"So, was this a waste of time?" Ti said gently.
"No. Not at all. Gives me a better sense of the information, love. Thank you."
"What did you find out, Uncle?" Dio fidgeted again, his own frustration only mounting. "Did you figure out where the bad guy got off the ride?"
Uncle Hades turned to stare, dark-blue eyes blank, as if he didn't recognize his own nephew. Dio tried to keep still. His uncle was just thinking, but those eyes could be disturbing. "I did. Our murderer left the bookcase on the first floor."
"And where to, then?"
"The first floor, unfortunately, hosts the highest traffic, both physical and psychic. The trail becomes muddled after a few yards."
"Well, fuck." Dio knew it couldn't have been that easy, or Uncle Hades would've found the killer already. But he didn't have anything close to the patience for all this. "So we found lots of crap out but don't know even a teensy crap more than when we started."
"We know much more than when we started." Uncle Hades clapped a hand on Dio's shoulder. "It's a matter of making the pieces fit now."
"Yeah. I'll get us a bigger sledgehammer," Dio muttered.
The grip on his shoulder tightened, and Dio glanced up to see if he'd offended his uncle. No, the stern expression hadn't changed. "It does leave us in an uncomfortable place though. We may still have a murderer lurking in the library."
Charon rose from his chair. "Do you need me to go hunting, my lord?"
"No." Uncle Hades waved a hand. "Thank you for the offer, but we don't know what we hunt for yet. My concern is for Leander, living here alone."
"I don't live alone, my lord." How Leander managed to sound anxious, offended, and horrified in one short sentence was puzzling and miraculous.
"The library assistants and your gardeners won't be able to defend you if our murderer sees you as a threat."
Gardeners? He has a garden? With people working there? How big a staff does one minotaur need? Are they handsome? Maybe shirtless? Taking care of other kinds of needs besides plants? And why does he act like he never talks to anyone if he has them?
"So I believe we should have Dionysus stay with you."
"Me?" Dio blinked out of his thought haze.
Leander staggered up and took a step back from the table. "My Lord?"
"Yes. Dionysus already has a rapport with the assistants. He would be the least disruptive choice. Don't be so quick to judge, Leander. He's more than capable of defending you."
"I didn't… I wasn't…" Leander was actually wringing his hands. "But in my rooms?"
"Just until this is over. It will do you good to have some company for once."
Dio glanced between his immovable uncle and his distressed assignment. Well. This was going to be interesting.
The Librarian's Bodyguard
Chapter Seven
Leander fretted and paced his rooms, finished off three popsicles, then felt queasy. What was he supposed to do with a god in his rooms? His inviolate, impregnable space? He could ask Lord Dionysus to sleep outside. No, oh, merciful stars, he couldn't do that to a god. Could he simply say please don't leave the front parlor? Was he supposed to feed his visitor? He didn't have any ambrosia and certainly didn't have wine. What had Lord Hades been thinking?
The knock on his door set his heart skittering and jumping. He stood paralyzed for a long moment, simply unable to process anything. He's not a stranger. He's been kind to you in his sane moments. Stop this nonsense.
When the second series of knocks sounded, Leander straightened his sweater, opened the door, and stood gaping again. Lord Dionysus stood ramrod straight in a Victorian-era military dress uniform, a rucksack slung over his shoulder. Even his hair had been tamed back in a neat tail.
He saluted Leander, crisp and proper. "Reporting for librarian bodyguard duty, sir."
"Um." For a long moment, Leander could only blink at the vision in his doorway, inappropriate thoughts creeping in about how handsome Lord Dionysus was in uniform. He must have taken too long, since the god on his doorstep cleared his throat, his dark eyebrows creeping up toward his hairline. "Oh. Yes. I suppose… suppose you should come in."
Dionysus completed the salute, clicked his heels together, and marched inside. "So, are we in for the night? Do you need to go back to work?"
"No more today." He had to go feed the assistants, visit his garden, and try to calm his stomach for dinner. What was he supposed to do about dinner? Mother of us all, I can't do this. I can't even think with him in my space.
