It wasn"t quite a yes, but it was better than an absolute no. Vivian wondered how he could open his heart to all these creatures, knowing the odds. But the odds didn"t seem to bother Dex. What bothered him was how the animals got treated in the first place.
Dex didn"t let Vivian linger anywhere. Each room seemed to have its own purpose. One of them held filing cabinets. Another held more cabinets-- smaller than the one out front. Each cabinet seemed to hold a variety of bizarre weapons, from a Buck Rogeresque ray gun to a giant plastic green hammer.
She was about to ask what the weapons were for when the corridor turned a final time. This time it opened onto a sunken living room, complete with big-screen TV, two couches, several love seats, and a dozen upholstered chairs.
Each piece of furniture, including the large television set, had its own animal--or two or three. The older cats had claimed the most comfortable chairs, leaving the younger ones to glare at each other on the couches and love seats. Toto had curled up on an ottoman. His tail wagged when he heard Dex"s voice, but his eyes remained closed.
All the animals had the contented look of the recently fed. Vivian"s stomach growled. She"d been hungry for a while now.
The kitchen was up three steps, to the left of the living room. The kitchen floor was littered with pet dishes. Only the rabbit remained inside, crouching against one of the cabinets.
"I have a pizza in," Dex said. "It"s frozen. I hope that"s all right."
Vivian was a pizza sn.o.b, but at the moment, she was so hungry she would eat paper slathered with tomato sauce and covered with mozzarella cheese.
"In the meantime," Dex said, "let"s start going through these boxes. I"ll put them on the table."
Vivian felt her stomach tighten. She didn"t want to look at Aunt Eugenia"s papers. She hadn"t wanted to look from the beginning. If she looked at them, then Eugenia--who had seemed so wonderful, so powerful, so strong--was gone forever.
"Viv," Dex said, his expression gentle, "she wanted you to see these."
"I know," Vivian said.
"Then the best thing you can do for her is to honor her wishes. From the way you described her and the things I"ve felt through you, she cared about you very much. She wanted you to have these things right away."
"I know." Vivian sounded like a three-year-old. She felt like one too; she wanted to stamp her feet and refuse to help Dex.
He slipped his hand in hers and led her to the dining room table. Unlike the house upstairs, the hideaway was neat. Either it meant he didn"t use it often, or that there was yet another side to Dex-- an organized one, the one who was in charge when he was working.
"I have a really good sound system down here," he said. "Care to hear anything while we"re working?"
"Got any Mozart?" Vivian asked. "I"m in the mood for precision."
He looked at her, frowning just a bit. "Bach"s more precise."
"I know," Vivian said. "But I want a bit of emotion too."
Dex smiled. He went to the wall, pressed a few b.u.t.tons, and a Mozart rondo filled the room.
"How"d you do that?"
"Science," he said. "A five-hundred-disk CD player hooked up to the internal system."
She shook her head. And here she"d been expecting more magic. She would have to learn that Dex didn"t use his powers idly. She wondered how someone could avoid using his powers when they made things so much easier than doing actual work.
"I"m going to get the boxes," Dex said. "Would you mind pouring me a Sprite? There"s other stuff in the fridge too. Whatever you want."
Vivian pulled the refrigerator open as Dex headed off down the hall. She had never seen such a full refrigerator before. Everything she could think of seemed to be inside--from different kinds of soda to fresh milk and cheese to yogurt and lunch meats. Cans of Sprite, obviously Dex"s favorite, lined the door.
Chill air seeped out, making her shiver again. She was really cold down here. She"d have to mention it when Dex got back.
She took out two cans, closed the door, and set the cans on the table. Then the oven timer beeped. She shut it off, checked the pizza--which didn"t look half bad--and decided to let it cook for a few more minutes.
Dex staggered in with two of the boxes. He dumped them on the dining room table. "I"ll get the other one when we"re ready."
Vivian nodded. She found some dishes, put them on the table as well, and added napkins. Then the timer beeped again.
This time Dex took the pizza out, set it on top of the stove, and used a pizza cutter to make wedges. Vivian took two and went to the table.
Aunt Eugenia"s handwriting was all over the outside of the boxes. The florid style made Vivian"s eyes fill with tears. She blinked them back, sat down, and stared at her pizza, no longer hungry.
Dex put a hand on the back of her neck. "Eat, sweetheart. You"ll feel better."
