Reborn (11 page)

I
stand there speechless for a minute, staring stupidly at the host and his
fastidious reservation booklet. “That has to be them,” I say finally. He nods
and motions for us to follow him, but hesitates when I tell Anna, “Come on, let’s
go.” I sigh and turn to leave, but I don’t hear the click of Anna’s silver
shoes behind me.

“Why?”
she wonders as she adjusts the straps of her sea foam green dress and combs her
fingers through her long, silky brown hair.

“Because
we can’t go on a double date with my teaching assistant and a
professor
.”

“He’s
not
my
professor. And anyway, like you keep saying, it’s not a date.”

“Anna!”
I call after her in a loud whisper, but she ignores me, practically skipping as
she follows our host into the dining room. I scramble to catch up with them.

Chapter 15

Unlike
the reception area, which was opulent but had
the cold, impersonal feel
of an art museum, Isabela’s is surprisingly small and intimate. Art deco
sconces cast pale white light along the burgundy walls. The only other light
comes from the garnet red candles encased in round glass jars at the center of
each table. The rich reds along with the polished dark wood of the floors and
furniture create an atmosphere of dark romance. A string quartet plays with
soft ardor in the back right corner.

The
host leads us to a table tucked away in the back. Jasper sprawls languidly on
the side that faces us. Dr. Mars sits across from him, so I can only see the
thick jet black hair of the back of his head. Jasper sees us coming and stands,
pulling out the chair beside him so that I can sit down. Dr. Mars does the same
for Anna.

“It’s
nice to see you both again. Outside of class,” Dr. Mars adds with a broad smile
at me. There’s a bottle of uncorked champagne on the table and four already
filled glasses. I pick mine up and take an unladylike gulp. I can already tell
this is going to be the most awkward dinner—ever. It fizzes on my tongue, cool
and sweet and tinged with an unusual flavor, like honey or something. Like
steady, liquid magic, it twists and spreads throughout my body, soothing my
frayed nerves.

Jasper
leans into me to whisper, “You look lovely.” His warm breath and the way his
lips briefly brush against my ear send a shiver of excitement down my spine.

“Thanks.
You don’t look so bad yourself.” Even in his usual black dress pants and white
shirt, Jasper looks like he’s about to walk the runway at Fashion Week. A gold
pin winks at me from his shirt collar. “You’re wearing your badge?” I groan
almost in disgust. He starts and glances down at the miniscule gold shield as
though he forgot it was there. “You Sigma Iotas take badge attire so
seriously.”

Jasper
relaxes back into his chair and smirks. “You do your best when you look your
best.”

We
peruse the menu as Dr. Mars asks us about our majors and hobbies. The menu
doesn’t offer anything earthshattering but is outlandishly expensive. Our
server returns to the table to take our orders. I’ve decided on the wedding
soup for an appetizer and filet mignon. Jasper orders a house salad and the
rack of lamb, Anna a Mediterranean salad and Eric grilled salmon almondine.
After our waiter leaves to put in our orders, Anna resumes talking about the
auditions for Faust.

“Well,
good luck—or break a leg, I guess I should say,” Eric tells her. “When is the
actual performance?”

“There
are four scheduled for the second weekend in October,” Anna says.

“I’ll
have to mark that on my calendar. Our students always put on fantastic shows.
And you’ll make a beautiful Marguerite.”

Anna
blushes and chokes on her champagne. “I have to get the part first,” she
mumbles into her glass.

Other
than these uncomfortable moments—well, they make
me
uncomfortable, Anna
relishes every word of Eric’s excessive compliments—dinner is not as bad as I
had feared. Mostly we make small talk between bites of food. My filet mignon
and side of cooked squash and zucchini melt in my mouth and are worth every
penny. Well, as long as someone else is paying.

Jasper
dabs the corners of his mouth with his white cloth napkin before setting it on
the table. “I’d like to take a walk out in the garden before we leave,” he
announces. “Does anyone want to join me?”

Eric
shakes his head. “I think I’ll stay here and see what’s for dessert.” He flips
to the back of the menu, but I can’t help wondering if his words have a double
meaning.

Anna
looks like she might say yes, but one sideways glance from Eric impels her to
pick up a menu as well. “Dessert sounds good.” Jasper turns to me, eyebrows
raised in expectation.

“Sure.”
I guess this will be our time to talk in private.

“We’ll
be back shortly,” Jasper says, standing and offering me his arm. I hesitate
before taking it. We pass the string quartet on our way to the back door.
Jasper holds it open for me, and I walk out into the courtyard first, the door
closing with a gentle click behind us.

