“You need to relax.” Philomena bumped her with her hips.
Lorelei’s foot was already tapping and her fingers began to drum on her arm. “I am relaxed. Now tell me exactly what you did.”
“I synthesized Ziah’s blood into my darts, and they came out perfect.” From the pocket of her fluffy, pink dress, she pulled out her peashooter. “They’re really fast acting, but only last a few hours—they’ll probably zap everyone’s energy when they run out here soon. Got a hefty dose of eros in ‘em, but I dumped a bunch of ludus and mania in there too. It’s all based on that research you suggested I do. That Jordan guy was so uptight I realized I needed to double the inhibition lowerers.”
“Oh, great suggestion, Lorelei,” she muttered to herself. “So, what does that actually mean in non-cupid terms?”
“Lust, affection, and infatuation—the darts are full of them. They basically turn you into a horny teenager.” She started giggling wildly.
Lorelei watched a set of satyrs pass by, their horns tangled around one another. Mr. Ambros and Mr. Felps were coming the other direction, arm in arm. Well, there was that sorted, at least. Mr. Carr was amongst the others, held tightly in the arms of a scaled woman one and a half times his height as they danced to Namtar’s Daughter. If nothing else, mellowing him out might make the rest of this worth it. “Besides being tired, are they all going to be embarrassed about what they’ve done once these things wear off?”
“No way!” Philomena flung her hands around, and Lorelei ducked away from the peashooter. “The details in the morning might be a little fuzzy, but I wouldn’t force anyone to fall for anyone else they weren’t already attracted to, and I told you, I only shot about half of the crowd anyway. Sure, desire and puppylove are sort of naturally contagious, but if someone’s not open to it, it’s not happening. Just think of these little darts like Dionysus’s best wine, except you can still walk in a straight line after overindulging. And too much of one won’t be a downer, if you know what I mean.” She elbowed her hard in the side.
“Wonderful,” Lorelei said as if it were anything but, scanning the crowd for any sign of Conrad, and then she gasped. What if someone who’d been shot singled him out? He definitely looked good enough to grab and—no, there wasn’t time for those thoughts, not right now.
“You get it, right?” Philomena was still waggling her eyebrows. “Oh, man, you’re so tense you’re not even laughing at my wiener joke. Good thing I know exactly how to help you out.”
Lorelei was distracted by Conrad as he emerged from the crowd with both Grier and Hana. “Did you do anything to either of them?” she hissed at Philomena before they made it across the ballroom.
“Those kids? Nah, I figured they didn’t need the help. But,”—she held up her peashooter—“I gotta keep up my high score.”
Before Lorelei could stop her, she brought the tube up to her lips and blew. Lorelei squeezed her eyes shut, wincing before the dart even struck her, the fear of whatever was going to follow even worse, but instead she felt nothing. No sharp jab, no overwhelming urge to tackle anyone, not even a change in her opinion of the weird aura in the room. She popped one eye open, to double check she was dart free but saw Philomena hadn’t aimed at her.
Conrad slapped his neck like he’d been bitten, squinting down at the ground in a sort of confusion, then, slowly, he lifted his head, and their eyes met. Lorelei was held in his gaze from halfway across the room, the rest of the party, the lights, the noise, the chaos, all falling away. Philomena had left her unenchanted, and yet her heart almost certainly skipped a beat. And then she swept back around to the cupid and grabbed the woman by the straps of her dress. “You didn’t!”
“I did.” Philomena was grinning like an idiom that hadn’t been invented yet. “And you’re welcome.”
“Are you crazy?” She shook the woman, the big bow tying up her hair bobbing all over her head. “You had to shoot him?”
The cupid looked at her like she were stupid. “Of course, him. That’s the one you like, and I can tell—”
“But what about all that love potion crap he already went through?”
“I didn’t think of that.” Philomena’s face fell. “Well, if he’s still broken hearted about all that stuff, the dart probably won’t do anything to him.”
“Probably?” she growled. “Shouldn’t you know for sure?”
