Strange Fates Read online

  “Like I-I told her. I wanted a gift for my girlfriend.”

  “Cut the crap,” he snarled. “You forgot one thing when you had that medicine woman craft her occulo spell.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied. I felt the sensation returning to my legs and I commanded them to move, but they remained stubbornly still.

  “The eyes,” he continued. “They always forget the eyes.” He pressed a knife against my cheek, at the tip of the eyes. “I’m going to correct that.”

  “What are you’re talking about?” I asked. This time, my left leg moved forward a whole half step, but Gaston didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m going to enjoy watching you stumble around without your big blue eyes.” He pressed harder until the knife cut into the skin on my cheek.

  “My eyes are brown.” They’d been blue, like my mother’s, but the occulo spell masked that.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “My eyes are brown. See for yourself.” I opened my eyes wide.

  He peered into them. “It’s a trick.”

  “No trick.” My arm burned as the spell wore off. “I just came in to get my girlfriend a gift. I can buy her something else. What about that nice crystal over there?”

  His gaze left mine for just a second, but it was enough. I swung out hard with my left arm, which was the only one working, and punched him hard. My fist connected with his nose and I felt a sense of satisfaction when blood spurted out. He instinctively put a hand to his face to stop the bleeding.

  I kicked him hard in the balls. He dropped the knife and I dove for it. He followed me and reached it first, but his hand was slippery with blood and the knife skittered away.

  He elbowed me in the face and then kicked me in the ribs, but I held on tight. He got a grip on my T-shirt, but it ripped. He dug his fingers into my side, but I grabbed his thumb and twisted until he yowled with pain.

  I gained possession of the knife and waved it in front of him. He went motionless. I stood. “Stay where you are. Don’t you dare even breathe.” I bent over and hauled him to his feet, but kept the knife to his heart until he flinched. “Give me the cat.”

  He didn’t hand it over, so I reached into his pocket and took it.

  “You bastard,” Gaston said. “You’re a piece of shit, just like your father.”

  “Like you know anything about my father,” I scoffed.

  “I know more than you do,” he said. The superior look on his face was all that it took for me to lose the tenuous grasp I had on my temper. I grabbed him by his hair and slammed his face into the tile floor.

  I scrambled to my feet. There was blood all over me and I’d ruined another T-shirt, but I had the cat. I gave the unconscious Gaston another kick in the ribs. I grabbed a prayer scarf from the bargain bin and cleaned the worst of the blood off.

  I ran all the way back to the Caddy, praying that nobody saw me. It wasn’t like Gaston would call the cops. He had as much to lose as I did.

  I drove in circles, hands shaking. I didn’t dare go back to the apartment yet, at least not until I was sure I wasn’t being followed.

  The Tracker had found me. The question was, what was I going to do about it? I’d lied when I said I’d never thought about my father, but now that the topic had been broached, the thought wouldn’t leave my mind. Who was he?

  I watched the rearview mirror all the way to my apartment, but no one followed me. I parked the Caddy in the first parking spot I found and headed inside to clean up.

  I’d stood up to the Tracker and won. More important, I had three of my mother’s charms in my possession. I had bigger problems, though. Jenny obviously was involved, which meant Elizabeth was up to her cute ass in it somehow.

  I stripped off my clothes and threw them into a garbage bag, then took a shower. I wiped the fog off the mirror and looked into it. There was a cut on my face near my eyelid, and I’d have a multitude of bruises in the morning.

  I replayed the fight with Gaston in my mind. There had been the smell of incense—and underneath that, I realized, I’d picked up on something else, but had been too eager to find the cat to realize it. The strong smell of the grave.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I had a feeling I was running out of time. The feeling intensified when Sawyer called me into his office on Friday. To my surprise, Naomi was there with him. Had they found out who I really was?

  “We’d like to invite you to dinner tonight,” Sawyer said.

  “No excuses this time,” Naomi added.

