“No magic.” I aimed a fierce frown at her, unable to bear the thought of Nikolos’s home ending up like every other home we’d been in tonight.
My brother squirmed on the seat, cheeks turning so red I could see them in the dark. I held back laughter, but winked at him.
“Please tell me this feeling goes away.”
I nodded. “Sort of. You get used to it.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay, okay, good. Otherwise I’ll be embarrassed. A lot.”
Not for the first time, I wondered about my brother and what sort of romantic experience he had. He was close to thirty, yet he blushed like a teenager whenever there was a hint of anything sexual. With Dooby around so much lately, there was a lot of that. The necromancer wielded innuendo like Elsa did her gun.
Resisting the urge to squirm myself, I instead focused on the scenery. The area was so beautiful. Spread out and heavily wooded, the property Nikolos owned had been allowed to run wild. It was the perfect backdrop to the home he’d built in ancient Minoan fashion. Long, rambling, and covered in large stone and rectangular brick, the house boasted a wide porch with steps and columns in front of a pair of side-by-side cherry doors.
We filed into the house. Castor hadn’t been here before and he stopped to gape at the half-naked, carved goddess figurines that graced the two pillars in the entry hall. I didn’t blame him. They were huge and startling at first. Each female figure had bees around her head and snakes around her feet. I wondered if Castor ever had snakes follow him around, because we shared the bee attraction. He’d put that to good use in the past by caring for hives and selling the honey.
Blythe sneezed and I turned to find her staring at a wall, her petite frame swaying in exhaustion. Black smeared her arms as well as her face.
Elsa swept past her and opened the door to the guest bathroom. Half her blonde hair had escaped from her bun. I winced when I saw the ends had ratted like crazy twine from being singed.
“No windows in here.” She frowned at the wrapped bundle in my hands. “This would be perfect for the vamp.”
“Good idea. Maybe we could flip the handle so it locks from the outside.” I held up the bundle that had been too still since I’d shaken him earlier. “You still alive, vampire?”
“The name is Fenris.” The muffled dry tone dripped with annoyance.
Elsa and I locked gazes, both of us chuckling. His tone was almost funnier than the name. Who named a sprite after a giant Norse wolf?
“Okay Mr. Fenris, we’re going to put you in a room without windows so the sun won’t hurt you when it comes out in a few hours.”
There was another muffled sound, the clearing of a tiny throat. “If I promise to stay with you, will you unwrap me? Please.” The last word was strangled like he had to force it out. Didn’t sound like a question either.
“Sorry, I don’t trust you. But don’t take it personally, I don’t trust most things. So you’ll be sticking close to me until I need your blood.”
“I can give you a vial.”
“Fresh is better,” Blythe said, coming up to sway next to me. “I have a headache like I get when I drink beer. I don’t remember drinking any beer.” Her glassy blue eyes stared at me. Or through me.
“Blythe, you collect herbs. How can you not know about datura?” Of course, that hadn’t been everyday datura…
“I do, actually. But I use it in other things.”
That made absolutely no sense. Not that a confusing Blythe was unusual or anything.
She leaned against the wall, shuffled one slippered foot over the tile. “Will you pick a bed for me? I’m so sleepy.” Black smudges showed up on the white marble floor.
I took us all in, heart suddenly dropping to my feet with the weight of responsibility. Technically we were all adults, but I felt like it was up to me to set things right. We were homeless and Nikolos had offered his home, so it was time for me to man up and get over my aversion to being here. It was certainly big enough for everyone. “We’ll stay here and regroup. There’s more than enough room and we’ll figure out food and everything tomorrow. Just pick a room…but not the master, okay? There are like seven other bedrooms here.”
Elsa scrounged up a screwdriver and changed the lock on the bathroom door and we locked the sprite inside.
“Goddess of law?” he yelled through the door.
Phro, laughing, disappeared.
Everyone else had already picked rooms when Elsa stopped me outside of one and looked me in the eye. “You okay?”
