by Kaye Draper
“Arianna said she knew something wasn’t right with the kleidí and that she basically pawned it off on Grey because she was afraid it was dangerous or would attract the attention of the gods,” Luca said around bites of vegetable lasagna. “She tried to talk Grey into taking it to the sirens so they could destroy it.”
Pontus glanced between them all. “And?”
Grey snorted. “Like I’d trust those assholes.”
She glanced up to find Pontus and Levi having some weird staring contest. “Why are you here?” Pontus said finally, after an uncomfortable amount of silence.
Levi pulled his drawing out of his hoodie pocket, pushing aside his plate and spreading the paper out for Pontus to see. “I wish to be able to leave the island when my new master travels. I have designed a way to change the binding spell on the kleidí to allow me to travel with her, but the magic that originally bound me was cast by a god. I cannot alter it on my own.”
Pontus studied the symbols and diagrams on the paper, frowning at whatever he saw. “You assume it was one god who bound you. I’m pretty sure it took more than that. Whatever magic created you was strong. Old.”
Levi smirked at the primeval god. “Younger gods, I think. But you are the grandfather of those fools—one of the original progenitors. You could do it.”
Pontus looked to Grey then. “Do you understand what he wants me to do? If I perform this alteration, the bond between yourself and the monster will only grow stronger.”
Grey licked her lips. “What does it do, exactly?’
Levi reached out and tapped the kleidí where it hung against her chest, setting the stone glowing faintly. “I will be able to travel in the stone—to shift and merge there, allowing it to contain my being like a vessel, much the same way as I was fused to the stones and earth beneath the island. You will be able to carry me with you.”
Grey gaped at him. “You want to put yourself in the rock?”
He blinked at her, those black, star-filled eyes serious. “Yes. I will not be parted from you.”
Grey glanced at Pontus. “Will it hurt him? He won’t, like...get stuck in there or something?”
Pontus shrugged. “I have no idea how it will feel. But if worked correctly you would have control over whether he is able to manifest a physical from or not.”
Grey shook her head before he’d even finished his sentence. “No. Absolutely not.” She turned to Levi, grasping one of his strange hands. “I don’t want the ability to control you, to lock you away. That’s just...no.”
He nodded, licked his lips, and looked at Pontus. “If my master consents, you could rework this bit,” he tapped the paper, pointing at one symbol in particular, “so I may come and go as I please.”
Pontus narrowed his eyes at Grey. “This is dangerous. You’re giving a being known for eons as a devourer to roam free. This whole thing is your mess when it goes awry.”
Grey rolled her eyes. “Don’t worry, I’m well aware of your fear of responsibility, old man.”
Stella chuckled at Pontus’s black look. “Well, it does seem that way to us mortals, dear. We don’t all understand the rules and conventions of godhood and all that non-interference stuff your people spout when it’s convenient for them.”
That just got her a dark look. But Stella wasn’t one to be cowed by her powerful husband. She knew who was really in charge. Grey tried her best not to snort with laughter.
After another half hour of haggling over details and redrawing the diagram a few times, Pontus and Levi finally agreed on the version they would use. Grey expected some big production—maybe with some weird witchy ingredients like eye of newt or pickled toads, maybe a little fire, an explosion...something. But all that really happened was Pontus’s eyes did that glowing, swirling thing they did, and he slipped into his celestial form—which meant he had to duck his head to avoid banging it on the ceiling. There was a rush of magic and the stone at Grey’s breast heated up so much she knew she’d have burns.
Levi sucked in a breath, his eyes glowing white, and his purple aura rippling, and Grey had the strangest sensation of water flowing over smooth, cool scales. Then it was done, over as quickly as it had begun.
Stella patted Pontus on the back as he eased into a chair by the kitchen table. “You’ve overdone it again.”
He waved her away and met Grey’s worried eyes. “Not as spry as I used to be, is all.”
Levi nodded. “The gods are fading. I have felt the waning of their power over the years. Eventually balance will be restored.”
