Simply Irresistible

by Grayson, Kristine

  “It’s not my fault,” Dex said. Vivian could feel his voice rumble through his chest as he spoke. The vibration was comforting, just like the steady rhythm of his heart was.

  “He’s a stray?”

  ‘They all are,” Dex said. “And he’s particularly sensitive. He’s only been here a few months, and he needs a lot of care.”

  “He doesn’t look injured.” Vivian pushed her glasses up her nose and studied the dog. He was cute, but wary of her. He had stopped by the door when Dex had said his name, and seemed to be waiting there, uncertain what to do.

  “He’s not injured any more.” Dex’s hand stopped rubbing her back. Instead, he just held his palm against her spine, as if he were supporting her.

  “What happened?”

  “His family was in a car accident. He was along, in the pet carrier. He was the only one who survived.”

  “Oh.” Vivian propped herself up on one elbow. Toto sat on the thin gray carpet, watching her warily. “How’d you get him?”

  “I went to the vet’s on the wrong day. They were patching him up, and looking for someone to take him. They’d already called the number on his tag and found out that the extended family had no interest in him. The vet saw me and knew the minute I walked into the place that the sucker had arrived.”

  Dex kissed her shoulder, then rolled over and extended a hand to Toto. The dog came forward as if he weren’t certain he was welcome, and licked Dex’s fingers. Dex bent over, grabbed Toto, and set him on the bed, petting him.

  “I think it’s great that you take care of animals,” Vivian said.

  Dex’s long fingers massaged Toto’s ears. The dog’s tail thumped. Vivian understood the reaction. If she could have, she would have purred with pleasure when those long fingers massaged her.

  “I don’t think it’s great,” he said, his head down. Obviously, this subject bothered him. “I’m only one person, and there are so many animals in need. And I’m running out of room, not to mention going broke. Besides, animals need personal attention just like people do. I’m going to have to learn how to say no.”

  “So that’s why you were relieved when the Fates took the kittens,” Vivian said, reaching across the bed and letting Toto sniff her fingers. His tail continued to wag. He didn’t seem so scared of her now.

  “I had no idea how I was going to cram an entire family of cats into this place,” Dex said.

  “You trusted the Fates,” Vivian said, “even though they anger you.”

  “I’m hoping that they’ll learn a lesson.” Dex sighed, then shook his head. He clearly hadn’t meant to say anything about that.

  “A lesson?” Vivan asked, gingerly petting Toto’s back. She could feel ridges where there shouldn’t be any—healing scars. Poor little dog. How traumatic that accident must have been for him.

  “Yeah, a lesson.” Dex propped himself on an elbow and looked at Vivian. His right hand continued to massage Toto’s ears. “I wanted them to learn what it felt like to help someone.”

  Vivian frowned. “I thought they were your governing body.”

  “They’re the judicial branch,” he said. “They mete out punishment, or they did. They had no idea what being a good person is all about.”

  “Taking care of kittens is part of that?”

  “Of course it is,” he said. “If you see someone in trouble and you have the power to help them, you should help them, right?”

  Vivian felt confused. She didn’t understand why that was even an issue. “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I said to the Fates. They called me in front of them for using my powers to help humans. I’d see someone in crisis, so I’d spell the crisis away. The Fates said that wasn’t allowed, said I was breaking the law. I argued that I should be able to help people in trouble and they said—oh, forget it.”

  His voice shook throughout the entire speech. She knew he was still angry at the Fates, but she hadn’t realized exactly why. Now it was beginning to make sense.

  At least, in his anger, he had taken action to help the Fates, even though he had been worried that they were trying to trick him. He hadn’t dithered the way Blackstone and his friends had.

  Dex wasn’t going to finish the thought. Vivian pushed a strand of black hair off his forehead. Amazing that they could get to know each other as well as they had, and yet still know so little.

  The intimate contact let them know the core self, but not the details. Learning the details would be the future—if they had a future.

  Vivian wasn’t going to bring that up. Not yet.

