Strange Fates (Nyx Fortuna) (11 page)

“Some people are comforted by the idea of fate lending a hand,” she said.

“The hand of fate isn’t necessarily a kind one.”

“So you do believe,” she replied.

“Do I believe that there’s something out there, meddling in the business of mere mortals? Possibly. Do I believe in destiny? No.”

After breakfast, I scoured the kitchen clean. I was wiping off the counter when Jenny appeared and gave me a dirty look. “What are you doing in my kitchen?”

“Nothing,” I said innocently. I winked at Elizabeth, who giggled.

“What would you like for breakfast?” she asked Elizabeth.

“Nyx fixed me a delicious breakfast already,” Elizabeth replied. “There’s plenty left.”

“No thanks,” Jenny said. “I’ll leave you two alone.” She didn’t sound happy about it.

After she left, I said, “Your roommate has all the charm of a prison warden.”

She shifted uneasily in her seat. “Jenny’s all right.”

I raised an eyebrow. “If you say so.” Time to change the subject. “Let’s talk about your brother.”

She had anecdotes about her brother’s brilliance, tons of photographs, and tissues for when she started to tear up as she talked about him. But she didn’t have any idea of who would take him or why.

“What about his friends?” I asked. “Can I talk to them?”

“No!” she said.

I frowned. “Why not?” Something wasn’t right. If Alex was such a wonderful guy, why didn’t he have any friends?

“He just didn’t relate to anyone well, besides me,” she said. “You have to understand, Alex isn’t just smart, he’s brilliant. That could wear on people sometimes.”

“Drug problem? Gambling problem?”

She shook her head. “No vices, except this intense curiosity.”

“We’ll find him, I promise,” I said. “Speaking of which, we should get going.”

She grabbed her house keys. “I’m ready.”

I led her to my baby, the purple convertible.

“And you thought the Lexus was conspicuous?”

“This is much more low-key,” I told her with a laugh.

“Right,” she said. “Purple Caddy. Real low-key.”

“You don’t like it?” I said. I pictured the guys she was used to dating. Rich boys who drove Porsches.

She gave the Caddy a long look. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

She definitely didn’t like it.

“You’re the only one who does matter,” I said. She took a step backward and I told myself to ease up on the intensity.

“C’mon, tell me,” I coaxed.

She swatted the fuzzy dice and sent them swinging. “I think it’s perfect for you.” I wasn’t sure how to take that comment.

I opened the passenger door for her and turned the heater on full blast. I took a minute to defrost. Lately, I’d been dreaming of a white sandy beach and lots of sun. The real sun, not the anemic imitation currently making its appearance in the Twin Cities.

“Where are we going?” Elizabeth asked.

I headed to the bank. She waited in the car at the curb while I ran in and made a large withdrawal. Then we found the pawnshop and parked a couple of blocks away.

I swung her hand as we walked along.

“You’re feeling chipper this morning,” she said. She smiled at me.

I raised her gloved hand to my lips. “I have a good reason,” I said teasingly.

But when we arrived, the front door at Eternity Road was open. Not just open, but off its hinges.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” I said. “Go back to the car.”

“No way,” she said.

“Don’t argue with me,” I said, but she was already through the door.

The place was trashed. The jewelry cases had been smashed, bookshelves shoved up against each other, and vintage gowns thrown on the floor. There was a tuba shoved partway through the ceiling.

A pungent odor hung in the air. At first I couldn’t identify it, but I realized it had the stench of dark magic.

The stuffed bear now wore a trilby, a loud plaid jacket, and a happy grin, like it had just come home from an all-night rager.

Talbot stomped toward us. “What are you doing here?” he growled.

“Is the lapis lazuli ring here?”

“What do you think?”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Like you don’t know,” he replied. “Get out.”

Elizabeth moved closer to me. I tried to see him the way she would. An angry man with strange silvery eyes.

Talbot’s eyes were my only warning. He threw all his emotion my way, a magical ball of frustration, anger, and fear.

I sent a surge of protective magic back at him, which I hoped would diffuse his emotions. It did, but my magic only barely held him back. He regained his equilibrium but continued to glower at me.

