Something Wicked (19 page)

I couldn’t even answer with words, I was so dizzy with wanting him.
Sure?
On the one hand, of course not. We hadn’t known each other long enough to be in love, had we? We were under a spell. My sister hadn’t been dead for two months yet. His brother had murdered her.

On the other hand, we weren’t dead. And this,
this
was as alive as we could get. So I nodded, and hoped that was enough.

Ben smiled a lopsided smile of sheer relief and began kissing me again, and touching me again, and finally filling me, hard and real and solid and right….

But no more words. For now, we didn’t need them.

We moaned happily. We gasped for breath. I think I screamed a couple of times, spreading my arms out beneath him, somehow flying on the ecstasy of it even as Ben’s hard rocking drove my body down, down into the bed, down under his, over and over….

Nope. No more talking. Which I really, really loved.

And his timing was as good as his focus.

Afterward, after the yells and the shudders and the sheer release of it all, after his strength and my softness and getting rid of the condom with a tissue, he pulled the side of the bedspread up over us. Then he wrapped his arms tight around me, as if he never wanted to let me go, and he rested his chin on my shoulder, and he went to sleep.

Magic. In the best and worst ways, it was magic.

I didn’t want to sleep. I wanted to memorize the feeling of his body alongside mine, to memorize the sound of his breath, to save the moment so that I could come back to it in my thoughts, anytime I needed to.

Because this might be the only chance I got.

Because those other two-to-four lovers in my life had nothing on Ben Fisher.

But the day had already been way, way too long. It had to end sometime.

And I slept.

When I woke, it was to the sound of typing. Ben had set up his laptop on the desk, by the data port. Wearing nothing but boxer shorts, he seemed to be doing some major Web surfing. Sunlight peeked around the very edge of the drapes, but other than that, only his screen lit the room.

I rolled quietly over and scanned the floor, past the edge of the bed, for something to wear. I found my underpants, which I wiggled into under the covers, and his T-shirt from the night before. It was big on me, and soft, and smelled like him.

Then properly armed, I said, “Good morning.”

“Hey! Good morning.” He stopped typing to turn in his chair toward me, smiling with what looked like honest pleasure. Instead of disappointment or annoyance or any number of more negative reactions he might have had, in hindsight, after our magic-fueled sex. That was a relief, but by the time I realized that this was the perfect moment for one of us to kiss the other one hello, we’d both let the moment slip past. I saw it pass when Ben’s smile faltered, then returned with extra cheer. “I think I’ve found it. Not just a selection of Hekate sites here in Italy,
the
Hekate site here in Italy. Have you read Virgil’s
Aeneid?
”

“I…forget.” Liar, liar, pants on fire. I didn’t even know who Virgil was, so chances were pretty low I’d read anything by him.

“There’s a famous chapter where Aeneas descends into the underworld, guided by a sibyl, to talk to his dead father. It’s very similar to the part in the
Odyssey
where Odysseus ventures into Hades, but then that’s no surprise. I mean, Homer, Virgil.”

He even did a weighing gesture with his hands, like, who
wouldn’t
expect Homer and Virgil to be tight?

“Uh-huh,” I said, and felt seriously stupid. Now I was the one forcing the cheer. You’d think, with a clear view of his chest, it would be easier to feel cheerful.

“Anyway, legend has it that Aeneas’s entrance to the underworld was in an area north of Naples called the Phlegraean Fields. The area has a lot of hot springs, sulfur deposits, steam, fumaroles…you get the picture. Hell-like. Anyway, there’s an archeological park that was once ancient Cumae, which of course was one of the oldest Grecian colonies in Italy.”

Of course. I smiled harder and began to feel panicked.

Thank heavens he’d liked the sex.

But that may have been Hekate’s doing, more than mine.

“And
there
—” Ben was really starting to look excited now, leaning forward, spreading his arms. “There’s an ancient cave, called the Sybil’s Grotto. It was undoubtedly one of the three famous oracles of antiquity.”

Undoubtedly. “That’s great,” I said weakly.