  Sawyer was the only necromancer I knew. He was involved in this somehow. My worst fears were being realized. People I cared about were getting hurt. It was time to take fate into my own hands. I accepted the invitation.

  Naomi nearly deafened me with her squeals of excitement. Was she faking it, or did the Fates still not know who I was?

  “And don’t be late,” she told me before I left the office.

  * * *

  I sat outside my aunt’s house for a long time. It could be a trap. Or it could be a family dinner. Or both. I contemplated attending my first family dinner, one that I might not emerge from alive.

  I finally mustered up enough courage to ring the doorbell.

  Sawyer answered the door.

  “Nyx, glad you could finally make it,” he said. He held out his hand and I shook it, faking an enthusiasm I was far from feeling.

  “I never turn down a home-cooked meal,” I said.

  “C’mon in,” he said. “I hope you’re hungry. I made a heap of food.” Nona appeared behind him.

  Sawyer went off to do something domestic and there was no sign of Naomi, which meant my aunt and I were alone.

  She led me to the living room where a baby grand piano stood at one end. I took a seat with my back to the wall, where I could see the door.

  “Would you like a drink before dinner?”

  I shook my head. I’d need every ounce of mental acuity to survive the night.

  She took a seat opposite me. “Naomi should be down any minute. Sawyer tells me that you are an ambitious young man.”

  “He’s being kind,” I said.

  “You also have a weekend job, I believe?” It wasn’t really a question. I’d bet my next paycheck that she had a dossier on me already.

  “At Eternity Road,” I replied. “The pawnshop.”

  “Seems like the perfect job for you,” she said.

  I gave her a sharp gaze, but the look she returned me was serene. There’s no way she would sit there and smile at me if she had the slightest inkling that I was the son of Fortuna. Would she?

  I didn’t know what to believe. At best, my aunts had reputations as meddlers, master manipulators, and liars. I couldn’t tell if she was messing with me or telling me the truth. Or maybe a little bit of both.

  “Speaking of which,” I said, “I haven’t met your other sister yet.”

  Nona frowned at my description of her older sister. “She’s out of town on business,” she said.

  What kind of business would be more important than harassing me? I thought she lived for that.

  Sawyer returned with a tray of stuffed mushrooms. “Dinner’s almost ready,” he said.

  Naomi came into the room and gave me an exuberant hug. “I told you he’d come,” she crowed to her mother. “I knew he wouldn’t break his promise.”

  I pulled her braid, but gently. “You did, did you?”

  Sawyer announced that dinner was ready. We took our places at the dining room table and he passed around a basket. “These biscuits are made from my mama’s recipe,” he said.

  He piled my plate high with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and biscuits smothered in gravy.

  We made polite chitchat as we ate. I was leery of this little get-together, but the food was amazing. Sawyer was a culinary genius. A necromancer who could cook. He was a man of many talents. Too bad they included blood magic, the dark arts, and raising the dead.

&
nbsp; Naomi went into the kitchen. A few minutes later, she came back carrying a pie in one hand and plates in the other.

  She sat back down, cut a huge wedge of pecan pie, and proceeded to tear into it with gusto.

  “How can you eat dessert?” Nona asked her.

  “Because,” Naomi said between bites, “I’ll be burning it off tomorrow.” Her mother shot her the kind of look that mothers give and Naomi added, “Swimming, Mom. I’ll be swimming. Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  “That reminds me,” Sawyer said. “When will we be meeting your young man?”

  Naomi shrugged. “If I have anything to say about it, never,” she teased.

  “I expect to meet the boy who is dating my only daughter,” Sawyer said firmly.

  Naomi handed me a plate with a slice of the pie on it. “He’s a friend of Nyx’s.”

  “He is?” Nona looked intrigued. “Tell us about him.”

  To stave off answering her, I grabbed a fork and took a huge bite of pie.

