by A. J. Menden
“Well, that’s the gods,” replied a card player.
“And wasn’t Kate Hughes supposed to be the latest incarnation of Aphrodite? So, it’s not like they don’t age,” another said.
“No, it doesn’t work like that,” I interjected. “Kate Hughes—”
“That Fantazia chick isn’t supposed to be a god, is she?”
I gave up on the argument. Modern people don’t understand the gods. They want to put them in terms they understand, and they only understand human beings born with the ability to fly and the like. It was more believable for these guys to think Kate was someone born with powers like Aphrodite’s than believe she’s an immortal and superpowerful being. But Zeus and his kin really exist, and they have since ancient Greece. Trust me.
“What’s up, Chad?” Cyrus complained. “Every time we’ve talked you were full of info on this sort of thing. How can you not know the biggest hitters? I didn’t expect you to be partying with them, but—”
“Look, man, I barely tested as a level three,” the blond guy replied. “I can do parlor tricks at best. Sideshow carnies have more skills than I do.”
“Okay. But you hang out on those magic community message boards and blogs. Surely you’ve heard something. Everyone’s talking about this.”
“You hear a lot of things,” Chad agreed, watching another player put down a card. He shuffled through his own set and made a play. “Early frost—goes back in your hand, man.” The other player groaned and picked his card up again, muttering something about a wasted turn. “Doesn’t make any of it true.”
“Well, for curiosity’s sake, what have you heard?”
Chad frowned. “Heard that the government’s going to start charging for a license to use magic.”
“That was debunked as an urban legend on that fact-or-lie Web site,” a comic-book fan cut in. “So was the story about our dimension getting dangerously close to one of the others.”
“I wouldn’t count that out,” I spoke up. “We’re always moving closer or farther away from other dimensions.”
They all stared at me again.
Cyrus shrugged. “You should know, I guess. Go on, Chad, what else?”
He sighed. “Hmm. There was something about portents being good for some prophecy to come true in like ten years or something, bringing back some sort of demons or gods or supermagical beings . . . I don’t know, there’s always some nut on one of those boards railing on about an end-of-the-world scenario. They usually just want you to come to their church service or contribute money or something.”
That last one sounded like it could be one of the Dragon’s people. But it also could be any number of other whackos. The kid was right: there are always people spouting off about dark prophecies.
“But nothing specific about the Brothers of Power? How about people ending up in comas?”
Chad grimaced. “Someone was talking about how his college roommate’s in a coma, wondering if he would be able to get a pass for the semester because of the trauma of finding him.”
“That’s definitely an urban legend, man,” one of the other players said.
“Did they say what city?” Cyrus asked.
“No, man. You’re not supposed to give out personal information like that online.”
Cyrus laughed. “I guess not.”
“Scary techno mages may come along and steal your action figures,” I joked. The group looked a bit put out by my comment. Call me a crone, will you?
“There may have been a couple of others,” Chad conceded. “I’ll check when I get home, e-mail you any links.”
“Ask around, too,” Cyrus pushed. “Find out if anyone else you know has heard anything. People’s magic being stolen, them put into comas . . .”
“Them being driven insane,” I put in.
“Oh. There may have been something like that,” Chad said, looking up at me (and not my chest). “Someone mentioned how a friend of theirs lost their shit in school the other day. People just thought he went off his meds or something, but this kid was really concerned. His friend was the only other magic-user in his town, and he was afraid it’d get out and people would think it was something that happened to all magic-users, like a disease or something that would have to be quarantined.”
“Get online. Ask if the friend was near any technology before he lost it,” Cyrus said. “Or if anyone’s heard anything about appliances sucking magic out of people.”
They all stared at him like he was crazy.
“That’s, like, something out of a horror movie, dude,” one of the cardplayers said.
“Wasn’t that an episode of Terrifying Stories?” someone asked.
“No, man, you’re thinking of Terrifying Tales.”
“That was vampire ghosts sucking people dry of blood, not magic.”
“The ghosts lived in machines,” someone else pointed out.
