Love in the Time of Dragons (37 page)

“There is a difference in surrendering something temporarily, and relinquishing the same,” he said cryptically.

I glanced up at him, squinting against the low sun. “If you’re going to steal it back from him, I want to help. I can’t believe I slaved for that man for all those years. Talk about ungrateful. Do you think Kostya would let us buy that house? This one is nice enough and all, but that house is just so us. And while I’m thinking of it, who was it who gave his life for me? It wasn’t you, was it? You were already dead. So who did that? I wonder also if I need to get a divorce from Gareth. Were we even really married, or did he just say we were?”

Baltic sighed again. “You wear me out with all these questions, mate. Can you not think, instead, of all the ways in which I will use chocolate upon your body?”

“Stop distracting me. I’m angsting, and I can’t do it if—wait, on
my
body? Oooh. Now that is kind of kinky. . . .”

I
sighed and smiled at Kurt. “The Vikings have been sent to help me with a little situation. They won’t cause any problem with the customers. Right, gentlemen?”

“We have sworn to not slay anyone you do not authorize us to slay,” Eirik said with a frown. “Although I dislike you binding us to such an oath, virgin goddess. It makes us feel helpless.”

“You guys are anything but helpless, and you know it. Is Imogen up yet, do you know?”

Kurt blinked. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen her this morning. Did he say
virgin
goddess?”

“No, he didn’t,” I said loudly, narrowing my eyes at each and every one of the Vikings. They grinned at me, the rats. “She knows I was coming, so I’ll just go say hi and get my Vikingahärta from her.” And get the meeting with Ben out of the way.

Inner Fran could not help but wonder if he missed me.

I hurried toward the gold-and-white trailer decorated with scarlet hands and runes, which was Imogen’s home when she was traveling with the GothFaire, ignoring both Inner Fran and my suddenly rapidly beating heart.

Kurt called something after us, but I was suddenly frantic to see Ben. Imogen! Not Ben, but Imogen! I didn’t want to see Ben at all. In fact, I’d pay good money to have someone haul him away so I wouldn’t accidentally run into him.

Inner Fran told me it was the purest folly to lie to oneself. I gritted my teeth and told her to go do something rude to herself. As we walked to Imogen’s trailer, I stopped and turned to the Vikings. “Uh . . . guys, would you give me a few minutes alone with Be . . . er . . . Imogen?”

Eirik looked suspicious. “If you command it, virgin goddess. What should we do while we are waiting for you?”

“It would be really helpful if you could scout around the area and see if there are any signs Loki was here.”

His suspicion turned darker. “We are not scouts! Vikings do not scout! We are above such things!”

“Well . . . what do you do?” I asked.

“We pillage,” he answered quickly. “We plunder.”

“We kill,” added Finnvid. “A lot.”

“Don’t forget drinking. We drink a lot, as well.”

The other two nodded

“It’s too early to drink, I don’t want anyone killed, there will be no pillaging, and since I know one or the other of you is bound to add this to your list, no oiling of breasts, either. At least not out in public. What you do in private is thankfully your own business.” I filled my expression with as much pathos as I could pack into it. “But if you don’t want to look around for signs of Loki, and where he might have gone, I’ll have to find someone else to do it.”

Eirik’s nostrils flared. “We were assigned by the goddess Freya to aid you! You will have no others. If you desire us to scout . . .” He shuddered. “Then we will lower ourselves to scouting.”

“Think of it as being Viking ninjas.” I leaned in and lower my voice to a conspiratorial level. “Stealthy and covert.”

“Stealthy,” Finnvid said thoughtfully.

“Covert?” Eirik glanced at the others. “Have we ever been covert?”

Isleif shook his head. “No, but I watched a movie about ninjas. They were most deadly and feared by all. Just like us. We will be ninjas, virgin goddess.
Viking
ninjas.”

“The best kind,” Eirik agreed.

“Sounds good. You go be stealthy, covert Viking ninjas”—really, I deserve an award for being able to say that without so much as one titter or a twitch of my lips—“and I’ll meet you guys back here in a couple of hours, OK? You remember which trailer is my mom’s?”

They nodded.

