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Deedee, or more accurately Diana Lemaire, was a cleric to the goddess Aphrodite. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, made her clerics the earthbound vessels of her love.
Anyone who wanted to be touched by love went through Deedee and the others in her temple, and they gave love, um, freely. In the form of lots and lots of sex.
Since Deedee and I were the same age, we’d grown up in similar circles, and I’d known her since we were both children. We weren’t exactly friends, because friendship wasn’t the sort of thing clerics indulged in—we were all too busy and our lives too disposable to become attached. But I liked her and she liked me, and if she was calling me now, sounding scared, I felt like it was my duty to do something to help ease that burden for her.
But I couldn’t do anything until I knew—
The phone rang, and I snatched it out of its cradle. “Deedee?”
“Oh thank the goddess, I was worried I’d get your machine again. I swear I was this close to calling the temple, but I know you hate that.”
“It’s fine. I’m here now. Are you okay?”
Her breath came out in a shaky little moan, and I couldn’t decide if it was relief or desperation that made the sound so tremulous. I gave her a few seconds to collect herself, and she finally said, “I didn’t know who else to call.”
So this was something she didn’t want to bring to her goddess or the temple elders. Interesting.
Our paths were very different. Deedee answered prayers through sex and kisses, whereas my job involved me being struck by lightning on a semi-regular basis. There weren’t many things I could imagine that might bring Deedee to me for help.
Whatever it was wouldn’t be good.
I wedged the phone between my chin and shoulder and made my way back to the couch, setting the bowl of chips on my coffee table so Fenrir wouldn’t indulge himself while I wasn’t paying attention.
Deedee spoke again, this time in a hushed voice like she had gone somewhere to avoid being overheard. Which, given how low on privacy temples were, was probably the case.
“How did you outsmart Manea?” she asked.
This sent a chill through me so powerful I had to pull my blanket across my bare legs to keep from shivering. The last thing I wanted to talk about right now was my close encounter with the goddess of death, or how she had literally risen the dead out of their graves to bring me down. Especially given that her cleric seemed to be having me followed.
Not to mention the whole thing where I’d needed to escape from the underworld in order to best her at her own game.
“It wasn’t like I solved a weird riddle or something, Dee. I almost died. Several times. I can’t exactly explain how I did it either.” It sounded like a lame cop-out even to me, and I was the one who had lived it. But really, what did she expect, a magical incantation to stave off death? If such a thing existed, I certainly wouldn’t go around handing it out to anyone who asked.
I liked her, but I wasn’t about to help her become immortal.
Eternal life tended to turn people into shitty bastards, if the gods were any indication.
“I’m not asking for me,” she countered, practically reading my mind. “You’re the only person I know who has met her. You’re the only person I know who has touched Prescott and lived to tell the tale. Things are going south over here, Tallulah, and if there’s a way to stay alive, I need to know.”
Why was she bringing up Prescott? This was all a little too timely to be coincidental.
Prescott McMahon was the literal right-hand man of death. Meaning he had the ability to kill someone with a touch, should Manea want them dead. Deedee was veering into dangerous territory by mentioning my past with Prescott right now, not because she knew he was following me, but because of what she was implying when she said I’d touched him and lived to tell the tale.
This was what I got for asking a sex cleric for romance advice when I was seventeen.
“What does Prescott have to do with any of this? Dee, you’re freaking me out. You leave me these messages that don’t say anything, and now you’re asking how to evade death. What kind of trouble are you in?”
She scoffed. “I think we all got into the same kind of trouble the day our parents ditched us.”
I thought about the girl on the beach, the one with the mark on her neck that promised her to Seth.
Had her parents been like mine? Had they believed her destiny meant her for better things?
I was willing to bet they hadn’t thought it would end with her lying dead on a beach in the Seattle rain.
“Besides,” Deedee continued. “Who else but Prescott am I going to blame when a girl with the mark of Aphrodite shows up dead on our doorstep without so much as a cut on her?”
Chapter Four
