Simply Irresistible (8 page)

It took him a moment to deal with the transition.
They
no longer meant headache.
They
meant the Fates.

“I’ll deal with them,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He went to the front door of the shop and locked it, turning the OPEN sign to CLOSED. Then he scooped up Marco Polo, who had followed him, placed the kitten on Vivian’s lap, and walked to the backroom.

He needed a little privacy for this spell, and he didn’t want to think about what he was going to do until he got back there, since he seemed to be shouting every thought.

The backroom was crowded with unloaded boxes of Science Diet and lams cat food, books on all the various fish, and some aquariums ordered by a new restaurant but not yet picked up. He hadn’t put an office back here, preferring to work out front, but there was an area for animals that he didn’t want to sell, an area that dated from the time when he really took pets.

Directly in front of him was the outside door. He double-checked the deadbolt and pushed on the steel just to make certain it was closed tightly. Then he closed the door to the tiny bathroom as well.

Precautions, precautions. He hadn’t used magic this powerful in the store in years.

Then he clenched his fists, trying to hold in all the anger he was feeling. He would save that until he saw those harpies face-to-face.

“To the Fates,” he said, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Chapter Six

The headache was getting worse. It felt like someone was pounding on the inside of Vivian’s mind. Or maybe on the outside of her mind, and it was echoing inside. Or maybe the entire percussion staff of every marching band in the country had decided to rehearse in her head.

Vivian plucked little Marco Polo off her lap and set him on the floor. The movement made her dizzy. She put a hand to her head and waited for the room to stop spinning.

Just her luck to meet the handsomest man she had ever seen when she had the worst headache of her life. She wasn’t even certain she had been speaking English—and then when he seemed not to know about the Fates, she was afraid he was going to consider her crazy.

He just sat behind the counter, watching her with those amazing blue eyes. He had rich black hair and a square jaw. He even had a dimple in his chin. When she had seen that, she wished Kyle were with her so that she could point out how charming a dimple was.

But of course Kyle, being eleven years old and male, probably wouldn’t have thought the dimple as charming as Vivian did.

The headache seemed to grow, as if it were alive. She had to do something about it—find out what had happened to Henri—or Dexter, which he seemed to prefer—and see if he had some aspirin or something, anything to make this pounding go away.

Vivian stood, careful not to step on the adventuresome kitten. She was glad that Dexter had locked the front door. The little one, Marco Polo, seemed to have inspired all the others into exploring. Mom didn’t care; she slept after a particularly draining feeding session.

The store had strange lighting. The fish tanks provided most of it. Somewhere nearby a man with a Southern accent talked about bluesman Robert Johnson.

The radio. It was only the radio.

The scratchy sound of an old recording filled the store, clashing with the hum of the cash register. One of the kittens meowed, and it sounded like someone screamed—at least to Vivian’s sensitive ears.

She needed to lie down. She’d got a sense that there was someplace for her to do it in the back. She’d had migraines before, often after a lot of concentration, particularly psychic concentration. The migraines usually passed after a short nap.

She used the counter, and then some displays, to help herself toward the back. The fish, moving in their tanks, seemed to follow her, as if they were concerned. She was imagining everything.

A short nap, and she could drive out of here, out of poor Henri/Dexter’s life. The man had just been trying to live like a normal person, even though he clearly was not. Just the mention of those women had put him into a panic.

They had some kind of history—the women had even referred to it—and it wasn’t something he wanted to revisit.

Vivian would return to them and make them go to that restaurant, Quixotic, instead. Or she’d go there herself, bring someone up to her apartment and get help.

After her nap.

She made it to the door leading into the back. The pounding on her skull grew harder, almost as if someone were trying to get into her mind. She pulled the door open and found herself faced with boxes, empty aquariums, and a lot of pet food.

In fact, the entire back had the meaty odor of dry dog food, and it made her instantly queasy.

She didn’t see Henri/Dexter anywhere. The back door was locked, and the bathroom door was closed.

She called his name, but he didn’t answer. Which was odd, because she hadn’t seen him leave.

