Uninvited (Etudes in C# Book 3)

by Jamie Wyman

  He leaned against the doorframe, holding his side. He’d wiped the blood off his face and pulled his hair back into an unruly ponytail. The bruises looked a shade lighter than before, and although the swelling had gone down, one of his eyes still refused to open.

  “Thank you for the water,” he said hoarsely. His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, but he was sounding more like himself.

  “No problem,” I muttered. I turned my attention back to the countertops.

  “The music stopped, so I thought I’d pop out.”

  “You’re just in time to see the cleaning crew.”

  “Can I help?” he asked.

  Flynn grunted. “You can jump in this bag so I can take you down to the Dumpster with the rest of the trash.”

  I expected Marius to take the bait and join my friend in a colorful display of expletives and insults. Instead, Marius shuffled to the couch and sat down. Linux jumped up to join him and quickly offered up his belly for devotions.

  “I remember you,” Marius said, placating His Highness.

  Marius had only met Linux once, and it had been just minutes later that shark monsters had battered down my door. The satyr hadn’t exactly had time to get to know my furry overlord.

  “Careful,” I warned. “You start that now and he’ll expect you to pay fealty into perpetuity.”

  “Is he such a difficult master to serve?”

  “You won’t be around long enough to find out,” Flynn spat. “Besides, don’t you already have a master?”

  Marius’s voice cracked. “Not as such.”

  That hooked my attention. “What?”

  “Eris released me.”

  Dishes clattered in the sink. Karma moved just a little too slowly to cover her surprise but went back to cleaning plates. Meanwhile, questions bubbled through the whiskey haze of my mind. The goddess had once held the deed to my soul, too; I knew all too well what it was like to be under her thumb. But I also knew that Discord did not just cast her toys aside.

  “When?” I asked.

  “This morning.”

  Flynn sat on the arm of one of my chairs, his limbs seemingly relaxed but his hands balled into fists. Even after Marius’s confession, Flynn’s tone remained sharp and snarky. “So was that before or after someone ran you through a wood chipper?”

  Marius responded with a lame attempt at his signature smirk. “Think I’m pretty, Flynn?”

  “Gorgeous,” he answered, eyes steely and jaw set. “Wish I’d been there for your makeover.”

  Marius let his head fall back onto the sofa and pawed at his face with exhaustion. “Had I thought ahead, I could’ve recorded it and put it on YouTube for all the world to enjoy.”

  “I’d watch it daily,” Flynn growled around his teeth. “In slow motion.”

  I shot Flynn a warning look. “Stop it.”

  “What?” The technomancer spread his arms, affronted.

  My gaze held his. “I think it’s time for you to head home.”

  His eyes blazed, furious. “You want me to leave you alone with this backstabbing son of a bitch? Karma almost died because of him, Cat.”

  Behind me, the water stopped running. “Uh-uh, baby,” Karma said in a tone that implied she would take no shit. She left the sink and joined me at the small countertop, crossed her arms and leveled her focus on Flynn.

  That night when Marius had run, when everything had changed, Karma and Flynn had been lovers that night. But that relationship ended soon after as Karma couldn’t process dating a deity. I knew both of them still hurt from the breakup.

  She eyed him with ferocity, and his expression—guarded and alert—said she had his full attention.

  “That wouldn’t have happened, Flynn,” she said bitterly, “and you know it.”

  With a level stare I added, “As-kunnigr” at the same moment Marius coughed.

  I had no doubt Flynn had heard me over the noise, though. The Norse phrase—“god’s kin”—hit my friend like a spear of ice. He deflated, gaze trailing to the carpet.

  It’s true: Marius had bugged out on a fight. But Flynn had been pulling his punches in that fight. Flynn had pretended to be mortal for so long that he’d started to believe it. Unlike most other deities, Flynn did not have a pantheon. Alone in the world, hidden from his peers for eons, this god of thought could sometimes forget his own strength.

  Not many people even knew Flynn’s nature. Marius included.

