Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (65 page)

“Well, your father avoided mentioning it because he knew it would have upset you.”

Arguing with someone who was in possession of far more knowledge of the situation than you could ever hope to have was definitely frustrating at best and demoralizing to boot. To my horror, I could feel angry tears begin to prickle at the back of my eyes. Was I so incompetent, so unqualified, that the only way I could get a decent job was to have someone give it to me as a favor?

“You shouldn’t have told me that,” I muttered, looking down toward my neglected lobster salad and forcing myself to eat some, even though my roiling stomach told me food was the last thing it needed at that moment.

“Typical,” Luke remarked, and this time he made no attempt to hide the mocking edge to his voice. “You mortals never want to hear the truth, do you? You want to live in a make-believe world where everything goes as planned, where everything is orderly and neat. Let me tell you something.” He leaned forward, and for the first time since I’d met him I actually felt a ripple of true fear pass through me. What looked out as me through his eyes definitely was not human. “The world isn’t an orderly place. It’s full of death and pain and despair.”

“Then what are you doing here?” I demanded. “If it’s so awful, why all the running around in designer clothes and the fancy cars and the house? Why the wining and dining and seduction?
Why
?”

“Because it’s still better than Hell, you foolish girl!” Following that statement I thought I saw a few widened eyes at the next table, and Luke obviously did as well, because he lowered his voice before he continued, “There are forces at work here you couldn’t possibly comprehend.”

“Try me,” I said, forcing a bravado I certainly didn’t feel into my voice.

His gaze shifted away from me. Suddenly he looked very weary. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“I can’t.”

From his tone I knew that I would get no further on that line of inquiry. I also knew if I dropped it, then I still might have a chance of salvaging the evening. But my pride had suffered a stinging blow because of that revelation regarding how I’d actually gotten my first job at the magazine. Part of me wanted to hurt him for telling me something that wouldn’t make any difference at this stage of the game. Angry as I was, I could also feel the hurt start to claw its way up into my consciousness, like the first flare of agony when the pain medication begins to wear off.

“You’ve told me I didn’t have enough confidence,” I said, forcing the words past the choking sensation in my throat. “Well, how is securing this job for me when I’ve done nothing to earn it going to make me feel better about myself? Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”

He stared over at me, almost expressionless, except for the tension along his jaw line.

“You tried to buy my heart,” I said, and finally the tears welled up past all my efforts to keep them at bay. I could feel them begin to trickle down my cheeks as I added, “And you didn’t even realize it was already yours.” Then I pushed my chair back and stood, turning and rushing blindly through the crowded restaurant and into the cold night air. I had staggered almost halfway down the block before I realized he hadn’t come after me. I stood alone on the street corner, tears stinging on my face, while a couple walked past arm in arm and gave me a curious look.

Angrily, I reached up to wipe the offending moisture from my cheeks. At least I’d had the presence of mind to gather up my purse as I fled the restaurant. Feeling chilled to the bone, I pulled out my cell phone. I always kept the numbers of several cab companies programmed in there just in case of date disasters, and I called one of them now.

I didn’t dare allow myself to feel or think. I just waited alone there in the darkness, until the cab finally pulled up and took me away.

S
omewhere a phone was ringing
. With a groan, I pushed the covers off my head and then blinked at the light filtering its way through the curtains. As soon as I recognized the sunlight for what it was, my brain started to throb. It took a few more minutes for my battered gray matter to process the fact that someone must be calling me. I groped for my cell phone where it lay on the nightstand.

“Christa, where the hell are you?” Jennifer’s voice, sounding more than a little pissed off.

“Uh — ” I blinked again, trying to focus on the clock that hung across the room on the wall above my dresser. It couldn’t really be that late.…

Apparently it was. “You said you were going to meet me at Abbey Rose at two. It’s now almost two-thirty. Did you forget?”

