Simply Irresistible (19 page)

A zzzzt
! went through Eris. Her entire body felt as if she had received a strong electric shock.

She had been sitting on the stairs, watching Quixotic while she was pretending to watch Sturgis wrap up his voice-over on the winking building. The voice-over would air during the afternoon newscasts, with promises of more to come later.

Sturgis was watching his replay on the video monitor, Kronski peering over his shoulder. Suzanne was off somewhere, trying to find out the scientific cause of the winking. The camera operators were anxious to go to the local affiliate—probably so they could escape Sturgis’s presence.

The crowds had thinned now that the building was solid again, and many of the other news teams had left. The story was, for all intents and purposes, over.

Until the
zzzzt
!, Eris had been contemplating the next few days, planning to let the team return to New York while she remained here, ostensibly to meet with stockholders. She figured it would only take a few days to wrap up her business, so to speak, with the Fates.

The rope trick’s failure hadn’t angered her. With that many mages in the room, she had been surprised to get as far as she had. Although if Dexter Grant hadn’t been there, she would have had the Fates.

Grant was the one to watch; Eris knew that now. And he seemed a lot more interested in pretty little Miss Kineally than in the Fates themselves.

Amazing what kind of information a connection gave her. It wasn’t as if she watched everyone, and it wasn’t quite a psychic link either. It was more like a radio in a neighbor’s apartment, tuned to a staticky talk station. If she wasn’t paying attention, she wouldn’t have gotten any information at all.

Then the connection ruptured. She’d never felt anything like that
zzzzt
! before. It was painful and left her tingling all at the same time.

And more than a little angry. Grant hadn’t severed the connection. Eris had been paying too much attention to Sturgis and hadn’t been listening in as closely as she should have. Someone else had severed it, and it had hurt.

“Erika?” Sturgis was peering at her over the video replay. His own tiny image—looking much better than his large one—was nattering on about mass hallucinations and tricks of the light. “You all right?”

“Of course,” she said, sounding as calm as she could under the circumstances.

“It’s just …” He waved a hand over his head. “Your hair …”

She touched her hair. It was sticking out straight, and it felt coarse, just like the fur on those cartoon parodies of cats with their claws stuck in light sockets.

“The wind,” she said, a bit of panic in her voice. “Hadn’t you noticed how strong it is?”

Sturgis touched his own hair, as if he were afraid the light socket effect was contagious.

“Wrap it up,” Eris said, nodding toward the video replay. “I want to get to the hotel and clean up before lunch.”

“Okay,” Sturgis said. “Why don’t you go and we’ll meet you somewhere?”

She raised her gaze toward the restaurant across the street. The neon lights turned on as she watched, and the vertical QUIXOTIC sign came to life in all its art deco glory.

“Meet me there,” she said.

“Across the street?” Sturgis turned toward the restaurant. “Why?”

“Because it’s famous, stupid.” Kronski handed Sturgis the handheld mike. “You have to do your outro again. Truck noise.”

Sturgis kept staring at the restaurant. “If it’s so famous, how come I’ve never heard of it?”

Kronski’s gaze met Eris’s, and for a moment she knew they had shared a thought. She wasn’t sure she appreciated it, or the fact that Kronski considered himself her equal. Then, as she watched, his eyes moved upward, his gaze traveling to her hair.

“What happened to you?” he asked.

“My creme rinse gave out,” she snapped. “It’s only an eight-hour treatment.”

“Oh,” he said, and turned away. She stood up and brushed herself off. People nearby were looking at her hair. It had to be pretty spectacular. She would wait until she rounded the corner before spelling her hair back to normal.

Then she would check into her hotel, change, and prepare herself for meeting the sources of those faraway radio voices. They wouldn’t know who she was, of course. She would use her blocking magic and no one would be the wiser.

But she would see what she was up against.

She had a hunch that, without Dexter Grant, she wasn’t up against much.

Dex appeared in the center of the cave, snapped his fingers to light candles, and clapped his hands. The Fates landed on the floor beside him, still standing side by side like they had been in Quixotic.

They looked just as angry as they had before.

