by Gillian Zane
The chime above the door rang out through the shop and I jerked to a stop, nearly spilling the glass of wine I had poured myself. Hoping it was Drake, I hurried to the front. It was him, fully corporeal. My first impulse was to run to him, give him some kind of lust-drunk hug. Reality brain took over and I covered up my over-eagerness by faking I had made a misstep, which in turn ended in an actual misstep and more sloshing of my wine.
Cursing under my breath, I took a big gulp of the wine and tried to play it cool. I knew it didn’t work by the way he was doing that smirky half-smile thing.
“Cassandra,” he said by way of greeting, which was so much better than Ms. Hail. Returning his greeting with an odd kind of tight lipped nod, I prayed for a removed and suave look, but knew deep down I wasn’t fooling him. It was official; Drake thought I was an idiot.
“You offering?” he asked and I choked on the big gulp I had taken.
“What?” I said with only half a breath in my lungs so it came out all high and breathy.
“Wine.” He gestured to my glass, his smirk turning into a genuine smile.
“Oh, oh my god, yes.” I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity and went into the back to round up another glass and pour him some.
By the time I returned to the front, I had composed myself and handed him the glass with efficiency. He clinked his glass against mine and took a sip.
“Hell of a day,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, not having anything else poignant to contribute. Now that Drake was here, my mind had gone blank. Everything I had been ruminating about only ten minutes ago was gone in the wind.
We stood there in uncomfortable silence, my mind unable to bring up any of my concerns from earlier. What the hell was wrong with me? I almost laughed in joy when he finally spoke up.
“Now that you’re not playing psychic, care to explain why you can’t go back to Karma?” He swirled his wine and locked me down with his eyes.
“I really have no idea, Drake. Only your mother knows why she does what she does,” I sighed.
“That’s the most ludicrous order I’ve heard from her. She shouldn’t even be able to tell you what to do since I’m your direct supervisor,” he grumbled.
“Can you go against her? Do you have that much pull?” I asked.
“No,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe I can try to talk her out of it, give her an excuse. At the very least you need access to your computer. That tablet can’t be doing it for you.” He motioned to the tablet I had thoughtlessly left out on the table.
“I think I have a plan down, I won’t need to do more research,” I shrugged.
“That’s not helping me, or you, Cassandra. You should be able to come home. Why would she tell you that you can’t return? I just don’t get it.”
“Again, I can’t begin to fathom why your mom does all the things,” I replied and he made a frustrated sound.
“I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and all I seem to be getting is more and more questions.” Drake drained his glass and when he set it down on the table, I filled it back up for him.
“Same boat,” I sighed. “And when I tried to answer some of those questions, you ended up dead.”
“Can you tell me more about what happened?”
“I just…I don’t want to get into it, Drake, I don’t think I’m ready.” I set my own glass down and noticed it was empty too. We were going to need more wine.
“Fine,” he said, the tone of his voice at odds with his words.
“The Johnson kids. I want to help them cross over,” I changed the subject. “Did you talk to Emmett?” I asked to prevent him from steering me back to the subject of his death.
He nodded, accepting my subject change. I glanced at my empty glass again and hoped there would be another bottle in the back.
Drake noticed my empty glass and indicated that we should get out of the front of the shop. He trailed behind me as I began to search the tiny kitchen for more wine. Not that I really thought I would find a hidden bottle stashed in a cabinet. I had found this one on a wine rack which only held the one.
“Charles is the issue. He’s the reason they are so scared. Emmett didn’t say as much, but it’s really what both of them are not saying.” Drake took the glass from my hand and placed it in the sink. “If you want more wine, I can go out and get some.”
“No manifesting up a good bottle?” I laughed, but I knew that was probably against the rules. He shook his head with a small smile.
“Now if I was the son of Dionysus, maybe,” he laughed.
“Tough luck,” I grumbled and decided on a sugar free cola from the fridge. “I would like to help Charles cross over, but if he doesn’t want to cooperate, what else can be done? Can we just help the younger two?” I continued our previous conversation.
“I think we might, but if Charles is the reason they are stuck there, which I think is a distinct possibility, we might have to take him out.”
“How, he’s a ghost?” I asked.
“Like you did earlier, drain him of energy until he can’t get in the way and then help the other two cross over.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. Do we bring them into Afterlife with us? Would that do it?” I asked.
“Maybe, I’ll have to do some research,” Drake replied.
“What happens to Charles?” If Charles was the reason the other two were stuck there, if he was the reason they were dead in the first place, I didn’t have much sympathy for him, but I still empathized with his current situation.
“We could force him. If he’s weak enough, we could maybe force a cross over. Really, this is all supposition, I don’t even know if they can cross over.” Drake pulled out his own tablet and began typing something into it.
“If that works, we could be forcing him to cross over into…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t really understand what the bottom floors were. Was it Hell in the Christian sense? Fiery pits of torture? Or since there were so many parallels to ancient culture, was it the Field of Sorrows?
