Rise of the Blood (6 page)

“My tickets were non-refundable,” I lied…or not. Who knew with airline travel these days?

“Oh, well—”

“Can I get you girls a drink?” Hermes asked, sliding a hand down Christie’s back in a way that made me want to slap him. Setting them up…worst idea ever. “Tori, you look like you could use one.”

“Sure, whatever.”

Probably two of the more dangerous words ever spoken. I could just imagine him making it a double, but he was off like a shot before I could take it back.

“Oh. My. God. Why didn’t you tell me about him sooner?” Christie gushed the second he was out of earshot. “You’ve been holding out on me! I mean, sure I’d met him in the middle of all the insanity in San Francisco, but not
met
him, met him.” I was sure that made sense in her head, if not so much when it came out of her mouth. “And he’s so
charming
!”

“He is?”

“You don’t see it? How do you not see it?” she gasped.

“Well, of course, I mean, I just think of him more like a brother—”

And speak of the devil. “There you are!” A bearlike arm wrapped around my shoulders. “The prodigal sister returns!” Spiro slurred. He squeezed me too tightly and breathed his beery breath into my ear. “Who
is
this gorgeous creature you’re chatting up?”

Spiro
would
see it that way. Last I’d seen him, he’d been hopping mad about me exposing his little love nest with Lenny Rialto’s new wife. I hadn’t
meant
to reveal it, but that didn’t change the pyrotechnics that resulted and nearly got my family expelled from the circus. It had only been smoothed over with a lot of ouzo, guy talk and, I suspected but couldn’t prove, my brother subsequently seducing Lenny himself when they were in their cups. Oh, and the decision to let me go. Me and only me, for kicking over the whole hornet’s nest.

Rumor had it that our family line had started with the god Pan beer-goggling one of the immortal gorgons. If I’d taken after Medusa’s half of the family with my gorgon glare, Spiro had definitely taken after Pan’s with his libido. If it was pretty and over the age of consent, it was fair game.

“She’s off limits,” I stage-whispered back so that Christie would overhear.

Hermes reappeared at her side as if on cue. “Ouzo,” he said, handing me a glass. “And a white wine spritzer for you,” he continued, bowing to present it to Christie.
A spritzer
. Probably the girliest of all girlie drinks.

“Where’s Yiayia?” I asked Spiro, trying to distract him from Christie, especially with the god of chaos taking it all in. The last thing any of us needed was him having fun at my brother’s expense. “I tried to call her, but—”

The look of I-know-something-you-don’t-know that flashed across Spiro’s face was not comforting.

“Let me guess, it went to voicemail? She’s probably off with her new—
cough
—paramour.”

He actually
said
cough. But that wasn’t the startling part.
Yiayia. Dating again
. It was… Pappous was barely in his grave…barely
two years
in his grave, anyway, and I’d thought… Well, I guess I thought that all of her crazy obsessions had taken his place. I couldn’t imagine another person filling it.

“Her what?” As if I’d misheard.

“
Anipsi
!” Yiayia’s voice rang out behind me, cutting through the babble of the party all around the terrace.

I turned and…and…
stared
. Every bit as paralyzed as if she’d hit me with the gorgon glare. Yiayia and a young man. Young for her, anyway, by at least twenty years, and with a beard fully as long as her own, starting from some truly impressive mutton chops, flowing down over his chest and out to the sides in a thick handlebar mustache. All of it flaming red. He wasn’t wearing a kilt and a tam, but he might as well have been. He looked like he’d stepped straight away from the Scottish highlands.

Yiayia embraced me, her beard tickling my ear as I hugged her back. She took after the gorgon side of the family for sure, which was how she’d gotten the bearded lady gig with Rialto Bros. When I stepped out of her arms, I noticed that her eyes were glowing. Not literally, like Serena’s, but with happiness.

“Anipsi, let me introduce you to Fergus. Fergus, my favorite granddaughter, Tori.”

Fergus smiled, or so I assumed by the twitching of his facial hair. I couldn’t actually glimpse lips or teeth. I held out a hand and he used it to pull me in for a bear hug, thumping me gently on the back.

