Lore vs. The Summoning (19 page)

"I want you to remove it," I said in my I'm-so-pissed-I-could-spit voice.

"It is a Brand, dearest. A Brand cannot be removed."

"Then you'd better hope I can heal it off my skin," I snapped before hanging up.

Threatening the high priestess of the Fire witches was probably a bad idea. I'd only been burnt twice by rogue Fire witches but those had been two of the most painful wounds I'd ever sustained. I'd endured quite a bit of pain since I'd been given my powers to have a pretty good comparison.

"What have you done now?"

I whirled around to face the derisive voice of my guide. "Great," I muttered at the dark figure standing in front of my bedroom door. "A visit from you is just the perfect way to end an already perfect day."

In a surprising move Kastio shimmered out of sight and then back in again with a more solid appearance. There was no mist around him now. He was in the Mortal Realm. My guide advanced on me too quickly for me to avoid his touch. I stood stiffly staring at the wall while his eerily smooth fingertips traced the mark on my neck.

I had almost forgotten that of all the people I'd met over the years, supernatural or otherwise, Kastio had the warmest body temperature by far. I didn't know if it was a peculiarity of the divine or if he'd been something supernatural before he'd been deified. The few times I'd tried to get information out of him about his past he'd given me cryptic responses or outright ignored me.

What I did remember was that these moments when Kastio visited in the flesh were the worst. I'd have paid him to go back to the Domain and dip into my thoughts simply to avoid having to feel his presence heavy beside me.
 

His aura always preceded him like a choking wave of humidity. It washed over me, holding me captive in a phantom grip. The scent of expensive fabric and exotic spice hovered with it.

I forced myself to speak in an effort to ignore his proximity. "Why bother asking? You know what I did."

"Yes," he agreed in his unreadable voice.

A shiver shot up my back at the realization that he had been watching. Kastio had all but admitted to seeing every tiny thing that Morrígan and I had done together. My cheeks flushed brilliant crimson. Of all of the things Kastio had probably witnessed, I was most mortified about this one.

"So you know this isn't my fault," I added defensively without looking at him.

His fingers were still on my neck. They'd long since stopped tracing the mark. I hadn't noticed it until then. Unfortunately the moment I'd noticed it, my body reacted to it. A tremor began in my shoulders and had washed over the rest of me by the time I'd taken a step back.

Kastio's hand dropped to rest beside him. "It is a magical Brand. Neither of your healing powers will remove it."

Technically I had two healing powers. There was the innate healing my body did effortlessly -- healing rather like shapeshifters had. And then there was the ability to Heal like the flavor of witch called Healers. I wasn't a true Healer because it didn't work when applied to myself and, well, I was half human, half divine instead of all witch.

But wait, he'd said
neither
would work on me. "You're joking."

"I do not joke." He was right about that. He had no sense of humor to speak of.
 

"Gods," I whined. "I can't have something like this there!" I jabbed my fingers toward my neck. "I always wear my hair up during performances and that will show on every gown I own." I inhaled a petulant breath, hoping for some sort of answer that would fix this. An idea popped into my brain. My eyebrows lifted and my gaze met his. "Maybe I can have someone tattoo over it with flesh colored ink."

He didn't so much as move a hair when he squashed my hope. "Your skin will heal the tattoo and absorb the ink but the Brand will remain."

"Damn it!" I slumped down onto the sofa to put a little more space between us without it being obvious what I was doing. Then I recalled something from the phone conversation. "Was she telling the truth, Kast? Will it protect me?"

His brooding expression didn't budge. "Yes."

That was surprising. People didn't usually give me gifts quite that useful. I could always use a little more protection. "What will it protect me against?"

"Fire."

His monosyllabic responses were irking the hell out of me. I should be accustomed to them by now. He'd been with me on and off for nine years and he hadn't changed in all that time.

"So that means what?" I pressed. "Nothing will happen to me if someone hits me with a fireball?"

