Strange Fates (Nyx Fortuna) (12 page)

He tossed the paper aside and I approached. “Are you finished with that?” I asked innocuously.

He nodded. “Help yourself.” I grabbed the paper and put my hand on his shoulder and muttered, “
Vomui, vomui, vomui
.”

“What did you say?”

“Thanks,” I said, but he was already bolting for the bathroom, hand to his mouth. He’d be out of commission for at least a month, which I hoped would be enough time.

I managed to sneak up the elevator to Parsi Enterprises without any hassle from security and took a seat in the waiting area. I waited to make sure that the receptionist wasn’t going to miraculously show up again. The hands of the clock above the desk ticked by slowly and I was getting sick of hearing my own breathing.

I realized I hadn’t even heard a phone ring. There was no one in sight so I took a quick peek at the phone system. The phones were set to go to voice mail, but I quickly deleted the programming, praying I wouldn’t get caught.

The phones started to ring before I slid back into my seat.

Sawyer Polydoros walked to the front, holding a pile of documents.

“Trevor, can you make sure these get sent overnight?” he asked. A puzzled look came over his face when he saw the empty seat and the blaring phone. He glanced at his watch and frowned.

I wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that Trevor would not be coming back from his break, at least not today.

He saw me and a smile lit his face. “Nyx, what are you doing back here?”

He really was a nice guy, for a necromancer.

I faked a down-on-my-luck grin. “Just checking back about a job.”

His gaze took in my secondhand suit and convincingly rumpled résumé. “I see. Not having any luck?”

“Not much,” I said.

“Have you been waiting long?”

The phone’s shrill cry interrupted. “I can get that, if you want,” I offered. “Just until he gets back.”

Before he could react, I slid into the receptionist seat and picked up the phone. “Parsi Enterprises, Nyx speaking.”

I put the caller on hold, or at least I hoped I did, and looked up at Sawyer hopefully. “It’s for you. Mr. Sabatini from the bank.”

He nodded. “You’ve got the job,” he said. “Just until Trevor gets back. And I’ll take that call in my office.”

It was sink or swim. I searched for and finally found an extension list, then patched the call through. I was in.

I put the phones back on voice mail and leaned back in my seat, well satisfied with my scheme. I’d work there until I figured out how to take my aunts down and maybe even find out what happened to Elizabeth’s brother.

“Are you following me?” A pair of blue eyes stared at me. I was losing my touch. I’d let Naomi sneak up on me.

“Oh, it’s you. The girl from the pool,” I replied. “I’m not following you. I work here.”

“Since when?” she challenged.

“Since today, actually,” I admitted. “Temporarily, at least.”

“What happened to Trevor?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Dunno. It’s Naomi, right?”

She nodded. “You remembered my name.” Suspicious as any other Fate.

“Of course I did,” I said. “You were my very own Good Samaritan.”

“Why do you want to work here?” She crossed her arms over her chest.

I paused and tried to think of a plausible lie that a normal girl would believe. Assuming she was a normal girl.

Lies were always more believable if you kept them as simple as possible. “I need a job. Any job.”

“What’s your story, Nyx?” she asked. “You don’t seem the day-job type.”

“What’s with all the questions?” I replied. “I’m exactly who I seem. A peon magician from the House of Zeus, trying to catch a break.”

Her gaze was sharp. “I’ll worm the real story out of you eventually,” she said. “Why don’t you come over for dinner tomorrow night?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I replied. “But thanks.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not after your bod. You just look…lonely.”

“I’ll pass.” I didn’t kid myself that the invite was motivated by concern. The girl was nosy, just like any Fate. I wasn’t ready to sit down with her mom, my aunt Nona . They’d have to hide the cutlery or I’d try to gut her with a steak knife.

“What are you so afraid of?” she said. “It won’t be as bad as you think. It’ll just be Mom and Dad and me.”

“You live with your dad?” I asked. She didn’t notice my slip. It was probably fairly normal to live with your dad, but the Fates had never been much for domestic bliss. The males in the family tended to go missing.

“And my mom,” Naomi replied.

