by Tami Lund
William lifted a vial of perfume and sniffed, then lifted the stopper and touched it to his neck, then at the V of his halter-top. “He had a copy of Tried and True Curses.”
“Killian? How in the world did he obtain a copy? There are probably no more than a dozen in existence, if that.”
“I suspect he stole your copy. He was just here visiting you, was he not?”
“He did not—” Prim rushed to the tiny, three-hundred-year-old curio cabinet where she kept most of her prized possessions. Sure enough, her copy of Tried and True Curses was not there.
“That-That-That—” Prim was not one to swear very often and she could not think of a word strong enough.
“I understand,” William said.
“I did not grant him permission to be in my bedroom.” She didn’t know why, but she wanted William to understand that her relationship with Killian did not involve anything that might happen in this space.
William’s shoulders sagged. “I’m afraid it’s my fault. We’ve overstayed our welcome, and I’ve suspected it for weeks. I went to Killian in the first place because he is such a recluse. I thought for sure we could hide from the Rakshasa at his home. I did not think about the reasons he is such a recluse.”
Prim glanced over her shoulder, at the doorway leading out to the hall. “As I understand it, the one you’ve brought with you, Brandon, led them to Killian’s place.”
“Not exactly. I suppose, in a roundabout way, it was his fault, but another Light One, one who died, ultimately led them to us. Either way, we should have left once everyone was healed. I have known Killian long enough to know he does not tolerate company well.”
“So why didn’t you?”
William picked up a tube of rouge and swept the color onto his cheeks. “We haven’t been able to figure out where to go, and in truth, I’m not sure we’re ready to battle the Rakshasa yet. Gavin and Sydney lead the pack like a democracy. They allowed everyone to have input into where they should settle. The majority wanted to return to Hilde’s place in Michigan, despite the fact the Rakshasa found us there, too.”
Prim allowed a tiny smile. “Hilde is a very sweet Fate. I can see why they would like to stay with her.”
“They love her property, too. That lake she lives on, all that property with no human neighbors for miles and miles. And as shifters have elevated body temperatures, they prefer the cooler climate. And Hilde, of course, loves the company. She hates being alone.”
“The polar opposite of Killian,” Prim murmured, watching while William added eye shadow to his lids.
“And yourself, it would seem.”
“I’m not alone here.”
“Yes, you are, and you know it. If you won’t come with us, Prim, teach me the curse, so I can go after Gavin. We have to get him back. I can’t let my Chala suffer like this.” He turned away from the vanity and gave her a beseeching look.
A sliver of guilt laced through her system. “Do you love her?”
“Yes,” William said immediately. “She’s like my sister. Or even my daughter. I had a daughter when I was human. Sydney reminds me a lot of Beth.” He sounded terribly sad.
“You had a daughter?” Prim couldn’t help the incredulous quality of her voice. William? The cross-dressing linebacker?
He made a face. “Yes, I had a daughter. And a wife. Back when I was alive, homosexuality wasn’t exactly an accepted practice. Neither my parents nor my wife understood my desire to wear women’s clothing, my attraction to males. Not that anything back then would fit me,” he said with a quirk of his lips. “It wasn’t until after I became a Fate that I was able to let my true nature out.”
Prim eyed his hairy abdomen. He’s certainly let it out.
“I can’t teach you the curse,” Prim admitted. “It’s far too complicated. I’m not even sure I remember it, let alone have the ability to teach it to someone else.”
“You need to remember, Prim. It is your duty as a Fate to help my Chala.”
His definition of a Fate’s duty had definitely become skewed. Her duty was to ensure the Chala remained safe and ultimately mated with a Light One, so she could see to her responsibility as, essentially, the mother of the Light Ones. A Fate’s duty was not to ensure their Chala’s heart wasn’t broken. Hell, back when Prim first became a Fate, they were still able to choose their Chala’s mate for them. Love seldom had anything to do with it.
Despite her wish that they simply pack up and leave again, Prim played the hostess with aplomb. She instructed Gaya and Brutus to rearrange the courtyard so that one long table stretched through the middle, enabling everyone to sit and eat dinner together. They set the table with her best China and crystal. She had instructed Brokk to chill several bottles of what she knew was excellent pinot grigio. The wine paired particularly well with the seafood gumbo and crusty bread he had made for dinner. She dressed in a hot pink cocktail dress and matching heels with tiny bows over the peek-toe opening.
As Prim sipped her wine, she watched Brandon over the rim of her glass. He sat across from her, devouring his meal without once looking at those who were seated around him. Yet Prim had the distinct impression he knew exactly what was going on at all times. If she picked up a butter knife and started the motion of tossing it, she imagined Brandon would leap across the table and wrench the knife from her grasp before she could even follow through. She couldn’t say why she felt so certain of her impression of the shifter, though.
Gaya pranced into the room, wearing the same skimpy dress she’d changed into earlier. Instead of fawning over Killian as Prim would have expected, Gaya made a beeline for Brandon. As she filled his water glass, her other hand came to rest on his shoulder, and she bent forward completely unnecessarily. Her breasts were practically in his face. If he wanted to, he could have flicked out his tongue and licked them.
