Strange Fates (Nyx Fortuna) (21 page)

I watched, transfixed, until the song ended, which is when I finally got it. His trademark grin was missing. When he didn’t think anyone was looking, he looked trapped.

Elizabeth said, “I’d love something to drink.”

I steered her toward the bar and ordered two waters. I ended up with an ultraexpensive bottle of something that tasted like tap water. Elizabeth wasn’t where I’d left her, but I finally found her staring out a window in the long hall leading to the ballroom. It was much quieter out there, and the hallway was nearly deserted. I wrapped my arms around her. “Tired?”

Elizabeth stepped out of my embrace. “Nyx, there’s someone I want to say hello to.” The abrupt change in mood caught me off-guard, but I followed her.

She led me to Nona and Sawyer. “Hello, Sawyer. Nona. This is my boyfriend, Nyx.”

“We know Nyx well,” Sawyer said jovially. “He’s our newest employee.”

Nona shook my hand and gave me an inscrutable smile.

“Yes, I’d almost forgotten,” Elizabeth said. “He has a second job on the weekends. He barely has time for me.” I stared at her. There was a hint of bitterness underneath her joking tone.

“So you’re Elizabeth’s beau?” Sawyer asked. “Small world.”

“Yes, I am,” I said. I reached over and squeezed her hand.

“Nyx is doing a wonderful job at Parsi,” Sawyer told Elizabeth.

“I’m glad you think so,” I replied.

Interesting, but what was more interesting was the question that popped into my mind: How did Elizabeth know a necromancer? There was magic all around us, but most people were too self-absorbed or too stupid to notice when they came up against it. Elizabeth was neither of these things.

Sawyer asked Elizabeth to dance and they left us. I knew it would have been polite to ask Nona to do the same, but I couldn’t bear the thought of dancing with my murderous aunt.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked, coming right to the point.

“I don’t even know you,” I said calmly, but underneath, I was panicking. Had I tipped my hand?

“You assume that I mean you ill,” she guessed shrewdly. I guess she knew her own reputation.

“I assume that you can’t believe that someone like Elizabeth would be interested in someone like me.”

Her face softened and she reached out to touch my hand, but I shied away. “Of course she would be drawn to you,” she said softly.

Elizabeth and Sawyer rejoined us before I could question her further.

A few minutes later, Sawyer and my aunt were called away to schmooze with some robber baron or something. Elizabeth and I were alone again.

“Why did you want me to meet them?” I asked.

She shrugged. “They seem like a nice couple.” I couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.

“Are you ready to leave yet?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how long I’d be able to pretend that I didn’t know exactly who my aunt was. Or how long I could stand to have my girlfriend lie to my face.

“What were you talking to Mrs. Polydoros about?” Elizabeth asked.

“Just being polite,” I said. “Why?”

“You seemed intense,” she said.

“I’m always intense,” I said, trying to make it a joke.

Afterward, I took Elizabeth home.

“Want to come in?” she asked. “Jenny won’t be home for hours.”

I followed her into the living room, but she went straight for her bedroom. I held back, thinking she wanted to change, but she gave me an impatient look.

“Are you coming or not?”

I took her hand and started running up the stairs. She burst into laughter.

“I’m going to get all this stuff off my face,” she said, gesturing to her makeup. “I’ll be right back.”

She slipped into the bathroom and I prowled nervously and tried not to think about what the invitation to her bedroom meant. But I was wrong. When she came back, she only wanted to talk.

“Any progress finding my brother?”

I gritted my teeth. She had a definite tone in her voice. “Some.” I added, “Why do you think I can find him anyway?”

“You’re smart,” she said. “Street smart. And no one else had any luck. Found anything you’d like to tell me about?”

“No,” I said, then amended, “Not yet. I’m working on something, but I don’t want to get your hopes up.”

“You seem to spend every weekend working at Eternity Road.”

“I like it there,” I said. “And I like the people. Talbot and I have become friends. And I haven’t had a friend in a long time.”

Elizabeth looked like she smelled something bad. “Do you have to jump every time he snaps his fingers?”

