Immortal Dreams

by Abbie Zanders

  For the briefest of moments, her lips parted in surprise. Then abruptly closed again.

  “Well, Mrs. Cavanaugh? I asked you a question. I expect an answer.” What he really wanted to know was how a man could allow his wife to do anything when she was obviously suffering. The idiot should be caring for her and soothing her pain. It was what he would do if he had a mate like her.

  When her shoulders stiffened slightly, he pushed a hint of compulsion her way.

  “He was still sleeping when I left, sir.”

  Nik frowned. A troglodyte and a bum? “Doesn’t he work?”

  She shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the personal turn the conversation had taken. “Not at the moment, sir.”

  Theós, he swore inwardly. What kind of idiot had she tied herself to? Then again, perhaps the man was not totally to blame. On multiple occasions, his PA had proven to be the epitome of insularity, a veritable fortress of dispassionate emotional detachment.

  “Mrs. Cavanaugh, is your husband even aware of the injuries you sustained yesterday?”

  She looked down at the floor, the first and only time he had ever witnessed any form of submissive behavior from her. Even when she was following his orders to the letter, she did so with a straight spine and a direct gaze. This unwillingness to meet his eyes was unsettling, to say the least.

  “No, sir.”

  “The hospital didn’t call him?”

  “They did,” she said quietly. “He wasn’t home at the time.”

  Golden brown eyes narrowed as he connected the dots between the tiny morsels of information so reluctantly given. “Then how did you get home from the hospital?”

  She stood a little straighter. He winced at the lance of pain that went through her.

  “I walked.”

  “How far?”

  “Mr. Deimos, I don’t see how any of this is relevant.”

  “How far?” The compulsion seeped into his voice without conscious effort.

  “Not far.”

  She was lying again. He could see the flare in her aura as clearly as if she had raised a red flag and waved it in his face. He wasn’t sure what enraged him more: the fact that she was lying to him, or that she had somehow managed to defy his compulsion. To the best of his knowledge, no mortal had ever been able to do so. Granted, in his reluctance to cause her more pain, his nudge had been subtle. Still, it should have been sufficient to elicit an honest response.

  Nick had had enough. As pleased as he was to see her, this was not the time to be selfish. She shouldn’t be here. She should be at home, in bed, being pampered and cared for. If he had to watch her suffer for much longer, he would scoop her up himself and take her somewhere to see to her needs. Of course, that would be an incredibly bad idea on so many levels. Especially since she was married.

  That thought continued to irritate him like a particularly sharp pebble in his shoe.

  “Go home, Mrs. Cavanaugh. You are of no use to me in your current state,” he said abruptly, leaving no room for discussion.

  She stilled for several moments, but he refused to soften the glare he directed her way.

  For the first time since she had come to work for him, he sensed resistance. Defiance. Then it vanished, and the air around them returned to its normal, calm state.

  Quietly, she shut down her computer, gathered her small faux-leather bag from the bottom drawer, and locked her desk. She was nothing if not obedient to a fault.

  “Your schedule is on your desk, sir.”

  Without another word, she walked gingerly past him and through the frosted glass doors. During the several minutes that passed while she waited for the next elevator, she did not turn around once.

  “Well, Hell and Hades,” he muttered under his breath as he walked into his private office and found a steaming cup of coffee, a buttered croissant, and small plates of cut pineapples, mangoes, and strawberries. Unbelievably, there was also a warm and gooey square of baklava. His favorite.

  He sighed. He didn’t know why he was surprised. It had been like this every other day since she cleverly discovered his personal preferences. He still wasn’t sure how she had quite managed that. He had long since ceased to question her eerie perceptiveness.

  He looked out of the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows that his prominent position afforded, down onto the bustling street below. Within minutes, he saw her emerge in that gods-awful coat. It was the same coat she now hid in one of the outer coatrooms since he had once made disparaging remarks about its clearly inferior quality, mistaking it for cleaning rags left behind by the janitorial staff.