“If he killed his entire family, he deserves where they send him.” Drake’s tone conveyed that he believed this to be the case.
“Yeah, you’re right.” I wandered to the sofa and sat down hard, tucking my legs underneath me. Drake followed, sitting next to me and draping his arm over the back of the pillows. I was all too aware of how close he was to me.
“What did you just say?” He smirked.
“Don’t get used to it.” I swatted at his leg, but he caught my hand. Tingles, god’s damn tingles, from only a touch. He didn’t let go.
“Tell me something.” His thumb rubbed across the back of my hand and he began to squeeze my palm in a very effective hand massage. I could have curled up in his lap and purred.
“Mmmm.” I relaxed a bit, letting my head fall back on the pillows and Drake’s arm behind me.
“Did we hook up?”
My body stiffened and my head shot up. I wasn’t relaxed anymore. My hand was back in my lap and my back was ramrod straight.
“Hook. Up?”
“Would you like the definition?”
“I know what it means, smart ass. I don’t like the terminology, actually. I hooked up with boys in high school.” I placed both feet on the ground. No relaxing around Drake, that was for damn sure.
“What would you call it, then?” That smug smirk was still in place.
“I don’t know,” I said in frustration. “Making love?”
He coughed and my teeth clenched tighter.
“So, that’s why you’ve been acting strangely. We…” he coughed again, “made love, and then I died.” He cocked his head, waiting to see how I reacted.
“Wait! I did not say that, I was only arguing terminology.”
“It was my logical conclusion, given the facts, and since you aren’t denying it.” He cocked an eyebrow waiting for me to respond.
“I can’t believe this…hold up, what facts?” I tur
ned to face him, folding my leg underneath me again; wanting to know what he was referring to.
“One,” he held up a finger like an ass. “You’ve acted more affectionate toward me since I died.”
“No, I haven’t…”
“You were running away from me every chance you got pre-death, and now…you get these sad puppy eyes when you look at me.”
“Pre-death?” I laughed. “And…puppy eyes? Are you serious? Maybe I felt bad for you, seeing as someone put a slug in the back of your head and I got to witness the aftermath first hand.”
“Valid point.” He nodded, but kept his finger up, adding another one to emphasize. “Two. My cold-hearted mother, who is usually quite indifferent, is acting jealous when it comes to you.”
“I can’t explain anything that woman does.”
“True, it’s not like I know her very well,” he shrugged. “But she doesn’t act this way with the other girls in Karma, only you, and from what I can tell it’s like she’s jealous. Unless you tell me you have a thing with Hades, I’m making it about me.” His face glassed over with annoyance.
“Never met the guy…err…god, so that’s out,” I said. Drake continued to stare me down, searching my face for any reaction that would prove his theory. I processed through everything Persephone had said and done and he was right, you could say she was acting jealous.
How she had told me that Drake’s attraction was only based off my energy, how she had sent me here and told me not to return like she was keeping me away from Karma for a reason. From what? Or who? Was it Drake she was separating me from? If that was the case, she must be out of her mind with him here on the case with me. I decided it was best to deflect. I wasn’t ready to make a full confession.
“Two facts? That’s it?” I laughed to cover up how conflicted I felt. I didn’t know what Drake’s angle was. Was he bringing this up because he wanted something to have happened between us, or was he purely curious? Did he think I was acting funny around him because in his mind we had casually “hooked up” and I was mooning all over him? Would he prove it and then be happy that he can’t remember? I didn’t want him to think I was holding some torch for him.
Which was essentially what was happening. I had thought the thing we had was something more, something else. But basically it was some weird hunger that I had sated in him. Nothing more. He might not even be attracted to me physically, he was only satisfying an urge, like I was food. That was depressing.
“No, there’s a third.”
I sighed. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear it. More puppy dog eyes probably.
“Three,” he said and held up a third finger. “I’ve been attracted to you since you walked into my office, but I wasn’t going to hook up with someone guilty of murder, or collusion, or you know, lying. I figure it was inevitable that I gave in to that attraction if at some point I finally trusted you.”
Now I was speechless.
“What, nothing to say now, Cassandra?” He shook his head looking almost embarrassed about his confession.
“Drake.” He met my eyes and I don’t know what he saw there, but he got up fast with a curse.
I jumped up and almost tripped over the coffee table trying to get to him. He was now pacing in the small space between the dining area and sofa, the same place I had been pacing earlier.
“So, we didn’t, that’s fine. Look, just…” I stepped in front of him and he nearly crashed into me. I grasped both of his biceps and squeezed.
“We did.” He closed his eyes in a tight, aggravated way.
“Why? Why all the bullshit then, Cassie? Are you playing some kind of game?”
“No, you always think the worst of me, dammit, Drake.” I couldn’t meet his eyes. Was he right? Had I been playing games? I didn’t think so, but I knew I had kept it to myself for selfish reasons, to protect myself. That could probably be considered playing games.
