Accidentally Aphrodite (6 page)

She did not want to be throat punched by Nina. She was a lover. Not a fighter. Okay, a former lover, but she’d still never be a fighter.

Khristos raised an eyebrow again, a clearly skeptical one. “You’ve heard? What kind of human are you?”

She shrugged her shoulders as her dilemma began to sink deeper and deeper into her brain—the ramifications of it all were beginning to wear her down. “The kind who likes to be prepared. So what’s next?”

Ingrid interrupted any hope he had of answering when she made a beeline for Quinn, her eyes blazing and angry. “Didn’t I tell you not to talk to him? You!” she yelped at Khristos. “Back off!”

Khristos sighed and slid back over to his side of the steps and leaned back on his elbows “Apologies,” he said with a smirk.

Ingrid’s phone dinged, making Quinn jump up and peer over her shoulder. While she kept one eye on Khristos, Ingrid held up her phone. “Finally! I’ve been trying to get a signal forever. So I gave up and tweeted Nina. Go figure Twitter works but I can’t dial internationally. Read.”

OOPS: @ingridbelieves Did u fucking say she’s sparkling?

Quinn nodded her head at the phone. Fucking yes, she did.

Ingrid watched Khristos while she tweeted,
Ingrid Lawson Ingridbelieves: @OOPS Yes! Something’s happened. Man—big man involved. Help now. Come pls!

OOPS: @Ingridbelieves R u telling me I should leave my man and kid because the nitwit is glowing? Did u eat moron 4 breakfast?

Ingridbelieves: @OOPS She also has cans the size of water balloons. Come pls!

OOPS: @Ingridbelieves LOLLOLLOLLOL!

Quinn frowned then stuck her tongue out at Nina’s tweet. “How are my big cans funny? This is not funny! He’s claiming I’m the Goddess of Love. After this past week, where I’ve decided love blows some hefty chunks, I don’t think I can hold up my end of the bargain. So tell Nina to stop mocking me and do her job, which is to help someone in paranormal crisis.”

She couldn’t even believe she’d just repeated those words. But help was help.

Ingrid’s fingers flew over the keyboard on her phone.
Ingridbelieves: @OOPS Come pls. He says Quinn’s Aphrodite!

OOPS: @Ingridbelieves The Goddess of Love?

Ingridbelieves: @OOPS Yes! Batshit, right?

“Khristos? Is that my favorite Greek ever?”

Quinn and Ingrid both whipped around at the sound of a familiar voice.

Nina used the word “favorite” in a sentence—referencing another person? One of these things was not like the other.

Khristos shaded his eyes and gazed into the far corner of the Parthenon. “Nina Statleon? Is that you?”

Quinn’s burning eyes went wide. “You know her?”

Nina’s form blurred momentarily as she moved from the far corner of the ruins to right in front of them in the blink of an eye. Her long dark hair poking out from beneath her hoodie, her usual dark sunglasses on her nose, sporting a white strip of zinc oxide for added sun protection.

She eyeballed Quinn’s breasts and whistled. “He sure does, Boobs. Dude, how ya been?”

“Get over here, you!” Khristos said with enthusiasm, opening his arms to Nina—to
Nina
—and she went right into them, as if hugging was her favorite pastime.

He chuckled as he squeezed her hard and let her go, smiling down at her. “If it isn’t my favorite vampire! I’m really good, lady. Damn, when was the last time we saw each other?”

Nina pushed her hoodie from her head with a wide grin, unzipping it to reveal a black T-shirt that read “I’m A Delicate Fucking Flower”.

A grin. Nina was grinning. Not scowling. Oh, the world really had tipped on its axis.

“Gods versus Vampires picnic of 2012. Remember that shit? Took Apollo out like he was GD wearin’ lace panties and a bra. Good times, my friend.”

Khristos barked a laugh, his head falling back on his shoulders, revealing a strong neck, thick with cords of muscle. “That’s right! That was one helluva play you made, too. Talked about it for days.”

Nina slapped him on his broad back while an astonished Ingrid and Quinn stood frozen and watched. “So what’s goin’ on here, man? Ingrid tells me Boobs McGee is Aphrodite? Seriously? Like she didn’t have big enough rose-colored glasses sitting on that snooty nose of hers? What in the ever-lovin’ hell have you done, Khristos?”

Khristos stood back and jammed his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Me? I didn’t do a thing. She did. She nicked the apple with her teeth, and you know what that means.”

Nina lifted her dark sunglasses and rolled her eyes, the strip of zinc oxide beginning to melt on her nose. “The golden one? Aw, duuude.”

