Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery Book 3)

by Cynthia St. Aubin

  Unable to contain myself, I broke from Mark and squeezed Steve in a tight hug before shuffling to my assigned spot behind Helena in the line of bridesmaids.

  Helena’s face was round as a pie plate as she turned to me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I just love weddings. Don’t you?”

  “Not especially,” I said.

  She blew a smoochy kiss to Kirkpatrick, who caught it, and placed it somewhere that made me stifle a gag. Though I didn’t know how it was possible, Kirkpatrick looked less…less—gingery. His pale face less freckled. His nose not as piggish I remembered.

  Mating agreed with him.

  The musicians quieted, only to take up again, switching from Lionel Ritchie to the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”

  To Wallis’s infinite credit, he bore Shayla down the aisle with the silent grace I had once imagined all unicorns possessed. Yards of sapphire satin from Shayla’s gown spilled to one side of Wallis’s white flank as she rode sidesaddle. Her cobalt blue hair had been swept up into a pile on the top of her head, curly tendrils escaping to fall around her neck and shoulders. Allan had taken full of advantage of her ample cleavage, selecting an empire waist to accommodate her swelling belly. The silk ribbon tied beneath her bosom mirrored the color of my own gown. Her wide green eyes glowed with happiness, the vintage siren red lipstick the perfect compliment to her wide grin.

  Married.

  My only brother was getting married.

  My nose stung as I bit my lip to stave off the eyeliner-compromising tears.

  A giant, broad-shouldered, white-bearded man stepped forward from Shayla’s side of the guests and helped her slide down from Wallis’s back.

  Zeus, I presumed?

  Allan emerged from behind Mark and stood in the center of the painted triptych. “Who gives ‘is woman in marriage?” he asked.

  “I do,” came the thundering voice.

  “Fank you,” Allan said. “Everyone may be seated.”

  The titan nodded, turned, and winked in my direction.

  I looked over my shoulder but found only a decorative spray of flowers. Sure enough, Zeus had winked at me. As he seated himself, my eye came to rest on the man behind him.

  Crixus.

  He gave me a charmingly crooked smile.

  On the off chance telepathy could be found in the catalog of his powers, I sent him the following message: Try anything funny in front of all these people, and I’ll make you sorry you can’t die.

  Wouldn’t dream of it, arrived the prompt reply. There’s always later.

  Mark’s twitching jaw was visible at twenty paces.

  Shit. Giraffe. Giraffe giraffe giraffe.

  Allan shot me a warning glance. “Right, then. We’re all gavered ‘ere today...”

  His words washed over me as I stood and tried to smile instead of think. And yet, thinking was all I could do. Could I really leave this? This gallery, these people, this world? Steve would still talk to me, I was certain. But would Allan?

  Would Mark?

  Travel, I had promised myself. Travel and art and all the cheese I could eat. My life would be so full of all the amazing things that I wouldn’t even have time to miss this place. More importantly, the things I would not miss.

  Vampires in my bathtub. Heads in my luggage. Leg-humping werewolf suitors.

  Heartache.

  “I now pronounce you wolf and wife!” Allan announced with a flourish. “You may kiss de Nereid!”

  Steve cupped Shayla’s face in his knobby-knuckled fingers and planted a solid kiss on her lips.

  The crowd of wedding guests shot to their feet, stomping, whistling, hooting and hollering, united, however briefly, by this shared joy.

  Steve and Shayla rushed up the aisle, the guests filing in after them.

  Allan stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled twice. Once audibly, once at a decibel that caused only half the crowd to duck and clap their hands over their ears. “Listen up, you lot! We’ve got to get dinner tables set up in ‘ere. Everyone in the lobby untiw we’re ready.” He nodded to Joseph, who began ushering people toward the door.

  Crixus lingered near the back of the pack. The strange, strained expression on his usually arrogant face dug an acidic pit in my stomach.

  Chapter 24

  “To the bride and groom!”

