Once Upon A Midnight

by Stephanie Rowe

  I could have killed him.

  I lost control.

  Concern lined Demarco’s features, but his eyes stayed bright with passion. Apparently I wasn’t the only one affected by whatever passed between us while I was unraveling in the shadows.

  Straightening and releasing one last breath, I turned to face my manny. “I’m sorry, Tweety. Your fear…you can’t show it when we’re in the shadows.” I thought about how Shade had broken down the rules of the realm to me. “You bottle that shit up and you put on a brave front. The darkness is like a wild sprite and it will rip you apart if it senses fear. You understand?”

  His eyes only widened. “I wasn’t afraid of the shadows, Romi. I was afraid of you. You were… What was that?”

  “That was me doing what I had to do to get us out of there.”

  “But you…your body, it was like smoke.”

  I’d finally transformed. Shade would be so proud. Speaking of which, we needed to get out of there before he showed up. “We’ll have a nice little chat about that later. After we get somewhere safe. Come on.”

  I took one step and my legs went out from under me. I would have face planted if Demarco hadn’t caught me.

  “Whoa, steady there,” he said, holding me up.

  “Thanks, but I can stand on my own,” I said, appalled at my blatant display of weakness. I tried pushing him away, but it was like trying to move a wall.

  “You’re exhausted. Maybe we should sit down for a minute.”

  “We can’t. Shade will show up any minute now and when he does…” I’d be in no shape to fight him.

  “I don’t think he can follow us,” Demarco said.

  “He most definitely can. He’ll study the photo like I did and pop up right where we’re standing.”

  Tweety snickered. “I don’t think he will.”

  “What?” I asked, looking back and forth between the two of them, wondering what I’d missed. “Why not?”

  “Demarco smashed Lorna’s computer with his hammer.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.” He shrugged. “Seemed like the thing to do.”

  It was the perfect thing to do, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. Big, strong, smart, handsome, and I needed to get away from him before I did something stupid.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to push him away again. My legs wobbled. Mortified, I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  “Romi, look at your hands,” Demarco said, gently grabbing my palms.

  The blisters I’d gotten from retrieving the Harpē were gone. Curious, I flexed my fingers. No pain, and they actually moved like I wanted them to. Amazed, I ripped the bandage from my left arm. My skin was completely smooth and unmarred beneath it. The only remnants of my wounds came in the form of dried blood.

  “The shadows healed me,” I whispered, completely in awe.

  Did Shade know they could do that? He never mentioned it…

  “Holy crap!” Tweety whooped. “That’s incredible.”

  Demarco turned my arms over, studying them. “Probably burnt up a lot of calories and sapped your strength. We should find a bed and some food.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but couldn’t. Shade would be coming eventually, and I’d need my strength if we had any chance of surviving his attack. Demarco had whacked the hell out of Lorna, but I had no idea how his hammer would do against the shadows. Shade wouldn’t have to materialize to fight.

  “You’re right. There has to be some sort of inn or hotel around here somewhere. If I remember right, Elefsina is the name of the city, there.” I yawned, barely able to keep my eyes open. “We’re in Greece, Tweety, so you’ll need to…to use…” I couldn’t think. “…whatever currency they use in Greece.”

  “Euros. They’re in your pack. I got it, Romi, just relax.” He sounded worried.

  “I’m fine.” I rubbed my eyes.

  “You don’t look fine,” Tweety replied.

  The wall of muscle beneath my head shifted and fingers brushed the hair out of my face. “She’s breathing, her pulse is steady, no injuries, I think she’s just exhausted.”

  “Well she’s not going to be able to walk like that. Want me to take her?” Tweety asked.

  “No. I’ve got her.”

  They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there. I most certainly could walk. Only my feet were no longer on the ground. Strong arms cradled me, encasing me in the metallic masculine scent of Demarco. I leaned against his hard pecs and breathed in his scent, knowing I needed to get down and walk on my own two feet. But for the first time in my life, I felt completely vulnerable, and completely safe. It was the last thought I had before I passed out.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “ROMI, YOU NEED to wake up and eat something.”

  Demarco’s deep, sexy voice pulled me from my sleep, and the smell of bacon, eggs, and coffee set my stomach to rumbling. The feel of fingers running through my hair drew my awareness to a different sort of hunger. And a whole lot of confusion. I vaulted out of bed, reaching for the daggers that should be sheathed in my pants. Only I wasn’t wearing pants. And the T-shirt I wore barely covered my ass. Unarmed and half-naked, I stared down the silvery-blue eyed man in the room with me.

  My shoulders relaxed as the events that led up to this point filled themselves in. I’d passed out in the ruins. I checked my arms and hands, and they were still healed. “Where are we?”

  “We rented a room.”

  “We?”

  “Yeah, the griffin’s out now. He’s doing research and trying to figure out where to find Demeter.”

  “You drew the short straw?” I asked, glancing around the room until I located my backpack beside the dresser.

  His brows furrowed. “The short straw?”

  “Yeah. Babysitting me…the short straw, the raw deal, the task nobody wants.”