“I’m not much for dinner with my bosses,” I told her. “Maybe another time, though.”

She grabbed her backpack and fished around for pen and paper. She scribbled down something on a slip of paper and handed it to me. “Here’s my phone number in case you change your mind. The invitation is open. Come for dinner anytime.”

*  *  *

My first day at the office had made me jittery. I checked out of the Drake within the hour, after first making sure the harpies weren’t around. I’d have to hide out at the Dead House for a few days.

I left the Caddy a few blocks from the fort and headed for my makeshift home base. I was about a block away when I saw a familiar red Lexus drive by and flip a U-turn, before pulling up to the curb.

Elizabeth honked her horn and I crossed to the driver’s-side window. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, with unbrushed hair and a T-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms.

“I’ve been driving all over Minneapolis looking for you,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t you ever answer your cell?”

“I was at work.”

She gave me a curious look but didn’t ask any questions.

“How did you find me?” I asked, then realized I sounded insensitive. “Are you okay?”

“Someone left a box on the front porch last night,” she said. “It was creepy.”

Dread filled me. “Creepy?”

“Jenny was at her boyfriend’s last night,” Elizabeth said. “So I was home alone.” There was reproach in her voice.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded. “They didn’t take anything, but there was water all over the front porch.”

“Water?” I thought of the water hag I’d fought in the pool, the troll I’d turned to stone. All from the House of Poseidon, the god of water and sea.

She held out a shoe box. “That’s not the worst part. Open it.”

I took off the lid. A human finger lay in the box, nestled in tissue paper like an unwanted birthday present.

“It’s not Alex’s,” she said. “He doesn’t have a tattoo.” Her voice was shaky.

Why would someone send Elizabeth her brother’s finger anyway? There was a lot she wasn’t telling me.

I bent to take a closer look. It had been sliced off cleanly and was almost clean looking, like someone had run it under the faucet before sending it over. There was a tiny trident tattoo on the finger. Jasper. I hoped the owner of the finger was alive, but I wasn’t counting on it.

Someone was sending me a message, but I didn’t think it was my aunts. Nonetheless, it was a reminder there was no room in my world for happiness, for love, for Elizabeth. But I couldn’t let her go back there, at least not alone.

“You’ll have to stay with me tonight,” I said. We’d stash the Lexus and I’d ward her house in the morning when she was at school.

“Don’t sound so excited about it,” she snapped.

“You haven’t seen where you’ll be staying,” I said. The Dead House wasn’t the Ritz, but it was warm and dry and, I hoped, the last place anyone would look for us.

Chapter Fifteen

“This is where you live?” Elizabeth didn’t manage to hide her look of horror at her temporary accommodations.

“Sometimes,” I replied. It had occurred to me that it might not be safe to stay the night in the Dead House, in case whoever had chopped off poor Jasper’s finger came looking there, but I wanted to check it out before it got too dark. The last time I saw Jasper, he was on a bus out of town. He’d come back to Minneapolis, but why?

We passed by the stone troll and Elizabeth stopped to stare at it. “That’s an unusual statue for a military fortress,” she commented.

I didn’t want to explain what had really happened, so I shrugged. “Maybe it’s a recent addition.”

I helped Elizabeth climb through the window I’d used before. The Dead House looked virtually untouched. The bedrolls were behind the couch, and everything was where I’d last seen it.

In fact, the place looked eerily perfect. In the days since Jasper had left, why hadn’t some other street kid stumbled upon his hideout?

Something silvery gleamed in the corner of the room. A plastic bag, full of discarded candy wrappers. Jasper had been back there, I was almost certain.

I walked over and picked it up and then spotted a bottle cap. I started to toss it away, but remembered what Jasper had told me about my aunts’ little manufacturing endeavor and flipped it over to reveal the entwined
P
and
E
that made up the logo of my aunts’ firm. Jasper had been here and he’d had company. But who?

“Did your brother ever mention a friend? Maybe someone named Jasper?” I asked Elizabeth.

She shook her head. “Do you think it has something to do with the finger?”

“I think it’s Jasper’s finger,” I said baldly, not realizing how it would sound to her.