  “What did the Fates say?” she asked gently.

  “They said if they allowed me to help someone in trouble, then they would have to allow other mages—those with less noble ambitions—to put people in trouble.” He wrinkled his nose and raised his voice, obviously imitating the Fates. “’It is not our duty to take care of mortals. It is their duty. We must take care of ourselves.’”

  “That seems pretty selfish to me,” Vivian said.

  “That’s what I thought,” Dex said. “So I didn’t listen. I continued my work, and they gave me warning after warning, until they swore that if I had one more violation, they’d punish me.”

  “You quit.”

  “I had to. Their punishments are—were—are awful. I’m a big, stupid coward. I couldn’t face whatever they were going to throw at me.”

  “Why does that make you a coward?” Vivian asked.

  “Because I didn’t stand up for my principles,” he said, and his right hand froze on Toto’s back. Toto looked up at him in doggy confusion. Dex smiled at him and continued petting him.

  “But if they had punished you, you wouldn’t have been able to help people either, at least not for the duration of the sentence. At least now—”

  “At least now I rescue puppies and kittens and hope that the Fates don’t notice,” he said. “And I let the Fates use me to give an occasional familiar to a mage. It’s small, it’s unimportant, and it’s all under the table.”

  “I don’t think Nurse Ratched would think it’s unimportant,” Vivian said. She wasn’t fond of the Siamese—not yet—but she sensed a fondness beginning. She rather liked Nurse Ratched’s jealous passion for Dex, and the way the cat guarded the household.

  Dex gave an eloquent one-shoulder shrug. “If I can save a family from a burning building by putting out the fire and healing any burns, then yeah, saving a few animals is minor. I can do all sorts of things if the Fates only let me.”

  “But they don’t have power any more.”

  “For all I know, they left notes with the Powers That Be.” He reached across the dog and caressed Vivian’s face. “You hungry?”

  “I could be,” she said.

  He smiled lazily. “I could get used to this.”

  “Me too.”

  In the distance, the phone rang. Dex continued to touch Vivian, and she got the sense that he was hungry for more than just food. But the phone caught her attention.

  “Don’t worry,” he said softly. “The machine’ll get it.”

  But it wasn’t the machine that had her concerned. It was that sense she’d had since Quixotic, that odd feeling of remembering something subconsciously without it hitting her conscious mind. She’d had it first by the bar.

  “Viv?” Dex asked.

  She frowned, trying to recall what had unnerved her then. “When you popped into Quixotic and made that remark about Buckingham Palace, did you notice Noah Sturgis?”

  “The news guy from KAHS?”

  “Yeah,” Vivian said.

  Toto, realizing there wouldn’t be more petting, made his way to the foot of the bed. He curled up near a calico cat, who opened one eye, saw who it was, and closed her eye again.

  “No, I didn’t see him. Why?”

  “There was a woman who joined him just before you got there. Middle-aged, really striking. I had the sense that I’d met her before. Have you ever heard of Erika O’Connell?”

  Dex grin
ned. “Hasn’t everyone?”

  But Vivian wasn’t listening any longer. The sensation had finally returned and this time there were no interruptions.

  She had seen Erika O’Connell before, but not in person. And Vivian hadn’t confused pictures she’d seen of the famous woman with some other memory.

  She’d sensed Erika O’Connell just about a month before—her presence thick and strong, just like it had been in Quixotic. It had been the night her Aunt Eugenia had died.

  “Viv, what is it?” Dex was looking concerned now.

  “I think I know who’s after the Fates,” Vivian said.

  “Erika O’Connell?” Dex sounded stunned. “Are you sure?”

  Vivian nodded. “She’s the person who murdered my aunt.”

  NINETEEN

  THE MEMORY FELT as real as the cats pressing against Vivian’s ankles. And the ironic thing was that the memory wasn’t really her own. It was, in part, Aunt Eugenia’s—powerful, strong, and sent across eight hundred miles.

