Rules of Seduction

by Jenna Mullins

  “This is Cyprus Metals, right? The jewelry store?”

  “According to the giant sign out front, yes,” she says, suddenly defensive. She told him they were closed. Why is he still there, in the doorway, with that look on his face?

  “Right,” he says. “Must have missed the sign. Look, I came all the way from Tribeca. Any chance you can stay open just for a few extra minutes? I’m a paying customer, or at least, I’m planning to be. Real American currency and everything.”

  Behind him, Nadia stands up. “I’m going to go,” she says quietly, briefly touching Lola’s elbow.

  Lola hesitates. She doesn’t want it to be another decade before they see each other again. “I’ll call you,” she says, and she will. Nadia gives her a skeptical smile and ducks out onto the sidewalk.

  “Sorry,” the stranger says, as Nadia blends into the street outside—almost as though she still had the power to actually disappear.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” the guy goes on. “I’m not exactly great at reading a room.” He leans down a bit to pet his dog’s head, scratching behind its ears. “This one is supposed to do that for me, but sometimes he can’t get the hint.”

  Lola feels like an idiot. Of course. The sunglasses, the dog. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t realize.”

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Observational skills aren’t my forte, either.”

  He casually pushes his sunglasses up on top of his head. His eyes are clear and blue, and Lola feels suddenly, inexplicably, deeply seen. She can’t explain it, but a hot shiver runs up her spine, and she’s immensely grateful that there’s no way he can tell she’s blushing.

  She kind of just stands there for a moment, beaming dumbly at him, before she remembers where they are. In a store. Where she works. Which he’s entered as a customer. She clears her throat. “Did you come for a ring?”

  She doesn’t make traditional engagement rings, but lately, the younger clientele have been into edgier styles. She has a small selection she’s put together: mixed metals, art-deco angles, surprising stones, verses from her favorite poems engraved on them.

  He barks out a warm, rich laugh. “No,” he says. “I’m just shopping for a friend. Mandy. Her birthday is this week, and I want to get her something special. She’s had a rough couple of months.”

  “I’ve got some new pendants over there. Let me show you—” She cuts herself off when he reaches out a hand to her. She stares at it: strong blunt fingers, a tan line around his watch that implies he’s already spent plenty of time outside, even this early in the summer.

  “I’m guessing that there are lots of big, glass display cases in here, and that they wouldn’t fare particularly well on a collision course with a hundred and seventy pounds of idiot. So, if you don’t mind leading me around,” he says, a teasing little smile in his eyes that makes her stomach swoop.

  “Okay,” she says warily. She puts her small hand in his, carefully watching his face. Normally, when she touches a man, the response is immediate: he is overwhelmed. A startled, hot look floods his eyes. Even as her powers have faded, her essence has remained—she makes men fall in love with her, whether she wants to or not. And it’s always not.

  This one doesn’t react to her touch, though, not like most do. His fingers curl around hers, he smiles politely, and she carefully guides him around the display cases to the big silver jewelry tree where she hangs her favorite necklaces.

  She’s startled, just a bit, when he rubs a thumb over her fingers. “I like these,” he says. “Your rings. They’re… unique. I like things with texture, weight.”

  She pulls her hand away from his and, instead, grabs him by the wrist, guiding his hand up to where the necklaces are hanging. “Check these out, then,” she says. “Let me know if anything stands out.”

  She allows herself a few seconds to watch him. She’s seen more attractive men, surely. But there’s something…raw about him. Something exposed. She can’t tear her gaze away.

  His eyebrows furrow, just a bit. “What’s this one?”

  “A piece of broken china from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.”

  “Wow. How do you get your hands on something like that?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “Mysterious,” he says. “And pretty grim. Didn’t, like, thousands of people die?”

  Three thousand, she’s tempted to answer, and: I was there. Lola usually doesn’t like to talk about her work. Other people don’t need to know what it means to her, they can decide what it means to them. Still, she finds herself wanting to explain. “Yeah. I guess it is grim. But I like taking something dark and bad and turning it into something else. Something that a man gives his wife to make her feel better about a bad day at work, or… something that starts a conversation between strangers.”

