Page 9 of Muzzled

Ryan turned thelemon-pepper rib over in his fingers and stared absently into the masses teeming on the street.

It didn’t make sense.

The faint scent of the Pirithous he’d located the night before had been most potent in the park he’d rested in earlier that day. The intermittent hints along the festival street had been little more than ghostings across his muzzle, indicating his target had merely passed through.

The corner where Mike had set up had held nothing stronger than a whisper.

But the images she was creating—

At her side all day, her assistant was a candidate to be carrying the Pirithous, but from the limited research Ryan had been able to do, the kid was a decade too young.

The curse’s parameters limited the Pirithous line to producing male heirs who carried the hex in their DNA. His research placed the last of the bloodline around age thirty-two.

It didn’t add up.

“Hey, man, heard you’re buying!”

He snapped out of his daze and motioned across the table to the assistant, Logan, pulling a chair out for Mike. “My pleasure.” Sliding menus across the table, he scanned the patio for his server. “The souvlaki here is delicious.”

Mike dropped her leather jacket off her shoulders, smiling at Logan as he tossed it onto an empty seat. “So, Ryan, you live around here?”

“Passing through,” he replied, opening his own menu to scan the beer selections. “Are you back out here tomorrow?”

Logan groaned. “One more day and we can recover before the music festival hits.”

“Recover,” Mike scoffed, crossing her legs under the table and bumping his foot. “My ass is starting to take on the shape of that cheap chair.” She looked up at him and smiled. “This kid hasn’t hit the ‘everything hurts in the morning’ stage of life. He’s still in the twenty-two-year-old-life-is-a-party-with-no-hangover stage.”

The assistant was definitely off the list.

As their server approached the table, Logan side-eyed Mike for a moment. “Two pints, please. And a rye.” When Mike gave him a look of disproval, he wrinkled his nose and amended his order. “One pint and a rye.”

Orders taken, Mike leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “So? Ask.”

Chapter Four

Mike watched asRyan floundered for a moment, apparently caught off guard with her blunt approach to his earlier request.

“I, uh…” He played with the straw in his drink, swirling it slowly. “You have a lot of ancient Greek themes running through your work. Did you study it in school?”

She shook her head. “School and I didn’t agree,” she stated, cringing internally at the defensiveness that always accompanied any questions about her education. Or lack thereof. “Like I said before, I put down on canvas what flashes into my mind. I can’t explain it much more than that. I see the image the canvas was meant to hold and try to do it justice.”

He sat up a little straighter. “But the woman in that collection shows up a lot in your work. Is she based on someone you’ve met?”

“I wish,” Logan muttered, grinning when she smacked his knee. “What? She’s a total hottie.”

Ryan’s lips drew into a tight line before he blinked a few times and relaxed. “So, the woman?”

“Probably nothing more than a combination of people and photos I’ve seen that simply melded into one,” she replied, taking a long sip of her beer as she looked up at him and smirked. “Like I’m assuming my mind did with the eyes of the dog yesterday.”

Ryan looked away instantly, his shoulders tensing. “Not going to lie, that was a little disconcerting.”

“It’s a risk of being in my audience. You might end up an inadvertent model.” She smiled, a pang of guilt hitting her over his obvious discomfort. “What can I say? I see something cool and unusual, it seems to pop up in my work.”

He lifted a brow and leaned back, the light amber of his left eye almost as dark brown as his right in the patio lights. “I suppose that’s flattering.” Pausing while their server set down their plates, he angled his chair toward her while Logan dove into his meal with the gusto of a starving boar. “All the pieces you’ve done are just pulled out of your head then,” he clarified. “No rhyme or reason.”

It wasn’t easy to explain to people how her mind worked to create her art. Creating wasn’t a job or a way to pass the time. It was a compulsion, one she’d carried her whole life. As a child, she’d filled notebooks and sketchpads with the images in her head, feeling like it was the only way she could truly communicate her thoughts and feelings.

And it was no different now.

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