A red-hot emotion swept through Prim, an emotion with which she had only the vaguest relationship. Jealousy.
I’m jealous of my own servant? Why? I’m not attracted to shifters. In fact, I’ve been avoiding all contact with shifters for the past 170 years.
And yet, she could not help but bark at her servant, “Gaya. Perhaps you could bring me some water?” Acid dripped from her words. Gaya straightened and looked pointedly at Prim’s full glass of water. Prim deliberately lifted her goblet and took several swallows, then set it down and waited. Gaya’s eyes were stormy, but she turned her back on Brandon and walked around the table to do as she’d been instructed.
Prim glanced down the table at Killian, and found him watching the exchange intently. Even Sydney and William appeared acutely aware of the reason for what she’d just done.
Lovely. The whole bloody island now thinks I have a thing for the shifter.
Her guests chose not to harass her about the curse over dinner, a decision for which Prim was eternally grateful. She didn’t think she had the emotional strength left to fend them off right now. She needed a solid night’s sleep first. Then she would feed them breakfast and send them on their way. With her blessing, but not her person.
Maybe she’d even try to write down the curse, so William could take it with him. It was coming back to her, in brief flashes of memory. By the time dessert was served, she was reasonably confident she could recall it with enough accuracy to be credible. If William practiced long and hard, maybe he’d get it right. And if he didn’t . . . Prim determinedly shook her head, excused herself from the table, and slipped through the doorway leading to the other wing of her home.
Acutely aware of the Fate and her every move, Brandon watched Prim go. She was sex and candy walking, and he had always had a healthy appreciation for beautiful women. If she wasn’t a Fate, he would probably be trying to finagle his way into her bed by now. But she was a Fate, and that made all the difference in the world. She could stand over a hot gri
ll, preparing the perfect, rare steak, wearing nothing but those impossibly high heels with those little bows on the toes, and he would still not be interested.
He was pretty sure that was the truth.
Her spike of temper when her servant had shoved her tits into his face had been amusing, especially considering the Fate was doing her damnedest to pretend like she wasn’t the least bit affected by their visit. Her fake veneer was too damn thin, though. It was obvious they’d rattled her, although what wasn’t obvious was why.
She didn’t really have anything vested into returning Gavin to his cursed state. She had no real connection to Sydney. In fact, according to Sydney, the two women did not particularly like each other. And according to William, he and Prim were little more than passing friends who happened to do the same job for a living. William also mentioned that until Gavin came along, Prim had been one of the premier Fates. She had always been first choice when a new Chala was born.
“The First Fate loves her,” William had explained. “She is particularly fond of Prim, because Prim has always treated her Chala like they are her children. More so than the rest of us.”
“More than the way you feel about Sydney?”
“Exactly the way I feel about Sydney,” William had qualified. “Except Sydney’s the first one I’ve been so close to. Prim develops this attachment to every single one of her Chala. Every time she handed one off to her mate, it was like sending her own child off into the real world. It broke her heart every time. But that’s what makes her so good at her job.”
Brandon had cut his gaze to the other Fate, Killian, who had been sitting as far away from the rest of them as he could on the small airplane, holding the newspaper he’d picked up in the airport up in front of his face, effectively cutting off any attempt at conversation.
“Killian must suck at the job,” he had commented.
William had pursed his lips and studied the newspaper blocking his view of the Fate. “I’ve heard that Chala used to complain about him, and sometimes even went to the First and asked for a replacement Fate. He hadn’t had an assignment in centuries, even before the Chala population began to shrink.”
“How does someone like him get to be a Fate, anyway?” Brandon had asked.
“You must be human first, in order to become a Fate. It’s your destiny from birth, just like a Chala’s destiny is set from birth. Probably something in our genes. Who knows? Generally speaking, most Fates are truly worthy of the task. My guess is, something happened in Killian’s life, when he was human, that molded the personality he has now. Whatever it was, he hasn’t been able to let it go, even though he’s been a Fate for almost as long as I have.”
Brandon was distracted from his musings by Prim’s quiet exit. She’s hiding something. He knew it as certainly as he now knew she had been his own mother’s Fate. She slipped through a doorway that had been cleverly shielded by a bevy of potted ferns. Whatever it was, it had something to do with her reluctance to go with them to find Gavin and curse him again, so he and Sydney could be together and their pack could reassemble and continue the good fight, as Brandon liked to think of it.
The good fight. Sydney’s idea, to track down Rakshasa and destroy them, one by one, if necessary. If they destroyed all the Rakshasa in the world, then theoretically, the Light One population would never become extinct. They were immortal, and the Rakshasa were their only true enemies. This would solve the issue of Gavin and Sydney being unable to procreate, and everybody could live happily ever after. Theoretically.
