Page 9 of Mochas and Minotaurs

I shook my head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Her shoulders sagged, and so did her features. I hated how disappointed she looked. Instinctively I stepped in, closing the space between us, and cupped her face in my palms. She inhaled sharply when our eyes met.

“I agree that we have to work together if we want to keep our businesses and homes,” I said. “But I canneverforget what happened between us.” I inhaled deeply. Yes, she still wanted me. “And judging from your reaction, neither can you.”

I didn’t know how long I stood there staring into her beautiful green eyes. Those eyes had worked with her red hair perfectly, but now with the dark hair and brows they were absolutely magnetic. I found myself trapped in their depths.

It was the alert tone coming from my phone that freed me from her magnetic pull. There was someone at my back door. Each of the three units in the building had two entrances: the front door opened directly into the commercial space, and the back opened into a stairway with access both to the shop and to the living space above.

Since I had two combined units, I had a grand total of four doors. I had signs in front of the two doors that had once led to the antique shop asking people to use the other ones. This particular chime meant that someone was at my back door.

I stepped over to my laptop which was sitting on my freshly installed front counter, and pulled up the feed. I’d made sure to set up cameras at all four entrances, just in case.

“Fuck!” I swore.

On the screen was a woman I never wanted to see again in my life. How the fuck had she found me?

My past had finally caught up to me and at the worst of times.

Chapter 5

Griselda

The screen showed avideo feed of a woman wringing her hands by the back door, and by Marcus’s reaction, he was not happy to see her.

“Who is that?” I asked.

“That’s Elise,” he answered absently. “How the hell did she find me?” He dragged both palms over his face. “I’m fucked.”

“And who’s Elise?”

The woman on the screen looked young at first glance, but she also had the telltale signs of too much filler in her face, so it was hard to tell. It could be a young woman with too much filler making her look older, or an older woman with too much filler, making her look… well, like she had too much filler.

“My mother.”

Ah, that explained it.

“Is seeing your mother really that bad?” I asked, almost glad that the attention wasn’t on us and our mess of feelings anymore.

“Yeah, it is,” he groaned. “I ran off and changed my identity for a reason.”

I raised a brow. That was news to me. So was Marcus not his real name?

He stood and started pacing, then went to check that the door to his gym was locked. You’d think he was facing the executioner and not an impromptu parental visit. The windows were frosted, so they let the sunlight in while still blocking the view into the gym. I had thought that was to give his patrons some privacy, but now I wondered if it was for another reason.

“First the mirrors, and now this? Fuck my life.” He was pacing now, the energy radiating from him turning more chaotic by the second. “I made sure never to show my face in my gym’s social posts. How did she find me?”

I reached out and put a calming hand on his arm, and he stopped pacing. Whatever his mother represented, it was bad news. He was no use if he panicked, so I tried to lighten things up. “Should I be worried that you’re not who you say you are? Don’t tell me I’ve been screaming the wrong name.”

He raised a brow. “I know what you’re trying to do; you’re trying to distract me. But no. You don’t need to worry about that. Marcus is the only name I go by now.”

“Want to enlighten me on why you’re reacting to your mom like she’s here to end your life?”

“It’s a long story.”

The doorbell rang again, and the woman on the screen looked up at the camera, finally noticing it. She pulled the scarf tighter to cover her face. Now that I knew she was Marcus’s mother, I saw the similarities. However, this woman looked fully human, but maybe it was an illusion. Illusion and glamor spells were quite common now, but the cheap ones were easy to see through, unlike the glamor The Wall had provided.

The Wall was a spell that had hidden monsters and magic from humans for as long as written history itself. It had suddenly faded a few years ago, shocking everyone except for those already in the know, like me. It must’ve been crazy waking up to discover that magic existed as well as monsters and creatures previously thought to be only things of myths and legends.

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