now it felt like too much of a bribe. Common sense and a desire to stay alive should be the only real motivation the guy needed.
Anyone who didn’t have a proper survival instinct and the ability to listen to reason probably deserved to die.
I licked sugar off my finger and tapped my pockets before remembering my phone was three hundred miles away, sitting in the same room as the person I wanted to call.
“Can I borrow your phone?”
Leo gave me a funny look. “Why?”
“Because I didn’t get to bring mine along when I got sucked into an unearthly road populated by the spirits of the dead. Why do you ask so many questions?”
“You present a lot of things that demand questioning.” He handed me his phone, a shiny new iPhone with a custom gold case bearing the initials MCH.
“Guessing this was an unplanned gift from someone?”
“I bought the SIM card.”
Leo was interesting, I’d give him that. Two days ago I thought I was coming here to rescue a little boy. As it turned out I was going to be saving the life of a ne’er-do-well small-time con artist with sticky fingers and a finely tuned sarcasm gene.
Peachy.
I stared at the phone in my hand stupidly before I realized I hadn’t the faintest bloody idea what Cade’s phone number was. Who knew anyone’s number anymore? Wasn’t the whole point of smartphones to clear up human memory space for more important information?
I knew the number for my own temple, but if I started asking them for favors, it would create too many questions I wasn’t ready to answer. As far as they knew Hecate wasn’t involved in this situation at all, and I’d like to keep it that way. The less Seth knew about my arrangement with the goddess, the better off I was. And the temple priestesses were terrible at keeping secrets.
I opened up the iTithe app and paged through the various deities, most marked as active, some with orange dots next to their name to indicate an anticipated delay in answering prayers, and went all the way to the bottom of the page where black dots marked deities not currently accepting paid prayers. There, instead of the names of the gods, were their universal symbols.
Because Seth was not called Seth everywhere he went, the symbol carried more meaning. Thus, the same system could be used worldwide without causing confusion for travelers.
Next to the storm cloud that matched the mark on my neck was a black dot and an expected return date of the following week.
How generous of them.
Similarly, next to the black cat icon of Ardra, was a return date the same as my own. I tapped on her icon and opened the tithing screen, where a banner across the top warned me my prayer would go unseen until the god was returned to an active status.
Below the drop-down menu for selecting the type of prayer I wanted and the comment box was a “Contact Temple for Assistance” option.
“You’re clicking an awful lot of buttons. Is that long distance?” Leo craned his neck to spy on what I was doing.
“I’m not even dialing a number. Have you ever used a phone before?”
Taking another sip of his coffee, he sneered at me. “You should be nicer to me. I didn’t see you pulling out your wallet to pay.”
Without looking up from his phone, I asked, “And which empty wallet around here should I be thanking for my seven-dollar meal?”
When he didn’t answer, I tapped the Las Vegas temple’s number and glanced up briefly, checking if I’d managed to offend him for real. The broad smile on his face suggested I was managing to do quite the opposite.
The line rang several times then picked up with a friendly male voice saying, “Thank you for calling the North American Designate Temple of Ardra, Goddess of Many Names, how may I assist you?”
“I need Cade Melpomene’s direct number, please.”
A pause. “I’m sorry?”
“Cade. Melpomene. Ardra’s current Luckless One. Are you new?”
The man huffed irritably. “I can’t give out personal information like that.”
“Sure you can. You know his number. I bet it’s laminated around there somewhere. He’s kind of important.”
“Ma’am, we have security protocols in place to keep fans away from our priests.”
Please, like this guy would be the one to drive a wedge between Cade and me? If anyone was going to do that, it would be me.
“Do you have a boss?”
“This isn’t Saks Fifth Avenue. We don’t have managers.” I couldn’t see the guys face, but I bet he was sneering in disgust. “I’m going to hang up now.”
“No, wait.” Shit, I knew I should have used the fake-sweetness routine, but I was so damned tired and sick of this that I defaulted directly to my normal, snippy, bitch mode. My bad. “Look, I’m sorry, this hasn’t been the best night. I’m Tallulah Corentine.” I paused, wondering if the name might ring a bell.