“None of this means it couldn’t happen,” Cyrus snapped. “Just check it out and let me know if you find anything.”
Chad nodded. “You’ve got it, dude.” He looked around the table. “My turn again?”
“This has been helpful. Thanks,” Cyrus said. I got the feeling he was being sarcastic.
Chad shrugged. “I do what I can.”
Cyrus leaned over the pimply kid. “If you use your Werebeast along with that Feat of Strength card, you’ll get extra attack points and no one will be able to use their defense points for the rest of the turn.”
Everyone at the table groaned. Chad threw up his hands and shot Cyrus an incredulous look. “Dude!”
Cyrus shot him an amused grin. “Enjoy the rest of the game, boys. Let’s go, Fantazia.”
At the mention of my name, all eyes in the room flew to me. “Bye, boys,” I said, waving. “By the way, I’m not a crone and this is definitely not an illusion spell. I’m all-natural.” I blew them a kiss. “Bye, now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Nice borrowing of my car, Fantazia.”
Lainey greeted us as the doors dinged open at the top floor of the EHJ headquarters. We’d spent most of the day bothering small-time magic-users Cyrus knew, and nothing had come of it except my discovery that my reputation didn’t precede me much anymore. Most people thought, like Chad, that I was an urban legend.
“You have several,” I grumbled at Lainey’s annoyance. “How could you tell, anyway?”
“A little thing called surveillance cameras,” she said. “And the huge dent.”
“I glamoured that away!”
She gave me a dark look. “I can see through glamours, Fantazia. I’ve got magic, too, remember?”
“Borrowed magic,” I said. I think I was looking for a fight.
Cyrus stepped in. “I can probably fix it, Lainey, it’s no problem. I’ve pounded a few dents out of cars in my time.”
“Thanks, Cyrus,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
“Lainey! There you are!” Selena Curtis ran up, a stylish Amazonian-looking woman also known as Granite, with flawless, chocolate brown skin and snapping dark eyes. Her excitement was visible through her animated movements and breathless speech. “Toby’s going to be on that cable program that makes fun of reality shows!”
“The one with Mr. Cute Host?” Lainey looked confused. “Why?”
“Apparently there’s some new reality show where people compete for an open spot on a team I’ve never even heard of. Mr. Cute Host is going to pretend to want to join, and Toby’s going to be giving him pointers.”
“And Wesley and Paul are okay with this?” She seemed horrified.
“I convinced Paul it would be okay. Fun publicity,” Mindy said, coming up to us. “Wesley agreed because he thinks a television reality show putting people in danger for a chance at fame is a horrible idea, and he wants Toby to say something to that effect. I think Toby just wants a chance to be near Mr. Cute Host.”
Lainey sighed. “Wouldn’t we all?”
“You two are married, and Toby’s with Forrest. If any
one should be near Mr. Cute Host, it should be me,” Selena groused.
“Why is his name Mr. Cute Host?” I asked, grimacing. “Is this another weird hero thing?”
“They’re talking about Todd Matthews,” Cyrus said. “He’s a comedian. He hosts this snarky television show. It’s really popular.”
“I can never remember his name,” Lainey explained. “I always ended up calling him Mr. Cute Host, and the name stuck.”
“An in-joke. How fun,” I said. I hadn’t had been part of an in-joke for years. I still wasn’t.
A beep sounded, and Mindy unearthed a strange device that looked like a combination tentaclelike being and one of those portable—sorry, cell—phones that everyone but me seems to carry. She consulted it, then grinned. “He just texted me. His segment’s coming up after the commercial break.”
I heard Paul call out from down the hall. “Mindy, if you’re going to watch this, you’d better get in here! It’s already started.”
Her phone beeped again. Mindy looked at it again and squealed. “Mr. Cute Host says hi!”
Everyone started down the hallway. Selena turned back and said, “Oh, Cyrus, my computer that I keep all of the schedules in isn’t working right. Mindy said she thought it might have some sort of virus.”
“So you thought you’d send a Virus to catch a virus?” Cyrus chuckled. “I’ll take a look.”
