Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (54 page)

“And who sends me roses,” I added.

“Roses,” Micaela said, her tone flat.

“Yes. He sent them the morning after our first date.”

Nina and Micaela exchanged a significant glance. Jennifer just looked pleased that at least someone in this town knew how to treat a girl on her birthday.

“Well, that settles it,” Nina said at last. “Either he’s a serial killer, or he’s the world’s only perfect man.”

“Oh, ha-ha,” I replied, but my sarcastic tone sounded a little weak to me. Now, I knew Luke wasn’t a serial killer, but I also knew he wasn’t the world’s only perfect man. Technically, I didn’t think he could be called a man at all.

Bringing up that point, however, would only result in disbelieving stares and a few pointed questions asking whether I’d switched medications lately. So I simply went on, “He’s not a serial killer. I already checked his refrigerator. No body parts.”

“Thanks, Nancy Drew,” Nina said, but I thought she’d gotten the point. Even if she might be a little jealous, she did care about my happiness, and I thought I’d made it clear that the remarks were getting a little annoying.

Micaela remarked, “In that case, you need to get him to elope right away — and make sure you get out of any pre-nups he might try to push on you.”

Mercifully, the waiter came back with our drinks at that point, and I took my melon martini and sipped at it, ignoring that last comment. I knew the jokes were just part of the way we interacted. However, it was a little hurtful to think they didn’t believe I could hold on to a guy (at least a guy as fabulous as Luke) for any length of time without tricking him into a precipitous marriage.

Jennifer, being the peacemaker of the group, apparently noticed my stony silence and pushed the conversation in another direction, asking what the three of us thought of seafoam green for her bridesmaid dresses. We were all in the wedding party, and already my involvement in Jennifer’s upcoming nuptials had taken roughly three times as much effort as I’d thought it would. Still, I knew she was probably trying to keep me from getting more upset than I already was.

Micaela made a caustic remark to the effect that seafoam green would make both her and me look as if we were dying of seasickness. I had to agree; some greens worked on me, but not anything that pale. Nina said she thought it would be great with her eyes, and Micaela sighed. Then Jennifer ventured that maybe she could go a
little
darker, but too dark and it wouldn’t work for a late spring wedding, and —

I tuned them out, shifting slightly in my chair. Movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I focused on the next room, where I saw Luke stride away, probably heading to the front door. Beside him walked another man, older, also in a dark suit. He was not as tall as Luke, his gray hair was thinning, and his nose was definitely oversized, but in the glimpse I caught I liked his face. There was something very kind in it, I thought, something gentle and unassuming. The stranger looked a little out of place in a restaurant that usually was filled with a hip crowd of twenty- and thirty-somethings, but he didn’t appear to notice that he stood out like a crow at a polar bear convention. He smiled, maybe at something Luke had said, and then the two of them passed out of my line of sight.

Puzzled, I turned back toward my friends, but I still wasn’t paying much attention to their conversation. Instead, I wondered about the strange older man who must have been Luke’s “business associate.” He didn’t look much like another demon in disguise. But who...?

My heart seemed to stop in my chest. No, it couldn’t be. It had to be someone else.

“Are you all right, Christa?” Jennifer asked suddenly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine,” I said, but my hand shook a little as I set my glass down on the table.

It wasn’t possible. Or was it?

Had I just seen God at Lola’s Martini Bar?

D
anny called me Monday morning
, sounding diffident even for him. “Um…I was wondering….”

“What?” I snapped. My head was pounding, even though I’d taken a couple of ibuprofen about an hour earlier. So much for the wisdom of not mixing alcohol in order to avoid a hangover. Or maybe I just hadn’t eaten enough to cushion the vodka. In any case, Monday morning was turning out to be even less of a picnic than usual.

“I thought maybe we could have lunch on Wednesday,” he said.

That sounded a little weird. We hardly ever went out to lunch, even on the days when he had appointments in my building. Then again, maybe he was just trying to do some damage control. I thought of Micaela’s comments of the night before and grinned slightly. No doubt Danny would turn about fifteen shades of red if he knew she had been discussing his potential as a “fuck-buddy.”

At any rate, I didn’t see the harm in having lunch. Maybe we could have a rational, adult conversation in which I told him that I’d rethought the situation and decided I couldn’t see him anymore because I wanted to pursue a relationship with the Devil.

On second thought….

“Okay,” I said, after a pause I hoped he hadn’t noticed. “Do you want to pick me up, or should I just meet you someplace?”

“I’ll pick you up,” he said immediately. “I thought we could go over to the Beverly Center or something — maybe California Pizza Kitchen?”

Danny loved CPK. I could think of several other places in the vicinity that I’d rather go, but after my past few days of grand dining, I was willing to be magnanimous.

“Sounds great,” I replied. “Is twelve all right?”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

I made an affirmative sound and then hung up. I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of him actually showing, let alone on time. Probably better to bring along a Lean Cuisine to throw in the freezer in the break room at work, just in case. Also, I’d make a point of meeting him out in front of the building. I didn’t want him bumping into Jacqui and maybe earning me some more grief when I returned to the office. She kept hoping he was permanently out of the picture, and I didn’t want to disabuse her of that notion.