Probably the brain cells that were supposed to retain that particular piece of information had been obliterated somewhere between the first and second bottle of wine. I sat up, and a swirl of stomach acid splashed up against my esophagus. Not good. “Sorry,” I mumbled, praying I wouldn’t vomit there and then. “I guess I did.”

A long pause. “You sound terrible. Is everything all right?”

No, it most assuredly wasn’t, but I didn’t feel like getting into it right then. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”

“You’re sure?”

I nodded, then realized that was a stupid thing to do, first of all because Jennifer couldn’t see me, and secondly because it made my brain feel as if it were sliding around inside my skull. “Sure,” I replied, after the room stopped spinning.

“All right,” Jennifer said, but I could tell she was definitely less than thrilled with me. “I’ll just have all the other girls get their fittings done first. It takes about fifteen to twenty minutes with each person, so that gives you an hour.”

“No problem,” I said, then hung up.

Not a moment too soon, because at that point I had to push myself out of bed and run down the hall to the bathroom, where I threw up the remnants of last night’s pity party. After I was done, though, I actually felt a little bit better. I staggered to an upright position, brushed my teeth not once, but twice, and then finally got in the shower and turned the water on as hot as I could stand it.

All right, so coming home and getting completely smashed after my fight with Luke probably wasn’t the most mature thing to have done. At the time, though, it had seemed like a pretty good idea. Anything was better than the horrible empty feeling that had taken over once I realized he wasn’t coming after me. For the record, I don’t have a habit of drinking away my problems. Once in college, right after Brad left for Stanford, I did have a bit of a lost weekend. The problem with using alcohol to erase painful memories is that, once the buzz wears off, you’re left with a really nasty headache in addition to those painful memories.

But last night I had completely lost it. I’d wanted to forget the inhuman look in Luke’s eyes as he stared at me, the cold contempt in his voice. For the first time since I’d met him, Luke had actually acted the way I expected the Devil to behave. And, to put it mildly, I hadn’t liked it very much.

Was it all over, then? Certainly by leaving me to make my own way home, Luke had sent a very clear signal. He wasn’t about to come crawling after me, and at the moment, as much as it hurt to think about never seeing him again, I wasn’t going to ask forgiveness when I hadn’t done anything wrong. Okay, causing a scene at the Ivy probably wasn’t the best way to have handled the situation. But in this case I actually felt I had the moral high ground. He was the one who had trespassed, not I. Maybe I’d shown a lack of judgment by confronting him in such a public place, but if making a foolish decision were actually a punishable offense, pretty much everyone I knew would have had to put in some jail time at some point.

Still, I felt absolutely wretched, and it wasn’t just because I had a raging hangover. Once I got out of the shower, I opened the medicine cabinet and popped a couple of ibuprofen, then threw on some moisturizer, a little lip gloss, and some mascara. I looked like crap — dark circles under my eyes, skin pasty and blotched, but I didn’t have time to apply any spackle to cover up the worst of it.
Don’t cry
, I told my decidedly wan reflection.
Your eyes will get red, and you’ll look even worse than you already do.

Then I ran a comb through my wet hair, pulled it back with an elastic band, and hurried into my bedroom to throw on a pair of jeans and a sweater. What I really wanted to wear was my rattiest, most comfortable sweats, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t go over very well with Jennifer. At least this way I appeared halfway presentable as long as you didn’t look too close. By then I’d already used up fifteen precious minutes, so I grabbed my purse and hustled out of the apartment, telling myself my head didn’t hurt as much as I thought it did and that the painkillers would kick in at any moment.

All I could do then was pray to whatever capricious gods ruled L.A. traffic that there wouldn’t be any accidents or freeway construction to slow me down on the trip into Pasadena. On a good day, when cruising at the speed limit was actually a possibility and not just a foolish dream, the drive only took about twenty minutes. But I’d had times when those fifteen miles or so stretched into an hour of agonizing stop-and-go traffic.

