Simply Irresistible (32 page)

There was no way to contact her. The rock and protection spells guarding the basement made that impossible. And he couldn’t send out a warning to anyone else. He didn’t know any spells that could be cast with the mind alone.

Until he could get Eris to release his mouth or his hands, he was doomed to lie here like a two-man luger whose partner had fallen off the sled.

And this, to Dex, was complete torture. Eris probably knew that, just like she knew the droning of her voice was torture. She was delighting in his pain, waiting for Vivian.

At least Vivian hadn’t come up—not yet. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she would wait long enough for Eris to become restless and make a mistake.

That was their only hope now. It was up to Eris. She had to make one of those colossal supervillain blunders or Dex and Vivian were doomed.

Because Dex wasn’t about to turn the Fates over to Eris, not even to save Vivian’s life. He wasn’t dumb. He knew there was no bargaining with people like Eris. She might promise to let Vivian go if Dex gave up the Fates, but in the end, Eris would kill them all.

At least with the Fates still around—and their cell phone in hand—they might eventually contact someone else to help them. They might solve this Eris problem long after Dex and Vivian were dead.

He hated being so pessimistic. It wasn’t his usual style. But he’d never been out of options before. Or, more accurately, his options had never been this bad.

And he’d only had to worry about himself. Never before had he had to protect someone he loved.

That made his job a thousand times harder. It made his job impossible.

Vivian was on her feet, investigating the Packard, before she’d even realized she had stood up. The problem with waiting and hoping, she’d discovered, was that she had never been very good at either. And she didn’t like the idea of being rescued.

She just didn’t make a convincing damsel in distress.

The Packard was in lovely condition. If Dex hadn’t spelled it down here, then there had to be a way to drive out. Vivian figured it would take some exploring, but she would find that way—or maybe Sadie would show her.

The problem was that the Packard had no gasoline in it. Dex had followed the rules. He hadn’t stored a vehicle filled with a flammable chemical in his basement. Normally Vivian would have applauded such good sense, but right now it irritated her.

Why did he have to be so squeaky clean? A few rough edges would have been good at the moment. Some kind of bad guy image—something she could use.

Next she checked out the weapons closet, and nearly put her fist through the wall. The weapons weren’t weapons at all, but collectibles.
Star Trek
phasers (who’d’ve thought he was a Trek geek?), high-end light sabers, and every comic book villain’s weapon ever drawn. The only thing that was close to a real weapon—which probably was a real weapon, come to think of it—was a kitana that had come from the
Highlander website
. Apparently Dex was a Duncan McCleod fan as well.

Nice that they had so much in common. Now if Dex would only live so that they could enjoy each other.

Sadie had followed Vivian everywhere, and Vivian could feel the dog’s urgency. Or maybe it was her own urgency mingling with Sadie’s.

There wasn’t a phone down here, and there seemed to be no radio equipment either. Nothing that connected this little bomb shelter prototype to the surface.

Except the elevator—which led directly to Dex and Eris.

Vivian walked to the elevator, put her hands on her hips, and stared at it. Sadie whined, as if she disapproved of this train of thought.

But Vivian felt like she was getting somewhere. After all, who was the expendable one here? Certainly not Dex, who was the only person who knew where the Fates were. It was Vivian, and she might be able to use that to her advantage.

She’d been hearing it all day. In fact, Dex had said it not a few hours before. Vivian could do anything she put her mind to. Anything.

The Fates had shown her that by making her envision that glass jar. She’d encased an entire building, cutting the spell that threatened it off at the laiees—or the feelers, to be more accurate.

Her heart started pounding, hard. If she could get high enough in that elevator to get past Dex’s magical prohibitions, then maybe she could use her mind to give Dex a few moments of freedom, just enough to get away, or to hurt Eris, or to find help.

Vivian would have to trust him to do the right thing. Somehow she would have to convey to him that she was the expendable one without having him realize that she truly meant to sacrifice herself if that was what was needed.

All of that would take a lot of mind control for a neophyte. But she could do it.

After all, she could do anything she put her mind to.

She just had to believe anything was possible.