There was no place to lie down back here. She put a hand on the pile of boxes and leaned on them, feeling like an old woman.

Then she used the last of her strength to cast about with her mind for him. But she couldn’t sense Henri/Dexter. She was alone here except for the kittens and the mother cat.

A shiver ran up her spine. Alone, and the headache was growing worse, worse than it had ever been in her life.

She wasn’t going to be able to drive. She wasn’t even sure she could walk any farther.

She was going to need some help, and she was going to need it fast.

*

Dexter appeared in a giant library. It smelled musty and the lights were dim. The floor was made of marble and there were long tables between the stacks. Ladders on wheels ran up the walls as far as the eye could see.

He looked up. The books seemed to run on forever. He wondered if every book ever written was in here and then supposed it was.

Behind him, gum snapped.

“Ew, gross,” a young girl said.

“Don’t do that. You almost got it in my hair,” said another.

“Did not.” The last voice was petulant.

He turned around. Three teenage girls sat on top of one of the tables, legs crossed. Stacks of books surrounded them, and they all had books open on their laps.

The girls wore crop tops, low-slung jeans, and too much makeup. Their feet were bare, but their toes were painted with glitter polish and decorated with fake tattooed butterflies.

“Excuse me,” Dex said, keeping his voice down even though they hadn’t. “I’m looking for the Fates.”

The girl closest to him—a long-haired blonde with sky blue eyes—smiled at him. “That’s us!”

“No,” he said. “The real Fates.”

The girl in the middle flipped her beaded corn-rows out of her face with one beringed hand. “We are the real Fates,” she said with a trace of annoyance.

He was the one who was getting annoyed. All he had wanted to do today was find a home for five kittens. He hadn’t planned on spending his morning searching for three women he didn’t even like.

“I meant,” he said, enunciating carefully, “I’m looking for Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.”

“Oh, them,” said the last girl, who had trimmed her red hair so short it looked like a crew cut. “They’re not the Fates anymore.”

“What?” Dexter took a step forward.

“Yeah,” said the first girl. “We are.”

He felt his stomach twist. “What do you mean, they’re not the Fates anymore?”

“Hey, bud, don’t you pay attention in class?” the second girl asked. “They’re done. We’re the Fates now.”

“Or we will be,” said the third girl, tugging on the rings jutting out of her right eyebrow.

“What do you mean, you will be?” Dex was feeling the beginning of panic. As much as he disliked them, he couldn’t imagine the magical world without the Fates.

The first girl pulled bubble gum out of her mouth, twisted it around her index finger, and then chewed the gum back in. She didn’t look more than twelve. “Well,” she said around the gum, “all we gotta do is a good job.”

“Yeah,” the second girl said, nudging the first girl in the ribs. “Right now, we’re the Interim Fates.”

“Whose bright idea was this?” Dex snapped, and all three girls looked stunned.

He could tell from the look on their faces that he’d just made a classic error.

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “The Powers That Be chose you.”

“We needed fresh blood,” said the first girl, speaking out of turn. Didn’t she know that the Fates were supposed to speak in order? And the girls hadn’t genuflected when he mentioned the Powers That Be.

The twisting feeling in his stomach had gotten worse.

“At least that’s what we were told,” she continued. “You know, they’d been doing it, like,
forever
, and they were beginning to screw up, you know, so it was time to bring in new ideas, new thoughts, new
people
.”

“You?” he asked.

“Us,” the second girl said with a grin. “Isn’t that just the spiffiest news you ever heard?”

“Spiffy,” he repeated. “I don’t suppose you’re Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, having a little joke on me.”

“No way,” said the second girl.

“Who gives their kids those weird names, anyway?” the first girl said.

“They were perfectly normal names in their day,” Dex said, amazed he was defending the Fates. “What’re your names?”

“Tiffany,” said the second girl.

“Brittany,” said the first, “and she’s Crystal.”

Crystal didn’t seem to be paying attention. She had returned to the book she was studying, frowning at the page.

“You sound more like pop stars than Fates,” Dex said.