Khristos threw up his hands. “Honest to God, I look away for one minute and bam. It’s partially my fault. I was a little distracted—”

“With a hot, leggy blonde, no doubt?” Nina asked, her grin facetious as she moved to the shade beneath a column.

Khristos rolled his eyes, but his face split into a gloriously handsome grin. “I tried to tell her not to touch it, but she wouldn’t listen.”

Quinn knew she should speak up, say something in her defense, but she still wasn’t over the fact that Nina knew this man.

“What the hell was the apple doing here in the first place?”

Khristos looked up at the column and shrugged. “I only set it down for a minute. We had some kind of weird tremor, right, Quinn? Maybe a mini-earthquake?” he asked her. “And it fell on the ground and she grabbed it up.”

Quinn’s mouth dropped open.

Khristos shook his head. “Never mind. She’s still a little shell-shocked. You know, the whole body change? I know it’s a delicate subject with women, but as I explained earlier, you know what the gods were like back in the day, right? Ample bodies and lush curves were all the rage. Anyway, the apple fell from the column and then, well, you know the rest.”

Nina nodded then nudged Quinn with her shoulder. “Did he tell you not to touch the apple, doofus?”

Quinn frowned, not liking the ugly guilt she was experiencing. “Well, yes…but I thought he was nuts. I mean, I thought maybe the apple was some rare artifact he was trying to steal. I tried to get it away from him, but in our struggle, I nicked my tooth on it. I thought by keeping it from him, I was saving all of Greece!”

“See?” Khristos said, hitching his angular jaw in her direction.

Nina nodded, her next words laced with typical Nina sarcasm. “Job well done, Indiana Jones.”

Oh, blame, blame, blame.

Nina brushed her hands together as if she were over this. “Then we’re good to go. And thank Christ, too. I thought I was going to have to spend another piece of my damn eternity codling one more cockadoodie whiny woman. But you can take it from here, right, Khristos?”

Wait. Nina was just going to leave her here with her big, big boobies and an utter stranger-slash-alleged-god who said he had to teach her how to be Aphrodite?

Aw, hell no.

She was terrified of Nina. Every time she ran into her when she and Ingrid had a study date, she literally shook in her shoes and avoided her like the plague or, if forced into her company, sat quietly as Nina scowled at her.

But what if Khristos wasn’t being completely honest, like Ingrid said? What if, even though he knew Nina, she didn’t really
know
-know him? Did you ever really know a person? Wasn’t it true that when serial killers were revealed, all the people who knew them in their everyday lives were all in total shock because they never suspected a thing?

Nina was a beast, but she was the beast Quinn knew, and if something went awry, she wanted the vampire on her side.

Which meant—let the begging and scraping commence.

Chapter 4

N
ina stopped dead in her tracks and gave her what Quinn decided was the scariest face ever. “Stop hanging on to me like I’m the last prom date on planet earth, for crap’s sake!
He’s
not gonna eat your face off, but I will if you don’t get the eff off me.”

Quinn backed off but still hovered at Nina’s elbow. Somehow, Nina seemed like the best bet. She’d lost count of how many times Ingrid had reminded her of what a badass Nina was.

“How do you know he won’t eat my face off?” she asked as the group made their way up the sidewalk to her small basement apartment.

Upon Quinn deciding her trip of a lifetime was officially over due to her new powers—and the discussion had with Khristos about how she couldn’t be trusted to know what true soul mates looked like in her fragile, heartbroken state—Nina demanded they come back to New York immediately and consult with Marty and Wanda before Khristos took over.

So now two things weighed heavily on her mind. What exactly did Khristos mean when he said she wouldn’t know two soul mates if Cupid threw them at her? And how they’d gotten here—without an actual plane—was still hard for her to form complete sentences about.

“FYI, speaking from my vast experience in face-eating, faces can be a little bony. I prefer other parts of a body, like a nice, fleshy upper arm,” Khristos growled from behind her, his tone teasing.

Quinn jumped, tucking her light sweater around her as though the flimsy material would protect her from this hulk of a man. Gone was her bravado, now replaced with sheer terror. Ingrid had filled her head with so many vivid images of demons and Hell and vampires running amok, Quinn couldn’t shake them.

She stopped by the big maple tree just before her apartment building and turned to face him, keeping Nina close. “Listen, I don’t know what goddesses teach their offspring, but where I come from, my mother taught me never to trust strangers, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re a stranger. I don’t care if you come with a recommendation from the Masters of the Universe and the FDA, you’re still a stranger to me. As a result of your stranger-ness, I now have lady pillows like a porn star and I glow. So, until I feel more comfortable—back…off!”

