Finding Her A-Muse-Ment (5 page)

“We haven’t met.” The unknown man moved forward. He had black hair and icy blue eyes and was dressed in all black, making his blue eyes stand out even more. “My name is Cyrus Rowan. You haven’t met me yet, Isyllus. But these two have.”

The vampires took two steps back. Rekkus seemed pretty threatening to Isyllus, but clearly they were more fearful of Cyrus.

Cyrus looked at the vampires. “I told you what would happen if this happened again.”

The woman dropped to her knees. “I just can’t control myself. Neither can he. We’re not animals, but we just can’t stop ourselves.”

“You have had ample opportunity to learn how to do so. We even took you back after what happened the last time you came, because you assured us seven ways from Sunday that you were serious about getting better.” He shook his head. “Rekkus. Would you mind helping me?”

“No. Please.” The man dropped to his knees. “If we go back not fixed this time I don’t know what they’ll do to us.”

“Not. My. Problem.” Rekkus grinned, lifting the vampire over his shoulder. “You and I are going to a holding cell until the portal can be opened. Damned pain in the ass blood suckers.” He stared at the woman. “Are you coming too, or am I going to have to drag you?”

“She’ll go.” Cemil sighed. “She goes where he goes.”

The woman nodded, following Rekkus as he left the scene.

Cyrus extended his gloved hand to Isyllus. “Good job keeping them occupied.”

“Thanks.” He took the hand offered to him and stood up. His gaze turned to Susan. She’d gone as pale as the vampire.

“Susie.” Her name, one word, meant so much to him.

Cemil stretched his arms over his head. “These two need to talk. Cyrus, come on. We need to speak to Sarka about our screening processes.”

They disappeared into the darkness. Only the sounds of their feet crunching on the fallen leaves and branches met his ears.

“Can I explain?”

She shook her head. “Before, when you were asking me all those questions about paranormal things, you weren’t being hypothetical. You wanted to know if I believed because you knew they existed and
you
are one yourself.” Her voice sounded gravelly.

“Yes.” He exhaled. How was he to make her understand? This had not gone at all the way he wanted it to.

“Because they were v-vampires and you’re something too.” She stuttered on the word
vampire
.

“Yes.” Wow. He had to come up with something else to say. He couldn’t continue to just say yes.

“What are you?” Susan whispered her words. Her neck clenched while she spoke, as if it were painful for her to get them out.

“I’m not a vampire or anything like that.” He wanted to touch her and even reached out to do so. She took a step back, and he was left with his hand hanging in the air. Finally, he placed it down by his side.

“Tell me.” She enunciated every word carefully. He’d seen her angry before but never like this.

“I’m a Muse. Well, specifically, your Muse.”

She raised her eyebrows. “My what?”

“I hoped you would know what I meant.”

“Sorry to disappoint. Explain yourself, because right now I am so confused that I can’t make sense of any of this. Except I know I’ve been lied to. I just want to know how badly.”

This wasn’t going to end well.

Chapter Five

“T
ell me what it means.”

He stood in silence for so long, she wondered if he intended to speak again. It felt incredibly important that she get her answers so she could figure out just how awful the fact that she’d slept with him would turn out to be. Did he turn into some kind of slug? Was he a demon? He’d called himself her muse. What did that even involve?

“When you were eighteen I was sent to you—”

“What?”

Since I was eighteen? Holy cow. This is bad.
Maybe she’d had some kind of breakdown. Lord knew she’d been well on her way.

“This will be easier if you let me get through it.”

“I don’t know if I’m concerned with what’s easier for you, asshole. Okay. Go for it. I need to hear this. Whatever
this
happens to be. You were saying. When I was eighteen. Finish up.”

“That was the year you took your first creative writing class.”

She remembered. He’d taught her how to write, how to formulate a story, tricks of the trade. It had been life changing.

“Your creativity was born, and the Fates sent me to you. Before you, I’d been about five hundred years in the future from now.”

Susan held up her hand. “Don’t. I can’t go there. Vampires. This. It’s enough.”

He started to pace, his every movement stiff. “Okay. Fair enough. Well, I helped you even though you didn’t know I was there. When you worked on creative endeavors, I helped.”

“Helped how? Did you do it for me? This whole time I thought I had some talent, was it only you?” Her heart stuttered. She’d always suspected that she was actually a fraud, that one day everyone would wake up and no one would want to read her. It all could make sense now. She’d been under the influence of some paranormal creature.

“No.” He shook his head and took a step forward. “I would never have been sent to you if you weren’t incredibly talented. If you started to have an idea, maybe I whispered in your ear to do more research on it, to keep going. I’m just meant to help with whatever you already are working on, and in your case that’s beautiful writing. Be more inspired.”