I offered her a tired smile. “I am. It makes sense for us to be here right now. I should be asking if you’re okay. You lost a lot tonight.”
She hugged me and stepped back. “I still have you and a pretty cool new brother. We’ll figure out the rest.”
I nodded and shuffled down the hall. I think everyone expected me to sleep in the master bedroom, but I couldn’t bring myself to be in Nikolos’s bed—not without him there. So I spent the rest of the rough night on the big green couch in Nikolos’s gathering room. I called it that because he’d obviously built this Minoan replica for a family. A large one. This room was my favorite, after the kitchen. It felt like a natural oasis with the fresh green scent from the potted palms and the trickling water noise from the spring. He’d built the room around the spring and underneath was a vast labyrinth of underground limestone caverns. A hand-painted screen masked the impressive computer system he had set up in the corner, and behind the sectional couch a beautiful antique table and chairs made the perfect game or research area.
Being in this house without him made me edgy and uncomfortable, so I thought sleeping in here would help. Just the thought of lying in that big bed in his room when I’d never had the chance to share it with him made my stomach roll. So instead of getting the sleep my body desperately needed, I stared at a painting of two wingless griffins pulling a chariot filled with two goddesses. The Minoans had believed these creatures were escorts to the underworld.
I could use a couple of those for what I had planned.
In my world, only fire elementals could burn open the deepest portals. Unfortunately, they were the creatures that scared me the most. Elsa knew this—it was one of the reasons she’d been kind of overprotective toward me lately. She’d been with me the night one of those nasty creatures had taken over my body. She hadn’t been awake for the worst part of it, thank goddess. We’d been unwilling guests of a black wizard who thought he had control of the elemental. I’d never told Elsa that the blood-covered basement we’d awakened in had been my doing, that somehow the elemental had possessed me.
Didn’t matter that I remembered none of it. I’d come to with shredded fingers, scratches and multiple deep gashes that told me the wizard had fought back. I’d seen what remained of him and knowing I was capable of that kind of violence had sent me running for a time.
Not anymore. Having some creature snatch my sister’s soul had been the slap in the face I’d needed to pull my head out of my ass and get back in the game. Though…I was still trying to figure out what that game would be. Not even the knowledge that I was the daughter of a monster—one who’d methodically gone through lists of families ravaged by cancer so he could kill their children—was going to stop me from moving ahead. I still needed a place to live, food, and instead of getting those things with piddly odd jobs, I wanted to find a way to afford food while still tracking down the monsters. I had no idea how many had escaped during that battle with the Dweller on the Threshold.
Of course, all this depended on whether I made it out of the hell dimension alive.
With that thought, I gave up. The sun was just beginning to rise and finish off what was left of my sleepless night. I rolled off the couch, then stumbled into the modern kitchen to find coffee. Blythe was already at the table, her soft, blonde hair plastered to one side of her face. She wore the pink flannel pajamas we’d bought at a twenty-four-hour mart after we left the vamp’s ruined home. I’d had them pick up black sweats and a couple of T-shirts for me while I stayed in the car with the little creature. I could only imagine that thing getting loose in a well-lit store in the middle of the night.
Though, that might have been pretty funny.
Blythe yawned and idly scratched the huge red crease down her right cheek. Morning sunlight turned her curls nearly white and winked off her silver pentagram ring.
The kitchen smelled like heaven. I thought about kissing her when I saw she’d already brewed coffee. “Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” I remembered where Nikolos kept the cups and pulled down a chunky, brown stoneware mug and filled it to the rim. Lifting it to my nose, I inhaled and let that caffeine scent work its zap before taking a sip. I winced when the too-hot coffee took off a layer of tongue.
“The Witch Council has twenty-four-hour phones. I called again to talk to Sophie and they finally admitted she’s gone.”
“Gone?” I sat in a black chair and bent my knees to put my feet in the seat across from me. I loved that Nikolos had big furniture in his house. It worked for me. Made Blythe look like a child though.