Luca frowned at him. “A little tact would be nice, after he depleted himself to help you.”
Levi just shrugged and glanced at Pontus. “I meant no insult. It is just the way of things. Power comes and goes. The gods were not the original beings. There were others before them and will be others after them.”
Pontus sighed. “He’s right, Luca. You know that.” He looked up at the sea monster. “You’ve been around since before the gods, haven’t you? It’s why you know what our fading feels like. You felt others fade before we even came into being.”
Levi’s expression was achingly sad, the eternities showing in the depths of his eerie eyes. “As you say, though it all seems a blur now.”
Grey swallowed hard, suddenly feeling more out of her depth than she ever had before—and that was saying something, given how weird her life had been the last few years. “Thank you,” she said to Pontus, her voice weak.
Pontus put his hands on his knees and stood. “What’s this? The siren kid is getting soft all the sudden? Now you know why I try to stay out of things that don’t concern me. Chin up, kid. You’re now the proud owner of a mobile monster. Just don’t lose that fucking stone.”
Grey’s gut clenched. “Uh. Yeah. Got it.”
As they were saying their goodbyes, Levi touched Grey’s arm to get her attention. She turned to him, fighting a shiver from the way his magic seemed caress hers when they touched. “What’s up?”
He gestured at the stone and gave her a wry look. “Perhaps we should test the spellwork? I know you worry about me be being seen by humans.”
Grey bit her lip for a second, considering. On one hand, yeah, taking him out was always a risk, since they could get in an accident or get pulled over by the cops or something, and she had no idea what would happen if a normal person was confronted with Levi in all his glorious weirdness. But on the other hand, being shoved into a rock sounded like a less than pleasant experience.
“We will have to try it some time, master,” Levi murmured, his deep voice pitched low, not drawing attention to Grey’s obvious hesitation.
Grey let out a breath and nodded. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s...do the thing. Uh...how?”
He placed his hand over the kleidí, fingertips resting lightly against the swell of Grey’s breasts. “I can activate the magic myself. But listen to the words, in case you need to summon me.” Then he murmured words in some ancient language that Grey struggled to grasp.
His purple aura pulsed once and he gave Grey a half smile before he turned to smoke, swirling into the stone. Grey gripped the kleidí, comforted by the familiar heat of it, and by the sense of contented laughter she thought she sensed as an echo at the edge of her awareness.
Luca watched Grey with her perceptive dark blue eyes, then shook her head. “That was bizarre. I wonder what it feels like in there?”
Grey sighed. “Not awful, I don’t think.”
At Luca’s questioning look, Grey shrugged. “I think I feel him? What he’s feeling? I don’t know for sure.”
Luca looped her arm through Grey’s and steered her toward the car, her wide mouth twitching with badly suppressed laughter. “Sounds dangerous.”
At Grey’s confused look, she winked. “What if it goes both ways? Then the scary creature will know how bad you’re dying to see his...serpent.”
Grey felt her face go hot. Shoving Luca, she slipped into the passenger seat. “Don’t be dumb. That’s my grandpa you’r
e talking about!”
Luca’s bright laughter filled the night air as she slid behind the wheel. “You are so weird.”
Grey grinned. “Thank you.”
Luca’s teasing continued as they drove home, and it helped to distract Grey from the heavy, crushing sensation of all the things pressing in on Grey from all sides—the upcoming tour, her disaster of a love life, the sea monster she was carrying around, the sirens, the gods—all of it. For one blissful moment it was just Grey and Luca, driving through the night singing off-key to bad hair-band music.
They pulled up to the curb and got out of the car. Grey was laughing at Luca’s suggestion that they all dress up as Kiss for Halloween when a wet hand grabbed her by the arm and yanked her into the shadow of the small tree in the townhouse lawn. She was so startled, she didn’t make a sound, just stumbled over her own feet. Luca shouted and a flare of bright blue energy formed in each graceful hand.
The first ball of energy hit the water elemental who had grabbed Grey, and it exploded into a spray of water drops. A second elemental went the way of the first as Grey got her bearings. Then she spun, kicking a third in the torso, effectively cutting it in half with her foot.
