The last note had taken around twenty minutes of frozen time. This one might take even longer at this rate.
She’d said please. How could he deny her anything, let alone when she said “please”? He had to try.
Did she really mean “friends” when she said “friends”? And what did he want either way?
He could call her and ask her. That’d be a good place to start. Not that they’d done so great with spoken conversations. The last one was... memorable... to say the least. Maybe it’d be better if they stuck with notes for right now. Though, she’d asked him to call her.
They could do both.
He could let her do most of the talking on the phone. That might work. He called another piece of paper into existence.
We can try. –R
There. Short. Sweet. To the point. It worked. She might find it lacking but he was still planning on calling her—and letting her do all the talking.
He left the note there and walked back to his motorcycle. A mile from the cemetery, he snapped his fingers. There. It was done.
Oh, forget it. She couldn’t do it. It was too messy and emotional. She’d leave a different note. She went back toward her brother’s graveside and froze. That wasn’t her note.
He’d already come and gone?
She looked around.
How?
Why?
And, once again, how? That was unreal. She’d walked away maybe thirty seconds ago... tops. He come here, read her note, and written a reply.
Picking up the note, she glanced around, as surreptitiously as she could manage.
Seriously? That was it?
Okay, so obviously when he read that she wanted to be friends—he took it at face-value. Dammit. Why did he have to do that?
She almost walked away but wait…
Rooting through her purse she found another scrap of paper and scribbled a hasty “okay” on it. If he could be brief and flat, she could too. She walked backward while staring at it—daring him to pick it up again—and she nearly fell over a tombstone.
She was being ridiculous. Phoebe went to her car, glancing over her shoulder every so often. It looked to be in the same place by the time it was obscured by other stones and distance.
“We can try,” she said under her breath as she got in the car. What did that even mean? It had to mean more than it seemed. Maybe she could call Lia and ask her what she thought it meant. Yeah. She could do that. Over dinner.
He set his phone on the coffee table in front of him and stared at it. He’d already called Zeit and asked him for the optimal time for calling Phoebe. Zeit had suggested between eight and ten o’clock. Actually, Zeit’s wife had suggested that through him. His brother seemed as mystified by the female psyche as he was, which was less than useful.
It was now eight p.m.
And he was staring at his phone.
He picked it up and tried to hold it loosely in his hand. He could do this.
“Why am I doing this?” Aside from the fact that Phoebe had asked him. Because that shouldn’t be enough. Even though she’d said please. It still shouldn’t be enough. “I’ve been alive longer than she could possibly imagine. I’ve seen civilizations rise and fall. I was alive when the telephone was invented. I can do this. Regardless of whether or not it’s a good idea. I can do this.” He set the phone down. “It’s not a good idea.”
He picked the phone up. “She did ask me to.” Ruin dialed before he lost his nerve.
“Hello?” She sounded out of breath.
“Are you okay?”
A pause. “Do you mean now or in general?”
“Both.” They could kill two birds with one stone if she said she was fine and he could hang up.
“I, uhh, ran for my phone to grab it. It was on the other side of the room. I’m... okay right now.”
“How about in general?”
She sighed. “I’m not okay.”
Settling into his couch, he suddenly wasn’t in a hurry to get off the phone. “Why not?”
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?”
“Of course.” Even if he had to freeze time, she wouldn’t hear him laugh so that was an easy promise to make.
“I feel like if I die that everything my parents, grandparents, and brother did their entire lives will die with me.”
“You expected me to laugh at that?” What kind of sick bastard did she think he was?
“No. I mean... not really. That’s just something that... umm mortals say when they’re about to reveal something personal.”
“Oh.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Phoebe. You’re not going to die, not anytime soon.”
She sighed. Her breath sent shivers across his skin as if she was in the same room with him. “You can’t know that... can you?”
“I can. My father would tell me, and I would prevent it.”
“Because he knows the future?”
“He knows all time. He knew I was going to be here now.” Which was, frankly, baffling. It was almost as if his father wanted him to spend time with Phoebe... a mortal. Why would his father want him to spend so much time with a mortal woman? It was making his existence complicated. He was feeling all these emotions.
“Can you teleport?”
“What?” What did that have to do with dying?
“Can you suddenly appear and disappear?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, testing the waters.
“I thought you didn’t have superpowers.”
“It depends on how you define superpowers.”
“Anything the average human doesn’t have.”
He cleared his throat. He didn’t like the way this conversation was headed. “The majority of mortals on this earth don’t have a personal computer. I read that online. So the average human is woefully underprivileged in many ways.”
“Yes, but I’m talking powers. What else can you do?”
He could probably tell her. He just wouldn’t correct some of her erroneous deductions. “I can stop time and I can summon things from one plane of existence to another—or will them into being after having seen them or pictured them.”
“Wow. That’s so cool. So, the night we went out for milkshakes, you could have just pulled one out of the air?”
“No. Well, yes, but it wouldn’t have tasted right because I’d never tasted one before that.”
