Strange Fates Read online

  I reached for the scissors, but before I touched them my skin started to tingle.

  I wrapped the scissors in a bit of fabric and slipped the bundle inside my leather jacket.

  Then I saw it hanging above the fireplace mantel, where Morta would have to look at it every day.

  A portrait of my mother. She wore a bright red dress and layers of charms around her throat. It was so like her, it was as if my mother were in the room with me. I touched the fine chain I always wore around my neck. She’d been wearing it when she died.

  My throat closed up as I stared up at her.

  “She was beautiful,” someone said.

  I froze and prayed that it wouldn’t be my aunt Morta standing there when I turned around, but I knew it was. I was completely screwed, but I tried to play it cool.

  “It looks nothing like her,” I lied.

  Morta scowled. “You don’t remember her as I do.” I thought I actually detected a note of regret in her voice.

  I wasn’t going to trade fond memories of my mother with the person who’d murdered her. “Did you hear about your little errand boy Gaston?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t proven himself unfaithful yet,” Morta snapped.

  “No, but you haven’t seen him in days, have you?” I’d bluff my way out of this.

  She ignored my taunting. “Tell us where your thread is.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I hear you’ve found a way to get what you want without my thread of fate. So why haven’t you done it already?”

  “I wanted you to consider coming to work for us instead,” she said. “I thought it would be a more palatable solution.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I snarled. “Did it ever occur to you that I’ve never known where it is? That I’d cut the damned thing myself if I could find it?”

  “You would deny yourself eternal life?”

  “Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead,” I said. “I’m alone. There’s nothing here for me in this life. Find it and cut it. You’d be doing me a favor.” I knew better than to let on how much Elizabeth meant to me, although from the gleam in her eyes she had a pretty good idea.

  “We’ve looked everywhere,” she admitted. I gave her a surprised look, but Morta ignored it.

  “I thought maybe she’d hid it in plain sight,” I lied. “Right under your noses.” But as the words came out of my mouth, I realized it might be true.

  Morta snorted. “She’d never leave it with us. It would be the first place we would look.”

  “But did you?” Her silence gave me my answer. I scanned the rows and rows of threads hanging in neat rows, but I didn’t find what I was looking for.

  My aunt’s gaze suddenly sharpened. “Tell us what you really seek.”

  I hesitated. “You won’t believe me,” I finally said.

  “Try me,” she replied.

  I told her part of my theory, and to my surprise she didn’t dismiss it. “Decima has been gravely ill,” she said. “But we haven’t been able to discover the cause.”

  “I think she may have been poisoned,” I said. “Someone tried to slip me the venom of a golden frog in my coffee. I thought it was you.”

  “It was not,” she replied. Her gaze sharpened. “You know who it was.”

  I nodded.

  “Tell me,” she commanded.

  “You’re not going to like it,” I warned her.

  “I do not like many of the things that come out of your mouth, Nyx Fortuna,” she said. “But you are not a liar.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Know thy enemy,” she said. “I know everything about you. Or I thought I did. You managed to surprise me by coming to Minneapolis. Now speak.”

  So I did.

  Morta gave me a smile that sent a chill down my back. “He will be dealt with, and you are going to help me do it.”

  I thought of the way the Tracker had bruised Jenny and manhandled Elizabeth. He liked to hurt women. I hated Gaston only slightly more than I hated my aunts, but I agreed to do it anyway.

  * * *

  We arranged to meet at the lake house. Elizabeth was already there when I arrived in my purple Caddy.

  She met me at the front door. “I thought you’d never get here. Come in out of the cold,” she said. She gave me a stiff little hug, but didn’t even notice when I didn’t hug her back.

  Even though my back was turned, I knew the second Gaston arrived, still swilling his bottle of nectar of the gods. I hoped it choked him.

  “Did you bring it?” Gaston said. He stared at the object in my hands. “Is that it?”

  I nodded.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” he said. “I’ll make you some hot cocoa. My specialty.”

  He was playing the jovial devoted servant, but I could see a trace of panic behind his eyes. There was no way I was going to drink anything he served me.

  “Where’s the money?” I asked.

  “Did you bring what I asked for?” he replied.

  I handed it over and he opened the container. As I expected, he didn’t bother to look closely at it.

  I put the bottle cap on the table and sent it spinning toward him. “You foul traitor,” I said. “You did it. You did it all.”

  “Nyx, what are you talking about?” Elizabeth said.

  “I know you raised a ghost, attacked Talbot, tried to kill me, but what I don’t know is why,” I said.

  “Why?” Gaston roared the question, and the genial mask he’d shown my aunts was stripped away to reveal his true nature. “Immortality, that’s why. It took me years, but I finally got this.” He held up a thread of fate.

  “You wanted revenge and used me to get it.”

  “All those years of slaving for them,” he said bitterly. “But have I been rewarded with immortality? No.” The logic of a crazy man. Eventually, I’d have to track down the nectar-of-the-gods soda and destroy the formula, but right now I had bigger problems.

  “You’ve lived longer than the average mortal. It seems to me you had a sweet deal,” I said. “So why the sudden desire to take out the aunties?”