“Hey.” Conrad’s voice was right in her ear, his body so close she thought they’d been transported back into the telephone box, and sweat broke out on her back. Breathlessly, he told her, “I found them for you.”
She released Philomena and turned to him, but he didn’t bother to move back. “Th-thanks,” she squeaked out.
“If there’s anything else you want, tell me.” Conrad practically melted her under the bedroom-eyed longing in his gaze as it traveled down her body. “I’ll give it to you. Anything.”
“Uh, how about, like, six inches,” she said, and pushed him half a foot back.
Hana was beside him, and despite her penchant for romance novels, was totally oblivious to Conrad’s abrupt shift in demeanor. “Grier said you picked this place!” she squealed.
Lorelei rounded on her and Grier, refocusing on why she wanted to find them in the first place. “Were you two behaving?” She heard her mother’s voice in her words and cringed.
“We were playing sho,” Hana said innocently, eyes wide. “I found the boards and all the tiles right where they used to be. I was winning.”
Grier pouted. “Well, you didn’t explain all the rules to me.”
Lorelei scrutinized one teenager and then the other, Hana looking adorable in a yellow and blue polka-dotted skirt and Grier clearly dressed by Ziah in a shirt he’d unbuttoned probably as soon as he got away from her. Satisfied enough for the moment that if Ando showed up, he wouldn’t have another reason to be mad at any of them, she sighed. “Just don’t go running off into any dark corners. Stay together, but also leave room between the two of you for whatever chaste entity you people believe in.”
They peered at one another, confused. “We need to go get more cookies anyway; I told Ziah I wouldn’t let them run out,” said Hana, eyeing the table. “Come on, Grier.”
Lorelei watched them head back to the door into the manor, one crisis averted. If nothing else, Hana seemed to be in a much better mood, and in turn so was Grier.
“Lorelei.” When Conrad said her name, it was throaty and deep in all the ways that it absolutely shouldn’t have been. “I have to tell you something.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think you do.”
He closed the tiny gap she’d made between them. “It’s important, and it’s been eating away at me.”
“Shh!” She put a finger up, her own breath catching. His hands had been hovering near her waist, but he thankfully, or regrettably, pulled them back. “Do you hear that?” She pretended to be listening hard, twisting up her face.
He grabbed her then, snaking his hands into the small of her back protectively. “What?” Well, that backfired. Sort of.
She pressed both hands onto his chest—his warm, hard chest—to hold him at bay. Right up against one another, and in heels, his face was almost close enough for her to simply lean forward and kiss. Like they had a will of their own, her hands were sliding up to his shoulders, but when she saw what they were doing she froze, cursing the next part already.
“Conrad, you are under a spell,” she said carefully. “Philomena shot you with one of her darts, and it’s making you,”—she glanced down at the lack of space between them—“affectionate.”
Conrad shot a look at the cupid who gave him a wink before running off into the crowd. “What? No, I—oh.” He pulled his hands away and took a step back. “I feel fine though.”
“Do you?” She looked him up and down.
There was a struggle on his face, but he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, totally. I mean, I must be immune to that stuff by now, right?” He coughed out an uneasy laugh, flexing his fingers.<
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“I don’t know.” She watched him fidget, scratching the back of his head and looking around the room. “You were just saying you had to tell me something. If it’s something you wouldn’t normally say, then it’s probably the dart.”
“Yeah, well, no, it’s normal, I think. I just wanted to say, um,”—his voice cracked like a thirteen-year-old’s—“I should have told you earlier, when you knocked on my door, how you look. I didn’t, and I should have. Said something. That’s all.”
Lorelei glanced down at herself.
“Good. Not that you don’t normally, it’s just right now, tonight, you look good. Really, really good.”
It had come out so awkward and stilted, she wanted to laugh but held back.
“Also.” He coughed, standing a little straighter. “You smell nice too.”
Lorelei was actually pretty sure she was sweating from the stress, turning toward her own shoulder and taking a covert sniff.