Vivian"s feminist friends in L.A. would hate it if they heard him call her sweetheart, but on his lips, the endearment sounded natural. She smiled at him and took a bite of pizza to satisfy both of them, and her stomach growled in response.
She would be able to eat after all.
Dex took his place across from her, and while he ate, dug into the first box. Vivian decided to wait to examine hers until she"d finished her dinner. She had a hunch she"d need her strength as the days went on, and eating regularly was part of that.
"Wow," Dex said, studying Aunt Eugenia"s notes on a series of yellow legal pads. "She had a vision of her own death shortly after you were born."
Vivian sighed. She wouldn"t get to wait after all.
"It says here that she knew her magic would fail her,"
Vivian made herself eat both pieces of pizza before talking to Dex. She ate quickly, the pepperoni burning her tongue.
"Do the notes say who was going to kill her?" Vivian asked.
Dex shook his head. "Someone stronger. That was all she knew. And it worried her, because there weren"t many mages stronger than she was."
Vivian sighed. She pulled open her box. More yellow legal pads filled with Eugenia"s handwriting. And, below them, some mythology books specializing in the "lesser G.o.ds." She had noticed them while searching for the will but hadn"t thought much about them.
But now that she knew about magic, magic systems, and the way that people"s actions turned into myths and legends, she realized how important these books were.
Vivian took one out. It had the dry look of a fifty-year-old college textbook. The brown cover showed Michelangelo"s painting of the three Fates. Vivian stared at it for a moment.
Michelangelo had depicted them as elderly peasant women, heavyset and sad-faced, carrying the burden of their office. They looked nothing like the women Vivian knew. Obviously Michelangelo hadn"t met them.
Aunt Eugenia had marked several pages in the text with Post-It notes. The notes were yellow, and stuck on the sides of the pages. She hadn"t written anything on them. Instead, they all rested below a name in bold-face.
Vivian read the entries. The first said: "All the G.o.ds came to the marriage feast of Peleus and Thetis. But one deity had not been invited. Eris or Ate, the G.o.ddess of discord, was angered at the oversight."
The second was a quote from Spenser: "Her name was Ate, the mother of debate And all destruction."
The third was a definition: "Eris: Sister of Ares, mother of Strife. The G.o.ddess of Discord, sometimes called the G.o.ddess of Chaos."
Vivian shuddered, and this time the movement had nothing to do with the cold. "Dex," she said, staring at the page.
"Hmm?" He didn"t look up from the legal pad he was reading.
"I think you should look at this one." She slid the book over to him, leaving it open to the definition.
Dex frowned, reading it. Then he grabbed one of the other books off the pile and looked at the marked pages.
"Eris, Erika," Vivian said. "Chaos, K-A-H-S. It could be her."
"Chaos," Dex said. "Not Discord. They"re not the same thing. I think the Greeks even had a G.o.d of Chaos."
"They had two G.o.ds of War too, if these books are to be believed," Vivian said. "Ares, the G.o.d of War, and Enyo, the G.o.ddess of War."
Dex grabbed yet another book. He thumbed through it. "All of these sticky notes underline her name."
"You think it"s her, don"t you?" Vivian said.
"If it"s her, Viv, we"re in a load of trouble." He set the book down and looked at her.
"Why?"
"Because the people who are that long-lived, who"ve gone on to become well-known mythic figures, are usually extremely powerful. Some of them have become Powers That Be. The Fates were part of that group. They"ve held power for a long time."
"But Andrew Vari"s that old. He isn"t that well known," Vivian said.
"He was punished by the Fates."
"Maybe this Eris was too."
"I"d ask them," Dex said, "but I don"t want to go see them. I might be leading her to them."
"What about the Interim Fates?"
"They didn"t know who I was," Dex said. "They barely know who they are."
Vivian sighed. "Then how will we know?"
"We keep reading," Dex said, "and hope our guess is wrong."
*Chapter Twenty-one*
It had been years since she had driven a car herself, and even then the car hadn"t been a stick shift. But Eris had decided to drive to Dexter Grant"s. She didn"t want to pop in on him, and surprise him in his own home. For all she knew, he might have the place b.o.o.by-trapped.