“It’s
beautiful out here,” I breathe. Japanese lanterns float above us, bobbing in
the breeze and shining like miniature suns against the night sky. They cast a
magical glow over the cobblestone pathway and surrounding garden, which blazes
with the colors of late summer: orange mums, goldenrod, bright yellow
black-eyed Susans and red coleus.

Where
the path forks, we pause at a grayish white sculpture of a sinewy man and
voluptuous woman—they’re both naked, of course—embracing each other, their
faces twisted in agony as they peer between the bars of an ornate domed cage.
With one hand, the woman reaches up to caress her lover’s face; she grasps the
bars of their enclosure in desperation with the other.

I
place my hand against the cool, chalky stone. “This looks really old.”

“It’s
just made to look that way,” Jasper says. I drop my hand, feeling pretty silly.
“There’s a brochure inside which talks about the sculptor,” he explains so I
know he’s not patronizing me. “It’s a series of statues made especially for the
hotel—‘The Lovers of Olympus.’”

“Ares
and Aphrodite,” I read, the names carved into the granite base of the statue. I
raise my hand as though we’re in class.

Jasper
looks at me strangely but goes along with it. “Yes, Ms. Elliot?”

  I
lower my arm. “What’s their story, Mr. Hart?”

He chuckles and
stands beside the sculpture, gesturing to it while he lectures. “Well, Zeus
forced Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, to marry Hephaestus, the ugly,
crippled god of fire. During their marriage, Aphrodite is unfaithful to him a
number of times. One of her affairs is with Hephaestus’s half-brother, Ares.

“When
Hephaestus finds out, he tells Aphrodite he’s going to be gone for a few days,
but he sets a trap for them—an enchanted net that drops on Aphrodite and Ares
when they’re in bed together, exposing their affair to Hephaestus and
humiliating them in front of all the Olympian gods.”

“That’s kind of
sad,” I say, looking again at her outstretched hand. When Jasper looks
skeptical, I elaborate, “I mean, I know Aphrodite was adulterous and all, but
it would be hard to be married to someone you didn’t love.”

“Aphrodite is a
manipulative, jealous, heinous
bitch
.” Once the accusation has dripped
from his lips, Jasper’s mouth snaps closed, and he looks at me as if dreading
my reaction.

“I didn’t know
you felt so strongly about fictional characters,” I reply, laughing nervously.

“I
guess I get carried away sometimes,” he admits. “Let’s go this way.” He beckons
me down the part of the path bending to the right. “There’s something else I
want to show you.”

On our way, we
pass another sculpture: this time of Hades and Persephone. In his stone hands
Hades offers her a flower with six petals surrounding a crown-shaped
protrusion, which Persephone stoops to sniff. When I stop in front of them,
Jasper sighs with impatience, but tells the story anyway.

“Hades watches
Persephone picking flowers one day and falls in love with her from afar. But he
knows, out of all the Olympians, he is the most reviled by both his fellow gods
and humankind, so he devises a plan to lure her to the Underworld.” The
rational part of my brain knows that this story should be creepy, but once
again Jasper’s milk chocolate voice and expert story-telling have me hanging on
his every word.

“The next time
she’s out gathering flowers, she finds a daffodil that absolutely mesmerizes
her—but when she plucks it, the ground opens up, and Hades rises out of it in a
golden chariot. He seduces her and abducts her to the Underworld.” Jasper
pauses and walks to where I’m standing beside the granite Persephone. My heart
beats faster in my chest as he holds my gaze steady and closes the gap between
us. He towers over me, and for a moment I think he’s going to bend down to kiss
me.

“When
Persephone’s mother, Demeter—goddess of the harvest—finds out, her anger
incites a drought that destroys every crop on Earth. Zeus sends Hermes to
rescue Persephone. She returns home but is forever tied to the Underworld and
must return every winter.”

This time,
Jasper lowers his face until his lips are millimeters from mine. Only minutes
ago I was wishing I had brought a light sweater, the cool night air coaxing the
hairs of my arms to stand on end, but now with Jasper standing so close to me
I’m sweating. Can he tell? I hope I’m not getting pit stains.

But again, he
doesn’t kiss me, just smirks and asks, “Can we move along now?” I nod, and just
as quickly as he came up to me, he leaves me standing alone, flushed and
perplexed. I watch him disappear around a dark corner. Shaking myself out of my
mindless daze, I hurry after him.

“
This
is
what I wanted to show you,” he’s saying when I catch up to him. He stands
before a statue of a third couple. In this scene, the woman is crushed against
the muscular chest of what looks disturbingly like an erotic angel. Disturbing,
because—well, I’m not very religious, but my Bible thumper roots in Laurel make
me cringe at anything that seems blasphemous. Like the way Jasper looked lying
on the forest floor that night six years ago—all dark, feathery wings and
rolling muscles. Angels shouldn’t be sexy. Then again, these couples aren’t
Biblical. I read the inscription out loud:

“‘Eros
and Psyche.’ Like in the story you told us,” I say, recalling his lecture at
office hours.

