by S. E. Babin
I studied her, realizing there was a dull power sparking from her—a power that hadn’t been there. "What did the letter say?"
"What does that matter?" She shut her eyes at the shrill tone of her voice.
I shrugged. "It may. It may not."
She blew out a breath. "It was just an apology. The person said they had no other choice."
My mind worked. I had no idea what it meant, but Eve was definitely different than she had been this morning. She was pulsing the power level of a strong witch. Very strange.
"Tell Ian you have to leave." I pushed my chair behind me and stood.
Eve looked up at me. "I can't abandon him. I'm on a date."
One of my eyebrows rose. "You already abandoned him. I might be able to help you if you come with me."
Sighing, Eve rummaged through her purse and pulled out a cell phone.
"Coward," I said, grinning as she fired off a quick text.
"I hate hurting people's feelings," she grumbled as she blew her date off via text.
"I don't," I said, then held my hand out to help her from the chair.
I looked around the courtyard, saw no one paying any attention to us, and pulled her close against me. At her squawk of outrage, I tilted my head down, winked at her, and disappeared from the restaurant.
She was screeching even before we landed back in my hotel room. As soon as we pulsed in, she stared at me, horrified, while also digging through her purse and producing a small black container with a red button on it.
"Get away from me," she shouted.
I stepped away and held my hands up.
Her chest heaved with the exerted effort of her breath. "Where are we?"
"My hotel."
She held the container up even higher. "Are you a rapist?" she shrieked.
I blinked. "Are you being raped?" I asked politely.
The container dropped a hair. "Not yet," she said, but her voice sounded a little calmer.
"I assure you I have no need to resort to rape to get what I want."
A pretty frown crossed her face. "Then why are we in your room?"
"Because it's quiet here and we need to talk."
She dropped the container another inch. "We could have talked at the restaurant."
"And been interrupted by puppy dog Ian?" I studied my nails. "Inopportune."
Eve snorted. "He's a nice man."
"Mmmhmmm," I agreed.
"Normal people don't drag girls back to their hotel room."
I glanced up as she tucked the container back into her purse. Whatever that was, it made her feel safe. I didn't feel the need to disabuse her of the notion that it wouldn't have affected me if she chose to use it. Everyone needed a security blanket.
"I am not normal," I assured her.
Her curvy frame began to shake. I was surprised she held out this long.
"Would you like some tea?" I offered.
She nodded.
I produced some Earl Gray from thin air and handed it over to her, despite her squeak of fear. "How do you do that?" she asked as she took the mug.
I bowed low. "Perhaps it is time for an introduction," I said as I straightened. "Hermes, Messenger, at your service."
The space between her brows wrinkled. "Hermes," she said, her voice deadpan. "The Messenger."
I nodded, even as amusement burbled from her throat.
"Like the books? The Greek Gods?"
I nodded again.
Her tea cup shook, sloshing liquid over the edges. I stepped over to her, put a hand on her back, and led her to the seating area. "Perhaps sitting will help you keep some of that liquid in the cup." Her fragrance tickled my nose, fresh and clean, like wild strawberries and bright sunshine. I wanted to bury my face in her hair and never let go.
She sat and placed the tea on the table. Those light green eyes that shouldn't have been so green met mine. "You sound crazy," she whispered. "I feel crazy."
"I just transported you from one place to another in seconds. I assure you, I am quite real."
Eve leaned her head back against the headrest. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, framing her small upper body but generous chest. My mouth went dry, and I had to mentally lecture myself not to keep frightening her. I was acting purely on instinct now, though I knew if my father found out what I'd done, he would have my head. We were not allowed to reveal ourselves to mortals, but there was just something about this woman.
"You did," she admitted after a second. "Today has been very...strange." She straightened, lifted her fingers, and stared at them for a moment. Soft golden magic glowed from the tips. I stepped closer to look at it. "I have no idea what this is. It feels like magic. But it can't be, can it?"
My mouth thinned. I recognized the source of that magic even though I didn't want to. But I thought the person it belonged to was long dead. "Do you have the letter?" I asked instead.
She produced it from her purse, the outside shell long gone. It was just a piece of parchment, but I could see the residuals of the magic floating from it. The shell of the letter must have been cloaked to contain it. I delivered messages, not spells.
I breathed out a heavy sigh. "I think you're the victim of a magical attack." I started slowly because I knew she was frightened, but there was nothing I could do to soften this blow. When I stared at her, I could tell the spell had already started to affect her DNA. Every second I sat next to her was a second I knew she could be losing more and more of her mortality.
"An attack?" She chuckled. "I'm a librarian. I think it's a rule that we never have any enemies. Unless it's the Dewey Decimal system." Eve snorted at what must have been a joke, but I didn't get it at all.
"Have you been researching anything new?" I asked her. I could only think of a few reasons someone like her would have been targeted. Eve must have uncovered something she shouldn't have.
Her gaze went a little blank as she thought about it. "This doesn't feel like an attack," she said after a moment. "I don't feel bad. I actually feel pretty amazing."