She"d heard such rumors about him. He"d taken out some of the more powerful mages in Canada, the ones who had actually used their magic to start crime syndicates in the 1920s and 1930s--back when such things were lucrative. Dexter Grant had kept Canada clean, so to speak, until he saved a friend of two teenage boys and saw his exploits written up in a comic book.
That had been the beginning of the end for him--except when those mages" friends had tried to get revenge. A number of them had died in mysterious circ.u.mstances, circ.u.mstances Grant never got into trouble for.
The Fates, apparently, didn"t punish attacks on mages they considered evil. The Fates only punished people who attacked mages considered good. Yet another thing to hold against those three women.
Eris drove Portland"s network of freeways, following the map she had pasted to the inside of the driver"s side window. The car bucked and lurched every now and then, and it had died at two separate stop lights before she remembered to use the clutch when applying the brake.
But it didn"t take her too long to get to Grant"s neighborhood, considering all the driving she"d had to do. He was in one of the suburbs--Tualatin, King City, Tigard--she couldn"t tell the difference. The western suburbs seemed to be exactly the same: modern houses (much too big at 3000 square feet for any normal family) usually painted white, scattered on the hillsides, near shopping malls and shopping malls and, in case there weren"t enough, more shopping malls.
Oh, and traffic lights to match the malls.
She had to turn at one of those traffic lights-- and, fortunately, the light had been green, so she hadn"t had to stop--and head down a windy road, past brown office complexes that all looked the same. For a moment she thought she had doubled back somehow, and then she realized that this set of brown buildings that disappeared into the young trees was a slightly darker brown than the ones she had seen earlier. Later construction, because the doors were wider, proclaiming their politically correct handicapped access.
The first thing she would do when she ruled the world was make anyone who uttered a politically correct phrase bathe in boiling lava for a week. In Los Angeles the week before, one man had had the audacity to tell her that the problem she was having with one of her male CEOs was because she was gender-challenged.
It took her a moment to realize that he meant it was because she was a woman.
She had him on her list. When she had a free moment she"d turn him into a rat--a gender-challenged rat who was involved in some university"s breeding experiments.
The brown buildings became country stores, which then became large lots--acres, actually, with older trees. The buildings on these lots looked like farmhouses or modified ranches, with big backyards and garages twice the size of the houses.
The neighborhood seemed very old--for the West Coast, anyway--and somewhat rundown. She wouldn"t have expected Dexter Grant"s home to be here.
But it was, if the address she had was correct. His house was at the end of a long gravel driveway that ran between two large oak trees, the roots sticking up into the road itself. She could barely see the house. It appeared to be another ranch-- and one not kept up since it was built.
The door"s paint was peeling and the garage was missing a few slats. But the fence around the backyard looked new, and Eris thought she saw, in the fading light, evidence of a well-tended garden.
So young Mr. Grant understood the importance of appearances as well. That shouldn"t have surprised her.
Eris parked the car in a neighbor"s driveway, several yards down. No one appeared to be home at that house--and hadn"t been for some time, if the knee-high gra.s.s and empty windows were any indication.
She doubted anyone would notice her here.
She walked down the street as if she had done so every day of her life, looking at the large oaks on several of the properties, and the for-sale signs on many of them as well. All of the houses had acreage. She supposed Grant"s did too.
If it did, it probably hid his real home, perhaps disguised as that masterful garden in the back and defined by the fence. And if Dexter Grant went to that kind of trouble to hide a house, he probably figured he could keep the Fates there safely as well.
Eris stopped on the edge of the gravel road. Even though it was nearly sundown and shadows had fallen across the gra.s.s, she knew that Grant would be able to see her if she wasn"t careful.
First she had to scope this place out, and then she would make her move. She wanted to surprise Grant and his pretty little girlfriend as much as possible. Grant wasn"t as powerful as Eris--not by a long way--but he seemed to use his magic creatively, and sometimes that gave the mage an extra few seconds of surprise.
Kineally herself wasn"t much of a worry. Now that Eris knew Kineally had psychic abilities, Eris knew what to expect from her.
In fact, all Eris wanted from Kineally was her ability to scream.
It was clear that Dexter Grant was already infatuated with the woman--why else would he help the Fates who had forced him away from his life"s goal? Not to mention the fact that he looked at her like he wanted to take her right then and there.
Grant was notoriously softhearted. He saved people he didn"t know. He would do anything for the woman he had fallen in love with.
He would even give up the Fates to save her life.