She swallowed. Her throat felt dry. Truth was, she wouldn’t be able to do this for much longer. Her head pounded, and she wanted to go back to her room to see George.

Goldfish made sense. Muses did not.

“So you were with me that whole time? For the last twelve years?” The ramifications of his words had shaken her very foundation. He’d been with her for a huge amount of time and she’d had no idea.

“Yes. It’s been my absolute pleasure. I mean that. You started out as a kind, talented writer and you are still that way.” He sucked in a loud breath. “After everything I’ve seen happen to the people I’ve helped, you can’t know how wonderful it was to watch you. I shouldn’t have favorites or even feelings for my charges. But I did—
do
—for you.”

“Oh?” Things were starting to make sense.

“Yes. Please believe that.”

She stepped toward him. Fury had started to creep up her spine. “Did you like watching me? All the time? When I slept? When I ate? When I had sex with my boyfriends? In the shower?” She stood directly in front of him and jabbed him in the chest with her finger. “Been waiting for your turn? Is that what this whole trip was about? Getting me to an island where you could use your knowledge about me, information I never gave you permission to have, to fuck me?”

“No.” He backed up a step. “I never watched you in the shower or when you were intimate with someone. And please believe me—I had no idea you’d be able to see me here.
None
. Sex didn’t factor into my feelings for you. Before this week, I never had a sex drive. I knew I loved you, but it was a chaste love, from afar. Of a woman I would never,
could
never have.”

His eyes were huge, and he held his hand in front of his face as if he wanted to ward off an attack. She studied him for a second. He didn’t look guilty, but instead sincere. If she could trust herself.

“I guess I can believe you about that.” She took a couple of deep breaths. Besides, she’d been the one to initiate the sex, not him. Accusing him of being a peeping Tom was somewhat unfair. But she didn’t care. At the moment, she couldn’t be reasonable.

“For that I’ll feel grateful.”

“Maybe you can explain something to me.” She had a question she’d been dying to ask the universe and had never anticipated having an answer to.

“Anything I can tell you, I will.”

“Why did it stop? Why did the writing stop? I defined myself entirely by my work. When I couldn’t write I couldn’t manage anything else. Did you stop whispering in my ear? Your ideas? Did you not like that I finished that series?”

Isyllus squatted down and looked down at the ground. He picked up a stick and drew a pattern of shapes in the sand. She waited, and finally he looked up and made eye contact with her. “That had nothing to do with me. For whatever reason, you stopped being able to hear me. If you can’t listen to your muse, you lose your muse. This was my last ditch idea to try to get us back in sync with each other so I could stay with you. If coming to Wiccan Haus brought you back to your creativity, then I could stay with you.”

This was too much. She turned and walked away from him. Even though she stood outside under the stars and the moon, she couldn’t breathe. There didn’t seem like there was enough air in the universe. But before she could go, she had one last thing to say. She stopped and turned around.

“Isyllus, I never asked for a Muse. Ever. And even though I’m sure I owe you a huge amount of thanks, I never want to see you again. Maybe that makes me the worst person on the planet, but I can’t stand the idea of any of this. When it comes down to it, you lied to me. We would never have been in that spring together if I had known. Don’t whisper in my ear. Don’t be my Muse. I don’t want you.”

He grabbed his chest. “What you’ve just said is the one thing you could say to send me away. The Fates will take me now. You’ve rejected your Muse.”

She knew she should stop and take it back, but all she could see was red. This whole place had been one giant screw-with-her-head experience. “Well, I hope wherever they send you goes better. Try not to lie to them. It’ll go a long way.”

“Listen to me.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I have just one more thing to tell you. You lost your creativity because you stopped having fun. That is what this week had to be about for you. Your whole life can’t be the writing. You need to see your friends, movies, plays, take walks. Whatever. Just do it. You’ll take on the world.”

Oh God.
His words made sense. Why was she angry? Because she’d been lied to or because she wanted this whole thing to be his fault? A reason for everything going wrong that didn’t land on her own shoulders.

“I love you, Susan. Please forgive me for my mistakes.”

“Isyllus.” She rushed forward just as he disappeared. “Isyllus?”

Susan had sent him away and he’d gone.

“No!” She screamed, but only the moon and the stars heard her.

Isyllus could barely move. His body felt like it had turned to steel. Still, he stared down at his new charge. An architect, and a talented one at that. He stared at the electronics around the room. From the look of things, he hadn’t changed time periods.

It was time to find David a new idea for a building to design, a masterpiece for all time.

Isyllus stepped forward. He’d be happy to help, and maybe someday in a millennium or so, he’d be able to forget Susie, and how her hair smelled like watermelon.

Susan limped into the Haus, not expecting to run into anyone awake. It had to be three in the morning or maybe four. She had no idea any more. Like the fool she knew herself to be, she’d called for Isyllus all night.