  His fingers dance across the necklaces. “What about this one?” he asks.

  “It’s made from a 1953 subway token,” she says, watching the light hit the carefully inlaid tiny pieces of turquoise and rose quartz scattered across the coin. “You can sit there all day, traveling, seeing nothing but the darkness under the city, and come out exactly where you started in the first place.”

  “Sounds like some relationships,” he offers, the corner of his mouth quirking up.

  She laughs. “Something like that.”

  Even though his eyes are unfocused, turned somewhere over her shoulder, she again feels sure that he can see her. She has an urge to look away from his face, as though he might catch her staring.

  He clears his throat, reaches for the tree, and catches another pendant with his fingers, silver and gold chains sliding over the back of his hand. “This is an arrowhead.”

  “Yeah,” she replies. “Dipped in silver.” It’s one of her favorite pieces. Not just any arrowhead, it was forged from the lava of Mount Etna, used in an epic battle between Typhon and Zeus. She scrounged it up recently from a chest she’d carted over from the Old World when they settled here.

  “I used to dig for these on the beach, with my mom. I would feel around in the sand for hours, searching, until I found one. There were always a lot buried where we used to go swimming, out on this little beach near my mom’s hometown in Connecticut.” He smiles, a little wistful. “Well, I think there were a lot. I guess it’s possible that my mom just buried the same one over and over for me.”

  Lola has always loved selling her jewelry. This particular necklace has a dark meaning for her. She pocketed it after a bloody battle almost a thousand years ago, and it represented death and war. For this stranger, it represents sunny weekends with his mother. For his friend, Mandy, it will mean something else entirely, and on it will go.

  She pulls the necklace off the silver tree and folds it into his hand, saying, “This is probably the one, then.”

  As his fingers close around the arrowhead, the tips brush hers, and she feels the heat of his hand dance all the way up her arm, settling somewhere around the base of her neck. They’re standing so close that she can smell the last vestiges of his cologne, a woodsy, clean smell lingering despite a day spent in the sweltering city.

  “I’ll ring you up,” she says, stepping quickly away to the register.

  “Thanks.” He follows her to the counter seemingly already comfortable in the cramped space. “So where are you from…?”

  “Lola,” she provides, since he’s obviously fishing for a name. “Lola Perris.”

  “Where are you from, Lola? You’ve got an accent. I can’t place it.”

  “I’ve moved around a lot.”

  “Army brat?” he asks.

  She hesitates. She’s usually got plenty of lies and stories at the ready when people ask her about her past, but for some reason, they all get trapped in her throat now that she’s caught in his cool, unfocused blue gaze.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” he says suddenly.

  She shakes her head. “That’s all right. I was born…” In a seashell. The words flash in her mind. She ha
s the sudden, insane desire to confess. “Off the coast of Greece,” she rushes on quickly. “Let’s just say my family is pretty untraditional and leave it at that.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “Not usually this nosy, but you can’t blame a guy for being curious about the mysterious, morbid artist-girl with the musical accent.”

  “I’m not morbid,” she says, feeling her cheeks heat up and a smile curve her mouth. She punches numbers into the register and takes his credit card when he digs it out of his wallet. The name on it is Julian Lawson.

  “I go by Jude,” he says, as if he caught her checking for his name, running his fingers over the edge of the display case. “Parents are Beatles fans.”

  She arranges the necklace in a gift box for him when he requests it. She takes her time, desperate to say something—anything—that might make him stay. Instead, she feeds him the standard line: “Thanks for shopping at Cyprus Metals.”

  “Sure thing. Thanks for staying open. Let’s go, Cow,” he says to the dog, who immediately stands at attention and leads Jude toward the exit.

  When he opens the door, a new breath of hot air swirling into the room, he pauses, and turns over his shoulder. “Lola?”

  “Yes?”

  He grins, broad and sexy and even a little silly, and says, “It was really nice holding your hand.”

  And then he’s gone.