The next elemental that reached for Grey froze the moment it touched her skin. It flashed the same violet blue as Levi’s aura before it burst into superheated steam.
Grey and Luca stood there in shock, no sound but the soft patter of the remains of the elementals dripping off the leaves above them and their own harsh breathing. The kleidí flashed and Levi stood before Grey, his galaxy eyes gone white. “I think it would be wise not to leave your home without me,” he said evenly.
Grey took a deep breath, her voice carrying with the force of her inhuman abilities, ringing through the night. “Nice try, but I wouldn’t try it again, assholes!”
The sirens. It had to be. She had only ever seen the water elementals when they were being used as pawns by Arianna and the others. Her mother had said that Grey had something the sirens wanted, something they’d be willing to bargain for to get them to destroy the kleidí. Apparently, they weren’t going to wait for Grey to come to them.
Chapter 23
The used bookstore where Grey used to work at hadn’t changed a bit since her last visit a few months ago. The only thing different was that the eccentric, amusing Mr. B had become Mrs. B. The old woman muttered and fussed as she slipped their books into a bag. Peering at Grey through her thick purple spectacles, she nodded at the Kleidí. “That’s a powerful bit of a relic. I’m glad it found its way back where it belongs.”
Grey narrowed her eyes at the old woman, but she couldn’t exactly ask what the hell she was with the human customers milling around. Instead, she nodded and said, “Yeah. Thanks.”
“I wouldn’t be letting it out of my sight,” the wizened woman said with a stern look. “There’s things that should stay hidden, young lady.”
“Sure, Mrs. B.,” Grey said as she took her bag of books. “I won’t let it out of my sight.”
True. Though she had at least convinced Levi to stay at home today, rather than hitching a ride in the kleidí. She needed privacy for this little outing. Gods knew it was going to be awkward enough without anyone listening in.
Grey slid her sunglasses on as she stepped out of the bookstore. Matheus held the door open for her, then followed, unfolding his own shades with a snap of his wrist and hiding his broody hazel eyes from sight.
Grey was the biggest chicken in the world. But Mat wasn’t much better. They both knew she’d invited the bassist out shopping so they could have some time alone to sort out their shit. But neither one of them had dared talk about anything more important than the weather and what shop they wanted to visit next.
Complete cowards.
Grey squared her shoulders and forced herself to woman-up. “How about we grab hotdogs and eat in the park? That way we can talk without anyone overhearing us.”
Mat nodded. “Sounds good. Lead on!”
They both got loaded foot-long hotdogs from the street vendor and crossed the road to the small park in the center of town. Grey led Matheus to a picnic table that was partially hidden in a quiet corner, beneath the trailing branches of a willow tree. Hopefully, no one would recognize them and start snapping pictures or asking questions, at least for long enough to get this over with.
When they were both mostly done eating, Grey started tossing the remaining pieces of her hotdog bun to the flock of seagulls that followed her everywhere. “I’m sorry I’ve been so bitchy about the whole thing, Mat. I just...I thought you were seriously interested, and I guess it stung. Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with someone else? Or is this a new thing?”
Mat gripped her hand, stopping her from tearing up the pieces of bread like they were her mortal enemy. “Can we back up for a second here? I think I need to say this again—I didn’t sleep with him, Grey.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But that doesn’t mean you aren’t right to be pissed off and hurt, and I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”
Grey sighed. “Just...explain, please. I’ll keep my comments to myself for the moment.”
Mat bit his bottom lip and gave her a wry look. “Just your comments? It’s your little ninja fists of fury I’m afraid of.”
Grey arched a brow. She wasn’t as good at martial arts in this body as she had been as a guy, since she hadn’t had as much practice in this form, but she could still kick ass if she had to. She’d put in the enough time in private lessons with her old teacher since the Swap Back to ensure it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t promise I won’t be compelled to beat you to death,” she said gravely. “Take it or leave it, dude.”