  Outside, she paused, her shoulders hunched against the cold. A cab pulled up, but she shook her head. A moment later, she was walking north, away from the parking garage instead of toward it. Would this woman never cease to surprise him?

  Nik cursed again in a language long-forgotten and grabbed his coat. He didn’t bother with the elevator, choosing the stairs instead. By the time he made it to the sidewalk, she was only a block or two ahead, her gait slow and cautious, as if every step was an effort.

  He followed her, pulling the brim of his hat down and the collar of his expensive coat up in case she should turn around. She didn’t.

  She paused outside the bakery, watching them knead and cut and craft with speed and skill. Just when he thought she would go inside, she put her head down and continued.

  She repeated the actions at a coffee shop in the next block. And a bistro that catered to early morning corporate types.

  Is she hungry? he wondered. And if she was, why hadn’t she just had some of the delectable treats she had prepared for him?

  Ellie wound her way over to the park, stopping once at a vendor to extract a few loose coins from her deep coat pockets and buy a small bag of peanuts. Then she sank down onto a bench, her normally graceful movements stiff and awkward, and proceeded to feed the squirrels from the bag she had just purchased. They approached her without pause, without fear, as if they knew no harm would come to them from her hand.

  After an hour or so, she got up and began to head back the way she came. Nik ducked into an alley as she passed.

  She walked. And walked. Slowly. Methodically. Through the city. Past the limits. Over the bridge and into the high-rent suburbs. Then farther still she went, until she reached a lower- to middle-class neighborhood.

  He watched her disappear into a small, neatly kept house that was little more than a bungalow, a replica of the ones to the left and to the right of it. Only then did he release the breath he had been holding.

  Theós, he thought again. She must have left hours before she was supposed to start work just to arrive when she did. He hated the idea of her walking alone in the cold, dark hours of the early morning. Did she do that every day, he wondered, or was today an exception? Why didn’t she drive to work like every other mortal in this gridlocked, traffic-clogged city?

  He now felt horrible about ordering her to leave, even though he had thought he was doing her a favor at the time. At least if he had kept his big mouth shut, she would be warm and sitting in relative comfort instead of walking miles in the bitter throes of the wintry wind in those faux-leather flats that couldn’t do much to keep her feet warm.

  Moments later, his acute hearing picked up a male voice. Nik moved closer to the house, using the shadows to conceal his presence.

  “Why aren’t you at work? You didn’t lose your job, did you? We need those benefits, Ellie.”

  A sigh. “I know, Cal. And no, I didn’t lose my job. I wasn’t feeling well. My boss sent me home.”

  “Are you sick? Because if you are, you should keep your distance. I don’t want to get sick. I have enough problems.”

  “I’m not sick. Just a bad headache.”

  A male grunt. “Guess that explains the shades.”

  “I’m going to go lie down for a while.”

  “Fine. Don’t forget, my mother’s coming for dinner tonight. You said you’d make your homemade pasta and sauce.”


  “I didn’t forget,” she said, wearier than Nik had ever heard her. “Do you think you could bring the pasta machine up from the basement?”

  A weighted pause. “You know I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than ten pounds, Ellie.”

  Another sigh. The sound was so foreign coming from his unflappable PA. So heart-wrenchingly sad. “I’m sorry, Cal. You’re right. I’ll get it.”

  Nik stood there for several minutes, but he heard nothing more than the closing of a door and the worthless diatribe of daytime game shows. Angry and more than a little confused, he turned around and headed back the way he had come.

  Ducking behind a neighbor’s garage, Nik wrapped himself in shadows and appeared back in his office, his mood even fouler than it had been earlier.

  * * *

  “Go home, Mrs. Cavanaugh.” Ellie heard the words over and over as she drifted in and out of a restless sleep, the relentless pounding at the base of her skull preventing her from getting the peace she needed.