  His gaze drifted down my shirt and lingered on my exposed thighs. “I volunteered to protect you while you slept. You were out cold, Romi. This Shade character sounds like he wants to get his hands on you pretty bad. I wouldn’t leave you alone while you were vulnerable.”

  “Wait, did you…did we…did you sleep in here with me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And my teenage sidekick was okay with that?” If so, I was going to have a serious talk with the boy.

  “Hardly.” Another chuckle. I liked the sound of Demarco’s deep, throaty laugh. “He really threw a fit when I started undressing you, but your clothes were covered in dark…blood of sorts from the fight. Besides, it’s not like I haven’t seen your body before.”

  I opened my mouth to voice my outrage, but his grin stopped me.

  “Don’t worry, I slept on the floor.” He pointed at the door on the other side of the room. “Tweety slept in the adjoining room with the door open. He came to check on you shortly after sunrise, and then headed out. We were both worried about you.”

  “Uh…thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “I brought you some breakfast. You should eat. You’ve got to be starving.” He gestured at the plate sitting on the nightstand beside him, which he could have just handed to me, but apparently he wanted me to come to him.

  My stomach growled. It felt like my bellybutton was trying to eat my backbone, but I also felt exposed. I could trot right over to my backpack and pull on some pants, but that seemed like giving in for some reason. I mean, what did I have to be ashamed of? We were adults. We even had a kid together. Refusing to cover myself up, I walked my ass over, grabbed the plate from the nightstand, and sat down beside Demarco, trying to ignore the fact I was half naked and he was fully desirable.

  “Wait, you unleashed Tweety on humans? All by himself?” I asked.

  Demarco chuckled. “He doesn’t seem all that dangerous to me.”

  “Are you kidding me right now? He’s a hotheaded, easily-distracted teenage griffin. The minute he opens his mouth, the humans will probably realize he’s not normal and b
urn him at the stake for witchcraft or something.”

  “He seems like a believable human to me.”

  “This coming from someone who’s been locked away from people for his entire life.”

  “Touché. Well, I have no idea where he is, so you should eat before your food gets cold. You’ve lost seven pounds since yesterday.”

  Well that seemed pretty specific. “Seven pounds? How could you possibly know that?”

  His gaze roamed over my body again, this time it felt more like an inspection than a caress. “Trust me, I know.” Then he cracked a smile. “Kidding.”

  Since I was too hungry to think of a snappy retort, I stuffed a piece of bacon in my mouth. Crispy yumminess exploded on my tongue, awakening my stomach, which sent signals of starvation to my brain. I needed food, now. All the food. Had Demarco not been watching me, I probably would have just scooped up the plate and dumped it into my mouth. But because he was sitting right there, I settled for using my fork as a shovel.

  “That good, huh?” he asked, sounding amused.

  I was too busy chewing to answer. I finished off the meal and was still starving. Washing it down with a gulp of coffee, I pointed to the plate on top of a small chest of drawers. “What’s that?”

  He stood and collected my empty plate, exchanging it for the full one. “The restaurant calls them tigantes. They’re some sort of pancake with honey and walnuts.”

  And they were tasty. “Mmm. My compliments to the chef.” All the great food made me think about Demarco’s life, stuck in Aphrodite’s bubble, eating the same cooking for twenty-five years. “Can you cook?” I asked.

  He eyed the plate I was currently working on. “Probably not fast enough to keep up with your appetite.”

  “Ha-ha, you got jokes,” I deadpanned. “No, seriously, you were alone out there. What kind of things did you eat? Did you cook? Did your mom before she passed? Did you have some sort of magical room service that showed up whenever you were hungry? I’m just trying to understand what it was like.”

  “No room service. Mom taught me how to cook pretty young. We experimented with a lot of recipes, several of which didn’t turn out so well.” He grinned. Then his smile faded. “I miss those days. They were…fun. What about you?”

  “Doreán brought fun into my life. Before he came along, things were…darker. Shade can’t cook. I don’t really know what he does for meals. There was never any food in his house before I moved out.”

  “What did you eat?”

  “Whatever I could steal or beg for. It was part of my training.”

  He hissed out a breath. “How old were you when it started?”

  I shook my head, not understanding his question.

  “There had to be a time when he took care of you.”

  “I know you’re right, because I was an infant once and couldn’t fend for myself, but I don’t remember any of that. Shade used to give me orders, things like, ‘Bring me a man’s watch.’ ‘Lift a diamond ring,’ then he’d drop me off in a busy city center and have me come home when I completed the task. As I got older, the orders got more advanced and personal. He’d have me earn people’s trust and then steal personal things like a family photo from their house or a good luck charm.”

  Demarco watched me, his expression unreadable. “Did you enjoy it?”

  Did I? “It’s complicated. I’m good at what I do, and it makes me feel like I have a purpose, but sometimes it was really hard. There was widow in London once who took me home, cleaned me up, and fed me.” Elenore. She’d always wanted a daughter, and she didn’t hesitate to take in a dirty little street urchin. “I lived with her for a couple of months. She even enrolled me in school and bought me clothes and stuff.”

  “What happened?”

  When I closed my eyes, I could still see her kind face. Warm, brown eyes brimming with concern and acceptance. “Shade found me. I thought he was going to kill her at first, but I begged him not to.”

