Simply Irresistible (9 page)

He didn’t believe her. How come she knew what he was thinking? She sometimes knew what people were thinking, but only flashes, strong flashes, and then rarely.

“I think it’s the glass,” she said.

“Glass?”

“Around the building …”

He frowned, squaring his face even more. His eyebrows were two straight lines across his perfectly horizontal brow ridge. He didn’t understand.

She would have to explain. She wasn’t sure she had the words to explain. Her mind was too busy for words. Except the few she was sparing now, and they were forced, difficult, something she had to struggle with.

Then his eyebrows rose. “Are they in a building? The Fates?”

“My building,” she said.

“And you always keep it guarded?” he asked. “Using a psychic’s glass jar image?”

“Never done that before,” she said. “It’s harder than it sounds.”

“Oh, crap,” he said, clutching her closer. “Those stupid women are trying to get out.”

“No,” Vivian said. “I think someone’s trying to get in. …”

And then she closed her eyes again, letting the words fade, and darkness take her once more.

The private landing strip at Portland International Airport was as far away from the terminal as it could get. Eris stepped onto the tarmac, the stench of jet fuel in her nose, and wished she hadn’t adopted this identity.

Erika O’Connell was internationally famous. She couldn’t spell herself around the planet willy-nilly. She had to use her magic with circumspection—and she usually did, often channeling her power through mages with less power than she had, or even the occasional unsuspecting mortal.

But she couldn’t do that now. She had to walk, catch a cab, and somehow find a reason to go downtown—create some kind of crisis, do something that would be worth her A team’s time.

Noah Sturgis was right behind her, his deep announcer’s voice carrying over the whine of the jet engines. “I have dinner at the Rainbow Room tonight, and I’m not planning to cancel the reservations. It took me a week to get them. Me! Imagine.”

Imagine that he wasn’t as popular as he thought he was or as big a star as he thought he was. Eris moved farther away from him so that she couldn’t hear any more of the conversation.

A young maintenance worker hurried toward the jet, his orange jumpsuit so large that it bagged around his body. Eris caught his arm.

“Where do we get a taxi?” She had to shout to be heard over the noise.

He was thin and blond, with that open friendliness so common to the West Coast. “Where’re you going?”

“Downtown.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. You’d better just stick around the airport for an hour or so. There’s some kind of thing going on.”

Eris glanced over her shoulder. Sturgis was still talking to Kronski at the base of the jet’s stairs. Suzanne Gilbert, the real reporter of the group, bent forward under the weight of the overnight bag she had slung over her back.

The camera operators—all three of them women—lugged their gear down the stairs, their arms looking as muscular as a man’s in the morning sunlight.

“What kind of thing?” Eris asked, turning her attention back to the maintenance man.

“Dunno. Radio says car alarms have been going off, and there’ve been like instant fires that just spring up and go away. They think maybe there’s been a gas leak or something. So they’re quarantining the downtown.”

“Really?” Eris knew it wasn’t quite a gift. Strife was screwing up again. But it would help her get her team down there.

“Yeah, and at least one building’s shut off. No one can get in or out. It’s weird. We’ve been watching it on TV when we’re not dealing with all this.” He gestured toward the tarmac.

Another jet passed by overhead—a commercial jet that had just taken off. Its silver side winked against the clear blue sky.

“Perfect,” she said softly.

“What?” he shouted, leaning closer to her.

She smiled. Her smile could be charming when she wanted it to be. “Thank you.”

He nodded—no one said “You’re welcome” here—and hurried off. Only then did she realize he hadn’t answered her original question: She had no idea where to get a taxi—particularly one driven by someone willing to go downtown.

“What’s the scoop?” Sturgis asked as he reached her side.

That had been a nice trademark line twenty years ago, but it wasn’t now. Eris ignored him.

“Where’re we going?” Kronski asked.

“We’re going to rent a car,” Eris said, “or a van, something large enough to carry all of us. And you’re going to figure out how to get us downtown. Apparently, the entire main area is cordoned off.”