“Any relation of Lorelei’s…” I’d known they must be on a first name basis, but still hearing her given name on his lips sounded odd.

Plus, my brain stuck on the question of how on earth they found each other’s lips to kiss. While I tried to steer quickly away from that thought (
avert! avert! avert!
I insisted, scrambling all my brain cells to turn that ship around), I couldn’t help but wonder about the Velcro effect. Did it take real effort to disengage? Ack!

At least I was no longer thinking about my fear of heights.

“We met at an extreme beard and mustache competition,” Yiayia continued, heedless of the mound of mental floss I was adding to my shopping list. “Fergus beat me. The first time I’ve faced a worthy opponent since puberty.”

“
Yiayia
!”

“What? I can say puberty. There, I said it again.
Puberty, puberty, puberty
. Speaking of which, where’s
your
young man?”

I didn’t even want to think how those two things—Armani and puberty—connected up in her brain.

“He went to freshen up. I’d, ah, better check on him,” I said, retreating like the hounds of Hades were nipping at my heels.

I hurried back through the restaurant and to the elevator, using the time it took to arrive to collect myself.

Yiayia dating.

Hermes and Christie dating.

Apollo and Serena…dating?

My brother on the prowl.

What
was
it about weddings?

As I stepped into the elevator and contemplated which number to press, I realized I had no idea what room I was going to and no way to call Nick. Yes, finally,
finally
, it was Nick. With my whole family gone crazy…er than usual, he was the most familiar and least insane thing in my world. Unfortunately, we’d only arranged for one of our phones to work in Greece, figuring we’d be together the whole time and didn’t need the extra expense. I rode the elevator to the lobby, calling Jesus on the way down, knowing
he
had an international calling plan already.

“Hey, where’s Nick,” I asked, burning to get to him and a semblance of normalcy.

“In your room, I’d guess,” he answered.

“Right, which would be?”

“Oh, number 501.”

“Thanks.”

I disconnected, rode the elevator
back
up to floor five and knocked on the first door to the left—501. Right next to the elevators. Oh joy. I hoped they were quieter on the outside than on the inside. Nick opened the door at my knock and stood in the entrance in a white dress shirt open down the front, exposing an incredibly nice chest with equally nice abs. I stepped right up to that chest and wrapped my arms around him. Nick eased back into the room, pulling me with him and closing the door behind us.

“You okay?” he asked. He stroked my hair and held me to him, resting his chin on the top of my head, because while I was
not
diminutive, Nick was tall enough to make me look semi-petite. Or maybe it was being overwhelmed that made me feel small. I listened to his heartbeat and let his breath stir my hair, so content for a moment that I forgot he’d asked a question that required an answer.

“I am now,” I said.

I felt him smile against the top of my head. It made me smile back.

“But—” he said for me.

“But…you know that part in a story summary where it pretty much boils down to
and wackiness ensues
?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s ensuing.”

He pushed me back from him gently and smoothed the hair away from my face—pushed it aside, anyway. Actually smoothing or taming my vipers’ nest of hair would probably take years of training, not to mention a bullwhip. If Nick could truly accomplish that, he’d fit right in with my family of circus folk. Thank gods he didn’t.

He looked straight into my eyes, his own deep blue lit with amusement and, possibly, a four-letter word I wasn’t yet ready to contemplate. It began with an “l” and ended with commitment.

“Let me just button up, and I’ll help you face the insanity. I’m looking forward to it, actually.”

I smiled back at him, all gorgeous and refreshed as he was, and realized that as little as I usually cared about appearances, I was going to have to step up my game. “Give me a minute to regroup,” I told him.

I dragged my suitcase into the bathroom and did the best I could to make myself presentable, including the world’s fastest shower. At least Christie’s spa day had given me a head start. Even my eyebrows were more or less under control.

When I stepped out twenty minutes later, I was wearing a dress the color of a tawny port that made my amber eyes seem almost gold, low wedge sandals Christie had made me buy, and some smoky eyeshadow. I looked as good as I was going to get, which, even I had to admit, wasn’t half bad. I was no Serena Banks, but I would do.

Nick whistled, and I forced myself not to look around for the cause.