  II

  Dean

  Hours later, Dean Rayson is kneeling on the bar in the VIP section of Epiphany. It’s two in the morning, and total chaos. The erratic heartbeat of the DJ’s music, the vibration of a thousand people dancing and sweating and fighting and falling in love: these are the things Dean can’t kick. The sense that anything could happen. Here, with a bottle in hand, swaying above the crowd, wild-eyed and strong, he feels like the god he was born to be.

  It’s been a while.

  The gods began to lose their powers around a thousand years ago. It was a slow burn, at first, but for the last century or so, they’ve been all but tapped out. Power is fueled by faith; so long as the mortals believed, the gods were omnipotent. When the people stopped believing, moving on to new ideologies, finding comfort in science instead of myth…

  Well, the gods’ lives became decidedly less fun.

  Some, of course, are worse off than others. Dionysus, for example. Once Dean had been proud to be descended from such an epic, charismatic, influential god—always surrounded by wine and women, music and dance. Last he heard, five hundred years back, Dionysus had gone underground, like most of the old gods, paranoid to the point of near-psychosis.

  Immortality isn’t exactly a cakewalk when you’re running on empty.

  “You want some?” he asks the girls surrounding him. He grins and takes a swig of absinthe. “Come and get it.” He’s been hanging out with Jane and Jenny, twins who are heiresses to some hotel or oil or hair product empire. One of them—he can’t quite tell them apart yet—tosses her head back and opens her mouth, painted red lips parting and stirring an old, dormant memory in Dean. He shakes it off and leans forward to tip the bottle, splashing liquor against her tongue.

  Dean’s buddy Weston has been hyping this place all week, citing rumors about some secret back room and a DJ that’s about to take the whole EDM scene by storm. The place is decent—dark and sexy, with chandeliers made out of jagged, broken champagne bottles and couches so big they’re more like beds, which hasn’t gone unnoticed, judging by the number of twosomes and moresomes writhing on them.

  Weston and the girls were supposed to meet him, but Dean’s never very good with schedules. Besides, Dean had been planning on taking it easy tonight. He was just going to swing by, see if the guy could spin, say hi to his friends, have a drink. Of course, when Dean showed up, Weston was nowhere to be found. The girls are probably just running late, but Wes either shows up precisely on time or just doesn’t show up at all. He has always been all talk; he probably stayed home to count his floorboards and make sure there’s still an even number. Technically, Dean works for him, arranging after-parties for Weston’s shows, but business has been slow since Weston’s tour ended. Weston says he’s taking time off for songwriting and soul-searching, but as far as Dean can tell, he’s mostly ironing his jeans, obsessively tweeting, and compulsively polishing every surface in his loft. Every time they hang out these days the dude reeks of disinfectant.

  Dean’s intentions to turn in early were thwarted when the twins showed up. Jane and Jenny, identical visions in sequined miniskirts, could make any man abandon his self-imposed curfew. He’s been around long enough to know that girls who look like they do are rare, and two of them at once? Even rarer.

  And Dean’s never been a fan of spending a night alone.

  Jenny—he’s pretty sure it’s Jenny—swallows the shot he poured into her mouth and looks up at him like an engraved invitation, so he leans in to chase the liquor with a kiss. Before he can get to her, though, some idiot grabs his shoulder.

  “Dean! You’re everywhere, bro,” says the guy, a lanky opportunist whom Dean recognizes as Nathan, one of the kids he tends to bump into around town. He’s a promoter, maybe, or possibly just a trust fund train wreck with a Black Card. It’s hard to tell the difference. “Is there any bartender in this city you haven’t got wrapped around your finger?”

  Dean tosses Jenny an apologetic look and hops down from the bar, drinking the last swill from the bottom of the bottle. “Just checking out the scene,” he says.

  “Yeah? You being shady tonight, Deano?” Nathan asks, with the comfortable familiarity of an old pal. Dean’s been acquainted with Nathan for six months or so. For a mortal, he guesses, that might constitute a friendship.

  “What?”