  Vivian had been sitting in the kitchen of her Los Angeles apartment. The kitchen had been the best room in that apartment—spacious, well lit, and comfortable, without any horrible sense impressions (Vivian sometimes got them from spaces she lived in, and it wasn’t something she enjoyed). She had been drinking hot tea, listening to Bach, and going over the books from her closed psychic hotline.

  The money she had made was phenomenal. People wanted to know about their lives—all they really wanted was someone to talk to.

  The function she had served was to tell them the truth about how they lived, without any of the tricks the other phone psychics used. The frauds looked at the phone number of the caller (always available to an 800-line, which was why so many people got the first few minutes free before being switched to the 900-line) and then used it to trace the caller’s living situation. Once the frauds had the caller’s credit card number, they could look up the caller’s credit record on the computer and learn all kinds of things—where the person lived, how much they owed on their mortgage, if they were in debt, and what they usually purchased.

  It was a brilliant scam, which was why so many people fell for it. Vivian had been trying to run a clean operation, but she hadn’t been able to hire a lot of other psychics—certainly none as good as herself—and trying to run the business as well as do most of the work had exhausted her.

  She hadn’t even realized how much money she had made until she had shut the business down and started going over her bank accounts. It embarrassed her. She felt like she had been making money off other people’s dreams. But she wasn’t going to give it back—at least not after the first conversation she’d had with Travers.

  You earned the money, sis, he’d said. They called you. You gave them a real service, and you exhausted yourself.

  He had been right, of course, but it bothered her all the same. And she was going to have to go back to him because she hadn’t sheltered any of her earnings. Her income was going to have serious tax consequences.

  She had been sitting in her favorite chair, the tea steaming in her Wolverine mug—not one from the movie, either, but a real Marvel Comics mug from the 1980s—and letting the numbers swirl in her head along with the precision of Bach, when she had seen Aunt Eugenia’s face.

  Vivian rarely got real visions, and they terrified her. This one came in from the outside. She could feel the invasion. It hit her the way a scream, coming from a neighboring apartment, could hit a person. With shock and sudden fear, and then concern.

  Aunt Eugenia’s face was pale, her eyes large, and there was blood on the corner of her mouth. There’s nothing you can do tonight, Viv. Don’t worry about me. This was foretold. But I failed you. I thought this would happen later—

  And then the face of a stunning middle-aged woman appeared. She seemed to be surrounded by wind and fog. She reached out a hand and light sizzled from it, exploding around Aunt Eugenia.

  Vivian felt an echo of the pain, so severe that she was surprised that Aunt Eugenia could survive it.

  For a moment the connection severed, and Vivian found herself in her kitchen, sprawled on top of the books, her tea knocked over and dripping onto the linoleum.

  Then Aunt Eugenia appeared to her again, looking even more battered, near death. Viv, read everything I sent you. Find a mentor. You’ll be strong enough—

  And that was it. Vivian saw nothing more. But she felt it—the horror of Aunt Eugenia’s death—and it left Vivian gasping for air. She finally was able to get up, call Travers, and ask him to call Eugenia. Of course no one answered, and it took some explaining—without mention of Viv’s psychic ability—to get a cop to go to Eugenia’s house, especially since the emergency call was being made in Los Angeles and the emergency was actually in Portland.

  Vivian shared her memories—and Aunt Eugenia’s—with Dex. He kept his arms close around her, making her feel safer than she should have. She hadn’t even told Travers all of it, only saying that she knew Aunt Eugenia was in terrible danger. No one knew that Vivian had seen the end of her aunt.

  “So what did she mail to you?” Dex asked, propped up against the pillows, stroking Vivian’s hair.

  “Boxes of things, all papers with her writing on them. They arrived the day after she died. They had been sent well before that night.”

  “Do you think she knew what was going to happen to her?” Dex asked.

  “She said she’d known,” Vivian said. “As part of that final vision, she’d said so, that she’d been expecting it, only not so soon. I had no idea what that meant. I still don’t.”