Today, though, luck seemed to be on my side. True, Sundays usually were the lightest days of the week in terms of sheer volume, but all it took was one person to make an error in judgment for the whole fragile construct to fall apart like a house of cards. But I got onto the 10 Freeway and cruised east at a little more than seventy miles an hour. At that rate I thought I might be able to buy myself enough time to pull into a Starbucks I knew on Arroyo Parkway and get myself some desperately needed caffeine. After all, Jennifer did have five bridesmaids, so they probably wouldn’t get to me until almost three-thirty anyway.…

Even in the middle of the afternoon there was still a line at Starbucks. It moved quickly, though, and I only wasted about five minutes getting my grande French roast and a bagel. Normally I’m not much of a bagel person, since I have a real sweet tooth, but I didn’t want anything sugary for fear it might upset my already abused stomach. The coffee was divine, though, and just what I needed. At that point I was ready to inject it directly into my veins.

Abbey Rose was a little designer wedding boutique on Green Street, not far from the historic Castle Green apartment building. Street parking could be a nightmare, but I seemed to have inherited some of Luke’s parking karma and found a spot only a few doors down from the actual shop. Clutching my caffeine fix and praying that I’d regained some color during the time that had elapsed since I last looked in a mirror, I opened the door and let myself into the boutique.

Any hopes that my appearance wasn’t as bad as I feared got dashed when Micaela looked over at me above a drape of deep sea-green silk dupioni and said, “Girlfriend, you look like crap.”

“Hi, Micaela, nice to see you, too,” I retorted.

Jennifer paused to glance up from the two tiaras she held, one in each hand. “Seriously, Christa — are you coming down with something?”

“Getting over it, more like,” I replied, and crossed the shop floor to take a seat next to Nina on the overstuffed pink couch that faced the display area. On Nina’s other side sat Sarah, Jennifer’s long-time friend. The last of the bridesmaids, a girl named Nicole whom I didn’t know very well, stood off to one side, flipping through what looked like a shoe catalog.

“What happened?” Nina asked.

I lifted my Starbucks cup and tipped some French roast down my throat. “Luke and I had a fight last night.”

A chorus of “ohhhhhs” swirled through the room. Nicole glanced up from the catalog she was holding. The girl hardly knew me, but obviously she was more than ready to hear some dirt.

Of course Nina went where others feared to tread. “What happened?”

That was a tough one. I couldn’t tell them the real reason for our argument, of course. Lifting my shoulders, I replied, “Let’s just say we had a difference of opinion,” then realized I had parroted Luke’s own statement about his quarrel with God. Not that I could exactly equate a lover’s spat with the fall of angels from Heaven.

“About…?” Nina inquired.

I fell back on an old standby. “Well, it’s private.”

Micaela made a huffy noise, but that could have been because the gal who was adjusting the fit of her gown had stuck a pin into her. “So is this a ‘kiss and make up’ kind of argument, or a ‘get the hell out of my life’ argument?”

Good question, although the fact that I hadn’t heard from Luke since I’d stormed out of the Ivy was definitely a bad sign. “Um…somewhere in between, but probably more the ‘get the hell out of my life’ type.”

She hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry.”

Nina leaned over and gave me a quick little hug. “If he can’t see how great you are, then he’s a total jerk — even if he is completely hot.”

“Nina!” Jennifer said, sounding completely exasperated.

“It’s all right,” I said hastily. The last thing I needed was for the two of them to start bickering. “If it’s meant to work itself out, then it will. If not.…” I trailed off and lifted my shoulders. “Anyway, I had a bad night, but I’m doing better now.”

“Of course you are,” Nina said, in tones of false cheer. “’Cause you’ve got all your peeps with you.”

“Damn straight,” Micaela added. Finally the seamstress was done with her, and she was able to step down off the little dais where the fittings were performed. “Um — does this mean I don’t get a crack at Danny?”

I saw Jennifer roll her eyes.

“He’s yours,” I said wearily. “Even if Luke and I aren’t together, at least this whole thing has made me realize that Danny is definitely out.”