“Thanks!” She smiled brilliantly and walked off to join her friends.
I watched her go. I watched them all go. They’d watch their show and laugh at all their little in-jokes, and it was sweet enough to make me sick. “Aren’t you Mr. Fix-It?” I said to Cyrus. “First cars, then computers.”
“It’s nice to be handy,” Cyrus replied.
“They certainly are awful trusting of you.”
Cyrus sighed. “What would they fear? Really. I was never particularly ambitious as a villain, Fantazia. You know that. I certainly wasn’t an ‘I’m going to amass lots of power and crush everyone’ type. It was . . . well, it was just easier to steal what I wanted than work for it. My laziness is vast and has no bounds.” He gave a wry smile.
“And that’s changed?”
He shrugged. “I stumbled into your place at the right time, I guess. Got pulled into that EHJ caper, helped save the day and found I had a taste for it. I’m lucky the Reincarnist is big on giving people second chances.”
“When he remembers,” I muttered.
Cyrus studied me. “So, when are you going to tell me what’s up with you and him?”
“A quarter after never,” I snapped.
Cyrus eyed me again. “What do you owe him, Fantazia? Did he save you from unspeakable evil? Did he—?”
“I don’t owe him a damn thing!” I crossed my arms over my chest, gritting my teeth, defiance filling every pore of my body just at the mention of my father.
Cyrus stared. “Is he the reason you don’t age? Did he put some sort of spell on you so that you won’t lose your good looks? You asked him to—”
I shook my head. “That’s all you think of me, isn’t it, Cyrus: that I’m so empty-headed I’d purposely do this to myself, put myself through never-ending hell so that I’ll always be pretty.”
To his credit, he flushed. I narrowed my eyes at him. He held up his hands in surrender. “I never said that, Fantazia.”
“You’ve certainly implied it.”
“You know me, I just say whatever’s on my mind, good or bad. I just thought maybe when you were younger, you got it in your head that staying young forever would be cool and went to him for help. Or, hell, I don’t know. Maybe you two were involved and he wanted to preserve your beauty forever.” He held up a hand before I could go off again. “A lot of smart people have tried the ‘fountain of youth’ thing, Fantazia. It’s not a knock against you.”
“It’s definitely nothing like that,” I said, trying to contain my horror at the idea of people thinking I was involved with my father. “I was just born like this. Well, I aged like most people up until my powers kicked in. That was when I was a teenager. By the time I hit twenty, I just stopped aging.”
Cyrus snapped his fingers. “There goes my other theory—that you pissed him off in some way and he put a curse on you.”
I had to laugh. “I’m sure deep down he probably wanted to at some point, but no, he didn’t curse me. Like he’d ever curse anyone. Mr. Do-No-Wrong? Please!”
Cyrus shook his head. “I don’t know, I just have this feeling that the Old One wasn’t always a goody-goody. There’s an edge of something dangerous there, I can just tell.”
“No, you’re way off base,” I argued. “He’s been like this for as long as I’ve known him.”
“Maybe you don’t know him as well as you think. After all,” Cyrus said with a grin, “would you have thought I’d turn out a good guy when you first met me?”
“No,” I admitted. “Not at first. But later, after you came to me for your favor . . .”
He looked uncomfortable. “Let’s not talk about that.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything about her. I just meant that . . . it was a nice thing to do.”
“Yeah, right. Making sure my ex will never see her daughter again? That’s supernice,” he retorted. He looked down and away.
“You were making sure your daughter is safe,” I reminded him.
He looked up when I brushed my fingertips across his arm. His blue gaze locked with mine. My stomach did a strange sort of flip and my pulse quickened. Suddenly, more than anything else in the world, I wanted him to kiss me.
“I don’t get nice requests like that,” I said.
“I don’t get the word ‘nice’ and myself used in conjunction very often,” Cyrus said. “Thanks.” Was it my imagination or did he look like he wanted to kiss me, too? Had to be my imagination; he couldn’t stand me under normal circumstances.
“Well, what do I know?” I teased, stepping ever so slightly closer. “I’m the one you insinuated doesn’t have a brain.”