He lowers his
gaze to the ground. “
Really
look at it,” he says, his voice suddenly
quiet yet pleading.

“Um, okay.” I
don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking for, only that I
have
been
ogling Eros this entire time, so I turn my attention to Psyche. Her head is
tilted up toward Eros’s face, but there’s something across her eyes. I guess
it’s supposed to be a blindfold since, as Jasper told us, Eros forbid her to
see his face. My eyes drift to her exposed back, where her own pair of wings
protrudes. They stand upright, perpendicular to her back instead of spread to
their fullest extent, but they remind of something. She resembles what I would
imagine a fairy to look like: a petite, dainty girl with dragonfly wings. No,
they’re not dragonfly wings. More like…

Jasper finally
turns to face me just as the revelation rushes over me like an unexpected
storm. Phrases uttered to me as he lay dying, since forgotten, click together
and settle back into place in my mind.

“
Psyche, you
came back to me
.”

And Vanessa’s
whispered prophecy:

“
The
butterfly goddess has returned
…”

Our eyes meet,
and I think my heart actually stops for a fleeting moment when I see Jasper’s
glisten with tears.

“When I told you
that you were important,” he says, swallowing a sob, “I meant that you were
important to
me
.” He takes a step forward. I take an automatic step
back, and he flinches as though I’ve slapped him.

“Jasper—” I feel
like I’m sinking in an ocean, water flooding my mouth and nose, drowning me in
dread. My wings prepare to erupt through the back of my dress. He talks over my
cry of warning.

“In your other
life, on Olympus, with
me
, your name was Psyche. And you were my
wife
.”

Chapter 16

“Say
something,” Jasper pleads with me. We’ve been standing in silence for what
feels like forever. His brow is creased with worry. My face feels numb, but I’m
sure whatever expression I’m wearing, it’s not reassuring him. I wasn’t able to
regain my composure, and my wings have ripped through the back of my dress. Out
of the corner of my eye, I catch shimmers of blue and purple in the dark.

“I
don’t know what to say. So I’m some kind of goddess. The goddess of
cheerleading and biology?” I try to joke, laughing weakly.

His
shoulders fall. “You don’t believe me.”

“It’s
not that,” I assure him quickly. “I want to believe you. I do. It’s just I have
no idea what you’re talking about. All I know is this life—my life. I don’t
remember Olympus.”

I
don’t remember
you. My unspoken words hang in the air between us, an
invisible but insurmountable barrier.

“Yes,
you do,” he insists. “Your dreams.”

Panic
descends on me like an arctic blast. “How do you know about those?” I demand
through gritted teeth, my voice deadly quiet. “Can you read my mind?”

“No!”
he exclaims, but then he falters. “I mean, sort of…we can pick up fragments of
thoughts—”

“Well,
stop
!” I clutch the sides of my head with my hands as if to keep him
out.

“I
can’t help it, it just happens sometimes—”

We
both jump as something whizzes past us and collides with the gray bark of a
birch tree behind Jasper. The trunk erupts in flames.

“Hide.
Now!” Jasper shouts. Without waiting for my response, he leaps toward me and
pushes me behind Eros and Psyche—behind
us
, I guess. I peer around…myself…but
I don’t see anything or anyone else besides Jasper in the garden. Jasper takes
a few steps forward on the cobblestone path.

“Hephaestus!”
he yells into the night. “I know that’s you! Come out and face me like a man,
you crippled idiot!”

Now
I do see a dark figure limping along the pathway. Moonlight illuminates the
scars and mottled flesh on the left side of his face. Hef gives a hearty
chortle.

“
This
coming from my wife’s pretty bastard child,” he taunts. He snaps his fingers,
and another fireball appears, orange tongues of flame licking the air as it
hovers above the palm of his hand.

Jasper
doesn’t recoil from the insult, but his reaction—to rip off his shirt without
bothering to unbutton it and toss it to the ground—is a little unexpected. “You
know better than anyone that my mother has screwed half of our world—
and
this one.” The strip-tease makes more sense when his magnificent black wings
spring from his back.

“Going
somewhere?”

“Yes.
Aren’t you forgetting? I have
these
.” Jasper pumps his wings once.
Twice. The motion creates a tremendous popping sound, similar to the kind you
make if you whip a sheet over a bed really hard, only much louder.

“Fine.
Fly away, little bird.”

Jasper
snarls, but his feet remain rooted to the ground. “Mom’s the one who sent you
here, I presume?”