"Awesome. So we can kick back." Dionysus dumped his rucksack beside the sofa and began yanking off his knee-high cavalry boots. This became quite a production and ended up with him on the floor, tugging and swearing.
Leander watched in horrified fascination. He wasn't certain some of those swears were actual words. "My lord? Do you need assistance?"
"Nope, nope, I got this." The last yank resulted in the right boot coming loose and Dionysus knocking himself in the head. "Ow."
It took a heroic effort not to sigh. "I should… perhaps you might… my lord, are you all right?"
"Look, I know you don't want me here." Dionysus yanked off his socks and clambered to his feet, still rubbing his forehead. He undid the jacket buttons and tossed the garment gracelessly over the sofa arm, where it slid halfway off again. "But Uncle Hades said I'd be the best fit, and I kinda go by what he says most of the time."
Leander could only stare in horror at the chaos in his parlor—boots and socks strewn haphazardly across the floor, jacket half on, half off the sofa, rucksack leaning drunkenly on its side. He choked out, "My lord—"
"What? What's wrong?" Dionysus followed his gaze and clicked his tongue. "Oh, got it. You're one of those. Like Fafnir."
"I don't… I'm not a dragon."
"Yeah. I got that much." Dionysus shot him a sideways glance as he picked up his boots. "I'm not really that stupid. See, no, my brother Hermes? His boyfriend's a dragon, but he's just a teeny bit fussy about neatness. And everything having a place." With exaggerated care, Dionysus lined the boots up along the wall by the door, toes precisely even, then stuffed the wayward socks inside. He picked up the jacket and hung it on a nearby chair. "He yells at me if I don't use a coaster."
"I don't have a place for you, my lord," Leander blurted out.
"Okay, that's gonna have to stop. I'm your houseguest, not your liege. Please, please, no more my lording all over the place." Dionysus straightened his rucksack against the sofa. "I'll just sleep out here, okay? I can sleep anywhere. Really. Anywhere. I once fell asleep next to a marching band. Though I was very tired. All right! Garden! Could I see it?"
He was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his bright smile reminiscent of a mad squirrel. What else can I do? The pandas need to be fed. I can't send him away. "This way, m—please."
Perhaps he could curtail the honorifics, but he couldn't bring himself to call a god by name as if they were friends. But could he survive someone so careless in his home? In his garden?
"If you could, perhaps, refrain from touching anything?" Leander suggested as he unlocked the garden door.
"Plants, oh host of mine. I do understand them. Best behavior. I promise."
To say that Dionysus squealed with joy at the sight of the garden might have been unflattering. But he did make a sound loud enough to make Leander's ears flatten. "Holy fucking catnip balls! It's gorgeous!"
Leander's heart nearly stopped when Dionysus danced barefoot out onto the grass. "My lord, please! The gardeners!"
He did an absurdly graceful pirouette to avoid stepping on one, then placed both feet down carefully and crouched low. "Britannicum. Leander… oh, how flipping cool. You have enchanted britannicum for gardeners. Here I was picturing ripped cover models with no shirts and man buns and stuff, and you've got little mushroom dudes instead. So much better."
The gardeners initially drew back from him, as Leander expected. When Lady Athena had come to help him build his raised vegetable be
ds, they had all hidden. But Dionysus stayed where he was, chattering and crooning to them. They began to drift toward him in ones and twos, then ran toward him until they were gathered in a semicircle around the wild god now seated on the grass.
"Nice to meet you, little gardeners." Dionysus held out a finger to each so they could approximate shaking hands with him. "Would you like to show me your garden? It's a beautiful place, full of wonderful smells."
They jumped up and down, nodding their mushroom caps, and as a group scurried over to the lemon tree, pointing and gesticulating in excitement, some of them clambered the little tree to show off the recent blossoms.
"What a fab little tree. You're just starting out, huh?" Dionysus ran gentle fingers over the branches, and the blossoms suddenly multiplied, much to the delight of the gardeners.