“You weren’t kidding when you said something big was going on,” Kronski said as he hurried away from them.

Sturgis watched him go. The jet engines behind them wound down and the whine faded. Eris’s ears ached.

“You’re the only person I know with sources this good.” He looked at her sideways, which in his pulled-tightened-and-tucked face made him look slightly evil. “How do you do it?”

“Trade secret.” She smiled. “And don’t bother to ask anymore, because it’s a secret I’m not planning to share.”

Vivian was going to die, right here in his arms, standing among the bags of cat food and the empty boxes in the back of his store. Dex smoothed her curls away from her face. Her skin was clammy and cold. If someone from outside broke through that glass she had built around her building, they would destroy her mind. And it looked like they were close.

He couldn’t believe someone was harming her. He cradled her against him. He had just found her and he might lose her.

What was wrong with the Fates? Why were they making a novice who hadn’t even come into her magic defend a building?

He didn’t have time to figure it out. He just had to solve it. He clutched Vivian even closer and did a location spell. He centered the spell on Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. If that didn’t work, then he’d try to find the building Vivian was talking about.

For a moment, he continued to stare at the unfinished walls in the back of the store. Then the world whirled, and he was crouching on the hardwood floor of a newly remodeled apartment.

The Fates sat at a glass-topped table, picking through a nearly empty box of chocolates. The light from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind them was opaque, and outdoor noises—someone’s car alarm kept going off—were muted.

“Henri!” Clotho stood and held out her arms as if he were her long-lost son.

“Not a moment too soon,” Lachesis said as she stood also.

“Someone keeps trying to break in,” Atropos said.

Dex rose, Vivian draped in his arms.

“Oh, no,” Clotho said.

“What did you do?” Lachesis asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Someone’s trying to break through the glass she put around this building.”

“And she’s not strong enough,” Atropos said, as if she were having a revelation. “Of course.”

Lachesis came over to him and touched Vivian’s forehead, as if she were trying to spell the pain away. But Vivian didn’t open her eyes. He could still feel the pain radiate through her back and into his skin.

It was as if they were hooked up somehow, as if there was a direct pipeline from her personality to his.

He had no idea what was causing it, but it had become important to him.

She had become important to him.

“You ladies need to get the hell out of here,” he said. “Vivian is in no condition to be part of your game.”

“Oh, Henri,” Atropos said, “it’s no game.”

“We have no powers,” Clotho said.

“What?” This day was getting worse by the minute. “You have more powers than the rest of us combined. What’s going on?”

“Had,” Lachesis said.

“We gave them up,” Atropos said.

Vivian didn’t stir. She seemed to be getting weaker. He couldn’t worry about the Fates at the moment. He had to worry about Vivian or she might die. If the Fates were testing him, he would fail. He wasn’t going to let Vivian die because the Fates had some misguided sense of justice.

Dex carried Vivian to the blue and gold couch pushed against the wall. With one hand, he grabbed all the matching pillows and placed them against the couch’s arm. Then he eased Vivian onto the cushions, careful to protect her head so that her pain wouldn’t get any worse.

The gray color of her skin hadn’t changed. The circles under her eyes looked deeper. The vibrancy she’d had when she had shown up at the store not an hour before was fading fast. And, considering how much pain she had been in then, that vibrancy couldn’t have been close to the kind she had when she felt good.

The Fates watched him closely, as if he were some kind of test subject. He turned his back on them, smoothed the curls from Vivian’s forehead, and kissed her ever so lightly. Her skin vibrated with agony, and he couldn’t absorb it, the way he sometimes absorbed other people’s pain.

This pain was something else, not internal but external. The mark of an attack that Dex couldn’t see or hear.

He had to fight magic with magic. And then he would be able to help her recover.

He clenched a fist and uttered a protect spell. Weaving it carefully, he spread his protection around the building, making certain the spell included Vivian’s glass jar vision as well. He wanted to make certain nothing could break her image from the outside. He cared more about that than he did about protecting the building itself.

Or the Fates.

