Immortally Ever After
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.
To my intrepid friend and critique partner,
Kristin Welker, who first suggested pranks
in the minefield.
acknowledgments
Special thanks to Stephanie Takes-Desbiens for an early read and some great advice.
The comic and the tragic lie inseparably close, like light and shadow.
—S
OCRATES
contents
chapter one
I rearranged the best poker hand I’d had all night and stared at the grinning sphinx across the table.
Frank Sinatra’s “Luck Be a Lady” had a tinny sound on the ancient record player behind him.
Jeffe squirmed his muscular lion’s body, his tail whipping up a decent breeze.
I fingered a pair of sixes and fought back a smirk. The sphinx couldn’t bluff to save his life. His tail always gave him away.
And my cocksure attitude had cost me the last two hands. I straightened in my camp chair and fought the urge to fiddle with my nose.
The army-issue lantern flickered above us, casting uneven light.
“Would you like to bet more?” he asked, practically bouncing. He shook out the thick, tawny hair that framed his sharp, humanlike facial features. “I would be most interested in your stash of Junior Mint candies.” He turned to the preening vampire on my left. “And your collection of Justin Bieber albums.”
Marius went red. “I do not—”
Jeffe nodded in approval. “It is glorious music. Very bouncy. Whenever you play it or sing it, all the sphinxes gather.”
The pale, hook-nosed vampire stood, toppling his chair, his eyes blazing red, fangs out. “I do not listen to Justin Bieber!”
The sphinx stared at him. “Okeydokey. Too bad you will not bet. You would not beat me with that hand.”
Marius had left his cards facing up on the table. He sank down, a shock of hair falling stylishly over one eye, his arms crossed over his chest. “I fold,” he snarled.
I glanced at the only other player in the game—Marc, my boyfriend. He winked at me before tossing his cards on the table. “I know when to quit.”
Yeah, right. Maybe at cards.
I focused on Jeffe. “It’s just you and me, cowboy.” I blew out a breath and rearranged a two of spades that was doing me no good.
Marc ducked behind me to take a look. “You’ve already bet all your ice cubes for the next month.”
“Don’t remind me.” Ice was hard to come by where we were stationed. The mess hall issued three a day. Three. To think, I’d been an ice-cube whore before I’d been sent to this godforsaken desert.
Marc leaned close. I could feel the heat rolling off him. He was a shape-shifting dragon and they always tended to run a few degrees warmer than most.
His warm breath tickled my ear. “I don’t think the sphinx can lie.”
“He’s got to get a bad hand eventually.” I hadn’t seen anyone pick up the game so fast.
Jeffe tossed his mane over his shoulders. “I was born under a lucky star, and the cracks on the pads of my feet mean good fortune. Would you like me to show you?”
“No,” I grumbled, trying to concentrate.
“Full house!” The sphinx laid his cards out on the table, clearly unable to stand the suspense for a second longer.
I groaned and tossed him my two pair, glad I at least kept my Junior Mints. Jeffe had already won a back rub, half my Tootsie Rolls and my I’m Not Really a Waitress nail polish. Maybe there was something to this lucky-star business.
Since we’d taught him how to play Five Card Stud, favors and loot had piled up in Jeffe’s tent like spoils of war. Case in point, right next to him he had a box of hot chocolate packets, three lemons, werewolf hair conditioner, a bicycle, and a brand-new pair of loafers. Jeffe didn’t even wear shoes.
Good thing we didn’t have any money to blow. Well, we did, but it was useless. There was nothing to spend it on where we were.
Marc stretched, sliding his hands through his spiky blond hair that was forever in need of a cut. He gave me a quick peck on the head. “I’m going to look in on my bypass patient.”
I glanced after him as he grabbed his cup and headed out the door, glad he hadn’t made a big production of kissing me. I couldn’t say the same for the way he’d laid one on me in the mess hall this morning. Or yesterday morning when he caught me coming back from rounds.
It was strangely embarrassing. Or it could be that I was just bad at relationships.
Maybe it would be different if Marc and I actually had a real conversation from time to time. Talk, laughter, it used to come easy back in Louisiana before the war, but now, it was like we had nothing left to say.
The only thing we ever talked about was work. Half the time, public displays of affection seemed like they were more about proving our relationship than about us.
See. Look. We’re okay.
I fingered my cards. Maybe I was just tired. We were, after all, in the middle of an eternal war.
The younger gods had revolted against the older gods. Again. They’d been fighting since Rome was a tiny town where everybody knew your name.
The gods battled over women, treasure, cities. They destroyed said women, treasure, and cities. Pretty soon, they forgot what they were fighting about. It didn’t halt their obsession with war.