They led him from plant to plant, from bed to bed, and everywhere the plants flourished and reached for him. Leander stood rooted in the doorway, wonderstruck. He had been so certain of his view of Dionysus as a destructive god, a god of debauched irresponsibility. But this… this was astonishing and beautiful, this gentle, playful act of creation happening in Leander's garden. Dionysus's speech became song and his footsteps a joyous dance, with the little gardeners twirling and cavorting after him. Where he danced, the grass curled up to meet his feet. Where he sang to the plants, they budded and leafed, green shoots showing in the potato bed, more leaves curling up on the parsley, the pea plants suddenly brimming with flowers.
Terrified of breaking the spell, convinced that if he did, the garden would wither, Leander edged around the blackberry bramble wall so he could reach the bamboo stand to gather the evening shoots and leaves. With a basket hooked on one arm, he picked carefully, keeping an eye on the god whose shirt had come untucked, the silver buttons somehow half undone. Now Dionysus had the gardeners in a line, engaging in some odd ritual where they all squatted down, then rose up one by one with their little mushroom arms in the air, before immediately squatting down again.
A sudden recollection hit him of stories about Dionysus. He had commanded vines to take down city walls, to destroy the palaces of kings who had displeased him…
"My lord," Leander called softly, then louder, "Dionysus!"
Dionysus jerked around as if a string tugged on his shoulder. "What? I was just teaching them to do the wave."
"Wave…" Leander shook his head to clear the distraction caused by the open-shirted vision in the midst of his gardeners. "You won't… won't turn my garden into a wild place, will you?"
The bright smile Dionysus had turned his way faded. "Um, no. This is how I bless the vineyards every year, and they're the opposite of wild. I get where you're coming from. You only have stories about me, right? And the little bit you've seen. Look, I had some anger issues when I was young. Not gonna defend some of the stuff I did, but I had a lot to be pissed about, right?"
Did you? You have power and beauty. Family who support you. What could have made you angry enough to commit murder and mayhem? "As you say, my lord."
Dionysus turned to the gardeners, his expression suddenly far too blank. "Thank you, little mushroom dudes. It was awesome to meet you. Leander, we have pandas to feed?"
No, I have pandas to feed. This is my time with them. "Would you mind terribly if I did this alone?"
"I'm supposed to stay with you, aren't I?"
"There is no other way into the pandas' room except their own special door, which is far too small for anyone but them."
"Sorry. Got it." Dionysus held up both hands in surrender. "I'm going back to your front room. To sit. And not make a mess."
Leander stared after him as he plodded from the garden and shut the door. Odd. His home had been invaded, his life disrupted, and here he stood, worried that he had hurt the invader's feelings somehow.
Dio sulked on the sofa for about three minutes before he started itching to get up. Being on edge didn't allow him to sit still, and there was so much edge going on. Sorrow, anger, frustration all sat in a clawing muddle in the middle of his chest. Now he could mix in the fact that Leander not only disliked him but also mistrusted him and add a good dash of sexual tension as a garnish. Sexual tension on his part anyway. He had his doubts about Leander. If it was only one-sided, did it make it sexual unison? Sexual one-sion?
Yeah, he let most things just slide off him these days. Not worth it to get upset about what other people thought. He flung himself from the sofa and paced, tearing the band from his hair to let the black waterfall loose. Sometimes though, just sometimes, the way people looked down on him got on his last nerve. Everyone's clown. Lovable but bumbling and incompetent, with the attention span of a squirrel on crack. Oh, and let's not forget unpredictably violent. And messy.
He stopped and realized he'd unintentionally wandered farther into Leander's living quarters. The kitchen, he'd passed through the kitchen, hadn't he? Now he stood in a room with a large square table, a rolling chair pushed up to it, and several overhead lamps. Shelves housing neatly placed tools and bits of wood lined the back wall. But the partially finished project on the table arrested his attention. A model of meticulously shaped bits of flat wood covered most of the table, a gorgeous, detail-laden reconstruction of the Taj Mahal. He could almost swear the thing was made of popsicle sticks—
"Don't touch that!"
The anguished bellow from the doorway nearly startled him enough to fall into the model, but he managed to jerk back from the table instead, catching himself on the chair to keep from falling on his ass.
