Simply Irresistible (31 page)

She resisted the urge to beg him to hurry back, just in case broadcast thoughts were getting through. She didn’t want to distract him.

She had a hunch he would need all his concentration to make it through the night.

Dex wished he had made the elevator run silently. He had never planned for this contingency—that he would leave the safety of the basement hideaway and return to the house to check out what he had seen. He’d always figured that whatever came through the elevator would attack him, not the other way around.

He could spell it silent once he rose above the protective rocks, but magic might draw more attention than the click-click-click of the gears as they moved.

He leaned against the hand railing, holding it tightly. He had his plan. Once he found Eris, he would use a binding spell, then immediately transport her to the Interim Fates. Not that those children would know what to do with her, but at least she’d be far away from him.

And the Interim Fates would have to do something with Eris, even if they had to consult the Powers That Be first.

Dex shifted from foot to foot. He was nervous. He hadn’t been nervous in years. Of course, he hadn’t done anything like this in years. He’d been a kitten superhero, not a real one. The only times he ever got a chance to use his skills had been when his old enemies sought him out.

But he was primed and ready now. The magic hovered on his fingertips, and the spell was in the forefront of his mind. One chance. One chance only, and he had to be careful. He couldn’t set off the spell too early, couldn’t jump at shadows. He had to be very precise.

Finally the elevator lurched to a stop. He took a deep breath and calmed himself. If he found her, he had a plan. If he didn’t find her, he would at least reassure himself—and Vivian—that they were safe for the time being.

The elevator doors opened. Dex stepped into the darkened linen closet. He thought certain he had left the light on, but maybe force of habit had made him shut it off.

After all, he didn’t want to point someone to his secret elevator. He opened the linen closet door and found the lights on in the hallway. His heart pounded. He had remembered this backward— light on in the linen closet, off in the hallway. Funny how the mind played tricks.

The house was unusually silent without the animals in it. He didn’t step into the hallway until he checked his shield, traps, and protect spells that surrounded the house. All were intact.

He started for the kitchen when the linen closet door slammed behind him. He whirled, expecting to see an animal he had somehow missed in the mad dash for the basement.

Instead he saw a tall black-haired woman, neatly dressed in a summer sweater and blue jeans. Even in such casual attire, she looked elegant and expensive.

Eris.

Even before Dex could send off the spell that hovered on his fingertips, his entire body went rigid. He tried to move but couldn’t. He couldn’t even move his lips to recite the spell.

She had captured him without saying a word, without moving a finger.

She had trapped him, and worse, she had seen him come out of the linen closet. He hadn’t even closed the secret panel to the elevator.

Eris could get to his secret hiding place. She could get to Vivian.

And he wouldn’t be able to stop her.

Chapter Twenty-five

Eris chuckled as she walked toward Dexter Grant. He was so much better looking in person than he had been in any of the photographs she’d seen. Hair so black it looked almost blue—and that dimple in his chin; how adorable was that?

If she’d known it was this easy to catch a superhero, she would have done so sooner.

“Lookee what I did,” she said as she reached his side. “And I didn’t even have any Kryptonite.”

His lips twitched, and she knew what he wanted to say. He wasn’t Superman. He had never been Superman, and there was no such thing as Kryptonite. Amazing the things people focused on. Amazing the things the mythmakers got wrong.

Eris understood because she had never been that interested in discord.
Discord
was such a wimpy word. She thought it only one step up from
disagreement
, an even wimpier word. She and Dexter Grant were having a disagreement. There was discord between her and Dexter Grant.

Minor, minor words for minor, minor leaders.

She wasn’t the Goddess of Discord. She was the Master of Chaos. And she’d prove it just as soon as she made sure those pesky Fates were out of the way forever.

“You don’t seem that formidable.” Eris flicked Grant with her forefinger and he fell backward, a straight shot, as if he’d been attached to a board. His head narrowly missed the corner of the wall.

He landed with a whump and a whoosh. The whoosh was the one that pleased Eris most. She’d knocked his breath away. Literally.