“I know you have a brain. It’s the most dangerous part of your body.”
“Really?” The edges of my mouth curved up. “What’s another dangerous part?”
He smiled. “Your lips.”
“And, why are my lips dangerous?” I wet them with the tip of my tongue, leaned forward and tilted my head, an open invitation for him to close the space between us. My breath caught in my throat, my body aquiver in anticipation . . .
He didn’t move. All he had to do was inch a bit closer, take advantage of the invitation I was clearly issuing. I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted it. If I could have him, if I could make him like me, that would be the end of my recent surges of desire toward him. I didn’t harbor any romantic delusions: romance never works out for me, and I never let myself get anywhere close to love. Not anymore. But if I could seduce Cyrus, this man who intentionally aggravates and annoys me, who insults me when I deserve it and yet still respects me, who reminds me so much of the warriors of days gone by and who never seems to show any interest in me whatsoever . . . well, if I could seduce him, I think I’d feel a hell of a lot better. For a few moments I definitely wouldn’t be bored. I wouldn’t be lonely.
I lightly bit my lower lip, eyeing him from beneath long black eyelashes. “Why are they so dangerous?”
“Because such vile and devious words come out of them on a regular basis,” Cyrus said.
His comment took all the air out of me. Cyrus was the only man I’d ever met who could completely shut me down and still make me desire him. I moved backward. “Wow. I compliment you and you insult me. Nice. Real nice, Cyrus.”
He shrugged. “I never said I was nice. That was you. Once again, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“Oh, I know you. You’re an asshole.”
I didn’t know what I was saying anymore, or why I was so flustered—besides pent-up sexual tension, of course. But that could be easily remedied. Any number of men who hung out in my pocket universe f
ound me attractive, and they were all far hotter than Cyrus. I would get over whatever this particular hang-up was. I needed to do it yesterday, if not sooner.
I started to stalk off, but he grabbed my arm. I glared pointedly down at his hand and back up at his face, but he ignored me.
“If you know me so well, you should know that I hate that little seductive sex kitten act you put on. There couldn’t be anything less sexy in the world, at least to me. God, if you would ever relax and not try so hard to sell it all the time—”
“Then what?” I asked. I yanked my arm out of his grasp.
That dark blue gaze searched mine for a moment and then he looked away. “Nothing.” He shook his head.
“No, you were definitely going to say something. If I’d ever relax and not try so hard, then what?” I challenged him.
He seemed to be considering his words. Finally he sighed and said quietly, “Then maybe people would actually like you. Maybe you wouldn’t be so lonely.”
“Who says I’m lonely?” I snarled.
“No one.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“No one has to. Because it’s so obvious.”
I flinched. It didn’t hurt that Cyrus said people don’t like me; I don’t need people to like me. It’s that he was getting dangerously close to my other issues, issues I don’t even like to admit to myself. “You said I don’t know you as well as I think, Cyrus? Well, you definitely don’t know me as well as you think.” And with that, I turned and walked off.
Wesley looked up when I walked into his bedroom. “Oh, hello, Fantazia.”
“Hi.” I perched on the arm of the small love seat where he sat. The television was on, showing some cartoon, but Emily was fast asleep. She lay across Wesley’s chest, her rosebud mouth half-open. One chubby little arm encircled his shoulder; the other was around his side and her blonde head rested directly above his heart.
It was a sweet picture, father and daughter resting together, but I was so intensely jealous of my sister at that moment I couldn’t see straight. He was cuddling her, obviously loving her so much, while my own father was long gone, buried somewhere so deep down inside that he barely thought of me at all, except when he needed another powerful magic-user. He didn’t remember loving me like this, and I remember it all. I even remember the first time he died, when he was replaced by the very first stranger—the stranger whom I’d taken care of, who thought I was some sort of loyal servant. He’d thought giving me a few extra coins at the marketplace was an act of kindness. He probably hadn’t thought twice when I finally left home. He simply moved on with his life each time, and I was a dusty past long forgotten.