“Oh. Then, clearly, you need to experience everything so you can summon whatever you want. Like a chocolate milkshake.”
Hmm. There didn’t seem to be a downside to that thought. “I could maybe handle that.”
She laughed. It made his stomach clench tightly and caused a bizarre fluttering in his chest. He’d missed hearing her laugh. “I could handle that too. Maybe we could go out to dinner sometime soon.”
“As friends?” he clarified.
There was a heartbeat’s pause before she said, “Sure.”
He could repress how he felt. He’d been doing it for months now. A few more months wouldn’t kill him, and not just because he was immortal. Though how he was going to break contact with her entirely when this year was up was beyond his comprehension. Even the peace he felt when he watched over her as she visited her family’s gravesite would be hard to give up. He couldn’t just continue on forever this way. Could he?
No.
Though Zeit had given up his immortality to stay with his wife.
To the last, his brothers had all thought he’d lost his mind.
Immortality was a lot to give up.
“Ruin?”
“Yes?”
“I just asked if you wanted to go see a movie tomorrow night... as friends?”
“Who picks the movie?” He wasn’t familiar with the process of going to the movies with friends.
“We could play Rock-Paper-Scissors for it.”
He could look up the rules to that and practice beforehand.
“Okay, so I guess I’ll
see you tomorrow night. You’ll come here—with your motorcycle?”
“I can’t wait.” At least that was the truth. He hung up. If only he could speed up time…
CHAPTER SIX
Being friends with someone you really wanted to wrestle to the ground and kiss was... difficult. So far, Ruin hadn’t seemed to notice they were dating if she regularly repeated they were going out as friends. They absolutely, positively weren’t dating, but they were always surrounded by couples who were on dates. Plus, he paid and she let him. It was dating.
By September, she’d eased him into sitting side-by-side on the couch regularly by smiling brightly at him whenever he looked suspicious. He helped her paint the house and was working his way through other repairs. Ruin had become addicted to home improvement shows. He threw around words like “curb appeal” and “aesthetic value” and brought over the Cadillac of pressure washers to clean her sidewalks.
It took him three hours and four pet stores to pick the perfect goldfish because he insisted on helping her choose. He’d get down at eye level with the tank full of fish and shake his head. “The water isn’t quite clear enough. They don’t look healthy. I want them to have their full anticipated life span with you.” Once she’d suggested she wanted a goldfish, Ruin had read books about goldfish, so he knew. One tank of fish looked depressed. Another looked older than was “ideal.” The pet shop staff watched in baffled amazement. Apparently most prospective goldfish owners didn’t anguish over the decision like Ruin did. Once they’d picked the perfect fish, he bought a giant aquarium—with a stand—for her one goldfish.
“I could get a second goldfish,” she said, once they’d gotten everything set up. They could even go back to the same store. It looked slightly ridiculous with one fish swimming around that enormous tank. Ruin had even bought him a huge castle. Her goldfish had a castle.
“Not yet,” Ruin said, with what was probably meant to be a soothing, “settle down now because that’s crazy talk” gesture. “We’ll take it slow.”
Story of her life. Though it was sort of adorable.
Ruin named the fish “Poseidon” after she’d insisted he pick the name. She and Poseidon had long conversations about the silly immortal who came over regularly.
Ruin went with her to Lia’s wedding in October as her “plus one,” having been convinced that friends did that all the time. How wrong was it to lie to him like this? Lia said it wasn’t too bad. Lia had also tried to trip him while Ruin and Phoebe were dancing so they’d fall into each other and accidentally kiss. It didn’t work. Ruin was too smooth a dancer—though he had steered clear of Lia after she nearly caused a pile-up on the dance floor.
It was nice that she didn’t have to fight his immortal family for holidays. She’d had “custody” of Ruin for both Labor Day and Halloween already. When she told him when they’d be having Thanksgiving dinner, it was as simple as “be here at this time” and he showed up. Nice. Of course, he might have things to do for Christmas.
“Do you ever have duties related to holidays?” she asked as she pulled the sweet potatoes out of the oven.
“Duties?”
“Like... jobs. Do you have like things you have to do for holidays?”
He cleared his throat. “Sometimes.”
Well, she’d know soon enough. Christmas was only a month away. “You seem jumpy.” She couldn’t seem to peg down his mood.
Ruin looked up from where he was setting the table for the two of them for Thanksgiving dinner. “Jumpy?”
She shrugged. “Like you’re worried about something or anxious.”
“Uhh, a year is coming up. I just wasn’t sure how to handle it.”
“Does something happen at a year?” She hoped not. Ruin’s hair kept falling in his eyes, and every time he’d brush it back, she wanted to pin him to the table. Maintaining her casual tone of voice was taking all her concentration.
“I’m not sure.” He sat down in front of a plate. “There’s no way we’ll be able to eat all this food.”
“Of course not. We’ll give it our best effort until we’re so stuffed we can’t move and then we’ll crash in front of the TV, moaning about how we shouldn’t have eaten so much.”