“The woman who answered the phone said she went crazy, dropped out of the council and is traveling with a band of singing witches.”
Phro snorted.
I hadn’t even realized she’d come into the room. Behind her trailed Frida, and I caught Blythe’s soft smile of welcome out of the corner of my eye. Blythe was one of the rare few who could see spirit guides. Everyone had one, but most had no idea they had these silent guards subtly helping them. It was too bad really. When I’d met Blythe, she couldn’t see them but knew she had one. She’d named the huge man Frida, but we were pretty sure that wasn’t his name. She’d only been able to see him and everyone else’s after she’d been attacked and Frida had fought for her. That had told me he was an unusual guide because they can’t normally do this. Mine were pretty useless.
Which made me think of Fred, my missing guide. My heart clenched and I shoved the thought aside.
Blythe pulled something from her pocket and I held my breath. It was the drawstring bag that carried her rune stones. I had the oddest fascination with the damn things. “Are you going to cast about Sophie? Can the runes actually tell us where to find the traveling, singing witches?”
She scowled at me. “It’s too early for sarcasm.”
I lifted an eyebrow, met Phro’s amused gaze, then cautiously tried another sip of coffee. A traveling band of singing witches is funny. It just is.
Blythe sighed and clutched the bag to her chest. “It doesn’t sound like something Sophie would do. She can’t sing. Really can’t sing. It hurts your ears. Plus, she hates traveling and she loved being on the council, loved it more than anything else. She’d never give up everything and take off like that. Something’s wrong—I know it.”
I shrugged, dug my bare toes in the soft padding of the breakfast chair. “So cast.”
Nodding, Blythe opened the bag, which had the color of a tiger’s eye stone with this faint iridescent sheen that drew the eye like a magnet. I loved tiger’s eye and wore one in the ankh around my neck. It was the only thing of value I knew was truly my own. It had been found on me when I was discovered alone in Big Cypress Swamp as a toddler.
Now I wore Nikolos’s ankh as well. I reached up to run my finger over the outline of them both through my shirt. He’d slipped the ankh over my head before diving into that damned portal. I pushed away the image, picked up my coffee and blew on it. Tried to focus on Blythe.
She spread a soft cotton cloth on the table before shaping a leather strip into a circle. Everyone I’d seen use rune stones had their individual style and Blythe was no different. Her ritual included placing each piece with concentrated precision, then moving her lips in some silent prayer or wish—I didn’t know which. Prayer was everyone’s private business.
But I did have to curl the fingers of my free hand around the mug to keep from reaching for those smooth bone carvings when she poured them into her hand. I’d held them once before and they felt good in the palm. Weird, tingly and warm, but really, really good.
“When I cast, I always remind myself that the runes were a gift from Odin. According to the stories, he was quite duplicitous, so I try to remember that. Even though they have never lied to me or tricked me, I think it’s important to keep an open mind.”
I nodded. I could use a more open mind—was working on that.
She let the stones drop. Both Phro and I leaned forward to watch and just like before, they shifted and formed a pattern on their own. Awareness slithered over my skin as if a bigger, more powerful presence had entered the room. The sun and air around me took on a hazy, surreal glow and I felt my eyes open wide.
Did Odin himself have a hand in the movement of the stones?
From the thick, yet gentle caress of magic that moved over me, it certainly seemed like he might. I looked at Phro, only to see her rubbing her arms. She swallowed heavily and took a couple of steps back from the stones. As Aphrodite, she’d been fearless. A fearless slut, yeah, but until she’d been cast here powerless, she hadn’t realized she could be made vulnerable. She was still pretty bold, but something in that last battle with the Dweller had changed her. I found myself hoping she’d eventually share what.
“What do they say?” I asked softly.
“Well,” Blythe chewed on her bottom lip and reached out to touch one of the stones. “I asked if she was in danger and the stones…the stones—”