  “What were the papers about?”

  Vivian sighed. “I couldn’t bring myself to read everything. This was just a few weeks ago. It took some convincing to get my family to see the wisdom of me even coming up here.”

  “What did you read?”

  Vivian sat up, looking at Dex. He seemed very serious, and she realized now that he was the one who had sent up one small mental wall. Not from his emotions, but from a few of his thoughts.

  “I searched for another copy of her will,” Vivian said. “She left everything to me, and I’m not her only family. I don’t need her money. I’m the oldest, and the will that her lawyer has was made just after I was born. So I searched for something more recent.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  She shook her head, wondering at his switch in mood. Somewhere, in this entire conversation about Aunt Eugenia, he had become focused again, not on Vivian, but on work, on the Fates.

  “I was going to look through the remains of her house, but I just got moved in. In fact yesterday—” And then she paused, feeling stunned. It had been just yesterday. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “Yesterday, my brother and his son left. I was going to go to Aunt Eugenia’s today, but obviously I got sidetracked.”

  “Obviously,” Dex said. “So you’d only been alone less than twenty-four hours.”

  Vivian nodded.

  Dex frowned. “All of this happened to you that quickly. No wonder your aunt was worried.”

  “I don’t think she could have predicted the Fates’ arrival,” Vivian said.

  “Don’t be so sure.” Dex pulled the blanket up around both of them, dislodging two cats. “If her gift was as powerful as yours—and it probably was, since the Fates assigned her as your mentor—then she knew that the Fates were going to arrive soon.”

  “But the Fates didn’t even seem to know.”

  Dex shook his head. “I’m not sure what the Fates did and didn’t know. I get the sense they’re not telling us everything either.”

  “Everyone says that.” Vivian felt an exasperated, but she wasn’t sure if it was at his wall or at the groups’ reaction to the Fates. Maybe she wasn’t going to be as tolerant as he was of the distances between them.

  “You mentioned the remains of your aunt’s house,” Dex said. “What happened to it?”

  “It burned the night after she died.” Vivian sighed. Her eyes prickled wi
th tears, but she blinked them back. She had loved that house. It had held so many interesting things—and, of course, the most interesting of all had been Aunt Eugenia herself.

  “After?” Dex frowned. “That makes no sense. Why not burn it the night of the murder and hide the body?”

  “Because,” Vivian said softly, “I don’t think the fire was about Aunt Eugenia’s death. I think the fire was an angry response to frustration.”

  “Someone couldn’t find something,” Dex said, the realization clearly dawning.

  Vivian nodded.

  “The somethings you have?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said.

  “Let’s bring those boxes here. What do you say?”

  “I say my car is still at your shop. I’ll bet yours is too.” Vivian shook her head. These new modes of transportation were so odd to her. She had been all over the city today, and she’d only driven her car to one place.

  “I was thinking of spelling the boxes here. They’ll probably be safer with us than at your apartment.” He looked at her. “That is where they are, right?”

  She nodded.

  He clapped his hands together, and a bright light filled the bedroom. When the light faded, the three large U-Haul boxes Aunt Eugenia had used for her papers sat on top of Dex’s clutter. One of the boxes tilted dangerously. It rested on two tennis shoes and a brown loafer.

  Dex got out of bed and steadied the box. Vivian leaned against the pillows, watching him. He was all sinew and strength, his muscles rippling under his skin. His muscles didn’t bulge like a body builder’s. He was just so trim that they were visible.

  Vivian had never seen a man quite so perfect before.

  Dex looked at her over his shoulder and grinned. “I thought physical appearance doesn’t matter to women.”

  Vivian shrugged. “It comes in third.”

  “After what?”

  “Sense of humor and intelligence.”

  “In that order?” he asked.

  She considered for a moment, then nodded. “In that order.”

  “So you’d prefer me to be funny over smart.”

  “I’d prefer that you keep me entertained. Didn’t you know that a woman always expects a man to entertain her?”