  Despite the fact that Steve and Shayla had already done their honeymoon getaway departure, glasses rose at every table. Some made contact, many others missed. Not surprising, considering this was about the seventy-eighth toast of the evening.

  Droplets of red wine fell on Mark’s white shirt sleeve like rain as an expansive lavender-skirted bum tumbled into our assigned table. “Oh, my dear! I am so sorry!”

  Mark helped to untangle her from a chair and helped her back to her feet while I steadied the table’s towering centerpiece.

  “Goodness,” she said, straightening the flower-assaulted hat perched precariously atop her floof of graying hair. “I don’t have the head for wine I once had.”

  I returned the heavy silver scissors to the purse that had exploded across our table at her arrival. “Nothing to worry about,” I said, handing the purse over to her. “We’ve all been there.”

  After all, no one wanted to piss off one of the Fates. Shayla’s aunt or no.

  “You are a lovely girl,” she said. “I can see why Shayla likes you. Even if you are destined to—”

  I held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. Whatever it is. I...I like surprises.”

  Lipstick flecked her dentures when she smiled. “I dare say you won’t be disappointed, then.” She weaved away, bumping from table to table like a lurching purple bumblebee.

  “I don’t know about you,” Joseph slurred, consulting his twentieth glass of scotch like the Delphic oracle, “but I get tired of all these obscure, vaguely threatening prophesies.”

  “You call ‘at a prophecy?” Allan’s speech was slower than usual, and losing the distinction of an accent. “De old twat doesn’t know ‘er ass from ‘er elbow.”

  “Shhh!” I held a finger to my lips, feeling a little booze loose myself. “We’ve come this far without an apocalyptic battle. Let’s just be nice. Okay?”

  This comment drew a piqued look from Mark, who occupied the chair next to mine. His posture was slack, his body radiating a delicious mix of soap, and scotch, and warm, salty skin. Somewhere in the course of the evening, he’d lost his coat along with the top few buttons fastening his crisp white shirt. Through the enticing “v” of the open fabric, I stole glances at the shadowy ridge where his pectoral muscles sloped upward from his sternum.

  And oh, the trouble that kilt was causing.

  Slumped down in his chair, his long legs haphazardly shoved under my seat, that damnable plaid fabric brushed the spot just above where the rounded muscles of his thighs met up with his knee cap. The darkened cave between them left my fingers craving to cartoon-walk right up into that magical cave of manly wonders.

  “Hanna’s right,” Mark said. “We should—”

  “Wait,” I interrupted. “What did you just say?”

  Mark’s dark brows gathered over his eyes. “I said we should—”

  “No,” I said. “Before that.”

  “Hanna’s right,” he said in his very own distinctive I’m humoring Hanna tone I had grown to know and mostly resent.

  “Oh God,” I said, affecting a full-body shudder. “That was so good for me.”

  “I could do better,” Abernathy promised, his lips curling in a lazy, cat-like smile.

  “Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “I think I’m going to go get a Tide stick to take care of that stain.”

  Mark caught me by the wrist as I pushed myself up from my chair. “Hanna, I don’t care about the shirt.”

  “You may not,” I said, “but I do. And I’m your assistant for another two hours, remember?”

  “I remember.” The playful smile vanished from his lips.

  “Not to mention I spen
t a bloody millennium cuttin’ it to fit them mile-wide shouwders of yours.” Allan lifted his glass to his lips.

  “Cigar?” Joseph reached into his pocket, producing three, long fat tawny sausage-sized rolls.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Mark said, rising.

  Allan followed suit, taking a cigar from Joseph and examining it with bright-eyed interest. “If I didn’t know be’er, I’d say someone ‘as a fixation they ain’t dealt with yet.”

  “Trust me friend,” Joseph said, clapping Allan on the back. “If I had the urge to play the skin flute, you’d be the first to know. We’ll be outside,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’ll find you,” I said.

  Pushing through the tables and mingling bodies, I reached the stairs and loped up to the landing outside Mark’s office where my tidy desk sat.

  My desk.