  “So there’s a necromancer in Minneapolis,” I said, after the last delicious morsel. He was sitting across the table from me, but I wanted to see their reactions.

  She gave me a sharp look. “There are several witches and sorcerers in the Twin Cities, but there are no necromancers in the area. I’d know.”

  “Necromancers are the only ones who can raise the undead, right?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Then there’s a necromancer in town,” I said. “And he sent a wraith to a restaurant downtown.” I didn’t mention that the wraith had been after me.

  I watched her reaction. Unless she was an award-winning actress, I’d swear she hadn’t known.

  Her husband, however, flinched. He knew something. Grave rot emanated from him.

  Former necromancer, my ass. He was a practicing bone-conjurer or he wouldn’t smell of the grave. It was faint, but it was there. Necromancers stank of the stuff, no matter what kind of fancy cologne they wore to mask the smell.

  “A wraith?” Nona asked.

  “Yeah, you know, a ghost, the undead, a spirit who has been called from his final resting place,”

  “No one in Minneapolis would do that,” Nona said.

  She meant no one would do it without her permission.

  “What if a necromancer were training an apprentice?” I asked.

  Sawyer nearly choked on his pecan pie. He caught me staring. “I forgot the whipped cream,” he said.

  “I’ll help,” Nona said grimly.

  “Your dad’s a little jumpy,” I commented after they left.

  I was glad I had accepted Naomi’s dinner invitation. I’d learned a lot—and maybe the most important thing was that my aunt was an excellent liar.

  “There’s some problem in his department,” Naomi replied. “He’s the VP in charge of product development.”

  Alex and Sawyer were both in product development. “What kind of problem?”

  Naomi shrugged. “Some boring technical thing to do with the water they’re using. No biggie.” She pushed around the pecan pie on her plate.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her. “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “So, you think my dad’s a practicing necromancer, is that it?” she asked.

  The ability to lie didn’t seem to run in the family, at least not when it came to me lying to my cousin’s face.

  “Maybe,” I told her. I didn’t want to tell Naomi that I thought her dad might have something to do with Alex’s disappearance.

  Her parents came back, both stony-faced. It was clear they’d been fighting in the kitchen.

  After dessert, Nona said, “Nyx, could you help me with the dishes?”

  “Of course,” I said. I wondered what she really wanted.

  I followed her to her gleaming high-end kitchen. She wrapped an apron around her waist and then handed me one.

  “I’m good,” I said. “Did you want to talk to me about something?”

  “I want you to tell me if you hear any more of a necromancer in Minneapolis,” she said.

  “I will,” I promised. I helped her load the dishwasher in silence.

  After my first family dinner, I was more bewildered than ever. I thanked them for a lovely evening and drove home. The evening wasn’t what I had been expecting, but nothing in my life was lately.

  * * *

  In the morning, I whistled as I flipped over the OPEN sign at Eternity Road for the day.

  “You’re in a good mood,” Talbot commented. “What the occasion?”

  I’d made it through a family dinner without being recognized or tortured, reason enough for my good mood. Either Gaston believed my story or he hadn’t told my aunts I was in town. I couldn’t figure out why he’d do that. I ignored Talbot’s sarcasm and got to work.

  I was trying to sell a tourist a set of early-twentieth-century china, but she dithered about the cost. “I’ll knock off another ten percent,” I said.

  The prospect of a bargain decided it for her and I rang up her purchase.

  “Buon fortuna,” she said.

  “Buon fortuna,” I replied, but the phrase made me uneasy. It wasn’t common in the United States. Maybe it was a coincidence, but my good mood evaporated.

  What if Gaston had figured out I was the son of Fortuna and decided to hurt the people close to me? He’d done it before. I grabbed my phone and called Elizabeth.

  “I thought you were working today,” she said.

  “I am,” I replied. “Everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” she said. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I said. “I’ll see you later. Gotta get back to work.”

