The traditional wedding march began to play. It played all the way through, but the bridal party did not appear. The wedding planner got a panicky look on his face. The music died and the room was completely silent.
I looked at the groom. His smile was fixed firmly in place, his body language relaxed, but his fingers were curled into fists. He jerked his head at the wedding planner, who tried to discreetly slip out of the room, despite the fact that everyone was watching with avid gazes. He was obviously going in search of the bride.
Finally, the music started up again and the bridal party made their way to the front at a sedate pace, as if they hadn’t kept everyone waiting for almost half an hour.
Then Willow made her grand entrance, beautifully pale but composed, on Trey’s arm.
“She looks as though she’s going to her own execution,” Wren whispered. “Couldn’t you talk her out of it?”
I shook my head, unwilling to reveal to her how much Willow’s nuptials upset me.
Morta turned and stared right at me as Willow passed by. Why were they here? Just how friendly were they with that slime Danvers?
The first part of the wedding ceremony was fairly traditional, but right before the part where the minister usually said something about pronouncing you man and wife, there was a deviation. The blood oath spell was conducted with great pomp and circumstance, but many guests looked at their feet, as if ashamed of what they were witnessing.
I looked at a point above Willow’s head and prayed that she’d stop the wedding, but she said her vows in a carrying voice that reached all the way to the back row.
I almost lost it during the first dance. The guy had his hands all over Willow. I don’t know what was more repulsive, the way he touched her or the way she let him.
I managed to control myself until after they’d cut the cake.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked Wren abruptly.
“I want to stay,” she said. “Please? I’ve never been to a wedding before.”
I smiled at her. “Another hour.”
The only good thing about the entire wedding was the open bar. I made my way there. “Give me a couple of whiskeys. Straight.”
I watched Danvers and Willow circulate among their guests as I threw back a couple of more drinks, courtesy of the groom.
Finally, Talbot came up to me. “You’re not going to cause a scene, are you?” His eyes gleamed silverlight, which only happened when he was doing magic or was upset about something.
I chugged the last of my drink. I’d lost count how many I’d had. “Why do you ask?”
“You’ve been staring at them all night,” he said. “You haven’t been paying any attention to your date.”
“Wren?”
“Yeah, Wren. Do you even know where she is?”
I pretended not to feel guilty. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“Some guy has been chatting her up all night,” Talbot said. “And you didn’t even notice. You were too busy glowering at the bride and groom.”
“Wren is fine,” I said. “I’m worried about Willow because she’s my friend, nothing more.”
“You look like a jealous ex-boyfriend to me,” he replied.
“Jesus, Talbot, give me a break. I just broke up with Elizabeth. Willow is my friend and Wren is a distraction. She knows it’s nothing serious.”
He stalked off, but his words did sink in. After he went back to Naomi, I looked around for Wren, blurry-eyed. I finally found her on the dance floor, in Danvers’s arms.
I stalked toward them, but Trey grabbed me by the arm. “Nyx, that would not be a good idea. Danvers is much more dangerous than you think. Your girlfriend is fine. He has been completely circumspect with her.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said.
I stood where I was and watched them as I waited for the song to end. As far as I knew, Wren and Danvers had never met, but they were laughing with easy intimacy. Had the whiskey I’d been pouring down my throat dulled my powers of observation or honed them?
Chapter Twenty-Five
That week, I slept poorly every night, awakened periodically by the baying of hounds.
I reported to my Saturday shift at Eternity Road, sleep-deprived and hungover. Even copious amounts of alcohol hadn’t drowned the sound of Hecate’s hounds. Even trapped in the underworld, she still managed to send me a message.
I hadn’t seen much of Talbot since the wedding. He’d been pissed at me.
“About time you showed up,” he said. Judging from his snotty tone, guess he still was.
I glanced around the store and understood his irritation. There were at least twenty people in the store, a curious combo of hipsters and senior citizens.
“What gives?”
“There was a write-up in yesterday’s paper,” he explained. “Apparently, Eternity Road is one of the Twin Cities’ hidden gems.”
“And your dad’s still out of town,” I said. “Sorry, Talbot. I assumed…”
He waved me away. “I know, I know. You assumed the store would be empty, like it almost always is. Now go man the cash register while I show this very patient woman to a dressing room.”
The woman, who had an armful of vintage dresses, glared at me before she followed Talbot.
The unexpected rush died down about three and a welcome silence fell over the store.
Talbot seemed to have gotten over his snit. “How did Willow know the murders would stop if she married Danvers?” he asked.
“The obvious answer is that she knows he’s the killer,” I replied.
“But how is marriage going to stop a serial killer?”
“It’s not,” I said. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless he’s not a serial killer,” I told him. There was a theory working its way through the sodden recesses of my brain.
Talbot’s eyebrows scrunched together. “I thought you just said Danvers is the killer.”
“Maybe he’s not trying to kill them,” I explained. “He has some other goal. The deaths are incidental.”
“Then what’s his real goal?” Talbot challenged.