  Would Mark hire another assistant after I left? He hadn’t really wanted one in the first place. But that was the curse of providing excellent service. Though initially resistant, Mark had conceded territory to me. First, his schedule, then his tasks, then his filing, his phone calls. Lately, he’d taken to malingering at my desk until I gave him something to do.

  Who would tell him what to do when I was gone?

  Picturing another girl at the workstation I had set up filled me with an instant, murderous rage.

  “Quite a party.”

  I jumped and spun to find Crixus leaning on the railing at the top of the stairs. Having forgone any kind of uniform formality, he wore his ubiquitous plain black t-shirt and ass-worshiping jeans.

  “It sure is,” I said, shuffling through my desk drawer in search of the Tide stick. Unsuccessful, I began rifling through my pencil cup, stopping when my fingers closed over something smooth and cool.

  “Clancy!” I crowed, looking at the silver flying pig letter opener that had opened much more than letters during my time at the gallery. Strange to hold in my open palm something that had once been planted deep in a werewolf heart.

  It had been thoroughly scoured and sanitized of course.

  I imagined myself at a different desk. A purely administrative desk for some CEO or other, managing his mundane calendar appointments. Picking up his dry cleaning. Doing his lame-ass expense reports.

  “You looked awfully good on Abernathy’s arm,” Crixus said, sauntering over to one of the chairs opposite my desk.

  “Yeah?” I asked idly.

  “Looked pretty happy, too,” he added, slouching into a chair, knees splayed in the posture of a man with testicles roughly the size of grapefruits.

  “That was my fake happy face.” I put Clancy back in my mug of pens and pawed through the shallow drawer in the middle of the desk. “Where the hell is my Tide stick?”

  “All due respect, I don’t think it’s his shirt Abernathy is concerned about losing.” That damn dimple appeared in his cheek as grinned at me.

  “What gave you that impression?” I did my best to sound casual as I pulled open my emergency snack drawer, rifling through cans of EZ Cheese, buttery club crackers, phosphate-rich meat sticks, and several half-eaten bags of chips.

  A girl had to have her options.

  “His face,” Crixus said.

  “You’re going to have to give me some more detail on that.” I said, fully aware I was doing the uber-pathetic you really think he likes me!? info pump.

  “In any given room at any given time, he’s both watching you and watching everyone around you and looking like he’s already calculated twelve strategies for killing everyone in it if the so much as sneeze in your direction.” Crixus stretched his arms over his head, lacing his fingers behind his skull like a hammock.

  “So?” I said. “He’s probably always calculating strategies for killing everyone in any given room whether or not I’m in it.” Ducking down behind the desk, I squirted a dollop of salty, processed spray cheese on my tongue. Desperate times, and all that.

  When I poked my head above the desk, I found Crixus wearing an expression of bemusement. “That’s the most pathetically in love motherfucker I’ve seen in two millennia on the planet.”

  My stomach engaged in a spontaneous death roll, releasing a swarm of manic butterflies into my chest. “You look pretty good for your age,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

  “Yeah I do.” Beneath the body-hugging fabric of his t-shirt, his pecs began an alternating flex-off.

  “As charming as that is, did you come up here purely to annoy the ever-loving shit out of me, or does this little chat have a point?”

  “Yes,” he said to both. “You just seem like you don’t have any neutral parties helping you make your decision is all.”

  “How very magnanimous of you,” I said.

  “One of my many sterling qualities.” At this, he scooted his hips toward the edge of the chair as if to suggest his most sterling quality lay smack between his powerful thighs.

  “I’m sure.” I slammed closed the last drawer of my desk and collapsed into my chair out of desperation, officially calling off the stain stick search party.

  “How about a list?” Crixus suggested. “You could make a list of all the things you like about Abernathy and the cop, and whichever one is longer, that’s the one you bang for life.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Why are you making all the sense right now?”

  “I have my moments.” Picking up my pad and pen from the pencil cup, he pushed them across the desk at me.

