"A quick jump, a grab, and a tug," Dex said.
"You must be very strong," Ariel said, looking at him with admiration.
Vivian didn"t like the admiration. She wanted Ariel to move away from Dex. Vivian also didn"t like the way Dex smiled at Ariel. It was a roguish grin, filled with a bit of joy and pride.
"Not that strong," he said. "The rope was going up by magic. Anything can interfere with that sort of spell. Which reminds me. We"d better put a good protect spell on this place or we"ll be in for more of this."
Blackstone glared at him, as if Dex were calling Blackstone"s magic into question. But Vari clapped his hands, and Vivian saw just a bit of light leave his fingers. The light seeped into the walls, ceiling, and floor, sparkling before it faded into nothing.
"There," Vari said. "Nothing bad can get in here."
"That"s subjective, isn"t it?" Dex asked.
Vari shrugged one shoulder as if he didn"t care. Vivian continued gathering rope. There was a lot more of it than she had originally thought. She had no idea how Dex had managed this. A regular man couldn"t have.
No wonder he got mistaken for someone with super powers. Traditional comic book super powers. Even when he wasn"t using magic, he was impressive.
"How"re we going to open for lunch?" Nora asked.
"We"ll worry about that when the time comes." Blackstone smiled at her. Then he bent over and, to Vivian"s surprise, helped Lachesis up.
"Let"s go sit down," he said. "I have some vegetable soup I"ve been experimenting with and some French bread. That should make us all feel better."
"Experimenting?" Clotho asked as Nora helped her up.
"Don"t worry," Nora said. "He tries to re-create meals he"s eaten over the past thousand years. So when he"s experimenting, we get a hundred really good versions of the same meal."
"Re-create?" Lachesis asked. "Why doesn"t he just conjure the recipe?"
"And take all the fun out of it?" Blackstone pulled back the chairs at the table he had originally been leading everyone to. The Fates limped over there and Van returned to his seat, patting the chair beside him for Ariel.
Vivian and Dex finished coiling the rope. When they were done, Dex slid it up his arm to his shoulder, the way a cowboy would. He started for the table too, not looking injured at all.
He seemed so confident. Vivian watched the way he walked, the tension in his body. His muscles rippled as he moved.
She made herself look away from him. She hadn"t followed him because something had changed. It took her a moment to realize the change had been in Blackstone.
His att.i.tude toward the Fates seemed to have shifted. It was almost as if he wore a layer of charm over his real personality. She could see it, like a mask, making his handsome features even more attractive, his eyes brighter, his smile wider.
Everyone else seemed fooled by it, but she still sensed confusion beneath the charm. Blackstone wasn"t certain whether he was going to help these women or not.
"I"ll help you serve the food," Vivian said, not trusting him.
Blackstone glanced at her in surprise, as if he had forgotten she was there. "No need."
He clapped his hands together, and before the sound faded the table had changed. White stoneware soup tureens and matching bread plates appeared before each chair. Three loaves of French bread sat on cutting boards in the middle of the table, along with a huge pot of steaming soup.
It smelled wonderful, rich and garlicky. Vivian"s stomach growled, but she still hadn"t moved. She didn"t trust any of this. Blackstone bothered her.
Dex put the rope over the back of his chair and sat down as if nothing were wrong. But he was watching with the same wariness Vivian felt. Only his wariness wasn"t as obvious. He masked it with feigned indifference.
"Food is a good idea," Vari said, leaning forward and grabbing the ladle. "I"ll serve."
Dex wasn"t going to speak up. He probably thought it wasn"t wise. But Vivian had nothing to lose.
"Wait a minute," she said, and this time she spoke with enough force that everyone turned toward her. "This isn"t about food or conviviality. These three women could have died."
"You don"t know that," Blackstone said. "For all we know--"
"I do know that." The anger Vivian had been feeling since she arrived in the restaurant finally boiled over. "And if you people hadn"t been so d.a.m.ned self-involved, this could all have been prevented. I knew it was going to happen. I could sense it. And you all ignored me to go on with your silly little argument."
Vari let "the" ladle fall back into the soup. Black-stone"s eyes narrowed. The Fates watched Vivian, small smiles on their faces. Nora and Ariel seemed surprised.
Dex was reclining in his chair, his arm over the back. It looked like he was resting. But Vivian felt him again, as if he were inside her mind. He was amused and proud of her, all at the same time.
His approval gave her strength.
"You couldn"t have known anything in advance," Blackstone said. "You haven"t come into your magic yet. You were just nervous."
"Nervous?" Vivian walked toward him, this tall, pompous man who had lived for centuries. "I wasn"t nervous. I felt something. I knew that we were being watched, and I felt the danger. I tried to tell you people, but you kept interrupting me with your petty argument."
"Petty?" Blackstone seemed taller than he had a moment before.
"Petty." Vivian shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and stopped right in front of him. She was a lot shorter than he was, but not as short as his cheerleader/lawyer wife.
Blackstone looked surprised. Apparently people rarely called him on his behavior.
"These women came to you for help," Vivian said. "They worried about it too, knowing you had a history. And all you and your friend there, Sancho or Darius or Vari or whatever his name is, did is try to figure out ways to make them pay for some punishment "they" meted out to you hundreds of years ago. Punishment that was, from what I understand, deserved."
"You don"t understand," Blackstone snapped.
"I think I do," Vivian said.
"Vivian," Clotho said, with a warning in her voice, but Vivian chose to ignore her. Chose to ignore everyone else except this cold man in front of her.
She didn"t even look at Dex.