“Then what is it? First you run off and leave me in Afterlife, giving me some cryptic line about fixing it all. You avoid me for days. Now you can’t even admit what happened.”
“Persephone,” I said his mother’s name and he grabbed my chin and made me look up at him.
“What does this have to do with her?”
“Nothing, I don’t know, everything. That night, when I said I could fix things. I went to my house, to find something. Something that might make us remember. She found me. She explained what happened. I thought it best to keep things platonic after that.” He let my chin go and I turned away from him, wrapping my arms around my chest. I didn’t want to admit what happened. I didn’t want to tell him that he was only attracted to me because of the energy I absorbed. That I was only some kind of sexual treat.
He wasn’t going to let me off easy, though. I could tell from his expression he wasn’t going to let it go. I could lie, if only I could think up something convincing.
“She explained what happened? Please, by all means, I could use an explanation too.”
“You’re a demigod. That means you feed off of energy. You know, the energy that people like me collect. I’m like food.” I choked on the word.
“People like you. Food, I don’t know if I like where this is going,” he said.
“Yes. Food. And before you died, you wouldn’t have needed it to survive, but you would have found the energy I collected irresistible. Every time you were around me when I was flush with karmic energy, I could tell there was a difference in the way you acted toward me, more…” I shook my head. My cheeks had reddened like I was a school girl. “Interested in me.”
“Interested, is that what you call it?” He stepped in front of me, crowding me with his big body, but I wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I don’t know what else you would call it.”
“To keep going with the food analogy, maybe hungry?”
“Ugh.” I tried to push at him to move, but he captured my hand.
“What was it, Cassie?”
“You said I smelled different, and you acted all hopped up, turned on,” I whispered. “I thought, I don’t know. I thought it was me. But…”
“But Mommy dearest told you it was just the energy that attracted me.”
“That’s about right.”
“I don’t buy it,” he argued.
“No, really, the first time you kissed me I had collected energy from this guy, he was horrible. I was high on the energy. You said I buzzed, and when we… well you took it into you. It was the most intense feeling. It should have been obvious what you were doing.”
“Have you collected any karma lately?”
“No.” I finally looked at him, wondering where he was going with this.
“So, say if I was…to continue the analogy…hungry for you now, that would prove the entire argument false.”
I could only do a slow nod in response. What was he saying?
“I might not remember what happened, Cassandra, but if I have to guess when I began to believe that you had nothing to do with— well, with your own death, I had nothing to keep me back from you. You weren’t my client. You specifically fired me a few times.” That smirk again and I could feel my face heating again.
His fingers trailed across my cheek and swept the hair from my face.
“You don’t remember, you can’t be sure,” I whispered.
“Maybe we should try again,” he said and I bit down on my bottom lip, unsure of what he was asking.
“No, you can’t be sure it’s not just the energy.” I stepped back. I wasn’t ready to go there with him. I wasn’t ready to fall back into bed with him. I wanted to, I wanted it badly, but I knew we had to figure things out first. Plus, there was that little nagging voice, the voice that said I was selfish to lure Drake back in. He didn’t deserve someone like me, someone who always thought of herself. Even now, ready to give in…
“I’m pretty sure,” he countered.
“But we should make sure.” I needed more space, my skin felt hot and this room felt too small
.
“Make sure of what, Cassie? Make sure I’m really attracted to you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m one hundred percent positive that I want you.” Somehow he got closer, the tips of my breasts touched his chest and I had the inexplicable urge to rub up and down his body like he was the pole and I was the exotic dancer.
I was one hundred and ten percent positive that I wanted him too. Something held me back though, some niggling doubt that if we did this it wasn’t for real. It wasn’t right. He must have seen the doubt in my eyes.
“Care for an experiment?”
“Like what?” I countered.
“Collect karmic energy, from anyone, doesn’t matter, and we’ll see what happens,” he said this like it was the most common thing in the world.
“And if it does change how you feel about me?” I asked.
“We’ll know.”
“And if doesn’t?”
He didn’t get to answer my question. From the front of the shop came a series of loud knocks. I had a visitor.
16
Reacquisitions
Drake strode over to the door and threw it open like this was his domain and the visitor was an invading army. I momentarily glimpsed a small man, too thin and probably only halfway through the five foot mark, before Drake blocked the door with his big body. From what I could tell, the man wore glasses I could only call spectacles, and a coat and tie, even though it was probably ninety degrees outside, even after the sun had set.
“Can I help you?” Drake said all business.
“I, um, I’m looking for Cassan— I mean, Castalia Rosso,” He tried to look around Drake, but the man was making a point of blocking the doorway. I didn’t miss the stumble on my name, though, and I’m pretty sure Drake didn’t either.
“What’s your business with her?”
“I’m sorry, sir, this is a private matter. Is she here? It’s a matter of utmost importance regarding her current case.” He stressed case like it meant something other than what was assumed.
“You’re from Afterlife?” Drake asked, still not letting the man through the door.