“I at least expected a fight from you,” Eris said. “One of those large good-versus-evil things you like so much, with plenty of fireballs and lightning and wild magic. Of course, I have you pinned now, and eventually I will have to kill you.”

His eyes had caught the light They were the only things on him that proved he was alive. Such fire in them. Such passion. They were quite eloquent She could feel their defiance.

She sat down beside him, crossing her legs. “I will have to kill you, unless you tell me where your pretty little Miss Kineally is. Or we can skip over the nasty parts where I torture the powerless little psychic who hasn’t come into her magic yet, showing her what the Fates did to me for two thousand years—as if starting a war was a crime! They were just angry at the way I exposed the pettiness of Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. Who’s the fairest of them all? And the napless Paris picks Helen, of course. Foolish man. It was his fault, after all, for picking a mortal woman over a mage. Not mine.”

Dex was still glaring at her. She wished she could let him speak, but if he spoke, he could cast spells, and if he could cast spells, he might, just might, be able to hurt her. Better not to take that chance at all.

“Ah, yes. I was talking about skipping the nasty parts. Because you could just tell me where the Fates are and let me get underway.”

Eris tapped her lips with a fingertip.

“That won’t work, though, will it? Because you’ll use that ploy done in a thousand movies. You’ll lie to me and tell me whatever you think I want to know so that I’ll unbind your mouth, and then you’ll use that feeble magic on me. If you can. Looks like I’ll just have to torture Ms. Kineally myself.”

Dex’s eyes narrowed. She could feel his anger. It made his body vibrate, and the vibrations were harming the integrity of the spell. Stubborn and strong. She wondered if he realized that he was messing with the harmonics of the binding spell.

Probably. Add smart to the equation. She strengthened the binding spell to accommodate his little temper tantrum and smoothed that pretty hair off his forehead.

“The real question, then, is do I go after Ms. Kineally while leaving you up here? I do like that elevator of yours. Your bunker must be buried deep, because I never would have found it from the outside. Or do I wait here with you until she comes up on her own, just to investigate?”

Eris leaned against the wall. Grant watched her, and she could tell he was hoping she’d wait, hoping that someone else would find them and rescue them, or that he’d figure out a way to escape in the hours that it took little Ms. Kineally to realize her big, strong man had deserted her.

“Hmmm,” Eris said, dragging out the moment “I think I Kuwait. Much as I would like to see what you’ve done with your underground hideaway, I think it would be better if Ms. Kineally came to me. That way I don’t have to disable any more spells and traps—good thinking, by the way, but you did forget to reinforce the point of origin for those spells. Or did no one ever tell you that the point of origin is always the weakest point, and can be entered by anyone if found?”

His eyes widened slightly. Fascinating. His mentor was as bad as they said he had been. Grant had learned much of this stuff on his own.

“Anyway, if I wait here,” she said, “I can rest up and be at full force so that I can really make that little girl suffer. She did love her Aunt Eugenia, didn’t she? Maybe I’ll make your Vivian relive that death over and over again.”

Eris held out her hand, studying her fingernails.

“Such choices facing me tonight. Psychological torture or physical torture? Or perhaps a mixture of both? I’ll just have to see what my mood is when little Ms. Kineally comes through that linen closet door, crying, ‘Dex, oh, Dex! Are you all right?”

Grant started. Apparently Eris’s imitation of Kineally was as good as she had hoped it would be.

“Let’s just sit here together you and I. I can tell you about my exploits, and you can tell me about yours. Oops! You can’t, can you? My mistake. I’ll just have to make diem up myself. Just think: your legacy in my hands. Maybe I’ll even make your death a news story on KAHS. It is time the world learns of magic, don’t you think? Imagine the problems that will bring. The
discord
between the haves and have-nots.”

Eris chuckled. “I’m having such fun.” She continued to stroke his hair. “I hope you are too.”

Vivian didn’t like the feeling of unease that was building in her stomach. Her emotions had received so much exercise that day that she wasn’t certain if her discomfort was coming from her own anxieties or from a true psychic sense that something was wrong.

She had repacked all Aunt Eugenia’s boxes, leaving out only the notebooks that mentioned Eris. Vivian put the mythology books on top of the nearest box in case Dex wanted to look at them again.