Ben started to look confused. “So…should I get us tickets to Naples? This is your quest, Katie. I’m just along for the ride—I mean, to make sure…you know.”

He thought he could protect me from Victor. But if Victor had really taken up black magic, there might not be much Ben could do…except endanger himself.

Still, that was kind of his decision.

“Naples would be great,” I said. “I’ll get washed up.”

I escaped to the bathroom…and leaned back against the door, feeling sick from the obviousness of just how unevenly Ben and I were matched. And not just intellectually, but ethically.

I remembered the touch of his hands on my body. Of his body
in
my body. I wondered if he’d be as attracted, once the curse…

Up until now, my only reason not to lift the curse was vengeance. Victor really did deserve everything Hekate could throw at him.

But who could have guessed how badly I’d want to leave the curse in place, just to keep a man?

“I
t’s here,” I whispered.

Ben turned to me, eyes widening, in the backseat of the car sent by the bed and breakfast. “You can tell already?”

I nodded, almost as surprised as he was. I’d felt something even as our train approached the Napoli Centrale station about two hours after leaving the Roma Termini. But “something,” that’s a pretty vague feeling. Sure, it could have been something psychic. Or it could have been a boost in blood sugar from breakfast, you know?

Or it could have been the pleasure of Ben’s company, heightened by the fear of losing that if I canceled the curse. No,
when.
Definitely
when
I canceled it.

Damn it.

Is everything okay?
he’d asked me, when I got out of the bathroom. He’d pulled jeans on, and another maroon T-shirt.
I’m sorry. I don’t do this that often, so I might have neglected some kind of morning-after expression of, uh, gratitude or…

That was the Ben I couldn’t take advantage of. That was the Ben for whom I had to find the Hekate site.

Once we’d transferred onto the Napoli-Torregaveta subway line out of town, I could finally name this strange hyperawareness. It was excitement. Anticipation, even.

Like the night before your birthday, when you’re a kid.

The Villa Minerva’s proprietor, Signor Vecchio, met us at the station and transferred our luggage into the back of his car. While he did, I looked at the green and brown hills around us, and the bright blue sky with just a few cotton-ball clouds. I breathed in the seaside air, and I was home.

As surely as if I heard my mother’s voice calling to me, from just over the next hill.
This was the place.

The goddess grail was here.

We drove past the almost perfectly round Lake Averno below us, which Signor Vecchio explained had formed from a volcanic crater. “There is path, from villa to
lago.
Very nice. Very pretty.”

“And the archeological park?” asked Ben, as we lost sight of the lake behind some trees.

Driving us under a very old, narrow archway, Signor Vecchio made another turn. “Perhaps one mile, perhaps two. No farther. Easy walk, for healthy Americans like you.”

Excellent.

Villa Minerva sat, elegant with its buff-stone walls and black shutters, in the midst of a lush green lawn. The “double” room Ben had reserved meant that it had only one full-size or “double” bed in a truly gorgeous room. Everything was muted shades of white and gold, with a slate tiled floor, a stone niche framing the head of the bed, and white French doors opening onto a sunny garden full of flowers.

“Beautiful,” I assured them, when Ben looked uneasy with the one bed, as if he didn’t want to seem pushy.

He didn’t have to be pushy. Part of me wanted another night of incredible sex with him so much that thinking too hard about it distracted me from forming complete sentences.

Part of me, however, feared taking anything for granted. Because if, after I found the Hekate site and lifted the curse, we decided we’d made a mistake…

That thought hurt enough to stop all words completely.

But not enough, I hoped, to stop me from finishing the job.

As soon as we’d had lunch, in Villa Minerva’s sun-dappled courtyard, Ben and I headed for the archeological park. Armed with a photocopied map, we followed the paved pathway that circled the rim of Lake Averno—” Lake Hell,” Ben said that might mean—in the direction of ancient Cumae. If this was Hell, it got really bad press. Little bitty ducks hid under tufts of long grass at the edge of the water, just beyond a quaint wooden fence made of slim logs in long Xs. To the east sat the ruins of some big old Roman building—part of what must have been a round wall, uneven windows still copping to its man-made origins despite the grooves of erosion and the grass growing on top of it—but we headed west. The midday sky seemed huge, partly because “west” not only took us toward Averno’s sister lake, Lake Lucrino, but toward the sea. The temperature was in the low sixties, mild and sunny.