  Such a deep voice. Strong. Unbreakable. Like iron wrapped in velvet. Even those words, spoken rather harshly, eased her a little.

  Nikolaos Deimos was the only man she had ever met who could do that to her. He wasn’t the most personable man, but even when he was being prickly, her soul felt oddly content. Perhaps that was why she could put up with his scathing remarks, his gruffly barked orders, and general condescending arrogance when others could not.

  Or maybe it was because, when he was ordering her around or piercing her with those incredible golden eyes, she was inwardly gathering fodder for her next private fantasy.

  Did other women harbor such deep, secret desires about their bosses? And if so, was it only the unexceptional ones, like her, who did so, or did such mental liberties extend to the beautiful, rich, compelling women who might actually have opportunities to live out some of those fantasies?

  Ellie would never know.

  While she did occasionally allow her mind to explore alternate realities, she was firmly and sensibly rooted in her own path. Daughter, sister, wife, personal assistant—that was her reality, and she was content with that. She would endeavor to do the best she could.

  Her life was a case study in real world mediocrity, without the benefit of one or more horrific events to explain her splintered psyche. She’d had a normal, boring childhood. She had never been physically beaten, abused, starved, or left alone for hours on end. Both of her parents were hard-working, God-fearing people who did the best they could to put food on the table and create a stable, if not overly loving, environment for their children.

  She had one older brother who, like her, existed from day-to-day without managing to draw undo attention, either good or bad. They had both studied hard and got good grades. Whereas Ellie had learned to play the piano, attended dance recitals, and stood beside her mother while learning generations of family recipes, her brother Daniel threw a baseball with their dad in the backyard, played cornerback on the high school football team, and was tutored in the arts of changing the oil in the car and minor home repairs, like replacing worn shingles and fixing leaky pipes.

  Over the years they’d had a dog, a cat, and a couple of goldfish they had won from the traveling carnival when it came to town. They had family barbecues on sun-drenched weekends in their neatly-landscaped, postage-stamp-sized backyard. They had grown up in a modest two-story brick home, just like all the others around it in their middle-class neighborhood.

  It was nice. Quiet. Peaceful. A picture of ordinary.

  Like her.

  Ellie knew she was no great beauty; she had never had any misconceptions about that. She was of average height, though perhaps padded a little more generously than other girls her age. Throughout high school, she’d had a few dates, mostly because of the pretty blonde girl next door who inspired many a post-pubescent male fantasy. Ellie’s presence was due more to the girl’s overprotective father not wanting his little girl going out alone than an actual fondness from the girl herself.

  Ellie never quite understood why Sherry had tolerated her, but she guessed it was the fat girl rule: every beauty had to have a fat, plain friend beside her to make her look even better. Ellie wasn’t really fat, but she didn’t have the lithe curves her friend had. And Ellie’s parents wouldn’t allow her to wear a lot of makeup, or highlight her hair, or get the cool new piercings popular among the high-school set. Moreover, her clothes and shoes came from the big chain discount stores. Ellie hadn’t minded too much; it wasn’t as if anyone noticed or cared enough to tease her about her lack of style. She was, and always had been, the one no one ever really saw.

  Her life was all very ordinary. Average. Normal. Perhaps the only thing slightly unusual, besides her nearly colorless eyes, was her name. Her real name. The one on her birth certificate.

  Raven Elena.

  It sounded dark and exotic, and so very unlike her.

  To this day, her mother would cast her eyes downward in shame when asked why she had named her daughter something so out of the ordinary, and her father would grow quiet and his lips would stretch thin. It was only much later, when Ellie was well into her teens, that her mother had confessed that Raven Elena had been the name of a character in a paperback romance whose title was long since forgotten, and that, in a moment of excessive hormones and post C-section morphine, it had seemed like a good idea.

  Needless to say, very few knew her real name. On the most official of documents, she penned her name as R. E. Cavanaugh. Everyone else simply called her Ellie, which was just fine with her.