  Demarco’s brows rose. “Why would he kill someone for showing you kindness?”

  “He said attachments would make me weak. He made me steal some family jewelry she’d never be able to replace and leave, forbidding me to ever make contact with her again.”

  “Think you’ll try to find her again now that you’re free?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sure she hates me for what I did to her. Besides, if I went back, what would I say? Sorry I stole the priceless gifts your dead husband gave to you, but my evil father would have killed you if I didn’t? Don’t think that’ll go over so well.”

  “Could you get the jewelry back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” And maybe I would go see Elenore again if I did. And if I lived through our current task.

  We sat in silence for a few minutes as I finished off my coffee. I wondered if I’d said too much or not enough, questioning how this bit of insight had altered his opinion of me. Did he think I was just a heartless thief? Or was he disgusted by my concern for Elenore? Did he find me weak like Shade did?

  After a while, Demarco cleared his throat and expanded on his original answer. “Yeah, mom cooked, I cooked, and somebody made sure we had all the supplies we needed. Except… When Mom got sick, we requested a doctor. I researched her symptoms and believe she had some sort of stomach or intestinal cancer, and I had no idea what to do. That was the first time we didn’t receive an item on the list. Pain pills came, but that was it.”

  I scooted closer to him, until my bare leg brushed against his jeans, and covered his hand with mine. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”

  “I thought I was gonna be alone forever until you showed up, dancing on the beach.” He flipped his hand over and laced his fingers in mine. “I’m really glad you showed up that night.”

  I couldn’t handle his serious tone and the admiration in his eyes. Attempting to lighten the situation, I replied, “Yeah, because you got laid and got out of the bubble.”

  He smirked. “And I have a kid now. But seriously, I’m glad it was you.”

  “That’s because I’m the first person you ever met.” I let my gaze take in his unusual eyes, his perfect features, and his broad chest. “Trust me, there are lots of women who’d be willing to have your baby.”

  “But would any of them go against gods to rescue him?”

  Doreán. I was sitting on my ass flirting with his dad while my kid was probably playing with Artemis’s bow or something equally dangerous. I yanked my hand back and stood, heading for my pack. “I’m gonna shower, and then you’re getting a crash course on Demeter.”

  “How do you know all this shit about the gods?”

  I slung my pack over my shoulder—silently marveling that it didn’t hurt—and faced him.

  “My mother has sent me two gifts in my entire life. Tweety was the second. He showed up with a midwife just a few hours before I gave birth to Doreán. The first gift was a library full of books with a note that said something like, ‘Everyone in your life will try to use you. The only weapon you can truly trust is knowledge.’” Actually, she encouraged me to trust both luck and knowledge, but he didn’t need to know about that.

  “That’s messed up,” Demarco said. “Think you’ll ever try to find her?”

  I shook my head. “Why would I want to go out of my way to hunt down someone who gave me up to save her own skin? I am going to miss that library, though.”

  “Part of your house?” he asked. “The one you gave to Lorna?”

  I nodded and headed for the bathroom.

  He stood, blocking my path. “Before you go in there, can we talk about yesterday?”

  My shoulders immediately knotted up. As much as I didn’t want to discuss it, he had a right to ask questions. I was asking the guy to risk his life, after all. “What do you want to know?”

  “I couldn’t see anything, but I could…feel something. What is that place? And what happened to you in there?”

  The very questions I didn’t
want to answer. I never thought I’d say it, but I kinda missed Shade’s magically-enforced gag order. “I can’t talk about that.”

  His eyes hardened and he crossed his arms. “Can’t or won’t?”

  Okay, two could play that game. I crossed my arms and stared him down. “Why do you think you need to know?”

  “Because if we’re in danger, I need to know so I can—”

  “Can what, exactly? There was nothing you could have done in there. You can’t smash shadows with your hammer. You can’t pull metals from the ground and pin them. We were stuck in the realm of darkness and shadows and I...” I lost control.

  “I’m not helpless, Romi.”

  “I know, but in there, you kinda are.”

  He closed the distance between us. “Oh, really? Because I’m pretty sure I saved your ass in there.”

  I knew he was right, yet everything in me wanted to argue. Desperate to save face and prove I was tough enough to take care of myself, I said, “I would have gotten it under control.”

  “Bullshit. If I hadn’t kissed you, we’d still be stuck in there. You want to know what the Pythia told me? She said you’ll fail without me, but you won’t trust me enough to help you. If I don’t earn your trust, we’ll both die.” He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “And after hearing that shit about your father, I get it, but I’m not him.”

  My stomach twisted in knots at the news. I had to trust him? Trust was a weakness I’d spent my entire life making sure I didn’t have. “How do I know you’re not making that up?” I asked.

  He chuckled, shaking his head.

  That just pissed me off. “Look, I’ve told you more about me than I’ve ever told anyone, so don’t be a dick.” Then I stormed past him.

  He grabbed my arm, spinning me around until we were face to face again. His hand went from my arm to my waist and he pulled me closer until my body was pressed against his. The desire in his eyes took a little steam out of my rage.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I could have killed you yesterday. Don’t do that again.”