“We must go shopping again,” Isleif commented as they headed off. “The ninjas in the movie had special armor. We will need the same.”

“Aye.” Eirik’s voice drifted back to me. “We will find the local ninja store, and use the weasel gold to buy everything they have. . . .”

“Heaven help the local shops,” I murmured before taking a deep breath and tapping at the door. I waited a moment, but heard nothing, opening it just a smidgen, enough to poke my head in to see if Imogen was up. The long living area was devoid of anyone. Perhaps she and her Gunter were out getting morning coffee and breakfast.

“Best thing is to just wait for her,” I said, ignoring the fact that my stomach did a few excited back flips as I entered the trailer. “Ben is not here, stomach, and Imogen has a boyfriend. Stop being so excited. Ben won’t be up and about until it’s dark.”

Unless, of course, Imogen’s boyfriend wasn’t staying with her. Which meant . . . I glanced down the narrow passage to the door that marked Imogen’s bedroom. It was quiet, very quiet—the sound of quiet that comes when no one else is around. Perhaps, I decided, I should just double- check to make sure no one was in Imogen’s bedroom. Just a quick peek to ease my mind and calm my unduly excited stomach.

I opened the door the bare minimum amount needed to slid through so no sunlight could sneak in and harm any vampires who might be sleeping therein.

The room was dark and warm. A muffled grunt came from the bed.

“Ben?” My heart beat wildly, and my stomach did flip-flops. It
was
him! He was right there in front of me. I should leave. I should run away as fast as I could. I should put him from my mind and heart.

I groped my way along the bed to sit on one end of it, pulling off both sets of gloves before reaching out to find him. My hand touched bare flesh.

A light clicked on at the exact moment that I realized the man wasn’t Ben. I snatched back my hand as two surprised hazel eyes met mine.
“Was ist es?”

“Er . . . hi. You’re not Ben.”

The man pulled the blanket up over his naked chest. “Who?”

“Ben. Benedikt. Are you Gunter, by any chance?” I asked, hastily getting off the bed and backing toward the door, my face redder than a baboon’s butt.

“
Ja.
You are Imogen friend?”

“Yes, I’m Fran. I’m sorry to disturb you. I thought you would be out with Imogen. And then I thought you were Ben, but clearly you’re not. Where is she?”

“He?”

“No, she, not he. You know, the word ‘she.’ She is female; he is male.”

He blinked at me. “In trailer,” he said, waving a hand toward the window. “Tattoo trailer.”

“Oh. OK. Thanks. Sorry again about waking you up. Nice meeting you.” I slipped out of the room, closing the door behind me, leaning against it for a moment while I covered my burning cheeks with my hands. “Just when I think you can’t be a bigger idiot, you top yourself. Nice job, Fran.”

I all but ran down the line of trailers until I reached one with familiar artwork. I’d never had much to do with Gavon, who did tattoos and custom piercings at the Faire, mostly because he struck me as somewhat creepy, but I had a faint memory of Imogen being friends with him.

I knocked on the door, mentally writing an apology to Imogen for barging in on her boyfriend when the door opened. A woman stood in the doorway. I stared at her bare legs, stared at her thigh- length silk robe, stared at a pretty face topped with a cloud of soft, curly brown hair. This was not Imogen.

“Yes?”

I gawked at her for a minute. I’d always thought Gavon was gay. . . . Maybe I’d been wrong, and this was his girlfriend? “Is Imogen here?”

“Imogen? No. Her brother is.” She continued to stand there, looking me over with narrowed blue eyes. I suddenly felt every inch my six-foot, built-like-a-linebacker self, not to mention the wrinkled T-shirt and pair of jeans I wore.

“Ben’s . . . here?” My stomach turned a complete somersault. I groaned to myself. Somehow in the conversation with Gunter, we crossed our lines regarding pronouns. “Right here?”

“Yes. You wish to see him?”

No. I absolutely did not want to see him. I had not gone through the hell of the last year for nothing. I had made a decision, and I was going to stand by it.

“Yes, please,” I heard someone say, and realized with horror that it was me.

“He was sleeping when I left him,” she said in a voice with a faintly French accent. “Why do you want to see him?”