His face set itself steely again like he had shaken off the doubt that had been invading him. “So, do you maybe want to go back to my room and—”
“Was this your idea?” Ando’s voice made Lorelei jump. She spun to see the chef staring at her, eyes narrowed, and she backed right into Conrad who didn’t budge.
“My idea?” She reached behind her and gave Conrad a shove. “If it turned out all wrong then yeah, probably.”
“This place,” Ando said, gesturing to the room. “Did you bring this place here?”
Her stomach turned. “You don’t like it?”
“Like it?” Ando looked at her like she were sous-chefing for him and had started a series of grease fires, but then he held his breath, eyes darting over the room. His shoulders relaxed, and he ran a hand over his mustache. “This place is my whole heart. But the white room—is it the same place? The actual temple?”
“Yes?” Lorelei looked up at the intricate ceiling and a spark that burst up against it. “I didn’t know it was a temple though. Oh, shit, and everyone’s being so disrespectful.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “And I just swore in here. Damn it! Ugh, I just wanted to help Hana with her homesickness.”
Ando sliced his hand through the air. “If this is indeed the same place, we have a much bigger problem than all that.” He pointed at the balcony area and the trees beyond, draped in moonlight. “The thing that killed Hana’s mother, that killed all of them to get to her, it remains here, tied to this place.”
“You mean, like, locked up in an urn or something, right?”
He shook his head. “It was bound to this temple, left behind and forgotten when it failed. It was left to rot with no magical energy to feed off of for years. That’s what the servants do—they collect. It is the reason why we can never go home, so it can never be fed again.”
“That’s the bad juju,” she whispered, glancing around for a sign of something out of place, but there was too much chaos already running through the crowd.
“I’ve told Hana and Grier to stay out of here and go back to their rooms, but that thing, if it’s not dead, it is surely consuming all of this and waking up.”
Lorelei looked back to Conrad, but his eyes were gazing down at the back of her, and she knew he hadn’t heard any of it. “We need Ziah,” she said and started pushing through the crowd, Conrad and Ando following behind.
She found her by her long, black hair trailing down an exposed back of golden skin. Dressed in blood-red satin, there was no mistaking her, and the pale hands that were pawing at her back made it even more clear she was totally immersed in having quite a good time. “Sorry, Ziah, I hate to interrupt, but we have an issue.”
Ziah turned, her eyes and nose covered by a lacy, black mask. She was grinning stupidly, but when she saw them, her face fell. She pushed the tall, masked stranger she’d been kissing away with a single arm and a shocking amount of strength. “What’s wrong?”
“I made a mistake,” Lorelei said. “I used Ando and Hana’s home as our venue, but Ando said this place is sort of cursed with a magic-eating baddie, so I think we need to get everyone out.”
Ziah glanced around the room, pushing her mask up on top of her head. Her makeup was dark and her lashes were thick, but her amber eyes pierced the room with the flicker of something like fire in them. Then she glanced back down at Ando. “What kind of curse?”
“A servant sent to do a job that was thwarted. We need to end the manor’s connection to this place before it wakes fully. If it’s alive, it’s been feeding on the energy here the whole time.”
“There are probably hours left on the timer still.” Ziah took in the rowdiness around her, the spells breaking against the walls, the noise, the chaos, for what looked like the first time. “Wait, what exactly is going on here?”
“Philomena has been shooting everyone with love darts,” Lorelei admitted, slapping Conrad’s hand away from her waist. “They’re all worked up, and she might have gotten you too. She says the magic wears off after a few hours, so everybody might be winding down soon.” A burst of sparks exploded overhead. “Or not.”
“Expending all of this magic.” Ando crossed one set of arms, the other flailing outward. “This place was left empty so that thing wouldn’t have anything to feed on, and now it could be walking among us.”
“You are concerned about an intruder?” Ren’s stoic voice came up from behind them, startling Lorelei. He wasn’t wearing any sort of mask, but his lips were stained red, likely from the wine. She hoped elves had a high tolerance.
Ando confirmed, “An entity of ill will.”