I slumped on the stool, defeated. “I have no idea.” I sat up again, galvanized. “When is your dad back? I want to ask him some questions about the Houses and Willow.”
“He’s due back any time,” Talbot replied.
Ambrose finally showed up a few minutes after closing. Talbot and I had made ourselves comfortable on a couple of chairs shaped like eggs and had cracked a couple of beers when Ambrose strode in.
“Talbot, where are you? I need help with the load,” he bellowed.
“I’ll do it,” I told him.
I made my way to the front of the store. “Ambrose, lead me to those boxes.”
His U-Haul was stacked high. I wasn’t going to make it home any time soon. I clambered up and grabbed the top boxes. “Where do you want these?”
“Those can go into storage,” Ambrose directed. “Use the dolly. Do we have room for any of the furniture in the store? I found some great deals.”
We made at least ten trips to the storage room in the basement before I could reach any furniture.
“Ambrose,” I said, setting down a spinning wheel straight out of Sleeping Beauty, “why did Trey walk Willow down the aisle at her wedding?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I missed the event of the season. Maybe even the century.”
“Why was it such a big event?”
“The two Houses don’t get along,” he said.
“I already knew that,” I said. “So?”
“So they were this close to war a few years ago,” he said. He held up his thumb and finger a sliver apart.
“Baxter said that they cut a deal to stop the killings,” I said. “But what does Willow have to do with all this?”
“Willow is Trey’s niece,” he said. “I thought you knew.”
“Why would he let her marry a monster like Danvers?” I asked,
horrified.
“Willow is a direct descendent of the mortal Cleito and Poseidon,” he replied. “Nobody lets her do anything. She’s the most powerful naiad in the states, possibly the world.”
“You’re saying that Willow went into this marriage willingly?”
“You’re asking the wrong questions, Nyx,” he replied. “What is important in this equation is why Danvers wants Willow.”
“Who wouldn’t want Willow?” I said aloud.
Ambrose gave me a sharp look but didn’t comment.
It wasn’t just Danvers who wanted her. I wanted her, too, and not just for an occasional drunken hookup. The realization kept repeating in my head as we finished putting away Ambrose’s haul.
“We need to talk to Dad,” Talbot reminded me.
He dragged me into the office, where Ambrose was doing a crossword puzzle. “What’s another word for stubborn?”
“Nyx Fortuna,” Talbot said.
“It fits!” Ambrose chuckled. Was he really writing my name in the crossword squares?
“Nyx has a problem,” Talbot told him.
“What can I help you with, dear boy?” Ambrose asked.
“I think it’s Talbot’s imagination,” I said.
“It’s not,” Talbot said. “Dad, focus for a minute. Take a good look at Nyx and tell me if you see anything different about him.”
Ambrose examined my face. “It’s definitely a spell,” he said. “And a particularly nasty one.”
I shrugged, but inside, my stomach squirmed like I’d eaten a bellyful of eels. “I have a lot of enemies.”
“Talbot, fetch the camera,” Ambrose said. “The one on the top shelf in my office.”
“The nota bene camera?” Talbot asked. “You told me not to touch that under any circumstance.”
Nota bene meant “take note,” loosely, in Latin. I was intrigued.
Ambrose sighed patiently. “Now I’m telling you to get it.” His voice was tense.
Talbot picked up on his father’s tone and made for the office. He came back with what looked like an old-fashioned Polaroid, but I knew better. It was, after all, something Ambrose kept on the top shelf.
“What does it do?”
“It reveals,” Ambrose said.
“That clears things up,” Talbot said dryly.
His father ignored him. “Nyx, please stand against that wall.”
I did as he asked and waited while he took a series of instant photos. He shook them gently and then put on a pair of glasses. He went quiet.
“Well?” Talbot prodded, but Ambrose shushed him.
Ambrose finally said. “Nyx, I’m afraid you’ve been cursed.”
“Is that all?” But my stomach sank. I had enough on my to-do list to last me the millennium.
“Can I see?” Talbot made a grab for one of the photos, but his dad slapped his hand away.
“I don’t need to waste precious time hunting down some piddly-ass curse,” I said.
“You need to make the time,” Ambrose replied. “This is serious.”
“How serious?”
“If we don’t find a cure, you’ll be old and wrinkled and gasping for air, unable to move or feed yourself, but you won’t die. That sound attractive to you? Your mind will be the same, but your body will turn to mush.”
I shuddered. I had thought living forever was the worst fate possible until I was staring down a worse one.
“I want to live out a life,” I said. “Not accelerate to the end and then get stuck there.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Talbot said soothingly.
“What if we don’t?” I asked. “We have to find my thread of fate.”
“And break the curse,” Ambrose reminded me.
“How do you suggest we do that?” I asked him. Ambrose was a big magician mucky-muck in the House of Zeus.
“Let me make some inquiries,” Ambrose replied. “I’ve seen this before, but it requires a delicate hand. We mustn’t rush into this or we could do more damage.”
“Like what?”
