by Helena Maeve
It took very little courage and far less effort for Eve to reach out a tentative hand and squeeze his shoulder. “For what it’s worth, I think you knowing what comes next will be enough to change the way this plays out.” Hardly reassuring, considering where they were coming from. Still a killer, just with a different victim. The willingness to take a life was buried deep within her bones now. She knew she had it in her. “Look, I can go. I still have the keys to my apartment…”
“And the money,” Neil pointed out.
“Right.” That, too, although for some reason the thought of leaving St. Louis behind had lost its appeal. Whenever she tried, something always seemed to pull her back, like a twitch upon the thread. Her plan—of losing herself into the wilderness of the Rockies—had come to an abrupt end when it became clear that what she was running toward was not salvation, but prison.
She remembered now. She wasn’t going back.
“Or you could stay,” Neil said, his tone very even, as if he was trying to cheat a polygraph. “I understand why you might not want to, but—”
“Well, it’s not so bad around here. And you do have a bunker,” Eve recalled, the twist of her mouth as close as she could get to a smile.
Her heart ached when Neil turned a hopeful gaze to meet hers, eyes like searchlights scrutinizing her for sign of hesitation. “You’re not just saying that to be polite?”
“When have I ever said anything just to be polite?” Eve scoffed, surprised to find that her vision had grown blurry.
She felt Neil tilt toward her half a second before their lips met. There was no hesitation, no flicker of doubt that this was precisely what she needed. Neil sank fingers into her hair, his touch sure and steady, an anchor just like she had been an anchor for him when they were caught inside the rift.
They fell back to the bed together, sheets wrinkling unnoticed beneath their bodies. Eve’s towel fell away first. She was glad to be parted from it when she felt Neil cup a talented hand around her breast. She arched into his caress, desperate for contact, for the heat of his body writhing against hers.
“This isn’t contingent,” Neil bit out between kisses, “upon you sticking around.”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Stop thinking so much.” And she kissed him again, as hard as she could, trying to steal his breath, and ground him with her body. Distractions were myriad if they allowed them—the world was ending, after a fashion, and a future version of him had not so clumsily attempted to spirit her away into the sunset.
Neil stubbornly rose up on his hands and knees, putting distance between them. “No, wait. You need to hear this.”
“I do?”
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You can still stay. I’ll— You’re welcome in my house whether we’re lovers or—”
Eve hooked a leg around the back of his knee and reversed them, pressing Neil into the mattress before he could finish. “I don’t need a way out of this.” I can carve my own. She could defend herself without a pack.
She kissed Neil again, letting her teeth play along his bottom lip just to hear him sigh and moan and surrender. He’d always been a cerebral sort, always thinking ten steps ahead. Eve no longer took that for an injustice. She didn’t need to emulate for him to think she was worthy. Slowly, she stretched her naked body over his, pinning him at hip and shoulder as she bore down onto his cotton-covered dick. “Why are you still dressed?”
Neil laughed. “I have absolutely no idea. Give me a hand?”
Eve gave him a lot more than that. They made quick work of his clothes, discarding T-shirt and slacks where they might fall. Eve straddled his hips, skin on skin, and canted forward to press her mound against his hard length.
She couldn’t say which one of them moaned the loudest as their bodies came together. It was graceless and clumsy, at first, what with Eve refusing to release Neil’s wrists and her body pulled taut like a bow as she ground down onto him, and Neil restlessly bucking against the backs of her thighs. The friction was almost enough to make her come right there and then, but Eve held back, grip white-knuckled around Neil’s wrists.
“I want to make this last,” she panted. “I want— We have time, right?”
“All the time in the world,” Neil said, casually ignoring reality. “Don’t think I can last, though… Rain check?”
Eve kissed him quiet and dropped a hand between them to wrap her fist around his dick. He wasn’t kidding. It only took a few quick strokes, her thumb curling around the glans, for Neil to spill into her fist. He gasped as if stunned by the force of his orgasm, digging his fingers into the meat of Eve’s forearm.