He didn’t say anything to them. Instead, he lit the fire in the hearth he had built by hand. The great room was his favorite. It had a natural arched ceiling, a flat floor (again the result of his own painstaking work), and thick fake fur rugs that covered everything. The couch was deep and comfortable, the easy chairs reclined, and the walls were covered with books.

A fully equipped modern kitchen stood off the entrance, and five bedrooms were down the hall. All of the bedrooms had tiny windows that overlooked the cliff face. The view from those windows was spectacular—waves breaking against the rocks below—and isolating at the same time. Nothing was visible except rocks and the sea itself, extending all the way to the horizon.

Dex went into the kitchen and flicked on the electricity. He’d wired that in during the last ten years, and it had been the worst job of his life. The electric company thought he was getting service to the acre of grass on the other side of the cliff face, not wiring inside natural caves.

So far, no inspectors had shown up, and he hoped none ever would. At one point, he’d had to use his magic to connect circuits through fifty feet of solid rock. There was no way he could explain to a mortal how that had been done.

When Dex got back into the great room, Atropos was reading the titles on the books in the bookcase. Lachesis was sprawled on the couch, her arm over her eyes, and Clotho was tending the fire.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m the only person alive who knows that these caves are here. The guy who sold this property to me died in nineteen forty-seven, and I’ve kept the caves hidden since then. You can get out if you need to by following a passage off the kitchen, but it will take you days, and at times you’ll have to crawl on your bellies. I don’t recommend it.”

“We’re stuck here?” Clotho asked.

“You said you’d stay a month,” Dex said.

“No windows,” Lachesis said.

“No television,” Atropos said, somehow making that sound worse.

“There are windows in the bedrooms—you can open them for fresh air. There is no beach below us, so no one will see you from the ground, although you have to watch out for the occasional ship. From the sea, those windows look like natural openings in the rocks, so you have nothing to worry about there either. There’s also a small built-in balcony off the master bedroom, if you feel the need to go outside.”

Dex felt awkward. He had never brought anyone here, no matter what the Fates believed. This was his private place, so private that he had built everything by himself, most of it by hand. He’d had to spell the furniture in here, but that had been easy.

“Who will bring us our meals?” Clotho asked, peering into the dining area. His table was made from the stump of an old growth tree, but the chairs were ladderbacks with upholstered seats.

Meals. He hadn’t even thought about it. “No one. We can’t continually pop in and out of here.”

“Then we have a problem,” Lachesis said. “There’s no way to eat.”

“Can’t you cook?” Dex blurted before he thought the better of it.

“I believe Clotho tried,” Atropos said, “decades before she came into her powers, which would put that… how many centuries ago, Clotho, dear?”

“Too many.” Clotho sat on one of the dining room chairs. “We’re going to need food.”

“I’ll make sure the kitchen’s fully stocked before I leave. I’ll put fresh foods in there, as well as frozen and microwavable. There are instruction manuals and cookbooks. You have a month. You’ll have to learn how to cook—modern style.”

“Cook?” Lachesis said, as if he had proposed she strip naked and jump into the ocean.

Dex nodded.

“Can’t you send us a chef?” Atropos asked.

“Aethelstan will do,” Clotho said.

“I don’t have control over Blackstone,” Dex said, thanking any god he could think of that he didn’t. He didn’t want to be part of that controversy.

“We have not learned anything nonmagical in centuries,” Lachesis said. “We will starve.”

Dex smiled. “I’m not too worried. Anyone can microwave a pizza.”

“I’m not even sure what a microwave is,” Atropos said.

Clotho twisted her torso so that she was draped over the back of her chair. “I had thought we would come to this place, have adventures, and then return to our job. I did not expect to come here, have a half day of panic, and be stuck in a cave for a month.”

Dex clenched his fists, struggling not to lose his temper. He hated their lack of gratitude, their sense of entitlement, their—he forced the thoughts back, took a deep breath, and said, “It’s not my problem, ladies. I had a solution to your predicament. As I said at Quixotic, accepting that solution is entirely your choice.”

“Books and cooking are not enough,” Lachesis said.