“Mortal traditions are strange.”
“You think that’s strange. Remember how I freaked out when you nearly cut through the wishbone in the turkey?”
“That was irrational.”
“That’s a tradition too.”
“Freaking out?”
“No, saving the wishbone until it dries out and then you find someone willing to touch a dried-out poultry bone and you each take a side and pull it apart while making a wish. Whoever winds up with the knobby part in the center gets their wish.” She sniffed and blinked back some stray tears. “Phillip had this theory that because we were twins that either of us winning counted for both of us. So, he hid the wishbone in his room one year to make sure no one else tried to use it. We found it in like October of the next year.”
“That’s both... touching and disgusting.”
“I know. So quit whining about how weird mortals are and eat.” Then she slapped her hand over his when he went to follow her directions. “Wait. We’re supposed to say what we’re thankful for. It’s Thanksgiving.”
Poor Ruin looked alarmed and his hand clenched underneath hers. If she wasn’t already halfway in love with him—that would have done it.
“I’ll go first. I’m grateful that I haven’t been alone this year. I know my brother roped you into watching over me, but I wanted you to know I’ve appreciated it. You’ve been the best friend a girl could ask for.” He was her best friend, actually. Somehow, someway, it’d turned into that. He hadn’t taken her brother’s place—which was probably what Phillip had intended. Ruin had made his own place in her life. He made her laugh and eventually that was going to make her cry, but in the meantime… “I’m thankful you’ve been here this year.”
A crooked smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “I’m grateful for that too.”
Her brother would have called him on piggy-backing her answer, but she wanted their relationship, however platonic it was, to be the thing that Ruin was most grateful for so she just nodded and removed her hand from his. And regretted it. It was the closest they’d come to holding hands.
Ruin looked down at his hand and frowned. If she had to guess, she’d say he felt the same way she did. Operation Seduce Ruin in tiny, little, minute baby steps was working. Sort of.
After eating, they were lying on opposite ends of the couch, when she asked, “What scares you about relationships?”
Oh hell. She’d just asked that. If she could have dragged the words back into her mouth, she would have.
He looked like he was considering her question, and he didn’t storm from the house. That was good. “It’s not fear. Many centuries ago, I spent time with a mortal family—parents, two sons, and a daughter. I found them fascinating. The way they interacted. The way they cared for one another. And, at first, they were kind to me.”
“Did they know what you are?”
He nodded. “That’s how we met. I saved their father from being killed in a rockslide. The daughter had seen me stop time. Back then, they could more easily accept my powers for whatever reason. I stayed around. I didn’t realize I was building up their expectations. As is the way with some mortals, they started to exploit my powers. I allowed it—which fed their greed. It changed them. The requests were little at first—and it seemed acceptable to repay the kindness of their hospitality, but their requests grew as their hospitality lessened.
“Their daughter seemed different, less susceptible to the avarice plaguing her older brothers and parents. We began spending more and more time together.” He was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have. I wasn’t good at recognizing emotions.”
“She fell in love with you?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure that it was real. She didn’t know me as well as she thought, and
she was the first mortal I’d spent any time with.”
“Did you love her?”
He shook his head. “No. I enjoyed being with her. It was flattering to have someone care about where I was when I wasn’t with them. No one had ever…” He trailed off.
She doubted that. He might not think other women had noticed him leaving them, but they had.
“Anyway, our relationship had progressed, I guess you might say, so that others had expectations of our... union. In my hubris, I assumed that they’d know it was impossible... and that it was simply a physical companionship.”
The sting of jealousy was fierce but whoever this girl was—she was centuries dead—far beyond a cat fight. Besides, she could certainly sympathize with this poor girl’s misguided perception that she was in love with Ruin.
Ruin’s eyebrows drew together. “I’d been there several months when one of their sons was killed by a wild animal and they were furious with me.” He held his hands out. “It wasn’t my place to stop it. We’re not meant to prevent all tragedies and ill... fate. I would have known if I was meant to prevent his death.”
“Yet you seem sure that I’m not destined to die anytime soon.” She’d taken some comfort in that.
“I would know if you were marked for death.” His gaze was intense and she almost looked away. “And I promise I would stop it. You’ve endured enough without that.”
She nodded. “So, what happened with the family? With the daughter?” There had to be more to the story. Though it sounded as if his prior brush with mortals was fairly lame.
“They wanted me to bring him back from the dead. Which isn’t one of my powers.” He held his hands out. “If it was…”
“I know.” For all his faults and his detachment, he’d shown her a remarkable amount of compassion. He would have brought back Phillip if he could have. But Phillip had been ready to go and he’d been in so much pain.
“Then, the daughter, Magda, said that if I cared for her, I’d bring her brother back. None of them would listen. Her father attacked me. Magda’s love turned to hate overnight. She cursed me and wished her family had never shown me any kindness because I’d proven to be so mutable. I left. I was glad to leave. I’d gotten too close. They were a very influential family and the curse upon my name faded into your language.”
Servants of Fate Page 24