Matheus sighed and gave her hand a final squeeze before releasing it so he could fiddle with the edge of his hotdog wrapper. “I’ve been in love with the idiot since we were kids. I....” he gave her a wry, self-deprecating smile. “Well, I started figuring out my sexuality before he did. And when I realized I was having those sorts of feelings for my guy best friend, I did what any red-blooded American guy would do—I went out and got a girlfriend.”
Grey snorted at that. “How’d that work out for you?”
He shrugged one shoulder, squinting off into the distance. “Great, at first. You see, it was a relief. My parents weren’t the kind to beat me or throw me out if I was gay, but they wouldn’t have been all happy and accepting either, you know? So at first, I was just relieved to know that I liked girls. I fucked my way through most of our high school, I think, trying to prove to myself and anyone watching that I wasn’t gay.”
He snorted and tore the wrapper he was holding in half. “It was a great time, until Steff came out. Here I was, proving how hetero I was, how many chicks I could bang to distract myself, and all along he was gay. And since I never talked to him about it before then, and I was way too chickenshit to say anything after the fact...I got to watch him date every hot guy in the county.”
Grey sighed and Mat nodded, giving her a half-smile. “Yeah, it was every bit as weird and awkward and stupid as you’re thinking. But so it went, for years. We all joined the band after The Change, and my mom...well, there were a lot of things to distract me then.”
Grey’s heart went out to him. She couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to lose someone like that. And on top of his dad leaving. She tended to forget sometimes that Mat was the youngest one in the band. The guy had only just turned twenty-one a month back—shocking Grey when he revealed that his ID was fake, and all the drinking and flirting around he did was technically illegal until just recently.
He sighed. “It’s so cliché, but...I doubled-down on seeking comfort of the horizontal kind.” He closed his eyes in a long blink, like he was reliving something painful. “Then Steff started struggling. He’d been drinking more and more, getting bitchy and abrasive...but I don’t think anyone really noticed at first. We should have noticed. We were his best friends. But we were too caught up in our own shit to care, until it got b
ad. Then he started hitting on Luca.”
Grey arched her brows at that. “Luca?”
He nodded. “Yeah. You might have noticed that she made a pretty cool guy. Easygoing, reliable. Steady. I think...I don’t know, maybe he needed that kind of thing in his life, maybe he was just bored or desperate. But...he wouldn’t let it go, and Luca got kind of nasty about telling him off. None of us knew she was probably reacting that way because of all the shit she hadn’t told us.” He shook his head. “Anyway. That fucking hurt. More than I ever admitted to myself until just recently. That he looked right over me and went for Luca. That I had to just sit back and watch, keep playing the idiot so I didn’t help completely wreck the band—since Steff was doing a good enough job of that all on his own.”
Grey should be mad still, probably. But instead she just felt sad. Luca was right. Mat lied. He hid things. He hid every fucking thing that hurt him. Like he wasn’t allowed to have emotions. “What changed?”
Mat licked his lips and glanced up at Grey from under his long brown lashes. “You, for one.” He grinned at Grey’s glare. “Seriously. You were a new distraction. Steff left and we all just said good riddance to the asshat, right? The band was taking off. Life was finally right. I thought I was over it.”
“But he’s changed,” Mat whispered, glancing at Grey hesitantly, suddenly shy in a way the broody Casanova never was. “Have you noticed? Since the whole thing with the siren, and going to therapy and stuff...I don’t know, something’s different. He’s—”
“Real,” Grey interrupted. “He’s more real than he was before. Like...that guy I met the first time was completely lost. He was a mess. But now...well, he’s still a fucking mess, if we’re being honest—I worry about what she did to his head, Mat. I worry about what I did to his head. But he has this way of just sitting down and blurting out shit that most people wouldn’t ever be brave enough to say out loud.”
Mat met her eyes and nodded, his face full of this mournful sort of hope that hurt to see. “Yeah. That. And...he told me it wasn’t one-sided, all those years of wanting him. He just opened his mouth and dropped that bomb and how the hell was I supposed to cope?”