“We need to stay occupied,” Atropos said.

“Then work on who could be doing this to you.” Dex did a long-lasting power spell on the cell phone Vari had given him, and added a boost so that the signal reached the closest tower. “When you figure it out, call Quixotic.”

“I hope you have instructions for that thing too,” Clotho said.

“Nice try.” Dex handed the phone to Lachesis. “But I’m the wrong person to give that line to. I know you keep track of modern culture. You may not know how to use a stove, but you know what one is for. And you’ve watched enough movies to know how a phone works.”

Lachesis didn’t say anything as she took the phone from him. She set it on the table beside him.

“Movies would help,” Atropos said.

“Anything to keep us busy,” Clotho said.

“There’s a DVD player in the master bedroom, along with the only TV,” he said. “When I spell in the groceries, I’ll spell in enough movies to keep you busy for a month.”

“That’s at least three per day,” Lachesis said.

“And be careful,” Atropos said. “We’ve seen a lot.”

“I’ll try to get the director’s cut where I can.” Dexter went into the kitchen. It was big and warm, with a flat-cooktop stove and a water-in-the-door refrigerator. He loved this room and spent a lot of time here, usually baking for himself.

The cave was special. Part of him couldn’t believe he would let anyone else inside. This was the place he went when the world got to be too much for him. This was his haven, his favorite hideout, his most secret lair. Now the Fates would move things, scatter things, break things. He’d have to resign himself to the fact that nothing in here would be the same.

At least they weren’t in his store. That, at least, remained his and his alone.

Then he froze. He’d left the mother cat and the kittens in there, unguarded, for hours. They could fend for themselves, but he couldn’t continue running off and leaving them. He would have to find them homes sooner rather than later.

“Cooking, movies, books, and thinking,” Clotho muttered. “As if those things will take up our time.”

“We can’t even do idle magic,” Lachesis said. “I’m not sure I know how to run a remote.”

“There’ s a lot we can learn,” Atropos said, clearly trying to remain upbeat. “I’m sure we’ll do fine.”

Dex snapped his fingers, and the box with the mother cat appeared. All the kittens except little Marco Polo were inside. Dex snapped his fingers again, and Marco Polo appeared halfway across the room.

“Troublemaker,” Dex said, going to fetch him. He picked up the kitten, rubbed its fluffy fur against his nose, and handed it to Clotho.

She smiled. “What’s this?”

“Something to keep you busy,” Dex said, snapping his fingers a third time. “If I’m going to help you, I won’t have time to take good care of them. I just spelled you a stocked kitchen and movies, along with cat food and litter. Don’t let these guys out of your sight in the bedrooms—they might climb out the windows and fall to their deaths—and don’t let them wander around the house until you’re sure they’re box-trained.”

“Box-trained?” Lachesis asked, clearly not understanding the reference.

Dex went to the bookshelf and pulled down a book on cat care. “I suggest you all start with this book. Do the best you can. I’ll be back as soon as possible:”

He got ready to spell himself out before they could complain about anything else. He was halfway through the arm arch when he heard Atropos say, “When you do come back, be a good man and bring us a chef.”

“Preferably a famous one,” Clotho said, her voice fading as she did.

Lachesis added something too, but Dex ignored it. He didn’t want to know what she said. All he wanted now was to return to Vivian.

He hoped nothing had happened to her while he was gone.

Chapter Fifteen

Vivian stood behind the bar at Quixotic, her back to the three men in business suits who laughed as they discussed their latest business deal. No one else sat at the bar. All the other customers were inside the restaurant, seated or waiting for the maitre d’.

The bartender was working around Vivian as he tried to keep up with the larger than usual number of mixed drinks being ordered at lunch. He blamed it on the disappearing building (“Did you see that?” he asked Vivian, and she could honestly answer, “Only on TV.”), but he hoped the trend would continue. He liked being busy.

She wished things would slow down so she could talk to someone. Dex hadn’t come back, and everyone else was busy with the lunch crowd. Vivian had asked permission to use a phone, and Blackstone had told her to use the one behind the bar, since the kitchen was already overcrowded.