Page 24 of Grave Curse

I loved my front door, going so far as to tell Carlo all about it. It was one of those old industrial jobs that people called a barn door nowadays. It slid open on a track and was heavier than an average compact car, but that’s what I loved about it. Once all the locks were in place, it was an impenetrable shield and nothing in the universe could get to me.

After waving Carlo and Roxie off for the night, I managed to lock the door, then half-fell out of my slippery heels on my way to the bathroom. It was so funny I started laughing at myself and couldn’t stop, all the while making my way across the ash-gray wood floors that would not stay still.

I seriously loved my loft. The interior was whitewashed for the most part, and that made the few exposed red-brick accent walls pop all the more. Other industrial touches like the overhead duct work and exposed pipes harkened back to another era, when my loft was a Victorian-age printing press. Now, having lived here since I finally left my hiding place with Hel in her room, I loved it even more. Because it was mine—well, Blue Horizons, LLC and mine—and no one could take it away from me.

Somehow I managed not to kill myself in the bathroom as I got ready for bed. I also made myself take some Tylenol alongwith a glass of water, my personal secret weapon in avoiding the worst of a hangover. The hardest part of going to bed was actually making it to the bed itself. The black wrought iron stairs were no steadier than the floors, so I hung on for dear life as I made it up to the square platform I used as my bedroom. Thankfully my bed took up most of the platform that was framed in thick wrought-iron railings. With a grateful sigh, I allowed myself to fall onto that lovely expanse of neatly made mattress, already more asleep than awake.

It seemed like only seconds passed before something brought me groggily back within the zip code of consciousness. A dream, maybe. A dream of light. No. Not light. It was the sudden absence of light. I’d left the lights on downstairs so I wouldn’t stumble in the dark. But now…

There was no light on anywhere in the loft.

Good.

With a sleepy sigh I sank deeper into the dark. I liked the dark. Dark was great for sleeping, and I loved sleep…

The bed moved.

No.

Imoved.

Or I thought I was moving.

Wait.

Did the bed just move?

I moaned. God, I hated the spinnies. The first time I’d ever gotten seriously drunk was when Hel and I had finished a bottle of Jack Daniels between the two of us, and the floor never stopped spinning. Tyr took pity on me and told me to lie flat with my hand on the floor. Amazingly enough, that did the trick. No more spinnies.

I needed the edge of the bed, stat.

I rolled toward what I thought was the edge of the mattress but instead came up against a wall. A wall? When had I put a wall in my bed?

“Spinning,” I muttered on another groan, if only to remind myself that I needed the floor so I could get off this damn merry-go-round.

Then I moved again, though I had no idea how it happened. I just…moved. Rolled onto my other side. Warmth slid down my bare arm, grasped my hand and stretched it down, down, down…

To the floor.

Slowly the spinning came to a stop. The warmth covering my hand lingered, keeping my hand on the floor, while the wall moved to press against my back and was now half-lying on top of me. It felt good, though, because that solidness helped with the spinnies too. With a sigh of relief, I again sank into the darkness and dreamed of a hot mouth opening on the nape of my neck, teeth gently biting, tongue slowly caressing.

All things considered, it was a seriously good dream.

Chapter Seven

Care Package

Tyr

One of the great things about my relationship with Romeo was that I never had to tell him when he screwed up.

Nevertheless the moment he walked through my office door, I held up a hand to forestall any dumbassmea culpashe was about to launch into.

“All you have to do,” I said in a deliberately even tone so he wouldn’t know how close I was to breaking his neck, “is take a breath the next time you get a bright idea that somehow involves Ginger. Then hold that breath until you pass the fuck out. I’ll take that as a sign that you wanted to do something monumentally stupid that would never work anyway, because Ginger Sisko is all the loose cannons that have ever been, so she’ll never follow any plan you come up with. Clear?”

“Crystal.” Romeo took that all-important breath. “Did you get the gist of what my plan was?”

“You wanted Ginger to walk into the lion’s den and appeal to Hades’s ego by asking for his help or support or whatever, thereby installing her as our spy on the inside.”

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