  “Power,” he said. “I want power. And they’re in my way.”

  “You’re willing to kill for it?” I asked.

  “Your aunts wanted to kill you,” Gaston responded. “But I liked you, Nyx.”

  “Weren’t you the one who tried to blow my car off the road?” I asked. “And tried to serve me up as a water hag snack? Sent the harpies after me?”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t like you.”

  Liked me so much he’d tried to kill me, several times. He was still trying to con me, even after everything I’d learned. Why did he think I was going to fall for it? The nectar of the gods had obviously rotted his brain. Or he had a double cross planned. Or maybe both.

  “And you also needed me to get what you wanted,” I guessed.

  “There was that,” he said, apparently deciding that I was a lost cause.

  “Did you know?” Elizabeth asked me.

  I shook my head. “Not right away,” I said. “I thought it might have been my aunts. It was Gaston the whole time.”

  “Why? Why would you do all this?” Elizabeth asked.

  Gaston ignored her, picked up the container, and opened it. He held up a pair of golden shears.

  I held my breath, waiting, but he stopped to gloat. “I had them fooled,” he said. “They trusted me. With their lives.”

  “Gaston,” I said flatly. “You are a traitor.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk,” Gaston said. “That’s why I knew you’d do it. You hate them as much as I do.”

  “You’ve got me there,” I admitted. I waited to see what he would do. If my theory was correct, he would be using those scissors very shortly. “But I never trusted my aunts and they never trusted me.” At least not until now. Had Morta believed me?

  He opened the canister and held the thread up.

  “No, stop,” I said, but without emphasis
.

  He took the golden shears, snipped the thread neatly in two, and threw the scissors at me. “I don’t need these anymore.” He picked up his bag and left.

  Seconds later I heard a thud, the sound of something heavy dropping to the floor. I expected to feel relieved, but I wasn’t prepared for the melancholy that enveloped me.

  Nona and Naomi appeared. “Did you hear it?” I asked.

  Nona nodded. “I heard everything,” she said.

  “I can’t believe it was Gaston,” Naomi said. “He taught me my first spell.”

  “You did well, Nyx,” Nona asked. “My husband’s death has been avenged.”

  “What happened?” Elizabeth asked. “I thought you were going to give him a thread of fate.”

  I put the shears in my back pocket. “I did,” I said. “I gave him a thread of fate. Just not the one he wanted.”

  “Whose thread was it?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Gaston’s,” I said.

  “You mean…” She couldn’t finish the words.

  “He’s dead,” I said. “By his own hand.”

  “This sounds like a goddamned Greek tragedy,” Elizabeth said. She glanced at me. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” I replied. “I’m Roman.”

  Elizabeth plonked down on the couch and put her head in her hands. “You tricked him.”

  “He was a killer,” I reminded her.

  Naomi broke into great noisy sobs. I sat next to her and held her while she cried it all out.

  “Can I see Alex now?” Elizabeth asked. “I have so much to tell him, so much to apologize for.”

  “First we need to call someone,” I said. I hesitated and then added, “To take care of things.”

  “You mean to make sure that evil man is dead, don’t you?” Naomi asked.

  “That, too.”

  “I’ll call,” Elizabeth said. She picked up the phone and dialed. “My name is Elizabeth Abernathy. There’s been a death. Could you come to the house right away?”

  When she put the phone back down, her hands were shaking.

  “I’ll make you some tea,” I said. I was getting to be an expert at serving tea to grieving women. I had no doubt that my aunts would grieve for Gaston, despite learning that he was not the person they thought he was.

  “When can I see Alex?” Elizabeth persisted.

  “As soon as we get things taken care of here,” I promised her.

  We waited in silence until we heard the ambulance pull into the driveway. The verdict was that Gaston had suffered a heart attack.

  “He was so young,” one of the EMTs commented. “And he had so much to live for.”

  “Not really,” I said, in a voice, too low for them to hear. Gaston didn’t have anything to live for, because he was consumed by hate.

  Chapter Forty

  After the ambulance had come and gone and taken the body with it, the Wyrd Sisters sat and stared at each other in some sort of silent communication. I paced back and forth. It’s not every day that you end a life. I didn’t know how my aunts could stand it.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told them, although neither of them seemed to hear me.

  I jogged out to the car to get my cell. I needed to call Talbot to let him know what had happened.

  As I put it in my pocket, there was a cold trickle down my back. Someone was watching me. When I turned around, my aunt Morta stood before me.

  “Why did you let me take your scissors?” I asked without preliminaries.

  Her eyes were full of winter. She raised an eyebrow. “Take? Nobody takes from the Fates.”

  “You let me have them,” I said.

  “You did well, son of Fortuna,” she said. “You have potential.” Her long silver hair glittered like ice in the sun.

  I crossed my arms. “Potential? Is that what you call it?”

  “You dealt with Gaston with a ruthlessness to be admired.”

  “I didn’t want to do it,” I said. “I had to. There’s a difference.”

  “Is there?” she asked, as if we were debating the merits of red wine versus white or something.

  “Killing someone?” I responded. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “It’s not meant to be,” she told me. “Still, I was impressed. I would like you to work with us.”