Khristos didn’t seem at all offended. In fact, he merely chuckled and motioned for her to go ahead of him. “My apologies. I thought Nina was a good enough reference.”

Stopping when they reached the stairs leading down to her apartment, Quinn dropped her carryon bag, letting it thump with a satisfying crunch to the hard, semi-frozen ground. “I hardly know Nina, and what I do know of her is enough to give me nightmares for a hundred years.”

Had she said that out loud?

Nina popped her lips, her eyes narrowing under the fluorescent streetlights. “I’m sorry, Lite-Brite, but wasn’t that you back in the Parthenon, clinging to me like some damn leech, begging me not to leave you alone with big scary Khristos? I’m all the nightmare you got right now. If I were you, I’d shut that yap of yours, and I’d shut it now.” She leered down at Quinn, making her shiver a cringe.

Yep. She’d said it out loud.

Honey. You get more flies with honey than vinegar, Quinn
, her Aunt Rachel had always said. Reaching up, her fingers shaking, she patted Nina on the shoulder before snatching her hand away. “That was rude of me.”

“The rudest,” Nina said before growling at her and snapping her teeth.

Headlights shining in her eyes as a big SUV drove up forced her to squint and back away from Nina.

Ingrid clapped her hands in delight. “It’s Marty and Wanda!”

Nina rolled her eyes before slapping Khristos on the back. “If you thought this one was a pain in the ass—wait. Marty and Wanda are the champions of ass pain.”

But laid-back, easygoing, hotter-than-hell Khristos rocked on his heels and smiled. What was with all the smiling? “Can’t wait.”

Marty and Wanda fell out of the car in a cloud of hair and perfume, rushing to Ingrid and scooping her up in a hug. Their eyes, sympathetic with only hints of shock, locked with Quinn’s.

And then they were scooping her up, too, in vanilla-scented hugs and bangle bracelets clacking in the howling night air. “Oh, Quinn!” Marty said, rubbing her arm with a gentle hand. “How are you feeling? Do you need to talk about it? I wish Ingrid had contacted us instead of Elvira here. We’re far more sympathetic to the changes you’ll experience, and well, we don’t swear nearly as much.”

Nina leaned down and looked Marty in the eye, flipping her middle finger up into the air. “Oh, eff you, Pretty-Pretty Princess. She’s here, isn’t she? Not a hair on her head out of place and her boobs even managed to stay inflated, all nice and poofy, just like I found her. I’d say that was damn well the best display of sympathy ever.”

Wanda sighed, poking Nina with a gloved finger between her shoulder blades. “You. Quiet. Now.” Reaching for Quinn, she hooked her arm through hers and smiled.

Wow. She was pretty—for a halfsie.

“I’m Wanda Schwartz-Jefferson, and we’re here to help. Now, let’s get you inside where you can warm up and we’ll chat over some tea, yes? You drink tea, if I recall what Ingrid said correctly, right?”

As Wanda led her down the flight of stairs to her apartment, Quinn couldn’t help but find her strangely soothing, in her slim-fitting taupe trench coat and silky turquoise-and-brown scarf. She smelled of good things—warm, kind things—and Quinn was instantly drawn to her.

Quinn nodded, reaching into her purse to dig for her keys, to no avail. “I can’t find my keys.” But she sure knew how to find an apple.

Nina groaned. “Move,” she ordered, parting the group and skipping down the steps to grab the handle on her door.

The other two women yelped, “No, Nina!” just as she mutilated Quinn’s doorknob with her long fingers.

Mutilated. As in, pulverized with a mere turn of her wrist, the heavy metal so twisted, it dropped and fell to the ground with a loud clang.

Oh, cripes.

Nina’s defiant black eyes found Quinn’s as though she were daring her to complain. Her raven eyebrow rose while she waited for Quinn to react. When she didn’t—because hello, throat-puncher alert—Nina grinned and said, “After you.”

She traded off clinging to Nina for clinging to Wanda. If nothing else, she was softer for the clinging, and she didn’t gnash her teeth at her.

Pushing her way through the door, she flipped on the lights to her very tiny living room and sucked in the familiar air of home, her eyes scanning the pastel colors and bleached white walls. She’d worked hard to make this space hers, using her favorite colors—pale blues and white—and decorating it with all the things she loved, like roses and hydrangeas and sheer curtains with lace.