Besides, by the time lunch was over with, it was entirely possible that Danny and I would be through.

I
didn’t hear
from Luke at all on Monday, which worried me. Not that I was really expecting another vase full of roses, but I thought he’d at least call or email after I got home. Nothing though, and I felt a pang as I closed up my MacBook Air and went into the kitchen to make myself a salad for dinner.

Wow, you’re some independent modern woman
, I thought. I hoped that by mocking myself I might get my sense of perspective knocked back into place.
Can’t you even go a day without some contact from Luke without feeling like you’ve lost your last friend?

Apparently not; after all the goings-on of the week before, my cozy little apartment had begun to feel downright confining. Nothing satisfied — not checking out the usual online sites I visited, or the book I had been reading, or even the hundred-plus cable channels that still couldn’t offer anything to distract me. My mother probably would have told me that I needed to take up some sort of handicraft, something to occupy my hands when my mind didn’t want to cooperate with anything else. But I’d tried to learn how to crochet when I was in high school and hated it, and sewing had never appealed, either.

Instead (and this should have been a clear signal of how desperate I was feeling), I called my sister.

She seemed surprised to hear from me. “Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Um, sure,” I responded. “I was just wondering if you’d told Mom.”

Lisa didn’t bother to ask about what. “Yes,” she said. “I talked to her this afternoon, in fact.”

“Oh,” I said. “How did she take it?”

“About the way I expected. She said something about Traci becoming more evolved as a person once she became a mother, and then she said she was sure Dad must be thrilled.”

Typical. I almost wished my mother had ranted and raved; it would have seemed a more normal reaction to me. “Well, that’s healthy,” I ventured.

“No,” said Lisa, sounding very cool, very flat, definitely unlike her usually sparkly sales-superpower self. “I don’t think it is. She has serious denial issues. But she’ll never admit it — she’ll just keep going on about how having a cleansed colon is somehow the key to enlightenment. Or whatever.”

That bitterness was not Lisa at all. Although I’d had no reason to disbelieve what Luke told me about my sister and her husband trying to get pregnant, it wasn’t until I stood there and listened to her monotone delivery that it really came home to me he’d been telling me the truth.

“Um — ” I hesitated; Lisa and I had never been ones for personal conversation. “Are you okay? Is there anything you want to talk about?”

“No,” she said immediately. “I guess I’m just tired. I took two new listings today, and I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

She was lying — getting new real estate listings usually charged Lisa up the way a jump would rejuvenate a tired battery. But I knew better than to challenge her on it. The lie was her way of telling me to back off.

So instead of saying anything else, I just told her, “Well, thanks for talking to Mom. I’m glad she handled it so well.”

“Better than some people,” Lisa said cryptically. “Listen — I’ve got to go. My work cell is ringing.” And she hung up.

I sat there for a moment, staring down at my phone, then sighed and set it on the coffee table. With a feeling of futility, I picked up the remote control for the TV and began flipping through the stations, all the while telling myself I didn’t miss him. Not really. Not that much.

W
hen I came
into work the next morning, though, I found a small brown-wrapped parcel sitting on my desk. Puzzled, I picked it up and turned it over. There were no UPS or FedEx labels on it, nothing to indicate where it had come from…which probably meant only one thing.

Trying to keep an idiotic grin off my face, I rummaged through the top drawer of my desk until I found a letter opener. Then I cut through the clear packing tape and carefully unwrapped the heavy brown paper. Once I pulled it away, I saw that it had concealed a book. An old one, too, judging by the scuffed leather binding. I turned it over in my hands to read the gold lettering on the spine.
Faust
, it said, then, in a slightly smaller font,
Goethe
.

Inside was a note, wrapped around a heavier piece of card stock.
I thought it might amuse you to get a little background
, the note read, written in Luke’s heavy black hand.
Highly inaccurate, of course, but a worthy diversion for an evening.

I pulled out the little card and realized it was a ticket — a ticket to the L.A. Opera performance of
Faust
for this upcoming Saturday night.

Opera? Was he serious? I’d always thought of opera as an acquired taste, one I’d never bothered to acquire. Compared to a lot of people in my age group, I actually had fairly eclectic taste in music, partly because my parents had played anything and everything as I was growing up. I couldn’t stand rap, and modern country left me cold, but otherwise I listened to everything from Elizabethan chamber music to Arcade Fire. I’d discovered that Middle Eastern music was a great background track for doing housework — you could really groove while pushing the vacuum cleaner around.

For some reason, though, I’d never really gotten into opera. Isolated pieces, sure, but I’d never been able to sit down and listen to a whole opera all the way through. Still, even I knew that going to the opera was a big deal, a very high-end night out.

This thought led me to the dismal realization that I had absolutely nothing to wear. Really, the world didn’t offer a heck of a lot of opportunities for dressing up these days. I had one plain black sheath I’d bought a few years back, since Jennifer had convinced me every woman needed to own a Little Black Dress, but that was about it for evening attire. And my LBD, while a very nice Jones New York piece, just didn’t seem quite festive enough for the occasion.