  Sobered by the reminder that I was not just a friend and student but a believer, Flynn picked up the trash bags and headed for the exit. As the door shut behind him, I had the feeling he wouldn’t be back tonight. I was okay with that. If he returned and kept talking shit, I would unleash a world of anger on him—some of it deserved.

  Karma put an arm around me and squeezed. “I’m going to go check on him. Get him home safe. You good?”

  “Yeah.” I leaned into her, my copper hair mixing with the fluff of her tomato-red curls. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve got your back, girl,” she whispered. “Happy birthday.”

  Karma grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door and slipped her feet into her wedge sandals, pausing only long enough to give Marius a last, wary glance. Then she was gone, and Marius and I were alone.

  “Charming, as always,” Marius said, some of his old snark returning to that threadbare voice.

  “I would apologize for Flynn, but he’s got a point.” I sighed and went back to work putting away food. “You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  “Come get something.” I waved him into the kitchen. “I’m not a waitress.”

  He gingerly crossed the room and sat on one of the barstools by my kitchen counter–slash–dining room. Marius slid the remnants of the party tray in front of him and voraciously began to wolf down anything that would fit in his mouth. He winced, the movements of eating obviously disagreeing with his wounded face.

  I poured him another glass of water. I chose what little was left in a bottle of Jameson for myself. The whiskey burned in my chest and made my eyes water. My buzz was long gone, but the drink dulled the edge of my more volatile emotions.

  “Looks like I missed quite the party,” Marius said. “What’s the occasion?”

  “My birthday.”

  “Bugger,” he hissed. He hung his head and fidgeted for a long moment. “I didn’t know.”

  “You never bothered to ask,” I snapped.

  He flinched and closed his eyes as if I’d smacked him. “Catherine, I didn’t know where else to go.”

  The sincerity in his words pierced me, and I bled bitter venom. “Because you don’t know any other suckers who’d give you a chance?”

  “Because I don’t have anyone else I can trust.”

  “Oh, lucky me.”

  “Christ, woman,” he rasped, “you’re the only being I know who doesn’t have her own agenda.”

  “How would you know? Maybe I’ve changed since I left Eris and joined Loki’s workforce.”

  He shook his head, strands of black hair coming loose at his temples. “You might wear the mark of an Asgardian, but you’re too stubborn to ever truly bend to anyone, Catherine. I know you.”

  Closing my eyes, I counted to ten and drew slow, even breaths. I swallowed hard, listening to him grunt as he got to his feet. With just a few steps, he was beside me, close enough that I caught the scents of blood, sweat, and cologne. The unique blend triggered memories of old times with Marius, sending them playing across my mind. For most of a decade we’d both worked for Eris, the Greek Goddess of Discord. Though our indentured servitude had come about in different ways, we had both hoped to work off our debts by doing odd jobs for her—few of them legal—and more than once we’d been forced to team up. I played those times over and over, a strange highlight reel that consisted of us running from the Fae, sharing a dance floor with deities, a few missed chances and a slew of mistakes. After all we’d been through, after all we knew about each other, the bastard had gotten
under my skin and I couldn’t help but care about him.

  And there he was, in my kitchen, turning my stomach into knots just by standing near me.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice warm on my ear. “For letting me in. I know it’s more than I deserve.”

  “You’re damn right it is,” I grumbled.

  I opened my eyes and stared at his beaten face. Contrition looked so wrong on him, but there it was.

  Just what the hell am I supposed to do with that? And what could possibly have happened to Marius?

  I was too tired to ask right now, too exhausted to deal with whatever trouble he’d inevitably brought with him. “I’m going to bed,” I announced. “I’ll deal with you at a reasonable hour.”

  I stomped into the living room and joined Linux on the couch. Pulling the fleece throw around me, I curled into a tight ball.

  Marius’s footsteps shuffled over the carpet. “You’re going to stay out here?”