“Thank you,” I said, flushing.
Not
blushing. “Shall we go?”

Nick got to the door of the room before me and reached for it. “Anything I should know?” he asked.

“I think I’m going to let it be a surprise,” I said mischievously. “Jesus coming with us?”

“He’s right across the hall. He says to knock when we’re ready.”

We knocked and, for a wonder, Jesus was ready. He wore a shirt the color of which I didn’t know how to describe—as if lavender had a pinker twin sister—and a diagonally striped tie the same shade, but deeper and darker, together with bands of deep blue and white. He looked like an Easter egg, but then, what did I know? No doubt it was all designer. Certainly, it fit him like a glove, the shirt like it was tailored for him, showing off the many hours he spent in the gym doing Zumba or hot yoga or whatever the cool kids were doing this week.

“Oh wait, my cuff links!” he said when he was halfway to the door. He was back a second later with a pair of silver and blue cufflinks that…

“Is that lapis?” I asked him. Because the swirl in the Greek key pattern of the cuffs was the exact blue of the stripe in his tie, the color of Armani’s eyes, and the gorgeous lapis lazuli Greece was famous for. “Did you buy those just for the trip?”

Jesus looked away, and I had a sudden suspicion. “It was a bribe, wasn’t it? To work for Apollo.”

He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Maybe.”

I rolled my eyes, since staring him down wasn’t doing any good.

“Jesus.”

“Bosslady,”
he said with the same amount of exasperation. “You don’t pay me enough to afford nice things. And anyway, he didn’t have to bribe me. Who could resist a free trip to Greece? I just didn’t want him to think I was easy.”

Nick snorted, and I shot him a look. “You’re not helping.”

He held up his hands as if to say that I should leave him out of it, but his amusement didn’t ebb.

I threw my own hands up into the air, an expression that always made me think about having to catch them on the way back down.

Then I grabbed each man by the crook of the arm and escorted them to the terrace—until the narrowness of the stairs forced me to let them go. When we got to the top I regained Nick’s arm and let Jesus fend for himself.

Nick didn’t slow as we hit the terrace and saw Yiayia with her young man, but he did mumble an, “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” under his breath.

I smiled. As I’d known it would, having him there, even more disconcerted than I was, relaxed me. I could enjoy his reactions instead of focusing on my own. Meeting my family was definitely a spectator sport.

“You’re enjoying this,” he accused me.

“Yup.”

“
Madre de dios
,” Jesus said behind us, and I turned, already anticipating the reaction I’d see on his face.

And…it wasn’t what I’d expected.

He looked gobsmacked, all right, but he wasn’t looking in the right place. I followed his gaze across the terrace, tracking the source of his distraction. As far as I could tell, he was looking across at Christie, Hermes and Spiro, who were chatting away in a corner. Spiro was laughing at something one of them had said, the hearty sound carrying easily across the other conversations, just as Christie’s laugh had earlier.

Jesus had met Christie and Hermes before, but Spiro? Was he…oh
hell
to the no.

I snapped my fingers in Jesus’s face.

“Jesus.
Jesus
, snap out of it!”

He shook it off and turned on me with irritation. “What?” he asked. “I can look. You’re not the boss of me.”

“Technically, I am. Anyway, trust me, you don’t want him. Spiro’s a heartbreaker.”

His irritation ebbed away in the face of pure, unadulterated lust. “You must introduce us. Wait, you’re not speaking from experience, are you?”

I nodded very gravely. “Sadly, yes. He’s my brother.”

Jesus’s mouth opened and closed, and I grinned at the sight of him speechless for the second time in two days. It had to be some kind of record.

“Come on, let’s get a drink,” I said, turning for the bar, but keeping toward the inner wall, well away from the view and the drop off.

But when Nick and I reached it and turned to find out what Jesus wanted to drink we discovered he was no longer with us. Instead, he was back across the terrace staring in to my brother’s eyes as they shook hands.

Worse yet, my brother didn’t immediately surrender the hand he’d been given.

Chapter Five

“My family’s never met a stranger…or, at least, anyone stranger than them.”

—Tori Karacis