Much nicer than Stratonikea, back in Turkey. Nicer than Eleusis, in Greece. This place, progress hadn’t screwed with yet.

And then there was the sacred feeling all around me, like a humming in my ears. It felt like my heart beat faster, like my breath came deeper, like the air around us vibrated. I could barely keep from fidgeting. This was definitely a magic place. And if I had to swallow my pride to understand why priestesses of Hekate might have hidden their sacred cup in some cave around here, then…so be it.

“So tell me,” I said, as Ben and I strode along together, and I tried not to wince. “What exactly is a sibyl?”

He laughed, like I’d told a joke. Then he looked stricken as he realized I’d been serious. “But…
you’re
a sibyl, Katie. Kind of.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Go on.”

“Sibyls were priestesses in ancient Greece. They told fortunes—usually in the form of riddles—at sacred sites called oracles. Well…the shrine was called an oracle, and so was the sibyl who prophesied at the shrine.”

I nodded. So far, so good.

“Now if you do just a pass-through of ancient history, you’ll read that the sibyls were priestesses of the sun god, Apollo. But that’s because history’s written by the winners. By Greece’s golden age, sun gods were being elevated far above earth goddesses. So to speak.”

The way he pointed upward toward the sun, then down toward the ground, made me laugh, which made him smile his lopsided smile.

“In fact, many scholars believe the sibyls were originally priestesses to an older chthonic goddess. One of the more ancient of those was Cybele. You can hear the similarity between the words.”

“And chthonic means…?”

This time he didn’t laugh. “Relating to the underworld.”

And that’s when I got it. I
got
it! “And Hekate’s the goddess who guides souls to the underworld, just like the sibyl guides whatsisname to the underworld in that Virgil book!”

“Aeneas,” agreed Ben, then staggered backward because I’d flung myself at him again. His kiss was only a little distracted by trying to keep his balance against my sneak attack. Otherwise, he seemed glad to comply, no questions asked.

I answered, all the same. Though not with,
I’m trying to stock up, just in case.

“You’re brilliant,” I told him, my nose touching his.

“You’re the one who figured out that we needed to go forward instead of backward to find the grail,” he reminded me, after another kiss.

“No, you did that. Or your brother, or Sarapis. Whoever it was who appeared to me in Stratonikea. I haven’t been big about going forward lately.” Deflated, I turned to continue with him toward the archeological park. I almost didn’t feel his fingers slide down my hair, one last time, before he let me go.

The path got steeper as we left the lake behind us. Soon the entrance to the park—a high stone wall with open, ironwork gates—came into view.

Beyond them, all thick trees and looming hillside, waited the end of our quest. It was enough to make me dizzy. Really.

Ben dug out money for our entrance fee. “Let me. This is tax deductible.”

That last part was because I’d gotten my own wallet out. “How is this tax deductible?”

“We can do a segment on sibyls for the
Superrational Show.
”

Since I had no idea what euros exchanged to anyway, I let him get in line. I hung back, randomly studying the blue signs that identified Cumae in four different languages. Did I say I was dizzy? The buzzing in my head felt so loud now, I could hardly think through it. It wasn’t a bad sensation. In fact it was kind of like being drunk, where things are swoopy and off balance.

That’s how big the magic was, here.

So much bigger than me, it scared me.

“Come on.” Ben caught my hand with that same old sense of completion to lead me at a fast pace into the park.

“This is the way to the Sibyl’s Cave?”

Instead of answering, he broke into a run, towing me with him down one of several paths. And…something was wrong. Something
other
than the magical buzz.

By the time I’d processed that, and yanked my hand free to collect myself, we’d rounded a corner into the hilly woods. “What’s the hurry?” I asked, wishing I could concentrate a little better around all this swooping dizziness. I mean…this
was Ben,
right? He was wearing the faded maroon T-shirt and jeans that had been his standard wardrobe since Athens. His hair was kind of long and loopy….