Conrad stood a bit closer to Lorelei so that she could feel how warm he was, but she didn’t push him away this time, the look of unease on the others’ faces frightening.
Ziah pulled her shoulders back. “All right, we need to shut this thing down and send everyone to their rooms without panicking or utilizing anymore excess magic. The door is already warded to only let guests with keys over the threshold. If those darts are starting to wear off, maybe we can convince everyone they’re tired enough to leave before this thing gets too powerful.”
They looked about at the party-goers, dressed in suits and gowns and all masked. There was no way to know, even if it weren’t dark with strobing, colored lights, who amongst them didn’t belong.
CHAPTER 33
A LITTLE WHILE
“You need to go back.” Conrad was dragging Lorelei across the ballroom. “It’s only safe on the other side of that door.” His hands were still on her, but the reason had suddenly shifted, and she wasn’t thrilled about the change.
Ziah, Ando, and Ren had scattered after the succubus set them all with tasks to wind the party down. Lorelei had a deep desire to run at the mention of another servant, a thing possibly as powerful and gruesome as Atax, but as Conrad made a beeline for the door to the manor with her in tow, a more pressing urge overcame all of that.
“No, I’m staying.” She tugged against his grip, but he continued on, stronger and more adamant. They were much closer to the door now, separate from the other guests. At a loss, she went completely dead weight against him, jerking back. “Conrad, listen to me!”
He stopped suddenly, blinking the determination out of his eyes and looking down at the hand he had on her as if surprised at what he had just done.
“I’m going to stay,” she told him, too level to be argued with. “I made this mess, I have to clean it up.”
In the silence that followed, his grip on her relaxed, but he didn’t let go. His eyes found hers. “But I don’t want you to get hurt.”
She bit her lip at the sweetness in his voice, then reminded herself it was almost certainly the love dart talking. “I’ll be fine. I’m a lorelei, remember?”
“Excuse me, everybody!” Feedback squealed over the speakers, and the music came to a messy halt mid-song. Ziah had made her way up onto the stage and wrestled the microphone from one of the members of Namtar’s Daughter. “Ladies, gentlemen, non-binary beings, I want to thank you all
so much for coming out tonight, and—oh!” A spell zapped past her and caught the neck of a musician’s guitar, turning the instrument into a wedge of parmesan.
“Sorry!” a voice called from the crowd, and with another zap it turned back. The guitarist sniffed her instrument, disgusted.
Ziah cleared her throat. “As I was saying, thank you all so much. Moonlit Shores Manor appreciates your patronage, as always, and with this, we wish to say goodnight.”
The crowd turned instantly, hisses rising up at her. The broad, hospitality smile she’d been wearing faltered, and she glanced to the edge of the stage where Ren stood. The elf wiggled his fingers, and she rolled her eyes.
“Weary travelers,” she said, her voice taking on a much deeper tone as if the echo on the microphone had been turned up, “the night grows long, and you desire the sanctuary of your beds.”
A warm wind blew through the arches into the ballroom, settling over Lorelei as a yawn racked through her, her eyelids drooping. There was something sweet on the breeze and pleasant tingles running up the back of her neck. Ziah was right, she was always right.
Lorelei leaned into Conrad, the skin of his forearm on hers, warm as his fingertips tickled at the back of her hand. She should leave. They both should. Together. But then she blinked, recognizing the feeling as unnatural and laced with magic. She propped herself back up. “Is Ziah trying to enchant the entire party?”
He hummed back, mostly useless, but the sparks the guests were shooting had died off, the smoke clearing, and no one was booing Ziah anymore.
The succubus waved a hand over the crowd. “One last song to close out our humble gathering. And as is tradition,”—she drew out the word as if convincing even herself—“masks off to say goodnight.”
The band behind Ziah struck itself up with a slow-tempo, and she passed off the microphone to the woman at her side, much more content to take it back and sing. Without the constant spells, the ballroom had fallen much darker, and the smell of burning had gone from the air leaving it sweet and cool.
The Wayward Deed (Vacancy Book 2) Page 33