And, after the day she’d had, believing was the easy part.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Sadie insisted on accompanying Vivian into the elevator. In fact, Vivian doubted she would have been able to get the elevator doors closed if she hadn’t permitted Sadie to join her.

Sadie gave Vivian comfort, even though the dog was pacing and looking panicked. Vivian had the sense that Sadie might actually bolt from the elevator and chew Eris into teeny, tiny pieces.

It was a great image, but not a realistic one. Eris would probably do something to Sadie long before the dog got near her.

Dex was going to be really angry that Vivian had brought Sadie along.

Oh, well. That was the least of her worries.

Vivian clutched the hand railing and closed her eyes. Timing was critical. She had to wait until she felt the barest hint of Dex’s presence. That meant she was out of the magical protection zone and into the main part of the house.

The elevator moved slower on the way up than it had on the way down. Or maybe it just seemed that way. Vivian wanted it to zoom to the top, and she wanted to spring out, do her battling and hurry away—or suffer the consequences, depending on what faced her.

Timing. It was all about timing.

And luck—although she refused to believe in luck. If she believed in luck, she’d have to believe in bad luck, and if she believed in bad luck, she might fail.

So she would believe in timing and—

—she felt him, just a hint of him, like elevator music imposing itself on her conscious mind (only much more pleasant). And that was enough.

She envisioned a solid stone box made of the same shiny black rock Dex had used to line his basement hideaway; the rock he said wouldn’t allow magic to penetrate through.

She made the box two feet thick on all sides and shaped it so that it would fit around Eris. She had to leave the bottom open for just a moment, and she hoped that moment wouldn’t be too long.

Then Vivian pushed the box away from her, just like the Fates had taught her, and visualized it scurrying down
the
hall—like a Borg ship in deep space—and slamming down on top of Eris.

The box left Vivian with the force of a sneeze. At least she had done part of this right.

The elevator still hadn’t stopped. Vivian kept concentrating—and hoping that her vision would work.

Dex sensed Vivian very faintly, like perfume left behind as a beautiful woman walked past. She was on the elevator, a third of the way from the top.

She was coming to rescue him.

No, Viv! No
, he sent.
That’s what she wants! Stay away
!

But he didn’t get any answer. He didn’t get any answer at all.

The elevator finally lurched to a stop, and as the door opened, Vivian pushed her way out. The secret panel was open, and so was the linen closet door.

She hurried through it, trying not to visualize all that could have gone wrong (Eris and Dex, squashed by the cube: Vivian arriving to see their toes curling under like the Wicked Witch of the West’s curled under the house in
The Wizard of Oz;
Dex smashed; Eris cackling, her hands reaching out…). Vivian made herself concentrate on holding that cube down.

When she reached the hallway, she turned and saw Dex sitting up in surprise. The floor was crumbling away from him, and the stone box Vivian had created around Eris was sinking into the wood.

Immediately, Vivian visualized a bottom on that box.

The wall was buckling and the ceiling was starting to come down around them. Chunks of plaster and something that looked suspiciously like asbestos were raining down on Dex.

“Is she inside?” Vivian asked.

“She must be,” Dex said. “The spell she put on me is broken.”

Vivian’s head was aching, just like it had with the glass jar. She was feeling dizzy, and she knew she would pass out a lot sooner this time.

“She’s fighting back. You have to do something, Dex.”

Sadie joined them, running to Dex and licking his face. He put his arm around the dog but looked at Vivian. “I’ve only got one idea,” he said. “You’ll have to concentrate like you’ve never concentrated in your life.”

Tears were running down her cheeks. Her head hurt so bad that she could barely think. It was taking all of her strength to hang on to this vision.

“Okay,” she said.

Dex waved his free arm in a circle and said into the air, “Take Eris, me, Vivian, and Sadie to the Fates!”

And, for the second time in her life—the second time that day—Vivian fainted.

She woke up sprawled on the floor of a huge library. The tile hadn’t been cleaned in generations and the dirt was all over her clothes. Dex was standing near a sorting table, talking to three teenage girls who sat on top of it.