But Dex hadn’t returned. She had thought he would be back by now.

Part of the problem was that she wasn’t staying busy. If she stayed busy, she wouldn’t obsess about Dex.

She’d finished Dex’s Sprite. She needed something else to drink. She turned toward the kitchen and stopped.

Sadie was sitting by the door, a frown on her doggy face. For the first time since Vivian had met her, Sadie seemed uncertain, as if she couldn’t decide what to do next.

The dog’s appearance startled Vivian. She had thought Sadie was with Dex.

How long had she been sitting there?

“What’s going on?” Vivian asked.

Sadie whined and looked over her shoulder, as if she saw something down the corridor. Vivian went to the dog, her thirst forgotten.

“Show me,” she said.

Sadie led her down the corridor. Everything seemed the same as it had when Vivian arrived. Animals were scattered in various rooms. The ferret had made its way around the room with the giant computer and was asleep on top of the punch cards. Portia was curled on her side in her hospital room, her paws twitching with a dream.

Vivian didn’t linger at any of those places. Instead, she hurried with Sadie toward the main room. Vivian knew Dex wasn’t here—because she could sense his absence—but the fact that he had left Sadie behind disturbed her.

The computer screens were all on, but the sound appeared to be off. SECURITY BREACH, SOUTH LAWN still scrolled across the center screen. Hadn’t Dex fixed that breach? Had he even made it there?

The other screens acted like closed-circuit televisions, showing various parts of the house and yard. Sadie went to a side screen and pawed it.

Vivian had to come close to see what was going on.

Dex was lying on the floor in the hallway, his arms at his side, his feet pointed. He almost looked as if he was preparing to go down a water slide, except that his arms weren’t crossed over his stomach.

Beside him sat the woman Vivian had seen in Quixotic, the woman she’d seen murder her Aunt Eugenia. The woman appeared to be waiting—and Dex was clearly helpless.

They had to be waiting for Vivian. The scenario Dex most feared had happened. He would be forced to tell Eris where the Fates were to protect Vivian’s life.

Vivian touched the screen, wishing she could touch Dex without Eris knowing. Only once before had Vivian felt so helpless—and that had been Eris’s fault too—the night Aunt Eugenia had died. Vivian had had to watch that, through the filter sent by Eugenia’s mind.

She wouldn’t watch again. She would rescue Dex.

And then she slipped into his chair. The impulse was noble but misguided. He had more magical powers than she could dream of. And Eris appeared to have defeated him in a moment.

There was nothing Vivian could do—except watch and hope that someone else would ride to the rescue and save them all.

Chapter Twenty-six

The one thing evil bad guys all seemed to have in common was their tendency to yammer. As if someone cared about their horrid little plots to take over the world.

If you’d heard one megalomaniacal speech, you’d heard them all. At least that was the conclusion Dex was coming to. Eris was telling him— apparently trying to impress him with her brilliance—about the skills she’d acquired since the Fates let her go, and how she had used those skills to create KAHS and her own Erika O’Connell personality.

Pretty soon, he was sure, she was going to explain to him how she would conquer the world, and why it was necessary for her to be the one to do so. She’d probably follow that with an evil laugh— something that would sound like
Bwa-ha-ha-ha
, since evil people rarely had normal and pleasing laughs—and then she’d find a new way to torture him.

He could practically write her dialogue for her.

He’d heard it in enough bad movies, read it in a thousand comic books, seen it on a million television programs. She thought she was original, but she wasn’t.

That was the problem with these supervillains; they all wanted the same thing. One day he’d like to run into a megalomaniacal nut with the dream of taking over all the newspaper recycling businesses worldwide, or conquering the ice cream industry. Or wait—that plot had already been done in a delightful little Scottish film called
Comfort and Joy.

Dex had stopped trying to move. Moving only seemed to make
the
binding spell tighter. He didn’t have real telepathy—not with anyone except Vivian, or so it seemed—and that was his own fault. He could have worked on his telepathic skills, but he never saw the point. He liked keeping his thoughts private—or he had until he met Viv.