“Aphrodite
doesn’t ‘send me’ anywhere.” Hephaestus tosses the fireball straight up in the
air and “catches” it, like a baseball. It stops just above his outstretched
hand. “She wants to use the girl against you. I have...other methods.”

Jasper
opens his mouth to reply, but Hephaestus heaves the fireball in his direction.
Jasper dives to the ground and mostly avoids it except for a few singed
feathers.

“Who
else crossed-over with you?” Hephaestus barks, conjuring yet a third fiery orb.
“We know Apate did. Where’s that pesky brother of hers? Dolos?”

There’s
an edge of wariness in Jasper’s disbelieving laugh. “I don’t know what you’re
talking about.”

“
Really
—”
Hef starts to scoff, but a quick flick of Jasper’s wrist sends a weapon of his
own hurtling toward Hephaestus in a silver-blue blur. Hephaestus drops his cane
so that he has a free hand with which to catch it. His fingers open to reveal a
sharp metal dagger, but a moment later I watch with wide eyes as the knife
dissolves into a metallic pool in his hand. Shiny silver droplets bleed onto
the ground.

“The
next time we meet, I’m kicking your ass all the way back to Olympus.”
Hephaestus throws the last fireball but seems to purposely miss Jasper.
Instead, the ferns behind him catch fire. Picking up his cane, Hephaestus
points it in the direction of the crackling flames and sweeps it dramatically
through the air in a semi-circle. An instant later, he’s gone and the entire
garden burns, gray smoke twisting into the night sky. I crouch lower to the
ground, but not before gagging from the smoke invading my mouth and nostrils.
Suddenly, two strong, reassuring arms scoop me up, and Jasper launches us into
the air.

“Hush!”
he yells at me above the whoosh of air rushing past us as we ascend higher and
higher. That’s when I realize I’m screaming. I clamp my mouth shut, even though
no one but Jasper can hear me. I squeeze my eyes closed and only open them when
we’ve stopped moving.

We
hover there in midair, Jasper’s wings beating rhythmically behind him. My body
is completely molded into his, which I’d be enjoying more if we weren’t just
ambushed by the alleged god of fire and weren’t presently hanging thousands of
feet above the ground. Although I can feel
he’s
relishing it.

“How
can you be horny after that?”

My
exasperation coaxes a smile onto his face, but only for a second. “Are you
okay?”

“I
guess so.” I chance a glance downward but only see the silhouettes and pinprick
lights of the buildings below. Not for the first time tonight, abrupt terror
seizes me. “Anna and Eric!” I gasp. “What if they’re still inside? We have to
go back!”

“Eric
texted me. They left a while ago,” Jasper tries to assure me.

“Eric
whisking Anna away somewhere. Gee,
that’s
comforting!”

I
might as well be an annoying but harmless fly buzzing around his ear.  “Let’s
go.” His grip on me slackens, and he starts to try to shift me. I squirm in
resistance.

“Stop
doing that!” he cries fearfully.

“What
are you
doing
?”

“I’m
trying to get you onto my back.”

“We
are
not
flying back.” I thrash even more. “Take us back down. We can
take a bus. Or walk.”

“Flying’s
faster. Just stop moving,” he cautions, “and hold onto me.”

I
cling to him the entire way back, horizontal beneath him, my arms and legs
wrapped snugly around him. My purse is squashed between our bodies, and I can
feel my wallet, phone and a tube of lipstick digging into my stomach. Cold air
bites my back through the rips in my dress where my own wings dangle uselessly.
Mostly I keep my eyes closed, but sometimes I open one to peer at his solemn
face. His eyes focus straight ahead, his mouth set in a thin, determined line.
As soon as his feet touch down on black asphalt, I push out of his arms,
falling backwards. His hand darts out to steady me.

“Watch
it.” It’s only then that I look around and notice we’re on a flat roof, not the
street. The leaves of a tree peek just below its edge, and two other
rectangular brick buildings loom on either side of this one.

“I
thought we were going back to campus,” I tell him. “Where are we?”

“Greenview,”
he says. “At my place.”

I
suppress my initial response, which is to completely freak out, and instead
calmly remind him, “I have a curfew now, Jasper. I need to get back to the
sorority house.”

He
shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have left you there last night. It’s not safe for
you anymore.”

Vanessa’s
eerie warning ricochets around my head. “Why?”

“Because
of your house mother.”

“Farrah?”
I ask, skeptical at first. Then, another realization smacks me. “She’s
Aphrodite. Your mother,” I mutter almost to myself. I remember her cold, cruel
jade eyes as they were in my nightmare, watching me dispassionately as I fought
to breathe. I know what Jasper’s going to say before he comes out with it.

“She’s
the one who killed you.”