  A salesman’s smile crawls over Nathan’s face, and he leans in close to Dean. “Shade, man. Don’t even tell me you haven’t tried it.” He’s just tickled to have caught onto something before Dean did, and he begins to steer Dean away from the bar, back to a shadowy corner where a few dark-eyed kids huddle, trying and failing to look casual. “Hook my man up,” Nathan tells them.

  Dean’s head is already swimming from the booze. It’s the one upside to losing his powers: As he’s grown weaker, his body’s tolerance for mind-altering substances has dwindled, too. It used to take barrels of wine just for the first glow of a merry drunk. These days he can get loaded with a few cocktails, if they’re poured generously. “I’ll try anything once,” he says, pulling his wallet out of his jeans. “Shade, huh?”

  “Damn it, be cool,” one candy man hisses, beady eyes darting around, twitchy and suspicious.

  Dean rolls his eyes. Paranoid tweakers. “Just give me a few hits, okay?”

  “Bro, one is enough,” Nathan warns, but Dean shrugs him off.

  “You want my money or not?”

  They count his cash and fork over five pills. They’re small and black, and in the flash of light from the DJ booth Dean makes out the shape of a round spiral stamped into the side and feels his lips twist into a scowl, an old memory starting to harsh his buzz. He’s about to swallow the whole handful when his phone vibrates. He shoves the pills into his front pocket and checks his screen.

  It’s a text message from Lola. She and Nike have come after all.

  He notices he also has an unread message from Nadia from a few hours ago, but figures he’ll write back later. Nadia’s never mad at him. Of all their old friends, Nadia’s the only one who never breathes down his neck, even when he goes off the grid for months at a time. She knows he just needs to take a load off sometimes.

  The music is getting louder, faster. Dean grabs a shot of tequila from a tray and tosses it back, slipping away from Nathan and the dealers and following the pulse of the party into the center of the dance floor.

  Lola sees him at the same time he sees her. She tilts her chin in a silent greeting as their eyes meet through the throng.

  She’s radiant as ever, of course, dizzyingly beautiful despite her best efforts to hide it. Her eyeliner is s
mudgy and thick, and she clearly tried to cover the impossible curve of her body with a too-big flannel shirt tossed over her short black dress. It’s no use, though. Lola may not have the powers she once did—she can’t change her appearance on a whim or incite wars with a sultry glance—but her capacity for seduction is still there, faded, lingering like day-old perfume.

  Lola’s not usually the type to partake in Dean’s brand of late-night hedonism, but once in a while Nike can get her to loosen up. A preppy frat boy steps up close to Lola, leaning in and whispering something in her ear. Dean sees Lola roll her eyes, but she nods and starts to dance with him anyway. Dean raises an eyebrow, but the music is too loud for conversation, so Lola just shrugs. The guy buries his face in her hair, practically swooning as they dance, and Dean almost feels sorry for him. Poor kid doesn’t stand a chance.

  “There you are,” Nike shouts over the din, suddenly appearing at his side with two drinks in her hands, her vibrant red hair tied up in some sort of elaborate purposeful mess. “We were supposed to meet outside.”

  “I guess I was late. Or early?” He takes one of the drinks from Nike and downs it in one painful swallow.

  “Uh, that was definitely not for you, but whatever!” Nike shakes her head, red curls bouncing. She’s wearing a slinky, sequined dress and heels that put her almost at his height.

  “Where’s Mark?” he asks.

  It’s pretty rare to see Nike and Lola partying together. Though they’re thick as thieves all day, they don’t exactly run at the same speed when it comes to nightlife. Nike usually hangs with Mark while Lola begs off early to watch documentaries on Netflix or read classic poetry or watch raindrops travel down windowpanes or whatever.

  Nike rolls her eyes. “Around here somewhere. I sent him off to find you so I could get some breathing room.”

  Dean nods. He knows Mark goes all Neanderthal every time some mortal guy gets handsy with Nike, or Lola.

  She grins, mischievous as the flashing lights catch her eyes. The truth is, she likes handsy.

  “And Weston?” he asks.