Our only hope came in the form of prophecies that could bring peace. They centered around a “healer who could see the dead.” Me. It was tricky because I had to keep it a secret. My particular gift was outlawed by the gods—probably because I
could
change things. If they learned who I was, they’d have me killed … or worse.
Still, life had been better since I’d managed to finagle a cease-fire back in the fall. It was spring now, not that you’d ever know it in limbo.
I’d been ready to give everything I had for that peace. There were only two people who knew my secret. Marc and Galen of Delphi, the special ops soldier who had put everything on the line for me.
Galen and I had shared three sublimely delicious, hot and frantic months, then his duty called, and he left. I had to struggle on with no closure and no answers. Sometimes I wished I’d never met him.
It hurt to think about Galen. I wondered what he was doing, if he was all right. The alternative was too painful to dwell on for long.
I had to believe he was using the fleeting peace for good. My colleagues and I were doing our best on this end.
We’d set up a temporary clinic in our MASH camp. Instead of putting soldiers back together, we were offering preventive checkups to creatures who’d never had good medical care before. We delivered babies, we vaccinated against basic diseases like tar fever and horn rot. We even performed some pretty complex surgery. We were making life better instead of simply preventing death. It felt good.
“Want to go one more?” I asked the grinning sphinx, gathering the cards. Heaven knows why I bothered.
Jeffe shifted from foot to foot. “Yes. Yes, I do. But, oh, how do I say this?” His eyes darted toward the door. “I think Dr. Belanger wants you to follow him.”
No he didn’t. At least I didn’t. I was having fun with my friends. If I left it would stifle that little part of me that just wanted to breathe.
I shuffled the cards, just like my dad taught me. “He’s checking on a patient.”
Marius gave me a long look. “Marc might need a second opinion.”
Jeffe nodded vigorously. “You should go after him.”
What? Were they afraid I’d win back Marius’s Polynesian fertility statue? I didn’t want it.
I did a one-handed double cut and sprang the cards back up. They didn’t even notice. “Marc is perfectly capable of handling a bypass on his own.” He was a heart surgeon, for God’s sake.
The door creaked open and Holly poked her head in. Curly tendrils escaped her ponytail clip. “I just saw Marc leave and Petra wasn’t with him.” She straightened. “Oh, there you are,” she said, as if she were surprised to see me.
“You people are starting to creep me out,” I told her, managing a swing cut. Holly saw, but she had a funny look on her face. Then it hit me. The camp rumor mill was working overtime. I gave her the hairy eye. “What?”
“It’s nothing!” she protested.
And my name was Steve. “Marc isn’t doing anything crazy, right?” He tended to be rash at times. It was enough to drive me up a wall, especially when it worked for him.
My friends sat in uncomfortable silence. “Come on,” I prodded, my eyes sliding over to Marius, who had taken a sudden interest in his fingernails.
Rumors didn’t merely run through this camp, they galloped. “Okay, fine. I don’t want to know.”
If Marc needed my help, he’d ask. Or maybe he wouldn’t. It was hard to tell with him these days. The entire relationship was beginning to feel like that time I shrank my favorite sweater in the wash and stubbornly insisted it fit.
Still, nothing in this camp stayed a secret for long.
Jeffe shook his head, talking to himself, watching me. “It hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know why it is not yet.”
I banged the cards down. “Out with it.” I glared from Jeffe, to Marius, to Holly, who had found a fascinating knot on the wall.
“Now you really screwed up,” Marius grumbled at Holly.
“The rumor is that it’s about a wedding!” Jeffe said, unable to contain himself any longer.
Holly gasped. “Jeffe!”
“Whose wedding?” I asked. “Is it Kosta and Shirley?” No wonder she’d skipped poker tonight. They’d only been together for a little while, but they’d sure pined enough.
Jeffe’s shoulders sagged. “I did not think of them. I was thinking of you.”
“Ha! No.” I grabbed up my cards again. “Marc is smarter than that.”
Jeffe choked on a hair ball.
“Breathe,” I told him. “There’s no way Marc is proposing.” When we’d first dated, back in college, he’d hinted around at it so long, trying to figure out what I’d say, that I was afraid I’d have to ask him.
Holly turned with a start as Marc leaned his head in the door. “Hey, guys.”
I jumped a foot. “Hey, yourself.”
He didn’t
look
like he was up to anything. Just your typical strong, gorgeous doctor boyfriend. Then again, he hadn’t been gone long enough to check in on a heart patient.
The deck dug into my fingers as I held on for dear life. Was nine o’clock too early to go to bed?
All four of them were grinning at me.
He wouldn’t dare. We weren’t wide-eyed medical students anymore. We were in the middle of a war.
Shake it off.
If I bought into every camp rumor, I’d think the officers’ club was built on an ancient Egyptian burial site, the mess hall hamburgers were made with swamp monster meat, and the mechanics were going to do the full monty on Saturday night.