"The mark draws power from its owner and thus is only as powerful as the one that gave it." Finally, I was getting some useful information out of him. "If the high priestess is powerful enough, then yes, you could be impervious to flame. If her power level were milder then it would only reduce the damage you took. A third-degree burn instead of a first, for example."

"Any idea how powerful she is?"

"Unfortunately no. I cannot read her."

My eyebrow lifted. "But you can read other people?"

"Yes," Kastio replied succinctly.

"Why can't you read her?"

"I do not know."

I stared at the divine being that had been sent by Apollo to help me and wondered why he didn't know. He was supposed to be the one with the answers. If he didn't know, did that mean something was off about Morrígan?

Kastio's eyes dropped to my neck. His already brooding expression darkened. It had seemed impossible for him to look more morose than he normally did but he'd just proved me wrong.

"I must go," he said in his deepest of tones.

There were few times that Kastio had ever told me he had to leave. Those occurrences had been when he'd been called to guide another for a few months. I considered asking him when he'd be back but I didn't want to sound as if I needed him. I didn't need him. He wasn't all that useful when he was around.
 

Perhaps it was the urgent way he'd uttered the words that made me want to ask why he was so suddenly leaving. When his slate colored eyes lifted up again I saw the strangest emotion within them: fear. I'd opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong but the rush of his usual parting greeting cut me off.

"Hera keep you safe."

I was left staring in bewilderment at the spot he'd inhabited.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I'd needed a day off. Perhaps it was irresponsible of me with a deadline looming over my head and all. I felt a little guilty for it a few times as I'd walked the sidewalks around my favorite boutiques. But not guilty enough to stop.
 

My day of shopping ended with a lengthy stop at Barnes and Nobles for a strawberry smoothie and a sit near the travel books. The retail therapy had returned my sanity to its typical,
partial
state. I'd counted myself lucky that pushing the balance on my credit cards higher was all that it took to get that state back.

I'd found a nice black silk mandarin collar shirt on clearance at one of my favorite out of the way boutiques. It was dressy enough that I could wear it with a long black skirt to the Chamber Tea. And that high collar would hide my new mark.
 

Each time I'd stepped in front of a dressing room mirrors and seen the sooty raven on my neck in the glass behind me my spirits had lowered just a little bit. It had put a damper on my usual gusto enough that I'd skipped more than half of the shops I usually hit. The thin plastic in my wallet was better for it.

I'd thought nothing of the people gathered on the sidewalk outside the row house as I drove by to find a parking spot near dinnertime. The raised voices I heard while coming around the corner, bags in hand, didn't particularly concern me either. But when the guy who lived across the hall from my apartment stepped in front of me with a scowl etched into the craggy skin around his mouth, I had to pay attention.

"The entire first floor is flooded," he informed me gruffly.

My recently plucked eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Flooded?"

His wrinkled forehead grew more so as he nodded. "Super says a pipe broke in the wall between apartment two and three." I lived in apartment three. "Everything is destroyed. He didn't even have flood insurance," the man spit his S's out.

The words he spoke were familiar but I didn't follow their meaning as quickly as I ought to. "What do you mean 'flooded'?"

"I mean there is two and a half feet of water in there!" He shouted in my face as if it were my fault. "Everything I own is destroyed!"

If everything he owned was destroyed then...

I looked down at the bags in my hand and wondered if these were my sole possessions now. Crap! My flute! I dropped the bags where I stood, uncaring about my new blouse and pair of novels, and darted toward the door.

"You can't go in there..." My neighbor's shout went ignored.

He hadn't been exaggerating. There literally was two and a half feet of water in the place and it was steadily rising. Running in that much water was a difficult feat to accomplish at best.

I shoved my way into the apartment to find, much to my relief, that I'd left my flute in its case on the second from the top shelf of my living room bookcase. With that worry behind me I sloshed my way into the bedroom.

