Strange Fates (Nyx Fortuna) (13 page)

The placard had been pried off the door of the next office. I tried the handle, but it was locked.

“What are you doing back here?” a female voice challenged me. I was busted by an older woman with a bad perm and a hideously ugly House of Hades brooch on her dress.

“Looking for the copier,” I said mildly. “I’m new here, just filling in for Trevor.”

“This is an R and D facility,” she replied. “You can’t just go roaming the halls. Now get back to your desk.”

“I thought Parsi Enterprises was a manufacturing company?”

“Parsi Enterprises is an international conglomerate,” she replied. “And if it weren’t for Sawyer Polydoros, you wouldn’t have a job here. Stop asking questions and get back to work.”

She marched me back to the front of the office and showed me a door immediately to the right of the reception area. “I’m the human resources manager. If you need anything else, pick up extension six-six-six-six and ask.” Figures that someone in HR would have that extension.

Back at my desk, I took a quick peek at my phone. I recognized some of the scribbled symbols. The new ambrosia formula? But something was off.

The phone began ringing before I could figure it out. Answering the phones at Parsi was mind-numbingly dull. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of any of the Fates until almost lunchtime, when Nona came in, along with a frail-looking Deci in a wheelchair.

Deci and I were face-to-face for the first time. We locked gazes, but I dropped my eyes first. I didn’t want her to recognize me from the burning hatred in my eyes.

She was sick. I hoped it was slow and painful. I grinned widely at the thought. Nona mistook my glee for genuine friendliness.

“You must be Nyx,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you from my daughter and husband.”

“Mrs. Polydoros,” I said. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

“Thank Sawyer, not me,” she said, but softened it with a smile. “Now if you’ll excuse me, we’re late.”

The rest of the day passed without incident, but I’d learned two things: My aunts didn’t usually hire mortals like Alex, and they were secretive about what was going on in their research and development department.

My cell phone rang.

“Ambrose Bardoff,” the caller identified himself.

“Ambrose, I was hoping to hear from you,” I said.

“I think I figured out what they were looking for,” Ambrose said. “Can you meet me at the store?”

“About an hour, okay?” I asked. Call me paranoid, but I wanted to make sure no one from Parsi followed me.

“I’ll see you there.” His tone was casual, but I caught an undercurrent of tension beneath.

When I got to Eternity Road, the door was open but the store was empty.

“Hello? Talbot? Mr. Bardoff? Anyone here?”

Something was wrong. I stopped and sniffed the air. It was full of bad magic.

“Where are you?” I checked behind the counter. He lay there, facedown, not moving. At first I thought he was dead, but I rolled him over anyway and checked his pulse. It was there, faint but steady.

There was no sign of any injury, but he was out cold.

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” I said aloud. He needed a healer. Healing magic wasn’t something you learned on the streets or picked up after a couple of classes. My magical résumé was sparse: healing, an ability to manipulate the elements, and playing hell at the roulette table. None of which would help me avenge my mother’s death or help Ambrose.

I was the son of Fortuna, however, and I still had a few tricks up my sleeve, but I needed my mother’s lodestone.

“I’ll be right back,” I told the unconscious man.

On my way out, I turned the sign to
CLOSED
and put a ward on the door. It wouldn’t be enough to keep away anyone but the tourists.

The lodestone was the most valuable item I owned, magical or not. If it couldn’t fix Ambrose Bardoff, nothing would. I ran to the Caddy and dug through my duffel bag.

I started to panic, but the lodestone was there, rolled up in an old pair of my socks.

I grabbed it and raced back to Eternity Road.

The ward was in place and Ambrose was breathing.

“Ambrose, wake up,” I said.

I tried to remember what my mother had told me about how to use the lodestone, but drew a blank.

“Damn it! Work!” I shouted. The stone went warm in my hand.

Minutes ticked by, but finally Ambrose groaned and sat up. “Crude but effective,” he said. “I think you just saved my life.”

I gave him a hand and hauled him to his feet. “Who did this to you?”

“I didn’t see them,” he replied. “I turned my back for a moment and then I was facedown staring at the hardwood floor. It was deadly dull until you arrived and shouted my name.”