I sighed. "You've been given magic. Most humans cannot tolerate real magic. You have people here who claim to do magic, but it's small stuff using the energy of the earth, which is infinite. But true magic…” I shook my head. "True magic is pure energy and will destroy the DNA of any human exposed to it. Unless you were born into it."
Eve stared at me. "I recently found a book. Something not in the catalogs." She tapped her fingers against her thigh in a nervous gesture. "It was strange." Her voice trailed off for a moment. "Like I was supposed to find it."
I just bet she was. I stifled the sigh and let her continue.
"The book was a history of Marie Laveau."
My eyebrows rose to my hairline. The magic she was under was not voodoo. It had a flavor more like the earth. More of a peaceful vibe, so the magic itself wasn't dangerous. But it would be dangerous to Eve because she was human. "The voodoo priestess of New Orleans?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
Eve nodded, and my stomach sank. Voodoo was not something we tended to mess around with. We kept out of their way, and they, in turn, kept out of ours. "I'm assuming you found something."
Her eyes sparkled. Even in as much danger as she was right now, the thrill of the discovery wasn't lost on her. "In the histories, Marie Laveau supposedly birthed a large number of children." She paused. "Fifteen, to be exact."
I choked on my tea. That was a lot of children, even for us.
"Right?" She grinned and continued. "Only two of those children made it to adulthood. One of them disappeared. Her death was marked as eighteen-ninety-one, but there's no real way to substantiate whether it was really her. At least not then." She paused and pushed those dark glasses back up on her nose.
Gods. She was adorable.
"There has always been confusion on whether the elderly Marie or the daughter was the true voodoo priestess. Some people believed it was the daughter responsible for the revival in the eighteen-hundreds, but oth
ers think it might have been the mother. And other historians believe both women were involved. The truth seems to be no one really knows. The two women supposedly looked so much alike that superstitious people believed Marie Laveau had somehow tapped into eternal beauty."
I hesitated to interrupt her because she was so excited about this, but we needed to find out what had been done to her and what it had to do with the voodoo priestess. Stat. "What did you find that differed from the histories?"
Her gaze met mine then. Bright green and full of intense interest. "Supposedly, the younger Marie found the fountain of youth, drank from it, and is still alive and living in this area today."
I scoffed. "There's no such thing as the fountain of youth."
But there was. She just couldn't know about it.
A slow smile curved on her generous mouth. "Uh huh. You just announce you’re Hermes of the Greek God type and basically teleport me, then tell me I'm the victim of a spell, but now you want me to believe there's no fountain of youth?"
I sighed as I realized her point. Leave it to a librarian to ruin my argument with logic. She was no dummy. "Certain things are not meant to be handled or even discovered by mortals," was all I said.
She waved a hand at me. "No desire for eternal youth. I have enough trouble keeping a boyfriend. Imagine if I never aged." She snorted in amusement.
But something she said bothered me. "You have trouble keeping a boyfriend?" I blurted. I wanted to cringe. On Olympus, I was aloof, handsome, easy with the ladies. Here, I was a bumbling idiot around a dark-haired Creole woman. She was making me stupid.
One dark eyebrow rose as she regarded me. "I'm a librarian, and my idea of being cool is figuring out how Harry Potter is going to destroy the next Horcrux. That's not exactly date material."
I had no idea who Harry the Potter was. Her mouth curved to the side in a smile, but it was a little sour.
"Perhaps mortals do not appreciate brains as they should. Beauty, in a mortal's case, will fade, but a sharp mind will inspire conversation for years to come."
Her gaze softened. "Most men who find interest in me aren't all that interested in conversation."
My nostrils flared in annoyance. While I could definitely understand the male perspective in this case, especially with Eve's delectable little body, no woman was meant to be used as a tool. "My apologies for your stupid mortal men, then."
Eve's laugh rang out through the room. "I'm sure there's one out there who would like a bookworm Creole," she teased.
Yes. He was standing right here. I cleared my throat before I got myself into even more trouble and refocused on the subject at hand. "So, you think Marie, the younger one, is still alive?"
She shrugged and stretched out her legs, the tea rapidly cooling on the table in front of her. "So says the book. Supposedly, she's still performing rituals on the weekends at a house deep in the Quarter."
Eve didn't appear too concerned about this.
I studied her for a moment. "Yet, you aren't bothered by this?" I finally ask.
"I'm a cataloguer of rare materials. I research and file," she said. "If I were to write an academic paper on this, I would be laughed right out of my doctorate degree."
"So, you don't think it's possible?" I asked her, confused.
She chuckled. "After today, I'd say anything is possible. It doesn't mean anyone would believe it." She sat up straighter and leaned forward, her glasses slipping down a hair. "My reputation is everything, and I won't risk it on something like this."
"Well, you've already been targeted with magic. I'd say you're already at risk." But these pieces weren't falling into place. Why would someone target Eve, and what did it have to do with the voodoo priestess? Her magic reminded me a little of Queen Isha, a modern-day Voodoo priestess I'd had the misfortune of dealing with many, many years ago. It was an encounter I would not soon forget, and it had made dealing with their form of magic even more distasteful for me. As I sat there pondering why Eve would be a target, it suddenly dawned on me. If the younger Marie Laveau was still alive and performing rituals, it would most certainly be putting a dent in Isha’s business. Whether those two were really related, I didn't know, but Isha never hesitated to put a stake on a familial claim. I never pegged her as particularly evil...more of an opportunist—a powerful one, at that.