“The Rain Chaser?”
Ding ding ding. Looks like all my past work with Cade meant his temple knew who I was. It made sense. “Yes. And right now Cade is assisting me with something, at Ardra’s request. But I’ve…I’ve been misplaced. Without my phone. And it’s very important I get in touch with him.”
“You’ve misplaced your phone?”
“No, I know exactly where my phone—” Oh. My. God. Dumbass alert. “Actually, you know what, I’m good, thanks.”
I hung up the phone, and though Leo looked like he was about to ask me a question, I lifted a finger to silence him and dialed my own phone number.
The line rang twice, and then picked up. “Who is this?”
I tried to think of something clever or cute, but the full weight of my night was suddenly pushing down on me, and I felt like I was being crushed under the sheer force of my exhaustion. “It’s me.”
Cade’s breath hitched, then came out in a rushed, shaky sigh. “I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Hecate never came back, and you were just gone.”
“It’s a long, weird story.”
“Do you know any other kind?” He laughed, but it sounded forced. I wasn’t expecting real levity from him. The situation was more than a little fraught. “Where are you?”
“New Orleans.”
Another pause. “How on Earth did you get to New Orleans?”
“Not on Earth, that’s how.”
“I’m not even going to ask. Are you okay?”
“As good as can be expected.”
“Are you safe?”
I eyed Leo with an unimpressed look. Verbal threats and physical menace aside, I wasn’t worried about him. My threat of shoving a lightning bolt up his ass might have been vulgar, but it also wasn’t entirely idle. Demigod or not, he couldn’t hurt me.
“I’m safe, and so is the kid.”
Leo made a face at me like I’d said something vastly more offensive. “Kid?”
“Kid is a grown-ass man,” I added, more for Cade’s information than Leo’s ego. “I’m going to call Sido after I hang up with you, get her to coordinate a pick up. Then Seth can tell Manea where to stick her threats.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself yet, Sparky. It’s not over ’til he’s with his people.”
“Yeah.”
His voice lowered, going soft and husky. “You sure you’re okay?”
The bottom of my stomach got quivery, warmth pooling deep inside me and weird butterflies fluttering inside my lungs. As muc
h as I’d love to say it was the nausea returning, I knew full well it was Cade’s words making me melty and wobbly. Dammit all.
“I will be. How’s the runt?” I could hear Fen yapping loudly in the background, like he was trying to get a word in edgewise.
“Shut up,” Cade growled, his voice moving away from the phone receiver. “She’s fine.” Yip, yip, yip. “The rat-dog is alive. For now.”
I told Cade where Leo’s apartment was in the Quarter and made him promise not to abandon my fennec on the side of the highway. “And don’t you dare hurt my car.”
“Need I remind you what happened to mine?” he asked.
“No, that’s why I want you to be careful with mine.”
A soft, humorless chuckle came across the line. “Good thing I’m not the one everybody wants dead.”
“Ahhh, I’m better off without you. You’re nothing but bad luck.”
He snickered and hung up on me.
Chapter Eighteen
New Orleans is filled with the dead.
It’s the kind of city where the barriers between life and death feel flimsier, like you could pass from one side to the other without much difficulty.
Hecate didn’t need flimsy barriers to get me here, but the nature of the environment made me nervous. As Leo and I walked the dark cross streets of the French Quarter, I felt like I was on one side of a two-way mirror, and around every corner there were eyes watching us.
Being watched was a real possibility.
So was being followed.
The sooner I got Leo to agree to come with me, the sooner I could stop looking over my shoulder.
We passed an Automatic Tithing Machine where a few party-addled frat guys were spending money on Dionysus anti-hangover charms and Aphrodite instant-attraction enchantments. Most of it was garbage with an official stamp of approval, but that was the power of prayer, wasn’t it? It mattered more that you believed it worked, as opposed to it actually working.