The statement was so patently untrue that my jaw dropped. What was wrong? She’d been on edge all night. If I didn’t know better, I would swear she was trying to pick a fight.

“Talbot’s my friend,” I replied.

“What do you really know about him?”

I glared at her. “I know everything I need to know.”

“Don’t you think it’s odd that he offered you a job and a place to stay just like that?”

“Why is it strange? That’s exactly the same thing you did. And he didn’t try to seduce me when he was doing it.”

I realized how harsh my words were and glanced at Elizabeth, but she was staring at the floor. The blush in her cheeks gave her away. I felt like a heel for mentioning the libido potion.

“Not that that wasn’t enjoyable,” I said, trying to tease her into looking at me, but her eyes remained firmly on the floor.

“You’d better leave.”

“Fine.” I slammed the door as I went. Finding her brother was important, but so far, everything had led to a dead end. I couldn’t lose sight of what I’d really come to Minneapolis to do, even if it meant I never found Alex.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Elizabeth had suggested a movie. Despite having decades to adjust to the technology, I was annoyed by movie theaters, but I went along with it just to please her. She’d been snapping at me about every little thing; maybe agreeing to her suggestion would be a good olive branch.

I was on edge anyway, so it didn’t take much to set me off. The movie had barely started when a couple of guys behind us started talking.

“Excuse me,” Elizabeth turned around and said in a low voice, “but we’re trying to watch the movie. Could you please keep it down?”

“Why don’t you suck—”

I was up and over the back of the seat in an instant. The rest of his sentence was stopped by my fist in his face. Fighting was one thing I didn’t need any magic for, something I was good at and had lots of practice doing.

“C’mon, pretty boy,” his friend said. He made a move toward me. I took my free hand and punched him in the gut. He bent over, clutching his stomach, and I hit him in the neck.

“Nyx, stop it!” Elizabeth said. She tugged at my arm until I finally stopped using the guy as my personal punching bag. She dragged me out of the movie theater. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Adrenaline was pumping through my veins, but the cold night air cooled me down. I opened the Caddy door and slid in, breathing hard. I rested my head on the steering wheel until I felt calm enough to put it in drive.

“I’ll take you home,” I said.

“No, let’s go to your place,” she said shortly. “We need to talk this out and I don’t want Jenny to hear us argue.”

Since when? “Fine.”

“Fine.”

There was a chilly silence the rest of the way to my place. She waited until I’d parked the car in front of my building before she started yelling.

“What the hell was that all about?” Elizabeth was seriously pissed at me.

“What do you mean? I’m not going to let anyone talk to you like that.”

“I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” she said.

“You expect me to just sit there?”

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“I can’t. I won’t,” I said.

“I think you like it,” she said accusingly.

“Like what?” I crossed my arms over my chest. I knew what she was getting at, but I wanted her to spell it out.

She glared at me. “You like to get into fights. To beat people up.”

“So what if I do? It’s how we met, isn’t it?”

“You can’t keep trying to protect me from everything.”

“I want to,” I said. “I just want to keep you safe.” I put my forehead against hers and looked into her eyes.

She didn’t say anything. We stood there, foreheads together, our lips nearly touching. Our breath mingled in the cold night air.

Finally, she looped her arm around mine and tugged me toward the stairs. “Let’s go inside.”

We barely made it up the stairs. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Her skin was the softest thing I’d ever touched. All the doubts that had been circling around in my brain evaporated.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, now kiss me already,” she replied.

“If you insist,” I said. I backed her up against the nearest wall and kissed her deeply. She made a happy little noise and kissed me back.

“Now where is that new bed of yours?” she asked.

I was trembling as I led her to my bedroom. I rained tiny kisses along her chin, her collarbone, the sensitive hollow of her neck and breathed in her lemon-and-honey shampoo.

We were just inside the door when she started to pull off my shirt. I captured her hands in mine. “Wait,” I said. “Are you sure?”

“Nyx, no matter what happens, be sure of one thing: I want this. I want you.” With a quick movement, she pulled my shirt off and led me to the bed.

*  *  *

Later, we lay back on the pillows and she started to giggle. She gave a little bounce on the mattress. “I approve of this purchase.”