I'd ran afoul of the witch after delivering a message to a woman over in southeast Texas. I had stopped at a restaurant, saw the target, dropped the letter on the table, and was about to leave when Isha stepped into my path.
Let's just say her particular brand of magic made my skin crawl, and I'd stayed far away from anything dealing with voodoo since.
Until now, of course.
"Are you familiar with Queen Isha?" I asked, and studied her face for a response.
Eve's expression brightened. "Of course! She's a regular at the library. Isha is always asking about older books on New Orleans history, especially anything to do with voodoo or…" she paused, and her gaze narrowed, "Marie Laveau." Eve blew out a breath. "Those two things have to be related." She stood and paced the hotel room. "But why me?"
I knew exactly why. "Plausible deniability. She wants Marie Laveau’s cover blown, but she doesn't want to be the one to do it. It's bad for business."
Eve's mouth dropped open. "So she gave me, a mere mortal, magic? To do what?"
I finally sat down on the edge of my bed. "With the power you're pulsing off, you're going to attract attention. Marie might have left Isha alone for a while as a tentative truce, but there's no way she's going to allow more competition."
"What does that even mean?" Eve asked, her voice becoming high-pitched.
"It means Queen Isha has placed you right in between them. She's gifted you enough power to draw the attention of Marie, yet hasn't given you a lick of training in it. If Marie were to show up at your doorstep right now, you wouldn't stand a chance."
"Thanks," Eve said, glaring at me.
I spread my hands wide. "Isha wants you to bring Marie out from her hiding. Her existence is a well-kept secret...except from Isha. My guess is she's using you as a way to expose Marie."
"But is it a bad thing she's still alive?" Eve wondered aloud.
"Aside from it being completely unnatural?" I asked.
"Everything about this day has been completely unnatural," she muttered.
I grinned. I had to give her that one. "True," I admitted, “but if Marie has found the fountain of youth and isn't sharing that secret with Isha, there's another reason you've been placed in the middle."
"Collateral damage," she muttered.
"Yep," I agreed.
"So, you think Isha wants to take her out and get the location of the fountain?" Eve asked. Knitting her brows together, she sighed. “And she’s using me to get it.”
"I know it's a lot to take in," I commiserated. "But if you were Isha, isn't that what you would want?"
4
Eve
Apparently, I didn't know Isha very well. All of this was too much of a headache to even comprehend. One day, I was working as a librarian, and the next, my eyes were all freaky weird, and I was trying to figure out how to take down a voodoo princess. I sighed.
"What do I need to do?"
The handsome man...well, not man, in front of me crossed his arms over his chest and studied me. It was almost like he could tell what I was thinking. Since he'd just teleported me magically, I wouldn't put anything past him right now.
"My advice is to find Marie Laveau first, tell her what happened, and send her after Isha."
My mouth fell open. "Say what?"
A grin peeked from the corner of his mouth. "Find the voodoo princess. Get her to your side."
"How about not and I just sit here in my comfy chair and pretend like nothing weird ever happened?"
"Ah, Eve," he said, and the way his voice sounded when he sighed my name did all kinds of funny things to my insides, "life isn't supposed to be comfortable or boring."
One of his golden eyebrows rose. "Well," he began, and chuckled ruefully, "I suppose you're right."
"Damn right I am," I grumbled. "I can trip on a sidewalk and die by breakfast. I imagine if the stories are true, you'd be a lot harder to kill."
Hermes nodded. "Yes. You're right. But you can't sit here and wait."
"And why is that?"
"Because Isha won't be content with that."
"But wouldn't finding Marie Laveau do exactly what Isha wants?"
Hermes grinned. "If I weren't here, the answer would be yes. But I'm here, and I can help you."
I stared at him. "And why exactly would you want to do that for me?"
His gaze shuttered and his face went blank. There was a long silence in the room, a heavy one. Hermes looked like he was thinking way too hard about my simple question.
"Because life is too comfortable where I am," he said, startling a surprised laugh from me.
"So, you were just doling out advice and doing the exact opposite of it?"
He laughed. "I supposed I was. Let me help you, Eve. Please."
I'd be an idiot not to accept his help. Wouldn't I?
"What are the odds of me dying?" I asked.
He shrugged one powerful shoulder. "About the same as if you tripped over a sidewalk and died before breakfast."
I snorted. "Touché."
Hermes set me carefully down in my own living room, his warm palms against my shoulders. "Get some rest tonight. You've had a long and strange day. I'll be back in the morning. We can track Marie down then and see if we can reason with her."
I tilted my face up so I could look him in the eye. "Do you think she's going to be reasonable?"
Amusement flashed across his face. "The one time I had anything to do with this type of magic, it wasn't reasonable. But people can be different, so I can't really answer that question."