“Wait, you could hear me?” Why would anyone attack Ambrose? And ransack the store? Who was behind it?

“Yes, dear boy, it was like I was frozen, incapable of movement or speech, but aware of my surroundings,” he said. “A most unpleasant experience. It was fortuitous that you arrived when you did.”

“Don’t you remember? You called me earlier and asked me to come down to the store,” I reminded him. The blank look on his face told me the memory was gone.

“That’s unfortunate,” Ambrose said. “I have a feeling it was important. I didn’t say anything specific?”

“Just to get down here right away,” I replied.

He reached underneath the cash register cabinet and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass. He offered me a swig, but I waved it away. It was a little early for me, but Ambrose had just been attacked.

“The place stunk of magic when I came in,” I told him.

He looked offended. “Certainly not mine,” he said.

I shook my head. “Definitely not,” I said. “This reeked of black magic.” The only necromancer I knew was Sawyer Polydoros, but it didn’t seem like his style.

He took a long drink of his whiskey. “That narrows it down considerably. Anything else you can tell me?”

There was a trickle of blood at the back of his head. I hadn’t noticed it earlier.

Talbot walked in. He saw his father bleeding and jumped to conclusions. He punched me. I wasn’t expecting it and it sent me flying. I landed hard and heard the crunch of bone. He came at me again, but his father grabbed him by his collar and let him dangle in the air before sitting him down hard on a stool.

“Talbot,” his father said sharply. “You have it all wrong. Nyx didn’t attack me. He saved me. Apologize at once.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. But his eyes told me the only thing he regretted was that he hadn’t hit me harder.

“Apology accepted,” I said. I held out my hand, but he ignored it.

“Good, good,” Ambrose said. “Now that you two are friends, I believe I’ll have another drink.”

“I’m watching you,” Talbot hissed under his breath when he thought his father wasn’t paying attention.

I grinned at him. I liked him, but he’d taken an instant dislike to me. Nothing, not even a simple friendship, came easily to me. My right leg throbbed from where I’d landed on it.

“Nyx, my boy, what brought you to our neighborhood today?” Ambrose asked with a warning glance. He obviously didn’t want to talk in front of his son.

“I was job-hunting,” I lied absently, my mind still on puzzling out the identity of his attacker.

“Who’d hire you?” Talbot said derisively.

“I would,” his father said. “When would you like to start?”

Eternity Road would be the perfect place to search for my mother’s charms. I’d found the coral fish. I would find the others.

“You saved my life,” he replied. “And I could use the assistance.”

I hesitated, but Talbot’s glare was convincing me to take the offer.

“I have a temp job right now. I couldn’t work here during the week.”

“We need help on the weekends,” Ambrose said. “Saturday’s our busiest day.”

“Our only busy day,” Talbot muttered.

I shrugged. “How about this weekend? I need to find a place to live, but I can start on that tomorrow.”

“I know the perfect apartment,” he replied. “It’s conveniently located and quite affordable. For the one who saved my life, that is.”

“Dad, the apartment, too?” Talbot said. “It’s been empty for ages and you promised me.”

His father cut him off. “Then it’s high time it was rented out.”

“I’ll take it,” I said.

“You don’t want to look at it first?”

“I can’t afford to be picky.”

He gave me a curious look, but didn’t comment. “It’s been empty for a few months, but it is furnished,” he said. “Although you might want to buy a new mattress.”

“You might want to ward the doors and windows,” Talbot said. “If you know how.”

“How would you do it?” I was messing with him. I knew how to ward off most of the things that went bump in the night. Except my aunts.

“For a sorcerer of your power?” he asked, making it clear he thought my power almost nonexistent. “Sage. Or maybe salt.”

He went into full lecture mode. I found his pomposity strangely endearing.

“Which Houses use those?” I asked innocently, knowing full well that none of them did.

“The House of Zeus is known for very complex protective spells,” he said. “The House of Poseidon uses the power of nature. While the House of Hades prefers the protective pentagram.”

He didn’t mention the House of Fates, the House of augury, omens, and oracles. The Fates were the ones everyone needed protection from, even if they didn’t know it.