  “All right,” I said, tapping my pen against my teeth. “We’ll start with Abernathy.”

  Crixus raised an eyebrow at me.

  “I’m working alphabetically.” Dividing the page into two neat columns, with Abernathy at the top of one and Morrison at the top of the other, I scribbled for several silent moments.

  “Okay. Let’s have it,” Crixus said when I’d put my pen down.

  I cleared my throat, attempting to sound as clinical and impartial as I was capable of. “Abernathy,” I said. “Plusses. Has forearms I want to lick.”

  “Is that so?” Crixus glanced down at his own, road-mapped with thick veins and tawny dunes of sloping muscle.

  “Is protective,” I added, moving on before I could stop to ogle. “Is handsome and brave and strong and wise and also adorably grumpy.”

  “I’m already bored with this game.” Crixus sat up in his chair and crossed an ankle over the opposite knee. “Minuses?”

  I glanced down at the paper and the one item listed in the “minuses” column. Because really, it was the source of all the other things that bedeviled me on a daily basis. “Is a werewolf,” I said.

  “But you’re a werewolf,” Crixus pointed out most unhelpfully.

  “I’m a werewolf heir,” I said. “There’s a big difference.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Only, the question hadn’t come from Crixus.

  It had become from behind me.

  In increments too slow to measure, I turned around in my chair.

  There, leaning against the door jamb of Abernathy’s open office, was Morrison.

  I’d rehearsed this conversation a million times in head. The one where, sitting next to Morrison on the couch, steaming mugs of tea between us on the coffee table, I patiently and gently explained to him that I was the carrier of DNA from an unbroken and ancient line of staggeringly powerful werewolves. At this point in my mental conversation, Morrison usually did one of the three things. Throw himself out the window, throw me out the window, or call the nice men in white coats to come and take me away.

  Which is precisely why we’d never had this conversation.

  Now he knew.

  Personal experience had taught me that knowing was a far shot from believing.

  Looking at his face now, I searched it for any clue as to where on that scale Morrison was currently camped. I found only that stern, impenetrable cop face that gave nothing away.

  “Well this is awkward,” Crixus said, looking for all the world like
he wanted to reach for a bucket of popcorn.

  “James, I—” I began.

  He held up a hand to silence me. “This actually explains a lot.”

  “So, you…I mean, you’re not…” Try as I might, I could find no concise way to ask him how he was doing with the revelation that the human race coexisted with a vast and sometimes murderous array of creatures.

  “I’m a homicide detective, Hanna,” Morrison said. “I’ve seen some shit out there that would make this news look like a sing-along with Mary Poppins.”

  “Mary Poppins,” Crixus said, rocking back in his chair. “I would totally hit that.”

  “Ditto.” Morrison crossed the room, taking the seat next to Crixus’s and sliding it several man card-retaining feet away before sinking down.

  A wave of sweet, clear nostalgia swept over me. It had been in exactly this spot when, on my first day of the job, Morrison had come to question me about Helena’s murder.

  He sat across from me now in that same, hunch-shouldered concentration. “I do have a few questions.”

  “Everything’s real,” I explained pre-emptively. “Vampires, werewolves, witches, satyrs, centaurs…unicorns.” This last I pronounced less than enthusiastically, picking at a glitter fleck on my arm.

  “What is he?” Morrison jerked his chin at Crixus.

  “A pain in the ass, mostly,” I said. “But also a demigod.”

  Morrison was quiet for a moment. I could almost see the wheels turning behind his hazel eyes. That powerfully analytical brain of his weighing, sifting, sorting.

  “About this heir thing,” Morrison said. “What exactly does that mean?”

  With slightly less gentleness and patience than I had imagined, I gave him the whole scoop. With sprinkles. Abernathy and Joseph, Oscar Wilde, London, the peace pact, the severed heads, the werewolf vampire war, the state dinner, my near strangulation at the hands (did ghosts even have hands?), Klaud, and Nero.

  “Jesus,” Morrison said, dragging a hand down his face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. But nothing happens until I—”