“Exactly how old are you, anyway?” Talbot asked me.
“Two twenty, give or take a few years.”
Ambrose answered my question. “If we’re not careful, you could wake up one day looking every one of those years.”
I’d thought, or at least pretended, that I didn’t care about my looks, but I found that I did. I couldn’t picture Wren dating me if I looked like someone’s great-grandfather. I suppressed the image of growing old with Elizabeth. That wasn’t going to happen, not ever. I wasn’t going to grow old with anybody.
“I’ll sit tight until you find out more,” I promised.
“The good news is that this is a relatively slow-acting spell,” Ambrose said. “Perhaps the sorcerer hoped you wouldn’t notice until it was too late.”
“I probably wouldn’t have,” I admitted. “Talbot’s the one who noticed.”
“Very good, “Ambrose told his son. “You have the makings of a very good magician.”
“Could the curse have been implanted in the wraith bite somehow?”
“It’s possible,” Ambrose said. “I’ll do some research, make some calls, but in the meantime, Nyx, try to take it easy.”
“I’d like nothing more than to relax,” I said. “But my plate’s kind of full.”
“True,” Ambrose said. “Try not to get bitten by another wraith.”
“Or stabbed,” Talbot added.
Underneath their forced jocularity, Talbot and his dad were clearly worried. And so was I.
I remembered the lighter and took it out of my jeans pocket, where I’d stashed it. It was blackened and twisted and still smelled of smoke. “Have you ever seen a lighter like this?”
Ambrose had owned the pawnshop a long time, and I didn’t have any other leads. It was a casual question, but he paled when he saw it. “Where did you get this?”
“I found it at the theater fire,” I said.
He stared at it. “Your father gave them out as gifts one Christmas,” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a matching silver lighter. “He gave one to me, one to your mother, and one to another woman.” I recognized the lighter. It was engraved with a peacock feather.
“What other woman? You make it sound like my father had been cheating on my mother.”
His silence told me all I needed to know. “Do you know who she was?”
He shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Please tell me who my father is,” I begged.
“That is not my story to tell, Nyx,” he said. No matter how much I persisted, Ambrose refused to tell me anything else.
*
On Sunday, Wren and I met Talbot and Naomi for breakfast. I sat in the booth with a beer and a shitty attitude. I was daring Bernie to say something, but she took our order without commenting.
“That was some wedding, wasn’t it?” Naomi commented but shut up when she saw my face.
I was angry, but I didn’t know why. Or maybe I knew why, but I didn’t want to admit it. My brain kept returning to the image of Willow in Danvers’s arms. I’d done everything I could to convince her not to, but she was now his wife.
I was itching for a fight.
“I’m going back to talk to your mother,” I told Wren.
“That’s a very bad idea, Nyx,” she said.
“What other choice do we have? She won’t stop until she gets you back. And that’s not going to happen. I have to do something.”
Talbot interrupted me. “You must still be drunk. You’re not thinking this through.”
I put the beer bottle down with more force than necessary. “It’s the only way she’ll leave us alone. Plus, it’ll piss off the Fates.”
“Do you ever think about anything else besides that Greek tragedy thing you got going on with them?” Talbot bellowed. “When you’re not killing your liver or chasing women, that is.”
“Talbot, I…”
“You don’t have anything
to say, do you? For once in your life, think of us before you recklessly charge in,” he said. He stalked off and left the restaurant. I could see him through the window, pacing angrily.
I started to follow him, but Naomi put a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to him,” she said. She slid out of the both and joined Talbot outside.
Even Talbot’s anger couldn’t sway me. Wren didn’t say anything until I got up to pay the check.
“Your friend is worried about you,” Bernie said as she took my money. “He should be.”
“Why do you say that?”
She started to say something else, but then her face closed. “Never mind.”
A second later, Wren’s hand was on my shoulder. “Ready to go?”
After breakfast, I changed into warm clothes, grabbed my jacket, and headed down.
This time, I went alone. Hecate would want to rip me apart and I didn’t want any innocent bystanders getting injured.
The trip down was cold and miserable without Talbot for company.
When I entered the underworld, Hecate was a few hundred yards from the gate, waiting for me, her three enormous dogs lying at her feet. Her dark hair, which had been bound up last time we’d met, was down and blowing in the wind.
“You have a lot of nerve, son of Fortuna,” she said. But she didn’t sic the dogs on me, which seemed promising.
“Where is my daughter?” Hecate asked. “I want her back. I was sure even someone as thick-skulled as you would have gotten the message by now.”
I glared back. “Message received,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you want.”
She smiled. “I think you will. I have what you’re looking for,” she said. “A very special charm of your mother’s. One I understand you have been searching for your whole life.” She placed special emphasis on the last word.
“You’re lying.” She couldn’t have the charm containing my thread of fate.
She raised one eyebrow. “Am I?” The confidence in her voice convinced me. Hecate had one of my mother’s charms and was prepared to trade for it. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like the trade, though.
“What do you want in return?” I already knew the answer.