Tiffany and Brittany grinned. “That’s what we want to be. We want to bring the Fatedom into the Now. You know. It was so Last Week.”

“Last Century,” Brittany said.

“Last Thousand Years,” Tiffany said, and giggled.

Dex didn’t feel like giggling at all.

“But this is a lot harder than we expected,” Brittany said. “You know, like, we’re supposed to know who you are just when you arrive—”

“You’re magic, right? Because otherwise you couldn’t get here, right? They don’t let, like, nonmagic people in the door,” Tiffany said. “Right?”

She was asking him? “No one trained you for this job?” he asked, then wished he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

“Well, like, we, um …” Tiffany let her voice trail off. She looked at Brittany, who grinned at him.

“We lied on our application,” she said. “Not lied, exactly, but we said stuff we shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said. “You’d think they would’ve known.”

“But I heard that the old Fates chose their replacements. That wouldn’t be right, would it?” Brittany asked.

It would if they wanted to keep their jobs. “They weren’t fired, were they?” he asked.

“Like, who knows?” Brittany said. “They’re gone, we’re here, and we’re going to get the permanent job.”

“Just as soon as we figure out what we’re doing,” Tiffany said.

“Or maybe not.” Crystal slammed her book closed. “This is way harder than anyone said it would be. You know we’re supposed to keep track of what all the mages are doing all the time? Most of them are
old
and, like, who cares?”

“Besides, we can’t make that work any more than we can make the name thing work,” said Brittany. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Never mind,” Dex said, and spelled himself back to the store. As he did, he heard Tiffany say, “The old ones all have weird names.”

“No kidding,” Brittany answered, and then their voices mercifully faded out.

He appeared in the back of the store, right in front of Vivian. Her face was gray and the circles under her eyes had grown deeper.

“You’re back,” she said. “Thank God.”

And then she fainted.

*Chapter Seven*

Vivian was cradled against a man’s hard chest, his muscular arms supporting her back. She kept her head against him, and her eyes closed. If she didn’t move, it didn’t hurt, but she had the sense that it would if she did anything out of the ordinary. Anything at all.

The smell of pet food was strong here, but if she kept her face turned toward him, she caught his nice clean scent instead. Masculine, with just a hint of something—sandalwood?—buried faintly in his aftershave. Attractive, whatever it was.

She’d always wanted to be held like this. Fantasy cuddling. She would have to choose though: Superman? Batman? She’d even settle for Wolverine if he looked like Hugh Jackman had in the movie. But not Spider-man. She’d never been real fond of Spider-man.

“Vivian?” He had a deep superhero voice too. Bass, with just enough tenor. What’d they call that? Baritone. Rich and warm tones, masculine without the scary Darth Vader vibe. “Vivian, are you awake?”

“No,” she said, without moving.

“You have to tell me what’s going on. I can’t spell your pain away, which means it’s coming from an external cause.”

Spell. Pain. She didn’t want to think about that. Or about the fact that the man holding her was— Superman. She smiled a little. Maybe Batman. Golden Age, anyway. Not Silver Age, not Bronze Age. Collectible. D.C., not Marvel.

“Vivian, please. Don’t fade out. I need you to stay with me.”

A cool hand on her face. Large hand, long fingers. Gentle. She could stay like this forever.

“Tell me what’s going on. Did the Fates do this to you?”

Fates. The pain whooshed back into her head twenty times stronger than before. She must have moved somehow.

She opened her eyes. Dexter—he preferred Dexter—was looking down at her. Maybe she had made him up. Maybe he was a vision from Kyle’s comic book. Square jaw. Dimple in his chin. Electric blue eyes and hair so black that there was blue in it too. It curled over his forehead just so.

How could a man be that good-looking? It wasn’t right.

Maybe it was right. He had strong arms too. He wasn’t struggling with her weight. She felt like she was floating.

“Vivian,” he said. “Stay with me. Did the Fates do this to you?”

“Do what?” she asked.

“Hurt you somehow?”

She shook her head, then wished she hadn’t. She must have moaned, because his arms tightened around her. “No.”