Why was he so pissed off?

“You think I did all this?”

“Yes,” he said impatiently.

“I didn’t do it,” I said flatly. “I came to
buy
the ring. A snatch and grab isn’t my style.”

Elizabeth kept looking around the shop like she thought she was being secretly taped for a bizarre reality show and wanted to know where the camera was.

His silvery eyes bore into me. “I believe you,” he finally said.

“Do you need help cleaning up?” I offered.

He looked amused. “I’ve got it handled,” he said. “It won’t take long to clean up.”
For me
was the unspoken implication. The guy had a serious superiority complex. I wondered what Mr. Arrogance would do if he knew who I was.

I nodded. “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “Can you call me if the ring turns up?”

“If we find it, will you know how to use it?” He couldn’t resist one last condescending remark.

I nodded but didn’t turn my head to look back. I should know how to use it. It had been my mother’s.

My mother had been the youngest and my grandmother’s favorite. The ring was one of many gifts she had given my mother. I had recognized it the moment I saw it, but it seemed too good to be true to find it in a pawnshop in Minneapolis.

When we were without funds, which didn’t happen very often since Mom was Lady Fortune and all, Mom would just pawn something. At the end, she’d parceled out her magic and kept just a little for herself, less than she should have had. When she died, she didn’t have enough magic left to heal. The one thing I understood, then and now, was that she’d done it for me. I’d been tracking down her magic ever since.

A pickpocket in Verona had stolen a very valuable dagger when we were walking in the square. My mother knew the moment the dagger had been taken, of course, but she didn’t even react.

“Why don’t you go after her?” I asked. “You know who she is.”

She gazed after the girl, who was disappearing into the crowd. “She needs it more than I do,” she said.

Why would a ten-year-old girl need a dagger?
I started to ask, but then I saw the tears in my mother’s eyes.

I was brought back to the present when Elizabeth asked me, “Are you all right?”

“Just thinking,” I replied. Was it a coincidence that the pawnshop was broken into soon after I’d been there?

“Are we done here?” she asked.

“I’m done.” A hundred years done.

Chapter Thirteen

We spent another hour driving around while she pointed out the food bank where Alex volunteered, his favorite restaurants, and where he shopped for suits.

We grabbed a couple of sandwiches and ate them in the parking lot of the restaurant. I sucked down the last of my soda and then grinned at her. “Want to get out of the city?”

“Where are we going?” she asked. When I wouldn’t tell her, she tried to wheedle it out of me.

“You’ll see,” I said. She tilted her head and gave me a little smile. In that instant, I knew my world would revolve around her smile.
Danger
, my brain told me, but I was sick of being alone.

She gave me a long considering look. “Have you ever driven on icy roads?” she asked. “Before they died, my parents taught me how to drive on these streets. Maybe I’d better take the wheel.”

“How did they die?” I asked.

“Boating accident. They both drowned.”

Interesting. That was the first information she’d volunteered about her parents. “I learned to drive in the Alps,” I assured her.

She reclined against the seat. “Then I’ll leave myself in your hands.”

I started the engine and headed out of town. The heavy stone that always seemed to lie upon my chest had lifted and I whistled as I drove. I was headed for the open road and there was a gorgeous girl beside me.

“This car certainly made you happy,” she said.

I knew when I bought it that the car would bring me luck. “Do you know who owned a 1956 purple Cadillac Eldorado?” I asked her.

“No, who?” she asked.

“The king,” I said.

“The king of Italy?” she hazarded.

“The king of rock ’n’ roll,” I said. “Elvis Presley.”

“And now he’s dead,” she said. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

“No, a goose just walked over my grave.”

I turned up the heater anyway.

When I’d headed out of Minneapolis, it had been cold and clear. But we were on a deserted country road when the sky grew black.

The wind whipped up, ferocious in its intensity, attacking the car with gust after gust. It was as if it were trying to blow us off the road.

There was so much magic in the air that I could barely breathe. I tried to take one of my hands off the steering wheel, but they were frozen there. The road curved sharply to the left up ahead.

Elizabeth shifted nervously in her seat. “Are you okay?”