  By continuing my relationship with Elizabeth, I was putting her in danger. The aunts would not hesitate to use her to get to me, but I wasn’t willing to walk away. My cash reserves were getting dangerously low and I needed money in the bank, just in case I had to run. But I was sick of running, so it was time to fight. At best, I figured I had a week before the Tracker caught up to me again.

  “You know any quick ways to make money?” I asked Talbot. I wanted to buy the hex sign from Ambrose. It would take more money than I had to convince him to sell it to me.

  He gave me a look. “A legal way? No. A borderline sketchy way for someone of your talents? Yes.”

  “How?” I asked. My friend was being suspiciously mealymouthed.

  He hesitated. “High-stakes poker. Very hush-hush.”

  “A backroom poker game? Sounds perfect,” I replied. I was the son of Lady Fortuna. It didn’t get much luckier than that. At least where gambling was concerned.

  “Nyx, I can’t stress this enough. The people who run it are not nice people. They will hurt you.”

  I was intrigued. “Who are they? Russian mobsters?”

  “Worse,” Talbot replied. “Frat boys.”

  “Piece of cake,” I told him. “I am a poker god.”

  He didn’t seem convinced. “Ever played tarot poker?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ll get the cards,” he replied.

  The bell over the door tinkled and an elderly woman came in. She wore an ancient trench coat with worn spots on the elbows and a faded dress with thick tights and men’s boots.

  Talbot left to fetch the tarot deck while I helped our lone customer, who wanted to pawn something.

  She opened a small silk purse and spread out a bunch of jewelry on the counter. “My husband gave it to me. He was quite generous.”

  I took a closer look at her stash. Her husband was a cheapskate. Every last piece was costume jewelry. From the looks of her, she hadn’t had a good meal in days, but she didn’t have the permanently windburned look of a street person. Not yet, at least.

  “Can you give me anything for it?” she asked. Her hand trembled with the effort not to beg.

  “I can give you five hundred for all of it,” I said. It wasn’t worth that, but maybe Naomi or Elizabeth would like the earrings.

  I took some
money out of my wallet and counted it out into her waiting hand. She tried not to look too eager. “I may have more at home,” she said.

  “I’m not sure we can use anything else—” I started, but something in her faded blue eyes stopped me. “But I’ll take a look.”

  Her face lit up. “I’m not promising anything,” I said.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she said. But there was a spring in her step as she left.

  I stared after her. The money wouldn’t last long and then what would happen to her?

  “That was a nice thing you did,” Talbot said.

  How long had he been standing there? “I’m already regretting it,” I snapped. “And now I own five hundred dollars’ worth of crap.” I wanted the evidence of my folly out of my sight, so I shoved the jewelry into the pocket of my jacket.

  Talbot just smiled. “Let’s play cards.”

  Three hours later, I stretched. “I think I’ve got the hang of it,” I said. “Now where is this game?”

  “The Red Dragon,” he said.

  “Set it up,” I said.

  “Already done,” he said. “Tonight at midnight.”

  I barked out a laugh. “How gothic of them.” I added, “I’ll have to stop by the bank at lunch. That old lady cleaned me out.”

  “Why do you do that?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Act like you don’t care,” he said.

  “I don’t,” I told him, but his expression told me he wasn’t convinced.

  He dealt the cards and stared at me.

  “Be careful tonight,” he said.

  “Of a bunch of drunken frat boys?”

  “I’m serious, Nyx,” he said. “I know you have a death wish, but I would like to live to see another day.”

  “You’re coming with me?”

  “These guys are suspicious bastards,” he replied. “Don’t let their looks fool you. Besides, they won’t let you in the game if I don’t show up to vouch for you.”

  “What should we do until then?” I asked.

  “Drink,” he said. “You won’t make it past the door if you don’t have whiskey on your breath.”

  At five minutes to nine, we closed up Eternity Road and walked to the Red Dragon.

  We slid into a hard wooden booth far away from the dance floor, but it reminded me of Elizabeth.