My heart shattered. Just like that, it was whole one moment, then in a billion pieces the next. Poof! Dust. Not that it had any right to shatter, but you try reasoning with a heart. It’s impossible. “You’re not Gavon’s girlfriend, are you?”

“Gavon? No. I took over his business. I am Naomi, the tattoo artist. I am Benedikt’s girlfriend. And you are . . . ?”

“Fran Ghetti.” Pain seared my soul with such intensity, I had to clutch the side of the trailer to keep from keeling over at her feet.

“Ah, the
former
girlfriend.” Her look scalded me up and down with enough acid to peel off at least three layers of skin.

I made an effort to get hold of myself, and my sanity. “If he’s sleeping, I won’t disturb him.”

“Benedikt is mine, now. Did he not tell you? Poor little American. Did you believe that he still wants you? Desires you? He does not even think about you. He thinks only of me.”

Her voice turned suddenly syrupy and sickeningly sweet. It was just what I needed, because her words pulled me out of a massive well of self-pity, and into the land made up of me turning her into a wart-encrusted cockroach. “There’s nothing
little
about me, chicky. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to Ben.”

She made an annoyed sound, but stood aside. I climbed the steps and edged past her, hardly able to catch my breath, so fast was my heart beating. I couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe the proof that was before me. Ben had moved on. He had really moved on. While I’d been spending miserable nights telling myself that I’d gotten just what I wanted, Ben, the bastard, had just blithely gone on with his life.

I glanced over my shoulder at Naomi. She smiled a slow “I’ve slept with Ben because he’s so over you” smile. “He’s in my bed. He was so exhausted after our night together. He went right to sleep.”

I turned back toward the door. With every step, the pain in my heart morphed into anger—a fury so hot, I thought I would spontaneously combust by the time I flung open the door.

“Nrrf?” a voice said from the bed, then yelped as sunlight streamed in around me. “What the hell are you doing, Naomi?”

The man who rolled over onto his back and sat up, his short hair mussed, his eyes confused and sleepy, brought me to a halt.

“I just came to tell you that I was here, and I never want to see you again. Not that I had planned on doing that, because I thought Gunter was saying Imogen was in this trailer, not you, but as long as we’re both here, it’s as good a time as any to get a few things off my chest. So I will. I never want to see you again, you two-timing, cheating rat bastard.”

His eyes widened as they focused on me. “Francesca?”

I stared at him for a moment, pain and anger roiling around inside me. “I’m so glad to know I was right about freeing us both. I’m delighted to see that it took you absolutely no time to find a replacement for me. I’m nigh on ecstatic that I meant so little to you that you couldn’t wait to screw the first girl you could find!” I ripped off the ring I still wore on my middle finger and threw it at his head. “I’m so happy, I could bloody well burst into a Broadway show tune!”

“Francesca—”

“I told her, but she wouldn’t listen to me,” Naomi said from the doorway. “Now do you see, little American? He is mine, not yours. Aren’t you?”

I saw red as she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his mouth. Ben’s eyes were the color of honey oak, and filled with an expression I couldn’t read.

“Is that true, Ben?” My voice came out croaked and hoarse.

His lips tightened. “Yes. I’m sorry. I was going to tell you. I just . . . I didn’t expect you to come to Europe for another year.”

Naomi nibbled on his ear, cooing softly into it. I stared at him for a few seconds, not believing what I was seeing, not understanding the words he spoke. I had left him, I had told him I didn’t want to be his Beloved, and yet somehow, I had remained true to his memory. I hadn’t dated, hadn’t been interested in other men. I hadn’t even
seen
other men. I had left him, and he had done just what I had wanted him to do—he had got on with his life.

While I remained in limbo, bound to a man who now didn’t want me.

Anguish overrode my anger and I choked on the bile triggered by my own hypocrisy. I spun around and ran blindly from the room, the mocking laughter of Naomi following after me.

New York Times
bestselling author

 

 

 

When one of Jack Fletcher’s nanoelectromechanical system experiments is jostled in his lab, the resulting explosion sends him into the world of his favorite novel—a seemingly Victorian-era world of steampower, aether guns, corsets, and goggles. A world where the lovely and intrepid Octavia Pye captains her airship straight into his heart...