  Giving up on sleep, Ellie forced herself to her feet. Making the homemade pasta and sauce would take several hours. She wasn’t even sure why she bothered. Nothing she did was ever good enough for her mother-in-law.

  On those few occasions when she had hinted as much, Cal had taken great offense and insisted it wasn’t true. Ellie knew better, but what could she do? Like it or not, Bernice was family, and for Cal’s sake, she would continue to try.

  Chapter 4

  Nik perched high above the bridge, cloaked in darkness. The wind caressed and ruffled his golden hair, then tugged enough to garner his attention.

  He smiled, recognizing the familiar presence. “Hello, Aurelia,” he greeted his cousin. Aurelia was one of the daughters of the Anemoi, the wind gods.

  “Hey, Nicky. What’s up?” He felt the brush across his cheek, an affectionate kiss of family and friendship.

  Unlike him, Aurelia’s coloring was almost non-existent. Like the winds themselves, she was meant to be felt more than seen. Pale skin, pale eyes, and pale hair seemed to absorb the colors around her so she blended perfectly into any environment.

  His attention focused on the pedestrian walkway well below them, at the tiny, huddled figure pushing forward against the chilly breeze across the ice-strewn river.

  Aurelia followed his gaze.

  “A human female?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  He flicked a glance her way. “I don’t know.”

  Aurelia narrowed her eyes. “Have you pissed off the aunties again?”

  Nik laughed. Over the years, he and Aurelia had plotted many times against the Moirai, better known as the Fates. When you were a bored immortal, playing practical jokes on those even older than you was a lifelong pursuit and an excellent way to pass the time. Sometimes the results of their little escapades played out over decades, which was always fun to watch.

  “Not this time, Auri.” His expression grew somber again as he saw Ellie falter. She paused for a moment at the edge of the bridge; the brisk breeze had blown the hat from her head. Now freed, her dark hair whipped around her head with a vengeance.

  After a moment of watching her hat float down into the white-capped waves of the river, Ellie lowered her head against the wind and continued.

  Nik looked to his cousin. “Do me a favor and help her out?”

  Aurelia nodded. Down below, the icy gusts softened and blew aro
und Ellie, instead of right through her.

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. What is she to you?” Aurelia asked, genuinely curious.

  “My personal assistant at the office,” he answered.

  “A lover?”

  “No. She’s married.”

  Aurelia laughed. “You found a woman who will put up with you without the benefit of your sexual prowess?”

  He laughed, too. “So it would seem.”

  “Hang on to that one, Nicky.”

  Yeah, he was thinking the same thing. The question was: why? What was it about his enigmatic PA that drew his mercurial interest and failed to let go?

  The answer remained evasive, despite his near-constant ponderings these days. Was it simply because she seemed immune to his godly charms? Was it because she seemed doggedly loyal to a man who didn’t deserve her?

  Thank the gods she was, a voice said in the back of his mind.

  His contrary nature and intolerance for incompetence didn’t exactly put him in the running for boss of the year. It was exactly because of her fierce devotion that she was still working for him.

  While those things were decidedly true, he believed there was more to it than that. Ellie Cavanaugh had an air of destiny about her. It was quite subtle, but it was there if one looked hard enough.

  He was beginning to think she might be a lost daughter of Hellas, one of those old souls who had been carried forth through countless reincarnations from ancient times. According to his grandmother, they were the ones who endured until their true purpose was fulfilled. For some, it was to develop the inner strength and courage necessary over several lifetimes to complete a worthwhile task or to right a wrong. For others, it was simply a case of “try and try again” until things worked out the way they were meant to be. In any case, those souls were incredibly rare, yet they did exist.

  It certainly would account for the vague sense of power and strength so at odds with her mundane exterior, as well as her ability to remain frustratingly unaffected. And if that was the case, then Ellie Cavanaugh was even more special than he had originally thought.