  I popped open one eye to glare at him. “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  “That’s not why I asked. It’s your bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

  I snorted. “And get your satyr-blood cooties all over me? No thanks. You’re washing my sheets, by the way.”

  He nodded slowly. “Fair enough. Good night, then.”

  With a small effort of will, I turned off the living room lights. Marius, silhouetted in the soft glow of amber pouring from my bedroom, turned and said, “I’m sorry, Catherine.”

  I rolled over, my back to him, and clenched my jaw around all the horrible things I refused to say. Behind me, the door closed. My brain wouldn’t shut off, though. It just kept playing those words over and over, trying to divine if he really meant it.

  I’m sorry, Catherine.

  I sighed. Aren’t we all?

  Chapter Three

  “Commissioning a Symphony in C”

  Sometime after “hangover o’clock” the next day, Marius padded out of my room. Bare to the waist as he was, I could clearly see the many cuts, scrapes, and contusions along his torso. Those wicked slashes I’d glimpsed the night before puckered beneath a black-red crust. His eyes, though, were both wide open, the flesh painted with the yellowish shadows of bruises. He even walked with less difficulty, standing at his full height.

  I put down the book I’d been reading and regarded him skeptically, “Either you’re getting the glamour wrong or my room has healing powers.”

  One corner of his moustache hitched up in a warm leer. “While I’m sure a night in your bed would do any man a world of wonders, it is not a fountain of youth. And it’s no glamour,” he added. “I just heal more rapidly than your lot.”

  The memory of another morning spent with him came unbidden. He had been shirtless, and I’d lost my pants. The night before he’d taken a ginormous bird’s beak to the bicep, and mere hours later it looked less like a gaping tear and more like an angry scratch. I’d seen the proof that the supernatural heritage in his veins allowed his body to stitch itself back together with amazing speed.

  Marius’s recovery reached beneath his skin, too. Mischief sparkled in his green eyes, and when he spoke, I heard his usual velvety baritone once again. “You could do with a larger bed, though,” he said as he crossed the room to one of my armchairs. “I know you’re a small woman, but there’s not much room for sport. Not anything adventurous, anyway.”

  “It suits me just fine,” I countered.

  I glanced a path down his chest, lower past the gouges at his ribs, before resting on the bare patch of skin on the underside of his left wrist.

  “It’s gone,” I said. “Your brand.”

  “I told you Eris released me.” He nodded at my wrist. “I see you still have Loki’s mark.”

  I self-consciously ran a few fingers over the ice-blue rune that announced to any who cared that I was beholden to the Norse God of Mayhem. Before the rune, I’d worn Eris’s golden apple, the same one I’d never seen Marius without. For centuries now he’d been working off his debt to the goddess in hopes that she would remove the curse Zeus had laid upon him centuries before.

  “You balance your books with her?” I asked.

  “Nothing so polite as that.”

  “Dishonorable discharge?”

  “Of a sort.”

  “What happened?”

  He sighed and wiggled in the chair. He might have been settling in or squirming, I couldn’t tell. “Is there anything for breakfast?”

  “No,” I said, folding my arms. “I told you last night that you could stay until morning. You’ve already been here longer than that. If you’re going to park it here a minute more, it’s time to feed the meter. Tell me what happened and why you’ve darkened my doorstep.”

  “Pan’s balls,” he said, exasperated. “And I thought you were stubborn before. Working for Loki has made you a chilly bitch on top of that.”

  “Not doing yourself any favors,” I warned.

  It was a testament to just how desperate for help he was when he sighed and said, “Eris discovered some of my other…enterprises. She wasn’t too thrilled about it and showed me the door.”

  “She found out you had deals going with Loki?”

  He raised an eyebrow in subdued surprise. “And just how did you know that I sometimes moonlight for your boss?”

  “Put it together after the poker game. Too many things went right for Loki for him to not have had help. I saw him palm you some cash the next morning and filled in the holes.”

  “Clever girl. Yes, she put that together as well, though not as quickly as you did. After I turned up without Polyhymnia’s veil, she ferreted out a number of my other business partnerships, too.”