"Um. Hi. I didn't."
"My lord," Leander wheezed. "Please. My rooms. Don't."
Dio stomped down hard on the irritation prickling his skin. Being yelled at was no fun, but Leander looked pale. No, he was gray. And his breathing just didn't sound healthy at all.
"Damn, damn, damn," Dio muttered. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
This wasn't Leander being judgmental or pissy; this was him having a full-blown panic attack, and it was something Dio should have spotted earlier. A lot of the kids had them when they first came to Maenad house. It wasn't like this was something foreign or alien for him. He moved toward Leander slowly and took him under the elbow, not gripping, just supporting, urging his steps back through the kitchen and out to the big sofa in the front room.
He kept his voice to a murmur, a constant stream of reassuring nothings. "It's okay, it's okay. Just another couple steps. You're almost there. Just hold together here. That's great. That's fabulous. You're fabulous. One more step. Just a step to the right. But no hands on your hips. And a step to your left and a flick to the right. No mirrors here though. That's it."
Sure, if Leander had passed out, Dio could have carried him to the sofa. His back wouldn't have forgiven him for a while, but he could have. This saved both his spine and Leander's dignity. It was a close thing, with Leander sounding like a broken squeezebox and shaking like he might come apart at his joints.
"Okay. Now… water," Dio muttered to himself and hustled off to the kitchen, hoping that his going back into the rooms wouldn't freak Leander out more. He grabbed a glass of water from the sink and tried not to think about where the water came from. It would make his head hurt. Damn pocket dimensions.
When he got back to Leander, the librarian had half collapsed on his side, head leaning against the sofa arm as if he couldn't hold it up. Poor guy. With those heavy horns, maybe he can't sometimes. Dio ducked under the horns and heaved to get Leander upright enough to sip some water. The whole sitting-up thing wasn't going well, so Dio lifted his feet up on the sofa instead and snagged a blanket from a nearby wing chair. If the panic-attack victim had been anyone else, he would've offered his arms as a refuge. Somehow he didn't think Leander would react well to a hug.
Think of something non-threatening to talk about. Think of something not crazy and linear and logical. "Oh, books!" Dio perched carefully by the twitching hooves and waved a hand at the walls. "Look at all the books you have. You work all day with bo
oks, and then you come home to more… books."
Oh, yeah, you're a genius. That was the most banal, stupid thing you could've said.
Leander wheezed something that sounded like "fiction," which made Dio take a closer look at the titles on the shelves. He recognized some of them from movies, so, okay, it figured the stories were books first. Most of them… Oh, wait.
"I get it. You spend all your time with dusty histories and magic philosophy and junk, and when you get home, you wanna read stories. That I get. I mean, I'm not the world's biggest reader. I like manga and graphic stuff. But I like most stories when someone reads out loud." He had to stop and swallow hard as memories of Meggie reading to him nearly swamped him. "Yeah. Stories."
Dio reached out to pet the nearest hoof, pleased when the twitching started to calm under his hand. "But you don't have new stuff. It's all old. I know Jane Austen stuff is old. I watched the movies. Love the clothes, but everything was so freaking stuffy and proper. They would've tossed me out on my ass at every party. I mean, don't get me wrong. The stories are good ones. And come on, you've gotta love Elizabeth, right? Takes absolutely no shit from anyone. She doesn't care who they are. But still being all polite about it."
One dark eye had fixed on him beneath the shaggy russet hair. The bull's ear that wasn't pressed against the sofa arm turned and twitched with his voice, so Leander was obviously hearing him, if maybe not quite listening yet. The wheezing had lessened. Good.
"So you don't like new stories? Just nineteenth-century stuff?"
"I don't—" Leander cleared his throat and slowly pulled himself to a sitting position, head down, gaze on the floor. "I feel… ridiculous, my lord. I must apologize for my absurd behavior."
"No. There's no must here. I hit a bad spot in your trauma centers and you reacted, right? Nothing to be sorry for. So, the books?"
Brandywine Investigations Page 9