Only he hadn’t come. How could he? The Fates would have sent him to someone more deserving than she. Someone who would have the good sense not to throw away a good thing just because he happened to be some kind of Greek god.

A tear she knew she wasn’t entitled to slipped down her face. She didn’t try to brush it away, just let it travel where it went. Simple tasks like swatting a tear were beyond her at that moment.

The room, however, was hardly empty. Instead, two women Susan hadn’t yet met had joined Cyrus and Cemil.

Cemil smiled at her.  “These are my sisters, Sarka and Sage.”

The two women were as different as daylight and sunlight. Sage had blond hair and Sarka dark brown, almost black.  They were stunning, and Susan wished she could capture them in fiction, but feared she didn’t have the talent to do them justice.

Both women smiled, and she tried to nod through the haze in her head.

“So, you’ve had a night.” Sarka leaned forward, regarding her with calculating eyes. “First with the vamps and then losing your guy. Or maybe you wanted him to go.”

“No. Or—” She sniffed. “At least I didn’t want it after I did it.”

Sarka shrugged. “That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

“I know.” Her mind whirled. It couldn’t be the end. She wouldn’t let it be. If she were writing this story, how would she end it? She bit down on her lip. Isyllus wasn’t with her now, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still come up with very good ideas on her own. Maybe it
was
possible to get him back. Assuming he wanted that. Would he? She looked at Sarka. “Or maybe not.”

Cyrus spoke up. “How do you presume to get him back? He was zapped out of here. Our paranormal alarms went crazy. Had to make sure the vamps weren’t revolting or something.”

“You guys are magic.” She looked among the four of them. How could she ever have not known? They were beautiful and so
other
that it made her feel blind to think she’d been so unaware.

“Well, we deal in magic.” Cemil smiled. “I don’t know that I would call us magic ourselves.”

Sarka shrugged. “I would.”

“So can’t you send me somewhere? To wherever he’s gone? And I can find a way to bring him back. Please, this can’t be the end. There has to be another way.”

“I don’t think such a thing is possible.” Cemil took her hands. “I’m sorry. Sometimes things go the way they are meant to. Perhaps you could spend the rest of the week reflecting and trying to heal.”

“I don’t think I can come back from this. I think he was special, and I’m going to live the rest of my life knowing that my foolish temper ended my best chance at happiness.”

“Well.” Sarka blew out a long breath. “It’s not entirely impossible. You’d stay here. But maybe I could send your consciousness somewhere else. For a while.”

“You don’t even know if she’s able do that.” Cyrus shook his head.

“Actually I do.” Sarka stepped forward. “Myron let Sage and me know that this might be necessary. So we gave it a try for her first nap. She travelled right to him.”

“Wait. What?” Since they were discussing her it seemed pivotal she understand what exactly had taken place. “My first nap. I dreamt of Isyllus. Are you telling me that really happened?”

“You shared a dream, left your own bodies and came together soul-to-soul. Now I can’t promise that will happen again, but I can assure you that you are able to do so.”

Susan swallowed past her dry throat. “How did you make that happen?”

“A little aromatic potion added to Sage’s otherwise benign herbs that put you to sleep.”

“I see.” She did, which should have thrown her off and yet didn’t.

“You know if they find out you are doing this type of magic, it won’t be just me the assassins are after.” Cyrus clenched his gloved hand.

“Assassins?” Susan looked between them. Some day she’d love to hear their story. If they ever wanted to tell it.

Cyrus moved away from the wall. “But now that it’s done, I suppose there’s no good reason for you to not do it a second time. Of course, you might end up sending her to Timbuktu. Are you prepared to end up landing somewhere completely unexpected?”

“If there’s a chance I can see him, then I have to take it.”

Sage finally spoke. “But even if you do, you’ll only have six more days with him. After that you’ll leave here a human and he’ll remain a Muse. You will not be able to see him.”

“Isn’t it better to have six days of perfect than to never have experienced anything like that ever?” Susan looked among the siblings. She legitimately wanted to know.

“Okay.” Sage smiled. “Then I guess you should make your way upstairs. We’ll join you in a second and see if we can send you on a second journey.”

“Did Myron see the outcome? In her cards?”

Sage touched her arm. “Sadly, no. Before she went to bed, all she could make out was fog. The Fates must not have decided yet.”

“In Isyllus’s case, I suppose that isn’t just an expression.”

She turned and left them heading for the elevator. If she could somehow make this work, she’d never let her temper run so amok again. She’d think before she spoke and never take anything for granted.

Susan woke up on a marble floor. She looked left and right, completely unsure of where she was. Then it occurred to her that she’d fallen asleep in her hotel room breathing in a mixture of Sarka’s potion with Sage’s herbs. So wherever she was now, she’d actually fallen asleep and woken up here.