“How long were you going out with this guy?” Nicole asked out of nowhere. Maybe she wanted to feel as if she were a part of the conversation.

“Just a couple of weeks,” I replied, and Nicole looked a little puzzled.

“He drives a Bentley,” said Jennifer in tones of heavy significance.

I figured I’d better not mention the Aston Martin. Jennifer liked to pretend she was above the whole material-wealth thing, but I knew better. There was no way she would have gotten engaged to Phil if she hadn’t been assured of having a husband who was guaranteed to make in the mid-six figures. No doubt if she’d been dating someone with Luke’s kind of money, she would have chained herself to the steering wheel of the Aston Martin before letting him get away.

“Oh,” breathed Nicole, who looked even more confused. Obviously she and Jennifer were cut from the same cloth.

Part of me managed to be amused, but I also felt myself growing a little angry, too. To someone looking in from the outside, I supposed that losing a guy who’d only been around a few weeks certainly wasn’t the end of the world. A little disheartening, maybe, but the sort of thing you were supposed to recover from without sustaining any permanent damage. The problem was that I’d let myself fall for Luke, and hard. I guessed I only had myself to blame; I should have been more careful, not allowed him to somehow worm his way past my defenses.

He’s the Devil. What did you expect?
I thought.
That he was going to sweep you off into the sunset on a white horse and that you were going to live happily ever after?

“Earth to Christa,” Micaela said, and I snapped my head around to look at her.

“What?”

“Boy, that guy really does have your brain twisted inside-out, doesn’t he? I asked you if you wanted to go over to Crown City Brewery after this for some drinks and a nosh. You look like you could use it.”

My first instinct was to say no. After all, I’d had enough to drink last night to last me for weeks. On the other hand, some solid food wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe I’d just skip the beer and go straight to the munchies.

I guess I hesitated too long, because Nina chimed in, “Come on, Christa. It’s Saturday…well, okay, it’s not Saturday night yet, but there’s no reason we can’t go have some fun. How about you guys?” she added, looking over at Jennifer, Nicole, and Sarah.

Nicole and Sarah both appeared a little startled to have been included in the invitation. Jennifer said immediately, “I can’t — I’m meeting Phil for dinner, so late afternoon snacking is out. Besides, I need to watch what I eat for the next few months. The last thing I need is to be too fat to get into my gown.”

I doubted that would happen; Jennifer was the sort of person who weighed her food portions.

As if taking their cue from Jennifer, both Sarah and Nicole shook their heads. “I need to watch it, too,” Sarah said, and since she tended to be a little plump, I could see why she’d beg off. Nicole probably just didn’t want to come because she didn’t know us very well. She was another high school friend of Jennifer’s who also went to the same church.

“Sounds good to me,” I said firmly, since both Micaela and Nina had faintly disgusted expressions on their faces. I just hoped Nina wouldn’t trot out some remark about uptight white girls, or this could get ugly.

But apparently my olive branch worked, because Micaela grinned and said, “Food therapy. Maybe some shopping, too, on the way over. I haven’t had a chance to get out and do anything for weeks, and my debit card’s burning a hole in my wallet.”

“Uh-oh,” I said, and for some reason Nina and Micaela and I all burst out laughing.

I loved them all in that moment, for their energy, their concern over me, and their attempts, however clumsy, to turn the conversation away from Luke. Hey, it even worked — for a whole fifteen seconds there I didn’t even think about him.

I
t was almost
eight o’clock by the time I got home. By then I felt unbelievably tired, but also oddly relaxed, as if spending those few hours in the company of my friends had started me down the first steps to healing. I hadn’t written off Luke, but I knew if things really were over between us, I still had other people in the world who cared about me. As I came around to the front of the building from the garage, I saw someone waiting on the bottom step. My heart gave a single wild throb before I realized it wasn’t Luke but probably the last person in the world I wanted to see — Danny.