The bed was nearly submerged, my collection of shoes hopelessly ruined and all but the top three of my chest of drawers were dripping. However most of my good clothes hung on hangers in the closet. Many of them were yet untouched. Only the longest of the gowns -- which of course were the most expensive -- had been ruined. I pulled things out by the armful and started transporting them out to the car. The flute case was nestled atop the first load.

My building superintendent caught me at the tail end of the race to save my worldly possessions. He attempted to shout at me for going into what he was calling a "dangerous situation". I didn't understand why it was a problem. The power had been turned off to the building and it hadn't been a sewage pipe that had broken.
 

I left my cell phone number with the furious superintendent, ignored his biting remarks about how stupid I'd been, and then trudged my drenched self back to the car to sit on a towel in the driver's seat. My eyes stared into the rearview mirror at the backseat that was piled with clothes, winter coats, towels, a compound hunting bow, a pair of slingshots, a collection of wet handguns and everything else I could shove into the few duffle bags that hadn't been submerged.
 

What the hell was I going to do now?

It only took me a few minutes to remember I owned a brownstone across town with a furnished lobby. I could at least store my things there and catch some shuteye on the stiff leather sofa tonight until I figured out the answer to that question.

It was an uncomfortably cold trip to the brownstone. The Mini's heater wasn't working as fast as I'd like. The afternoon had turned unseasonably cold. That could be a problem because there was no heat at the brownstone. None of my blankets had survived the flood. I'd have to get warm with some of the few towels that had. Paying the bills for gas and water at a building I wasn't using had seemed like a waste. The only things I'd bothered with were electricity and the high speed WiFi for the security system.

By the time I'd finished hauling things inside, getting warm was no longer an issue. I was sweaty, uncomfortable and more than a little smelly. I cleaned up as best I could with the towels and pulled on fresh clothes. Unfortunately the only other garments that had survived the flood beside my dressy outfits were my very casual knit pants and tank tops, the items I wore to bed. I'd have to go shopping...again.

I'd been trying to find a new apartment near Symphony Hall using only my phone for a few hours when there was a knock on the lobby door. I sat still, hoping whoever it was would believe the place empty and leave. Perhaps they hadn't seen the Mini in the parking lot out back.

"Miss Denham?"
 

Aiden Bruce. Why was I not surprised he'd be the first to track me here?

"May I come in, please?"

I attempted to make my breathing shallow. He didn't know that I was here. I could have left my car here and gotten a ride with someone else.

"Though that is a valiant attempt at stealth, I can still hear you breathing," he said, proving I sucked at hiding. "I brought dinner with me, a large double cheese pizza from Manzetti's."

That was all he'd needed to say. I bounded from the leather sofa with the furious growling of my stomach spurring me onward. Aiden's smirk was ignored in favor of the pizza pie he was holding out. I snatched the cardboard box up and went back inside without bothering to greet him.

The vampire remained on the lobby's edge while I scarfed down an entire piece of pizza so greasy it dripped off my fingers. Food that might kill me before something supernatural did the deed first was my favorite kind.

"You will stay with me," he said imperiously.

"That only works when Morrígan does it," I replied without thinking and then immediately flushed scarlet when I realized what I'd admitted.

"I have guestrooms that go unused for years at a time," he added rather than comment. "And plenty of hot water. Manzetti's is two blocks away."

My response was dry. "Not even the promise of the most divine pizza in the world will get me to move in with you, Mr. Bruce."

He ignored my refusals as if they hadn't been spoken at all. "You're still under my employ. I won't have my employees living in destitution."

"I'm not under your employ and I'm not destitute," I refuted with a finger jabbed upward, "There's a roof over my head and you brought me pizza."

"You have no running water."

I tossed him a sharp look. "How do you know?"

Aiden exhaled noisily. "I won't take no for an answer."

"I've already booked a room at the Hilton," I lied.

And then my phone rang. From the number listed on the screen I gathered my evening was getting even better. Briefly I contemplated if debating with Aiden was preferable to listening to Morrígan. In the end I decided she was safer over the phone than he was in person.