And he looked hurt by my suspicious studying of him.

Damn, I was paranoid.

He flashed his shy, ducking-his-head smile, and that was a little better. “Have I told you how great you look today, Katie?”

Which was nice to hear, so why did everything seem so…off-kilter? “No.”

“You do. You’re gorgeous. Your dark hair. That olive skin…”

“Ben, something’s wrong,” I admitted. “I’m really…dizzy.”

I mean, seriously. Had the Villa Minerva drugged my food?

“C’mere.” Concerned, he led me to a rock hewn bench, beyond which loomed a pathway—half dirt, half stone stairs—up to the ruins of some huge structure. Italian ruins, apparently, were golden brown instead of white. We both sat. “Tell me about it.”

“I think it’s the magic. Like I told you, I
know
this is the place, and I’m glad.” Except for the fear of losing him, once the magic ended, but I wouldn’t admit that part. “But it’s like…like sensory overload.”

“So maybe you need to concentrate on something else?” Ben suggested—and his mouth covered mine, searching, tasting. His arms encircled me, pulled me to him. The connection clicked between us, strong as ever. He really was a hell of a kisser. And I really did want to stock up. But something still seemed wrong.

“How’s that?” he asked, throaty, between kisses.

Taking his advice, I tried to concentrate on just one thing.
Him.
And the way he was leaning me back across the bench, following me down with his hard body, running a hand up my ribs and across one of my breasts as he filled my mouth with his…

The dizziness overwhelmed me, all the same.

“God, you’re so hot.” He lowered his head to kiss across my breasts, his mouth open, his tongue hot, which distracted me right back.

Then he was tugging my shirt out of the waistband of my jeans “Ben.” I managed to protest. “We’re kind of…in public.”

With a grin, he wrapped his arms around me and rolled us off the bench, into the grass on the side opposite the pathway. Since it was a big, blocky bench of solid rock, someone would have to walk right by us to see.

Coincidentally, he’d landed on top. “Problem solved,” he said, and freed enough of my shirt to push it upward, following it with his hot, hot tongue in my belly button. “I’m—” his words were muffled now “—a problem solver.”

Part of me was shocked. We were
still
in public, even more than the time Sal Milano and I were in the backseat of his Grand Prix in high school. But I’ve got to admit…the part of me that had taken up with the dark side lately was kind of turned-on by the risk of it.

Especially as Ben kissed upward from my belly button, up my sternum and unclipped the front of my bra. “Oh, God,” he breathed again.

Then his hot mouth covered the tip of my breast. Dizziness and desire and danger merged in an overwhelming intoxication.

I threw my head back in the leaves and grass, arched under him like I had last night, wasted my one good hand by stuffing it in my mouth so that I wouldn’t attract the attention of some field trip kids or something. Oh, yeah. This was my kind of wicked. Except…

“Something’s wrong,” I gasped. Even drunk on magic and arousal, I knew that much. It wasn’t the way he’d moved to the other breast, his soft hair tickling the one he’d left wet. It wasn’t the hardness I could feel through our jeans, pressing the seams against my own need for him….

His head stilled on me. He pushed himself far enough off me to squint down at me. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

Then he started to tell me, in a raspy whisper, exactly what he wanted to do to me, and how right it would feel. I wove my fingers into his hair…and just as I felt the scar on his scalp, I realized what was different.

Ben sure was talking a lot. In bed last night, he’d been practically wordless. I’d found that especially sexy, him not diluting what we did with commentary. But now…

He stripped off his maroon
Napoli
T-shirt, up and off his beautiful chest and over his head, and tossed it aside—but I was the one who went cold. Sure, he had a great chest, tanned and ripped with just the right amount of hair trailing from over his pecs down the center of his six-pack and into his jeans. But—

A
Napoli
T-shirt? Not one from Chicago?

Oh-my-goddess-holy-hell, it was Victor!