“Fuck—oh, fuck, yes…”
There were no words for how good it felt to watch him come down, his shoulders rattling against the bed as he shook and squirmed. Eve slowed her ministrations but didn’t release him for a good long while, until she was satisfied that she had milked him dry.
“This is a very, very good look on you.”
“What?” Neil gasped. “Sweating like a pig?”
Eve pressed her lips to his cheek in a wet kiss. She would’ve kissed his mouth, but he seemed to need it to catch his errant breaths. “Undone,” she corrected. He was sweaty, too, but she didn’t mind. It only eased the damp slide of their bodies as she moved above him.
She got hers only minutes later, circling her clit with slick fingers as Neil ran his shaking hands over her hips and shoulders, pinching at her nipples until she crested over the edge with a soft cry. She couldn’t stop shaking in the aftermath.
The thing about coming undone was that it looked good from the outside, but from within it was like taking a wrecking ball to the head. Everything felt scrambled—in a good way, for a change—and her joints gave out as she dropped down to the bed, half sprawled on top of Neil and half not so much.
She felt him kiss her brow, but it was too chaste and she was too tired to respond.
“You’re gonna need another shower,” Neil murmured against her temple. “And me too…”
“In a bit,” Eve demurred. It was all she could do not to fall asleep right there, cocooned in Neil’s warm arms. They had time. It wasn’t as though every minute they spent in bed was a minute they could’ve spent putting distance between them and the blast radius.
Neil was quiet for a long moment, enough to make Eve think that she’d gotten through to him, before he spoke again. “You know, there’s no rush. I could open a rift—”
“No more rifts.” Not after the last one had very nearly propelled her into the unknown in the company of a misguided version of the man presently carding his fingers through her tangled hair.
“Okay. But you’re quick on your feet, right? You could stick around for a few days, catch your breath…”
Don’t let go, Eve heard, the words rattling about in her skull in the shape of a plea or a command. “I could,” she murmured, careful to make no promises. She wasn’t the kind of creature he could domesticate. She wasn’t a witch’s familiar—the very thought should have repulsed her—she was much too tired to wonder why it didn’t.
There was only one way to put an end to the conversation.
Eve raised her head from his shoulder with some difficulty and pressed their lips together in a surly kiss. Let it go.
Given how quickly Neil got into it, she didn’t think he minded the distraction very much. It was another hour before they made it to the shower, and it took them another thirty minutes after that to get clean and leave Neil’s room. If the ghosts that inhabited his home noticed, they were wise enough to keep their peace.
Chapter Ten
St. Louis, seven days before
When news of the asteroid’s advance was first made public, St. Louis had erupted in party after party. In true Midwestern fashion, they’d broken out the barbecue grills and hard lemonade ice coolers. They’d gorged themselves on turkey and pumpkin pie and enough alcohol to make a speakeasy look sedate. No one cared that it wasn’t the season for pumpkin pie
or that three hungover weeks did little more than cripple the city’s economy. The world was ending, so time to put on the Sunday best and go out dancing.
Mundanes didn’t hold a monopoly on unambiguously flawed ways to express resignation. In the days that followed the closing of the rifts, Eve stuck around Neil’s house like a bad penny. They watched DVDs, played with his Wii remote on power that didn’t come from any generator. They took long baths in his claw-footed tub—the same one where an ancestor of his had purportedly slit his veins—and lounged in the sun like lizards. There was no sense of urgency to upset the languor of their afternoons.
Felix was out most of the time, which left the house available to their use. On the last Monday of the world, they chased each other around the front yard with water pistols. On Tuesday, they made love al fresco, in the swing on the back porch, with Eve’s legs curled tight around Neil’s back.