Eris sat in a chair in the corner, ropes holding her in place. Duct tape covered her mouth, and a hat made of that same shiny black rock covered her head—apparently to prevent her from sending spells the way Vivian sent images. Eris’s eyes were narrowed in fury. If she ever got loose, they’d all be in big trouble.

Shards of black rock littered the entire room. Sadie was cowering underneath the checkout desk.

“I don’t care that you don’t know what to do with Eris,” Dex was saying. “She’s your responsibility now.”

“No one told us we’d be responsible for adults,” said the blond teenager. She was twirling a long strand of bubble gum around her right index finger.

“She’s really old. What could she have done that’s bad?” said the next girl. She shook her corn-rows as if the very idea of a bad adult frightened her.

“Yeah, like we can discipline anyone,” said the redhead, tugging on her nose ring.

Dex sighed. Vivian could feel his exasperation. “Well, can you at least keep her tied up until we figure out what to do with her?”

“Why can’t you?” the blonde asked.

“Because,” Dex said, in that tone people used with particularly dumb children, “she’s stronger than I am.”

“Isn’t that just like a guy?” the middle girl said. “He can’t control a woman, so he wants the law to do it.”

“That’s right,” Dex said. “You are the law, and she’s breaking it It’s your job to punish her.”

“We don’t know what our job is yet,” the redhead said. “We haven’t finished all the reading.”

Vivian sat up. Her headache was gone, but she was still slightly dizzy. Sadie saw her, and her tail thumped.

Eris was examining the ropes as if they held some kind of secret.

“Why don’t you just ask the real Fates,” Vivian said. “They’ll know what to do with her.”

“Who’re you?” the blonde asked.

“Who’re you?” Vivian asked in the exact same tone.

“I’m Brittany. I’m a real Fate.”

“Oh, really?” Vivian stood. She’d had arguments like this with Kyle. This was a world she was used to. “If you’re so real, then how come you can’t handle one measly criminal?”

“He says she’s not measly,” the middle girl said.

Vivian arched an eyebrow at her. “I don’t believe I was talking to you.”

“If you talk to one of us, you talk to all of us,” the redhead said.

“Really?” Vivian raised both eyebrows. “Just like real Fates?”

“We are real Fates!” the girls wailed.

“Then prove it,” Vivian said. “Do something with her.”

She pointed at Eris. The girls all looked at Eris, who glared at them. The girls looked away quickly. The redhead started thumbing through a book. The middle girl looked like she was about to burst into tears. The blonde—Brittany—whispered, “We don’t know what to do.”

As if Vivian knew.

“If you don’t know, you ask someone for help,” Vivian said. “Dex, bring Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos here.”

“No!” the Interim Fates wailed in unison.

“If we ask them what to do, then they’ll know we failed,” the middle girl said.

“Who’re you again?” Vivian asked the middle girl.

“Tiffany.”

“Well, Tiffany, you have failed. You don’t know how to handle a simple problem.”

“Neither does he.” The redhead pointed at Dex.

Dex was watching all this with great consternation.

“Yes, he does,” Vivian said. “He captured the bad guy and brought her to you for trial, just like he was supposed to.”

“He said you captured the bad guy,” Brittany said.

“Whatever,” Vivian said, using the phrase with as much emphasis as Kyle always did. “The point is that you have to deal with her.”

“We’re not getting anywhere,” Dex said. “I’ll get the real Fates.”

He raised his arm. Vivian felt her stomach clench. What if Eris broke free and did something to all of them—the Fates, the Interim Fates, and Dex, Viv, and Sadie?

But Vivian wasn’t going to stop Dex, because this was their last hope.

Dex started to swing his arm down in completion of the spell when a voice boomed, “Belay that!”

Dex’s arm froze in place, and for one horrible moment, Vivian thought Eris had done something to him again.

Instead, a man appeared beside him. He was short and squat and had a square face that reminded Vivian of a bull. Yet there was something oddly appealing about him.

“Daddy!” the Interim Fates cried.

“Oh, Daddy,” said Brittany. “I’m so glad you’re—”

“Shut up,” the man said.