She gasped. “You think the same people who chopped off his finger might have Alex? That something happened to my brother?”

“Calm down,” I said. “Jasper mentioned that he knew someone named Alex, who volunteered at a food bank sometimes. Does that sound like Alex?”

“It does,” she said. “It bothered him that he had so much when other people didn’t even have enough to eat.”

Jasper and Alex sounded like unlikely friends. Jasper was a hustler, Alex a humanitarian.

Alex’s decision to work for my aunts was even less logical. Even if you didn’t know they were the three Fates, witches of the highest order, the look in Morta’s eyes could turn a man’s spine to mush. So why did he go to work for them?

I handed Elizabeth the cleaner of the two bedrolls, which meant I ended up with the one with dried blood all over it. We curled up together, but I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t used to being so close with another person. I sat up on one elbow and watched Elizabeth. Was there anything more intimate than watching someone sleep?

I rolled over and turned my back to her. I didn’t do intimacy. It only got people killed.

*  *  *

I woke up early and nudged Elizabeth gently until she opened her eyes.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. There hadn’t been any trouble during the night, but I wanted to get out of there and get some answers.

She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “Give me five minutes.”

There was one person who might be able to help me figure this out, but I didn’t want Elizabeth tagging along, just in case anything went wrong. I wanted Elizabeth far, far away from it.

We headed for Hell’s Belles for breakfast.

“I’m Bernie, what can I get you?” A big barrel-chested woman in her sixties stood in front of us. It was the same woman who’d sniffed the air suspiciously the morning I’d put Jasper on the bus out of town.

She told us the specials and took our order, but before she left, she said, “
Buona fortuna.
”

The phrase sent a chill down my spine, but she didn’t seem especially interested in me.

After the demon waitress left, Elizabeth asked, “Why did she say that?”

I shrugged. “It’s just an expression.”

She gestured above my head. The wall behind me was decorated with a variety of horseshoes. “Horseshoes are lucky, and
fortuna
is another word for luck.”

How had I missed it? I stared at the wall for a long moment, but none of the horseshoes were from my mother’s necklace.

“I’ve got something to do today,” I said after we’d eaten.

“What do you have to do?” Elizabeth asked. “I’ll go with you.”

“No!” I replied.

She stared at me.

I modified my tone. “You have class. Besides, I have a job.”

“A job?”

I shrugged. “I got a job where your brother worked. It might help find him. Besides, if I’m sticking around Minneapolis, I need to work, find a place to live, and act like a normal human for a change.”

Elizabeth didn’t seem to pick up on what I was trying to say. Instead she focused on one word. “
If
you stay?” she asked.

“Do I have a reason to stay?”

She blushed but met my eyes. “Yes.”

“Then I need a job and a place to live.”

As I spoke, I realized what I was saying was true. I was tired of running, and Elizabeth was worth fighting for.

“Speaking of which, I’ve got to go. Duty calls.”

I dropped Elizabeth off at her place and said good-bye, but before I left I put the strongest wards I knew around her house. There was no way anyone from the water world would be able to get anywhere near her now.

Chapter Sixteen

My first official morning at Parsi Enterprises was uneventful. An uninterested office drone by the name of Stan gave me a mountain of paperwork to fill out. I had no identifiable skills, at least in the civilian world. It wasn’t like I could put
sorcerer
down under previous occupation, so I made up a bunch of stuff. Stan took my completed forms, gave me the ten-cent tour, and abandoned me for the doughnuts in the break room.

So far, the most ominous thing about my aunts’ company was the high-calorie snack choices, but the day was young.

I waited until the hallway cleared and went in search of clues about Alex Abernathy. There were no cubicles at Parsi, just shut office doors with name after name, but no Alex Abernathy.

I found Sawyer’s office and knocked. Nobody answered so I turned the handle. It was unlocked. I stepped in and shut the door behind me. His desk was bare, except for a couple of financial files and a picture of Nona and Naomi.

The whiteboard behind his desk was covered with a thick black scribble that I realized was a combination of a magical spell and scientific formula. I whipped out my cell phone and took a quick picture, then stepped back into the hallway to continue my search.