Brandon pushed away from the table, excused himself, and then skirted around the perimeter of the room, slipping through the same concealed door Prim had used a few moments prior. Whatever she was hiding, it was in this area. They’d all been given strict orders to stay away from this wing of the house. Considering they had every possible type of pampering in the other wing, there hadn’t been any reason to disobey the command. Until now.
Now, Brandon was determined to find out what Prim was hiding back here. Once he knew, maybe he could figure out why she was so adamant about not helping them find Gavin.
He’d only walked five paces when Prim suddenly materialized in the hallway before him. He was so surprised by her sudden appearance that he stopped short, and guilt raced through his mind as he realized he’d been caught sniffing around the wing he was strictly forbidden to go into.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her color was high, her eyes were spitting fire, and she was as agitated as William had been when the motion sickness hit him for the first time.
“Looking for you,” he smoothly lied.
“Well, you found me. What do you want?”
“To talk to you,” he said quickly, working furiously to come up with a solid reason why he would be where he wasn’t supposed to be.
Prim thinned her lips and rolled her eyes. “Can’t you give it a rest? Just for tonight? I’m sure everything will seem different by the light of day.”
She assumed he wanted to wheedle her about tracking Gavin again. Fine. He could go with that. “It will seem even more pressing. Because by tomorrow morning, if it isn’t already, the curse will be completely reversed. And Gavin will immediately set his sights on tracking Sydney. And since they can actually sense each other, it won’t take him long to figure out where she is.”
He watched the color drain from her face.
“He can’t come here,” she whispered.
She really is scared. Desperately so.
“Then help us,” he said, infusing his voice with urgency. “Help us turn Gavin back into the shifter he was, when he was our pack leader, and Sydney’s mate.”
“He isn’t her mate, not really.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Brandon snapped. “I get that you Fates see everything as black and white. But whatever the hell they have between them is anything but black and white. Whether the Fates believe it or not, they’re meant to be together. It works. For them. For all of us. And besides, you know you’re the reason they’re together in the first place, right?”
Prim’s chocolate-brown eyes widened in mock innocence. He didn’t buy it for a minute.
“Yeah, that’s right. It’s your fault. You cursed him two hundred years ago. He fell for Sydney because he was cursed. And somehow along the way, they formed this pack of Light Ones who have made it their life’s mission to destroy the Rakshasa population. And isn’t that a Fate’s biggest fantasy? You never have to worry about your Chala being in danger again.”
“If there were any more Chala to protect,” Prim snapped back.
Brandon shrugged. “Sydney wasn’t born by conventional means. Maybe another will come along in the same way, someday. If you help us get Gavin back, we at least have a fighting chance of that happening. But if we leave Gavin without his curse, I can guarantee our population will die out, sooner than later. He’ll kill Sydney first, and then he’ll execute the rest of us in turn. Bye-bye, Light Ones.” He lifted one hand and made a small waving motion in Prim’s face. She batted his hand away.
“You don’t have a lot of confidence in your own abilities, do you?”
He shrugged again. “I have plenty of confidence in my abilities. I’ll probably live the longest. But in the end, I’ll be killed, too. The Rakshasa population continues to grow, because they don’t have the infertility issues we do. And as they decimate our population and grow their own, eventually, the numbers will be too overwhelming. They’ll catch me at some point, and I’ll take down as many as I can, but they’ll get me on sheer numbers. It’s just the way it works, babe. Unless you step up.”
She was wavering. He could see it in her eyes. She was too damn tied into her belief in her responsibilities, in the necessity of saving the Light One population for the sake of all humanity. He had no problem using that to his advantage. Nor did he have any p
roblem using her obvious attraction for him to his advantage, either. He stepped closer, crowding her.
“Come with us, Prim,” he said, his voice pitched low. His bedroom voice. The same one he used when he was trying to coax a woman into taking him home for the night. Prim’s eyes widened and her nostrils flared. He could see the outline of her stiffening nipples pressed against the front of her dress. He could smell her arousal, musky and yet sweet, drifting on the tropical breeze. It stirred his own senses, turned him on, made him wish they really could act on this strange, mutual attraction. Instead, he ignored his own reaction and focused on seducing her, at least to the point of her acquiescing to help them find and curse Gavin.
“Think of it as an adventure,” he murmured, his voice soft and soothing. “You can’t possibly be happy, holed up here on this island, all alone.”
“I–I’m not alone.” Her voice cracked. She wanted him. Or the mission. Whatever. He didn’t care, just as long as she came with them.
“A handful of servants who obey your orders without question, all the time? That’s your idea of not being alone? When’s the last time you had fun, Prim? When’s the last time you went on a date or cut loose and went home with a man? When’s the last time you let yourself feel?”
He lifted his hand. Let his fingers trail along her arm. Seducing her for the mission, he told himself. He did it again, because he liked the way her skin felt. Smooth as silk. Her nipples contracted even more. Even through the material of her dress, they looked like they could cut glass.
She lifted her face, and he stared at her rosebud lips. His mind dimly registered the fact that those lips were drawing closer and closer . . . And then she lifted up onto tiptoes and kissed him.