I captured her in my arms and tickled her. “I intend to make good use of it.”

She noticed the scar on my chest. “I am so sorry you were hurt,” she whispered, then kissed the spot where the knife went in.

“It was worth it,” I said.

She went still. “I hope you always think so.”

Her cell phone rang with that curious ringtone I’d heard before, the one that made her go all quiet and look for someplace to talk where I couldn’t overhear. This time she let it go to voice mail, but the mood was ruined.

“Go ahead and check your messages,” I said. “I can tell you’re dying to.”

“Are you jealous?” She was trying to tease me, but it fell flat.

“Yes.”

“Nyx, I would never do anything to hurt you,” she said, suddenly serious.

“Don’t say that.”

“Why? It’s true.” She tried to kiss me, but I pulled away.

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” I said. In a relationship, hurting the other person was almost inevitable.

She reached for me, but I avoided her embrace and got out of bed. “Go ahead and make your call. I’ll get us something to eat.”

I threw on a pair of sweatpants and went to the kitchen. I put sandwiches and a couple of sodas on a tray. I headed back to the bedroom, but I heard her voice through the door and lingered in the hallway. She was clearly arguing with someone, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I cleared my throat and then pushed the bedroom door open with my foot. “Dinner is served.”

She closed her phone with a snap. I set the tray down on the bed. “Did your phone call go all right?”

I sounded like one of those douchy guys who didn’t trust his girlfriend. Wait. I
was
one of those guys. The realization was humiliating.

“Yes,” she said and changed the subject, which was exactly what I deserved. “I’m starving.”

“You seemed angry when I came in,” I ventured.

“I was.”

“Care to explain?” I tried and failed at a sympathetic tone, but Elizabeth was too pissed off at someone else to notice.

“It’s just family stuff,” she finally said.

“That was Jenny on the phone?” Relief coursed through me. I was giddy, unconcerned with anything but the little voice inside me that said
mine
. “What does she want you to do?” I asked idly.

She bit into her sandwich and ignored the question. “This is good.”

It was clear she didn’t want to talk about it. I had enough of my own family stuff to deal with, so I let it go.

“You have a bit of mustard on your cheek.” I reached out to wipe it away with my thumb and when I touched her skin and she smiled at me, it hit me. I was in love with her.

“I hate to eat and run, but I’ve got to go,” she said.

“What? I thought you would spend the night and we’d go out for breakfast.”

“Another time,” she said. She grabbed her clothes and dressed quickly. She dropped a quick kiss on my head, like someone kissing a child.

It was hard not to feel like a hump and dump. Elizabeth was entirely too eager to leave and I didn’t like it one bit.

I caught her hand as she walked by. “No good-bye kiss?”

She laughed, but I kissed the laughter from her lips until she dropped the badass act.

“You know I don’t do this all the time, any more than you do,” I finally said.

“You don’t?” Her surprise was somewhat unflattering.

“No, I don’t.”

“But you said…” Her voice trailed off.

“Too late to protect my ego now,” I said. “Tell me.”

“It’s just you told me you’d been around. I thought you meant—”

“That I was a big old hosebag?” I frowned.

“Well, yes,” she replied.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I told her. I struggled to think of a way to explain it without revealing my secret. But I didn’t want to lie to her, either. “I meant that I’d lived a rough life. Bar fights. That kind of thing. It’s been a long time since I’ve been with anyone.”

“How long?” she asked, trying to keep the amusement from her voice.

“It feels like a hundred years,” I finally replied. Felt like because it had been that long.

She touched my cheek. “I hope it was worth the wait.”

I grinned. “Definitely.”

She smiled back, but then glanced at her watch and swore. “I’ve got to go.”

The smile left my face. “I thought we’d settled all that.”

“Don’t pout, Nyx,” she added. “It’s not attractive.”

I pulled her down into my lap. “Make me.”

“You’re such a child sometimes,” she said, but she laughed before she repeated, “I’ve got to go.”

“I’ll drive you home,” I said.

“Don’t bother. I called a taxi,” she said.