He made the spell as strong as he could. In all his years of fighting crime and evil, he had learned how to make spells even more powerful than his so-called mentor had taught him.

Dex didn’t know if the Fates had seen this extra power of his, or what they would do once they knew it existed.

But they had seen it now.

He was sacrificing everything for Vivian—a woman he had just met.

A woman, it seemed, he had been waiting for all his life.

Beside him, Vivian sighed. Her color was improving. Some of the pain had to be easing.

Before he congratulated himself on finishing the spell properly, though, he checked it—mentally testing its walls and shields so that nothing could get through.

He had woven the spell as tightly as he had ever woven a protect, and it seemed to be effective. He hoped it would hold until he had time to deal with whomever or whatever was out on the street, trying to break in.

Then he sat down on the edge of the couch and stroked Vivian’s forehead. He had expected her to come to after he had taken the pressure off her vision. But, of course, she didn’t know he had done that.

The shadows under her eyes were still deep, and there were lines around her delicate mouth. She seemed so tiny to have so much psychic power. She clearly had been able to read him. He’d come across a lot of psychics in his day, but none of them had the ability to read him—particularly when they were at a disadvantage, like she had been.

“Vivian?” he said, running a hand along her cheek. Her skin was soft. She stirred under his touch but didn’t awaken.

Had the pain been so bad that it had destroyed part of her?

He eased his hand to her neck and found the problem. Her muscles were rigid, as they had probably been the entire time she fought the pain.

The external cause of the pain was gone, but the internal one apparently remained. And that was something he could solve.

The Fates were being unusually quiet during this crisis. He expected them to give him advice, to step in, to shove him aside, to do the work for him, or even to criticize what he was doing. Instead, they hovered, blocking his view of the rest of the apartment and making him nervous.

He shifted on the couch, determined not to let them interfere with his concentration.

Dex bent over Vivian. He slid his hand across her face again. The pain resonated through his fingers. The psychic link was there—faint, because she was unconscious, but there.

He pressed his thumb against the bridge of her nose and put his forefinger on her temple. Vivian leaned into his hand. He closed his eyes, reached through his hand to her mind, and found the pain.

This time he was able to touch it, and because he could, he recited a very simple spell that would transfer the pain from her to him.

It took a moment for the spell to work. Then his fingers seemed to sink into her skin, and pain shot up his arm. It struck his brain.

The intensity was blinding. Dex nearly toppled off the couch. He had no idea how one person had survived that much anguish. He bound the pain, wrapped it in a ball, and forced it outside the building, into the Willamette River, where it wouldn’t harm anyone.

Even feeling the pain for that short a time had been staggering. He wanted to put a cold compress over his face and lie down.

But he couldn’t. He had to make sure Vivian was all right.

He opened his eyes. Vivian’s skin wasn’t quite so gray. There was a flush of red in her cheeks. It gave her a startlingly warm appearance, as if she were about to open her eyes and smile. Some people’s faces in repose looked solemn. Vivian’s had an impishness to it, as if she had fallen asleep in a particularly good mood.

The Fates had moved even closer, and they weren’t looking at him. They appeared to be watching Vivian with concern.

It took him a moment to catch his breath enough to speak. “Vivian?”

Her eyelids fluttered. She raised a hand toward her forehead, then let the hand drop.

“Vivian?” he said again.

Her eyes opened. They seemed clear for the first time since he’d met her, and he was struck by the intelligence in them. He revised his opinion upward: She wasn’t beautiful—she was strikingly beautiful. And it was the intelligence that made her so.

“Dexter,” she said, frowning just a little. “Right?”

“Right,” he said.

She smiled. “It suits you better than Henri.”

He thought so too. “How’re you feeling?”

“Fine.” She put a hand to her head. “Amazingly.”

“They had no right to ask you to create that vision,” he said, unable to keep the anger out of his voice.

But Vivian didn’t seem to hear him. Instead she was looking around her—at the couch, the artwork above it, the end tables, and then, finally, at him. “I’m home.”