“I think we should have a dinner party,” Neil said as they were coming down from their shared orgasm, stroking his fingers lightly across her nape. “I can cook. You can wear something nice…”
“Who would we invite?” Eve asked, before it occurred to her he might have been thinking of making it a private event.
“A few friends—”
“That frightful little leprechaun?” she suggested with a grimace. She owed him an apology for threatening bloody murder, but she didn’t feel particularly eager to follow through. If he hadn’t been such a contrary bastard, she wouldn’t have been forced to react so violently. It was a flimsy excuse. It didn’t hold water.
“Him, too,” Neil agreed. “And Felix, of course. This is his house, too.” As long as it was standing, the Riccard seat of power would always be open to the entire clan.
Eve wanted to ask what had really become of them, but thought better of bringing up bad memories. They were doing a decent job of skirting tough topics as it stood—no need to complicate matters by letting her curiosity run wild.
She stretched out her arms and legs, loosening tired limbs like a house cat. “I didn’t pack a ball gown.”
“Would you object to wearing something of my mother’s?” Neil suggested.
“I think your mother would object to me wearing something of your mother’s.”
Her death was no impediment in this regard. No one held a grudge more faithfully than a dead witch. Eve glanced his way, relinquishing derision for compromise. “I’d have to see what fits.” Neil’s mother had been a tall, reedy brunette with eyes the color of slate and a tongue like a serpent—figuratively speaking, although anything was possible in this house. It was unlikely that any dress worn by her could possibly be even close to Eve’s size.
Unlikely, yes, but as it turned out not impossible.
In the attic, Eve found three that were wide enough in the hips to fit her snugly and a fourth that didn’t need any adjusting in the bodice. It was easy to choose her favorite.
She trooped downstairs in the white and gold gown with feet bare and one hand on the banister. She knew all about jealous ghosts pushing women down steep slopes just because they could. It would be a ridiculous way to go.
“Need a little help with the zipper,” Eve said, padding into the kitchen with the skirts in hand. Neil’s expression stopped her short. “What?”
He was gaping at her open-mouthed, like a fish.
“Oh, come on. It’s not that bad… Is it?” At least, she hadn’t thought it was bad when she’d glimpsed herself in the mirror. Considering that her idea of dressing up these days involved a clean pair of socks and a clean shirt, her judgment was worth calling into question. “I can take it off—”
“No,” said Neil with a rapid shake of the head. “Don’t. Definitely don’t do that.” He wiped his hands clean on a rag, aborting the complicated alchemy of an End of the World supper.
The trays of canapés and duck breast seemingly produced out of thin air registered only peripherally.
Eve felt unusually flustered as Neil bade her turn around.
“If it’s too much, I can take it off.” Or, she thought, if it was weird for him to see her in his mother’s clothes. A Freudian psychoanalyst would’ve had a field day with them, had there been one left in what was soon to become the ruins of St. Louis.
“It’s perfect,” Neil said, too light, too awed for it to be an empty compliment.
With the zipper pulled up tight, the bodice finally fell into place, cinching tight around her narrow ribcage. Eve let the skirts drop to the floor, the hem pooling around her feet. She probably needed a little bit of heel to make the dress look right, but that was for later. She still had half of Mrs Riccard’s wardrobe to raid. She hadn’t even begun going through the shoe rack.
“You look amazing.”
“Yeah?” She couldn’t help but check again—it wasn’t false modesty. Eve knew full well that she wasn’t ball gown material. No one had ever accused her of being born with an overabundance of class, either. “You don’t think it’s too— I don’t know, too busy?”
There were gold beads sewn deftly all along the heart-shaped bodice and they continued down into the skirt, hiding the seams. The dress left her arms bare, which Eve appreciated. She hadn’t learned how to do a hundred push-ups in a row in her time at the Briars to hide all that muscle definition.
“It’s definitely not,” Neil said. He couldn’t seem to look away.