I belonged to the House of Fortune, which had one member. The House of luck and lost causes.

“Or maybe I’ll just hang up my antique witch ball,” I said. That shut him up, but only momentarily.

“I could write down a simple spell for you to try,” Talbot said.

“I think I can handle it,” I said. “Pretentious little twit,” I added under my breath.

Ambrose heard my comment and laughed. “My son mistakes your lack of House allegiance as a lack of knowledge.”

He went to the register and took a key off a large ring. “You can move in today if you want. The power is on and it’s furnished.”

We shook hands and I was the proud tenant of the apartment above the pawnshop. The benefit of dealing with a sorcerer was that he didn’t ask questions, every exit and entrance in the building had been warded, and the rent was cheap. Of course, the contract was a tricky one, but nothing I hadn’t seen before.

I was lucky, I knew, but sometimes I was suspicious of that luck. It wasn’t always good fortune when someone offered you something for close to nothing. Sometimes, there were strings attached.

Chapter Seventeen

“Ready to take a look?” I asked. I was showing Elizabeth my new apartment.

Elizabeth nodded, but she didn’t look especially happy. “Hey, it’s going to be great,” I said. “I couldn’t sponge off you forever.”

“You aren’t sponging off us,” she said. A faint blush tinged her cheeks and she kept her eyes resolutely on the wall. “I told Jenny not to worry if I didn’t make it back tonight.”

My heart started to beat in triple time, then slowed to normal when she added, “I wasn’t sure how long it would take.”

We walked up the stairs until we came to the apartment. There were two doors, one marked 1A and the other 1B.

“Which one is yours?” she asked.

I held up the key, which had a number inscribed on it. “One-B. Let’s check it out.”

The apartment was small, clean, and beige. It didn’t look like anyone had
ever
lived there iat least not anyone with a speck of personality.

I showed her the bedroom. It seemed presumptuous of me to ask Elizabeth to go shopping with me for a bed for my new place, so I ordered one from a discount mattress place that Ambrose assured me wouldn’t be full of lice or bedbugs and bought a king-size bed. It had already been delivered and thoughts of what I’d like to do in that bed had been buzzing around in my head ever since. But Elizabeth didn’t seem to want to linger, so we headed back to the kitchen.

“At least it’s clean,” Elizabeth said. “But why can’t you get a place closer to us? This side of town is the pits.”

I raised an eyebrow. “This is the only place I can afford, and I can work at the pawnshop on the weekends to make rent.” The money I had in the bank needed to stay there.

“I can help with—” Elizabeth started to say, but I shook my head before the rest of the sentence was out of her mouth.

Dating a rich girl wasn’t easy, at least not for me. I had too much pride to let her support me, but apparently I did not possess many useful skills. Things were looking up now that I had a job and a place of my own, although Elizabeth didn’t see it that way.

“It seems too good to be true,” Elizabeth commented. “You know what my mom always said?”

“No, what?”

“That something too good to be true probably is,” Elizabeth replied.

“My mother said
fortuna audax iuvat
.”

“What does that mean?” Elizabeth asked.

“Fortune favors the bold.”

Elizabeth dropped her eyes, but not before I saw a flash of panic in them.

I changed the subject. “The kitchen isn’t bad,” I said. “Maybe I’ll learn to cook.”

I opened a drawer and discovered a stack of take-out menus. I handed the menus to Elizabeth. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving,” she said. “This place looks good and they deliver.” She held up a pink paper menu from a Chinese restaurant.

“Sounds perfect,” I said.

She took out her cell phone and ordered a bunch of stuff, gave them her credit card number and the address, and hung up.

“You know, I invited you out,” I said. “You don’t have to try to pay for everything all the time.”

“It’s just habit,” she said. “No big deal.”

It was a big deal to me, but I decided not to press the issue. “Let me show you the rest of the place.”

The tour took about ten seconds. The small dining room didn’t have a table or any chairs. I’d find some furniture at a thrift store or something.

“At least the bedroom’s big,” Elizabeth said.

The doorbell rang, saving me from thinking anymore about beds and Elizabeth in the same sentence.

We spread out the food on the coffee table and ate sitting on the sofa.