  “No,” I said flatly.

  “You don’t wish to think about it?”

  “No,” I repeated.

  Her face didn’t change expression, yet suddenly there was an overwhelming air of menace in everything she said. “You will.”

  She left without another word.

  I stared after her for a long time before I called Talbot.

  “How’s Alex doing?” I asked.

  “He’s recovering,” Talbot said. “He and Dad have hit it off. But he’s been dosed with bad magic for a long time. He has long screaming nightmares.”

  “That bastard,” I said. We both knew I wasn’t taking about Alex.

  “How’d it go at your end?”

  “He did exactly what I predicted,” I replied.

  “So it’s all over?”

  “I guess so.”

  But I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  * * *

  Two days later, Alex came home. To be honest, I hadn’t wanted Elizabeth to see him until he’d become a little more coherent.

  He was skinny and shaky and squinted at the bright light of day. Tough girl Elizabeth wept when she saw him walk through the door.

  They holed up in the study, but I couldn’t hear what they said. Alex and Elizabeth emerged hours later. Alex looked drawn and pale, but they both were smiling.

  Alex was shaking so badly he could hardly stand. Elizabeth helped him to the sofa and he sank back against the cushions, as if exhausted. “It wasn’t even about me,” he said. “It was all about you.” He pointed to me.

  “Alex, it’s not Nyx’s fault,” Elizabeth said. She gulped. “You don’t know what he’s done for you. That’s why, that’s why he…”

  I didn’t blame her for not wanting to put the horrible act into words. “It’s okay,” I said. I couldn’t bear to touch her, even though I knew she hadn’t had much choice. The whole experience had reminded me what a bad idea it had been to get involved. With her. With anybody.

  And as if the world needed to remind me of that fact, the next day Elizabeth simply disappeared.

  By nightfall, Jenny called, frantic. “Have you seen her?” she asked without preliminaries.

  “Since when do you care?” I asked. “You let Gaston get his hooks into her without thinking twice.”

  “I was trying to help her find Alex,” she said. “And things just got out of hand.”

  I didn’t trust her, but there was real panic in her voice.

  “Do you know where Elizabeth is?” Jenny asked.

  “We’re not exactly talking,” I said. “Why?”

  “Goddamn it,” she replied. “I had hoped Elizabeth was with you.”

  A surge of adrenaline hit me and that’s when I knew something was wrong. “When did you see her last?”

  “This morning,” she replied. “But she was supposed to meet Alex and me for lunch and she didn’t show up.”

  “Why would you think she would be with me? She doesn’t need me anymore, remember?”

  “Oh, get over yourself, Nyx,” Jenny said, with a familiar note of exasperation in her voice. “The girl loves you. They were holding her brother hostage. When are you going to forgive her?”

  “I don’t know.” Forgiveness. It was a foreign concept. Hard to wrap my mind around. Could I forgive Elizabeth? Did I even want to try?

  Jenny was still talking. “Alex is not taking it well.”

  “Tell him I’ll find her,” I said. “No matter what. And Gaston is gone. He can’t hurt her.”

  “You tell him,” she said. There was a pause and I heard Alex’s quavering voice. “Nyx?”

  I repeated what I’d said to Jenny and it, surprisingly, seem
ed to calm him.

  I was sure my aunt Morta was behind it. Her face had been like stone when I’d refused to join the family business.

  Even though I’d tricked Gaston into cutting his own thread of fate and saved their asses, it wasn’t enough.

  I hadn’t enjoyed it. In fact, it made me sick. I was not cut out to be part of the Wyrd family.

  I drove to Nona’s and didn’t bother to knock before I strode in. The three sisters were sitting motionless in the living room, as if they had been waiting for me. Deci looked emaciated. The poison was still in her system.

  “You look like hell,” I said.

  She snarled at me, but it was a halfhearted effort. I had other things on my mind.

  “So I guess the cease-fire is over?” I asked. The aunts knew what I’d ignored about myself. I would do anything for the one I love. I hadn’t thought I was capable of love, at least not since my mother had died.

  “What do you want from me? To beg?” I got down on my knees. “I’m begging. Let her go.”

  “A bargain, my boy?” Morta asked. “Your life for hers?”

  I started to nod, willing to do anything to save Elizabeth, but my mother’s voice rang in my head. “Never take the first deal you’re offered.”

  “No,” I said. “We need to set terms first.”

  Bargaining put a gleam into Morta’s eyes. “Good.”

  “We need you to find someone for us,” Nona said. I’d heard that one before.

  “How long will it take?” I asked.

  “That’s entirely up to you,” Morta said.

  “Who am I supposed to find?”

  Nona opened her mouth to speak, but Morta forestalled her. “Not until the terms are set.”

  “You set Elizabeth free before I leave,” I said. “And she goes back to her old life without any more interference from you. You don’t touch her or her brother. In fact, you forget they even exist.”

  “How do we know you’ll keep your side of the bargain if we free our little bargaining chip?” Morta asked.

  “Because I know what you’ll do to her if I renege on my promise,” I replied.

  Morta let out a cackle. “Smart boy.”

  “Anything else?” Nona asked, clearly impatient for it to be done.