  “And she kicked your ass, I see.”

  Marius snorted. “You should know the Lady better than that. Discord would never do her own dirty work. Where’s the fun in that?” I narrowed my eyes, and he answered the unspoken question. “No, all she had to do was whisper a word of my misdeeds into the proper ears, and some emissaries came to chat.” He spread his hands and displayed his battered body. “What you see is what you get.”

  “Since you and Eris didn’t part on the best of terms, I’m guessing she didn’t fulfill her end of your bargain. You’re still…” I searched for the right word. Impotent? Neutered? “Cursed?”

  “You assume correctly.” He simmered there a moment. “I know I’m not in a position to ask favors, but I don’t suppose you’d be willing to have another go at curing me of this particular ailment?”

  “No chance. Especially since you can do it yourself.” I bit my lower lip, relishing the opportunity to make the satyr squirm. “Trouble falling in love?”

  He shuddered. “Disgusting. I still refuse to believe that’s the only way.”

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Not my fault the gods think it’s a great joke to make a satyr have to give a damn about someone else to get his groove back.”

  He turned his green stare to me, his face stony and serious. “Leave it,” he chided.

  As much fun as it was to poke and prod at his soft underbelly, seeing his mangled torso was enough to convince me that it was time to hold my tongue. Marius gazed off into nothing for a few awkward moments, fingers combing his goatee.

  “What are you doing here, Marius? Really?”

  “I’m not sure to be honest,” he said, then laughed uneasily. “The list of people I can go to for help has shrunk considerably. Freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “At least no one is there to tell you what to do,” I said.

  “That also means there’s no one to tell others to leave me alone.”

  “No one to hide behind, either?” I asked bitterly.

  He eyed me, one hand idly stroking the arm of his chair. Finally, he answered. “Something like that.”

  “Is that what you’re doing now? Hiding behind me?” The old wound opened, and black ire started pouring into my voice. “Hoping that if some big nasty breaks down my door again it
will come after me and give you time to run away?”

  Emotion rippled over his face like waves on the surface of a still pond. Anger sparked in his eyes while sad helplessness dragged at his cheeks. “That’s not why I’m here,” he protested through his clenched teeth.

  “Isn’t it? You’re like a little remora, looking for the biggest fish to swim with so you don’t get swallowed up. You don’t give a shit who gets hurt in the process as long as your skin is intact.”

  “Which it clearly isn’t,” he said, motioning to the slashes along his ribs.

  “So someone else should take those lashes for you?” Furious, I shot up off the couch. “I’m not your fucking meatshield, Marius! Maybe Flynn is right. You got yourself into this; maybe you should get yourself out.”

  “They’re going to kill me, Catherine.”

  It wasn’t so much the words that stopped my heart, but the power behind them. His voice shook, a wave of anguish breaking over my name. He fixed me with a stare as serious as cancer and twice as dark. I saw something new deep in those familiar green eyes. Something raw and vulnerable. So fragile. Marius, who was usually so cocksure and aloof, was afraid.

  Despite my efforts to immunize myself with my rage, his fear was contagious. “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Everyone I’ve ever swindled, duped, double-crossed, and otherwise fucked over,” he said flatly. “And I assure you that list is quite long.”

  “All of them want you dead?”

  Marius nodded. “Give or take.”

  “But I thought you were immortal,” I said.

  He blew out a breath, making his lips flap. “Immortal, sure. Invulnerable—as you can see—is something else entirely. I’ll live as long as I’m able, but if someone takes my head, that’s the end of me. That’s what they want. And they won’t take it quickly.” Marius’s gaze fell to the floor, and I pretended not to see the sheen of tears that filled his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was as small as a child’s. “I don’t want to die. Not like this.”

  I needed to think, but my brain was fuzzy, muddied with stupid emotions like compassion, sympathy, and another that I wouldn’t dare name. I needed clarity. Quiet. Caffeine.