“Take the wheel,” I told her. She did as I asked and with effort, I managed to work one hand free. It was enough to find the lodestone in my jacket pocket. I cast a protective spell around the entire car, but the attacker was too sneaky for me.

I was completely unprepared when my foot hit the brakes and they didn’t work. I fought it, but the car was gaining speed as the curve quickly approached. I threw the car into low gear, which slowed us down but didn’t bring us to a halt.

“Stop it!” Elizabeth said.

“I can’t,” I told her, through gritted teeth. “The brakes aren’t working! Pull over!”

“I’m trying!” she said. While she struggled to steer the car to the side of the road, I managed to free my other hand and dug through my inside jacket pocket for the tiny moonstone I’d bought at Eternity Road.

“Put it in park,” I ordered.

“But we’ll tailspin,” she objected.

“Would you rather we slam into that tree?”

I gripped the moonstone and drew from the magic stored there. One touch brought my mother vividly to mind. It was during happier times, my birthday maybe. She was wrapping a present and telling me not to peek.

The memory fled as I concentrated on staying alive long enough to figure out who was behind this attack. The sky lightened back to blue and the wind died down as quickly as it had started.

Elizabeth threw the car into park and it went into a spin. I pumped the brakes hard and they finally responded. The car let out a groan before it finally slowed to a stop mere inches from the tree.

Elizabeth was shaking and I put an arm around her. “Are you all right? You didn’t hit your head or anything, did you?”

She gestured to the seat belt, stretched tightly against her. “Not a scratch.”

We stayed there a long time, not speaking. My hands shook on the steering wheel. For someone who was supposed to be dead, I was clinging to life with all my might.

“That was a lucky break,” Elizabeth finally said, but there was a quaver in her voice.

“If we’d been in a lighter car, that wind would have blown us clean off the road,” I told her.

At first I thought we’d missed the tree completely, but the front bumper had some minor damage. The weight of what I had planned to do had stayed on my shoulders like a yoke, but instead of guilt, I felt free. They had tried to hurt Elizabeth and every cell in my body screamed that it was time for the Fates to pay.

Although my life stretched in front of me to infinity, I did not take the idea of murdering my aunts lightly.

I expected Elizabeth to bombard me with questions, but she was strangely silent. Shock, I supposed.

“C’mon, let’s go,” I said. “It’ll be okay now. Let’s get something hot to drink.”

Maybe something hot and sweet would bring back some color to her cheeks.

“Can you just take me home?” she asked.

The ride home was taken in silence.

Someone was trying to kill me. My aunts were the obvious suspects, but a thought occurred to me. Elizabeth had been in the car with me, and she had experienced more than her fair share of tragedy. Was it coincidence or something more sinister?

Chapter Fourteen

The next day, I hit the streets.

Besides my aunts, I couldn’t think of anyone else who wanted to kill me, and they knew it would take more than a car accident to get rid of me. Maybe it wasn’t me they were trying to hurt? Elizabeth. The thought sent terror through me, but I couldn’t let it stop me from taking down the Fates.

It was risky, what I was planning. Infiltrating the Fates as an outsider was dangerous enough, but Morta and her tracker had made it clear they had something particularly gruesome in store for me. They’d never suspect that I’d have the balls to face them.

I spent a couple of hours at a thrift store until I found a decent-looking suit. I paid for it in cash and changed into the suit, careful to knot the tie a tad haphazardly. The suit was clean but worn. I needed to look like an upstanding young man, down on his luck, but trustworthy.

No one at the company would help me, at least not knowingly, but I knew how to help myself.

I watched the building until I saw Trevor the receptionist leave and head for the coffee shop across from Parsi Enterprises.

I followed him at a distance. He ordered, sat at a table in front of the bay window, and read the paper. I ordered a coffee and waited for my chance.

I felt a twinge of remorse about what I was planning to do to the innocent worker, but I needed to get into Parsi Enterprises and fast.

The spell wouldn’t hurt him, just have him worshipping the porcelain goddess for a few days. It would work best if I touched him while I worked the spell. Otherwise, it was possible the entire café would end up sick.