Eve reveled in the attention, though it was so unlike what she usually felt when she was the object of anyone’s scrutiny. Maybe it was different because it was Neil looking her up and down, a smile tipping up the corners of his lips.
“Something smells good,” Eve said, because distraction was her preferred method of subterfuge.
“I’m making duck confit—the quick version, anyway.”
“And enough finger foods to pacify a regiment.”
Neil grinned, glancing down the length of the kitchen island. “I went a little overboard.” But he looked far from chastened as he dipped his head for a kiss. It didn’t even cross Eve’s mind to deny him.
“Let no one say we can’t ring in the end of the world in style,” she chuckled. “All right, let me get changed and I’ll lend a hand.” Her stomach was already rumbling at the sight of so much delectable food.
It would’ve been impossible to resist nibbling on a mini jacket potato doused in sour cream and chives, so she didn’t try. She was banished from the kitchen in a hurry after that, before she could lay waste to all of Neil’s good efforts.
She was back in minutes, this time wearing a borrowed pair of boxers and a button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up—both of them Neil’s—her feet bare on the kitchen tile.
“Okay, put me to work. But you should know I’m culinarily challenged and I can’t be trusted to follow instructions.” Mirth left her as she glimpsed Neil standing stock still by the kitchen sink. The tap was running, but he didn’t seem to have noticed it. His hands were clasped tight to the edge of the sink, his gaze trained on the window.
Oh gods, not a rift. Not again.
Eve touched a tentative hand to his elbow. “Neil?”
He jumped, the spell of his fascination broken.
“Neil, what’s wrong?” She could read its evidence in the rigid line of Neil’s shoulders.
“I had a vision.”
“You mean you were scrying.” Eve had spent enough time around warlocks and witches to know that visions weren’t a thing that happened to you—they had to be sought, forced into being. True prophets were merely very curious sorcerers.
“Yes. No.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure…”
At least he wasn’t trying to lie. Eve pursed her lips. “What did you see?”
“St. Louis.”
Eve pressed her lips into a thin line and reached for the dials of the kitchen sink to shut off the running tap. “Nothing good, I’m guessing.” There was only one thing that could make Neil look so pale and frightened and it had everything to do with geography. “Maybe you should
sit down.”
“I’m fine,” Neil said, brushing away her concern just like she would’ve done if their roles had been reversed. We’re both stubborn wretches. It was a miracle that they’d ever found common ground on any topic, for any reason.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Proof to the contrary was everywhere. His hands shaking, Neil had busied himself with loading up the duck into the oven at the first opportunity, quickly turning his back on Eve to conceal his expression. It was no surprise when he turned her down. This was the Neil she remembered from her youth—secretive, distant, extremely private. Why bother sharing his thoughts with her when he could process them on his own?
“Okay,” Eve sighed, trying to rally to this new reality. “Do you…still need my help, or—?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“So you keep saying.” Any other time in their ill-fated relationship and she might have pressed him for answers just because she could. They were twenty-four hours from a rain of fire and cosmic justice. Eve shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll be upstairs.”
She didn’t turn around to see if Neil had acknowledged her parting volley.
* * * *
Neil’s parents had commandeered the largest room in the house for their bedroom. It could’ve fit Eve’s entire apartment, bathroom and kitchen included. At the far end, between two tall French windows lay a four-poster with thick, velvet curtains and a maroon bedspread. It looked antique, but Eve was more perplexed by how bumpy it was. She sat down to try on shoes that might fit her misappropriated gown and nearly stood up right away. The mattress was as stiff as a jagged lump of cement. That said a lot about the people who’d judged it comfortable.
Just about the only thing worth praising about the room were the French doors that led out onto a small balcony that sagged above the front door. A gentle breeze stirred the curtains. Eve heard footsteps down below, on the footpath leading up to the house.
Felix, she mused, returning from his patrols.
Eve waited to hear him on the landing, but he remained downstairs, possibly enjoying more of Neil’s confidence than she ever would.