I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. Nina should be up and around by now, although she usually didn’t have to start work until ten.

Her cell rang four times, and I worried that maybe she’d left it someplace or was in the shower or similarly unavailable. But she picked it up just before it rolled over into voicemail.

“He wants to take me to the opera,” I said without preamble.

“What — Christa?”

“Yeah. Look, Luke is taking me to the opera Saturday night.”

“Really? How
Pretty Woman
of him.”

“Very funny. Any clothes advice?”

“Where are your seats?”

Fumbling a bit, I shoved the phone between my ear and shoulder and reached down to pick up the ticket. I squinted at the tiny print and said, “Um…Grand Circle?”

I heard Nina expel a breath. “Wow, this guy doesn’t mess around, does he?”

“I assume those are good,” I said.

“The best,” she replied. “It’s L.A., so you’ll see everything from jeans to tuxes, but if you’ve got seats in the Grand Circle for a Saturday night performance, I say you go red carpet.”

“Red carpet?”

“Gown. Important gown. No little black dress, no skimpy cocktail slip number. No way.”

Great. Well, at least now I knew where the rest of the birthday money my father had given me was going to end up.

“Hey,” she went on. “I’ve got to run a piece out to a client in West Hollywood today anyway. How about I meet you for lunch and we go shopping?”

I’d actually feel a lot better having Nina along. Although she wasn’t exactly an opera devotee herself, I knew her father was a big fan and had season tickets. For all I knew, Luke and I might bump into Dr. Nomura and his wife in the Grand Circle. I sort of had a feeling that Nina’s plastic surgeon daddy didn’t exactly have season tickets in the cheap seats. At any rate, she knew how to dress for the opera, and I didn’t.

“Sounds fabulous,” I said, trying not to sound too relieved. “You can keep me from making any horrible gaffes.”

“Not a prob. I’ll be by a little before noon.”

I said thanks and hung up, then picked up the book once more and really looked at it. The leather-bound volume had the faint musty smell I always associated with used-book stores; when I opened it, I saw the text was printed in both English and German on facing pages. I couldn’t tell a lot from the imprint, as it was solely in German, but I did see a date: 1895.

Definitely not something Luke had picked up at the local Barnes & Noble. Feeling a little awed, I carefully wrapped the brown paper back around the book and then stowed it in one of the locking compartments that sat above my built-in desk. The opera ticket I slid into the bill compartment of my wallet so it wouldn’t get bent.

The rest of the morning went by more slowly than I would have liked; I supposed I was just eager to get out and go shopping. After all, how many times in your life do you actually get to buy an “important” dress? Not many, unless you’re a celebrity who spends a lot of time on the red carpet.

But the time passed, as it always did, and at about five minutes to noon I got a text from Nina that she was out waiting for me at the curb and to hurry so she wouldn’t get busted for double parking. I scooped up my purse and was outside at lightning speed, then squeezed myself into the front seat of her little BMW Z4. It was a cute car, but I still couldn’t comprehend why someone as tall as Nina would want something that low to the ground.

“I thought we’d go to Loehmann’s,” she said. “The last time I was in there it looked as if they’d gotten another shipment of post-holiday evening wear, so I’m hoping we can get a deal.”

I thought that sounded like a good plan, and told her so. Then I hung on for dear life as she squealed away from the curb and headed west on Wilshire. From there she hung a right on San Vicente, bringing us up to the Loehmann’s that backed up to the Beverly Center.

We’d gotten there ahead of the lunch rush, but the place was still fairly crowded. Luckily, though, the racks toward the back where the formal wear was kept didn’t have quite as many women browsing through them. Deals are great, but if you don’t have any place to wear it, grabbing a five-hundred-dollar gown for ninety-nine bucks isn’t going to do you much good.

I took one rack and Nina another, and we got down to work. Technically, I was a size six, but different designers sized their clothes differently, so we couldn’t judge just by what the tag said.

Pushing aside a few items that looked like refugees from prom circa 1985, I came across a beautiful beaded Sue Wong number. I pulled it out for Nina to inspect. “What do you think?”

She looked up from the rack she’d been digging through and frowned. “Nice, but everyone always wears black. Try to find some color.”

Personally, I liked black. It was slimming, and since I was dark-eyed and dark-haired, it looked pretty good on me. But I knew she was right — every woman always went for black first, so it would be nice to find something in a different shade that would suit me.

After pushing my way through some more gowns, I found something in a gorgeous dark teal that would have been perfect. When I pulled it out, though, I saw that it was just cocktail length, and I knew Nina had been hoping for a true evening gown. Still, it wasn’t bad for a second-string choice, so I draped it over my arm and kept working.

Then I heard Nina say, “Oh — oh — ” And she lifted this amazing red number up for my inspection.

“Weren’t you the one making
Pretty Woman
cracks?” I asked, although I couldn’t take my eyes off the gown.

“This doesn’t look like that dress at all. Besides, red has always been great on you. And it’s a size six.”

Well, that cinched it. I went over to Nina and took the dress from her, then headed over to the dressing rooms. I had to wait in line before I could even get in, but that was all right; somehow I knew this gown was The One.