"What I understand is this," Vivian said, raising her chin slightly so that she could look Blackstone in the eye. "You use charm like it"s a magic spell. You pour it on so thick that people think you"re better-looking than you really are, and nicer than you really are. And what has your attention at the moment is the fact that these three women scare you and--"
"They do not," Blackstone said.
"They do. You"re worried that they"re going to punish you again for some imagined slight. Which--" Vivian started to add that Dex had been afraid of the same thing and then changed her mind. That was his secret to tell if he wanted to-- "they are in no position to do."
"I am not afraid of them," Blackstone said, but his voice shook, belying his words.
The Fates looked amused. Dex leaned slightly to the left, the rope coiled behind him like a tamed snake. His right fist was clenched. He didn"t seem to notice. His entire body vibrated with anger at Blackstone, for the way the man was treating Vivian.
Dex would jump to her defense in a moment, and she didn"t want that. She wanted to do this on her own.
"I"ve never seen Blackstone afraid of anyone," Vari said, "and I"ve known him the longest."
"You don"t need to defend him," Vivian said. "You"re just as bad, maybe worse, because you"re acting out of an anger that you know is misdirected."
Vari"s pale cheeks flushed. The red accented the blue of his eyes.
Dex shifted in his chair. Vivian made sure she avoided eye contact with him. He would take that as an invitation to help her.
Instead, she glared at Andrew Vari. "You know you were wrong all those years ago, and still you blame them for all you suffered in between."
"I do not!" Vari said.
"Well, you certainly did when they arrived," Vivian said. "You"re still broadcasting your desire for revenge. You never thought you"d get this chance. Of course, you"re a little appalled because you didn"t realize you were this angry."
"You can"t know that," Vari said. "It"s not possible. You don"t have magic yet."
"She doesn"t need magic." Dex"s tone was laconic. "She"s psychic."
"No one"s that psychic," Vari said.
"You mean she"s right?" Ariel"s voice rose. She frowned at Vari.
"You were angry at them too," Vivian said to Ariel. Vivian wanted to include all of them in this. She was furious that they had dismissed her because they thought she had no super power.
Well, she had a strong super power, and it had saved the Fates when they arrived in Portland. These mages and their wives wouldn"t ignore her again.
"You think the Fates hurt your husband unnecessarily," Vivian said, "and you"re not happy about that either. But you"ll help them if someone else does."
"Boy." Ariel winced. "That makes me sound like a humanitarian."
"It wasn"t meant to," Vivian said. "There is only one humanitarian in the room and it"s--"
"Quite obviously Vivian." Dex interrupted her before she could say his name. "She took on the Fates even when she thought they were crazy women. I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt and listen to what she has to say. You"ll be surprised at the depth of her knowledge."
Vivian turned to him, startled by the way he"d taken control of the conversation away from her. Her anger turned on him for just a moment, until she sensed the emotion beneath his words.
He didn"t want these people to get to know him.
He didn"t trust easily, and nothing anyone in this room had done made him trust them.
Vivian frowned. He believed he didn"t trust easily, yet he had trusted her from the moment they met. His expression thawed just slightly and his eyes held a warmth just for her. "We"re different". His thought reached her as if it were her own.
And it almost felt like one of her own thoughts. She"d had some similar ones earlier. This feeling she had for Dex--this instant sense of him--was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
"I already am surprised at her knowledge," Blackstone said. "I should apologize."
His words took Vivian"s attention away from Dex. The anger returned. "No," she said to Blackstone. "You shouldn"t apologize. You wouldn"t mean it."
Vivian walked past him toward the table. Blackstone watched her with something like awe. Dex"s mouth twitched as he tried to suppress a smile.
She was shaking. She hadn"t lost her temper like this in nearly a year--and that incident had occurred at the hotline after months of build-up.
She had never gotten this angry this fast about anything.
"We"ll be all right, dear," Lachesis said. "If they don"t want to help us, they can spell us to someone who will."
"There aren"t many who will," Atropos said. "We"ve never made friends outside of our circle."
"Surely you haven"t threatened to punish everyone," Nora said.
The three women faced her as if they were surprised by her comment.
"You work in law, young lady," Clotho said to Nora. "You know that judges are often feared and mistrusted, especially by people who do nothing wrong."
"That"s true," Nora said. "I hadn"t thought of it that way."
"It"s the same for us," Lachesis said. "Either we"re hated for the punishments we"ve doled out or we"re feared for the ones we might."
Dexter winced. He had been worried about something that hadn"t happened too.
But, unlike the other mages in the room, he seemed to be able to get beyond his feelings. He had been helping the Fates.
"Well," Vivian said to the Fates, "I"m not afraid of you, nor am I angry at you. And after all I"ve seen today, I certainly believe you are who you say you are. I"m willing to help, whether anyone else here is or not."
She sat beside Dex, who was now leaning forward, his head down. Her sense of him vanished again, and she felt oddly alone. Did their connection wink in and out like the building had? Was he doing it?
Or was she?
"And if none of the rest of you are willing," she said into the silence, "help us figure out who might be."
The silence grew around her. She was beginning to wonder if she alone would be responsible for three formerly magic, extremely naive, and somehow experienced women. The idea scared her. She was out of her depth, and the people who understood that depth weren"t willing to help.
What was that about fools rushing in? Was Clotho right? Were cliches a lot more painful than Vivian could imagine?
She waited. But no one said a word.
Not even Dex.
*Chapter Eleven*
Finally, instead of speaking, Blackstone came over to the table. He grabbed the soup ladle and picked up Vivian"s bowl. Then he poured some steaming broth into it and set the food in front of her.
He meant it as a peace offering. She didn"t even need her psychic powers to know that. And it was a good offering. The steam wafted toward her, smelling of beef broth, bay leaves, and thyme, as well as spices she couldn"t identify.