Besphinxed Read online

  “I have seen into your mind! The Fury is that friend of yours. Kai something…the one with the Greek name. It makes sense.”

  Owen said nothing.

  Heather strained to hear better. Whatever magic Miss Sunshine had done to see inside Owen’s mind, Heather had somehow been swept up in it too, like a hitchhiker.

  “Now that I know her identity, I will kill her myself.”

  Heather was glad her hands were already over her mouth. She didn’t like Kai Xanthopoulos, but she didn’t want her dead.

  Owen…laughed.

  This reaction upset Miss Sunshine as much as it surprised Heather. “You think I won’t do it?” Miss Sunshine asked.

  “I want to see you try,” Owen said languidly. “If you could get past Kai’s parents—which you won’t—you’d still have to fight half the population of this town to get to her. Nocturne Falls looks out for its own.”

  Nocturne Falls never looked out for Heather. But then, Heather wasn’t really from here. For half a second, she almost wished she was.

  Miss Sunshine’s growl was inhuman. “I’m not going anywhere. Eventually, I will get what I want. Or I will just kill you.”

  Heather listened to the dwindling sound of Miss Sunshine’s chunky heels on the stones before straightening. She stepped around the bushes.

  “See all you needed to see, little miss stowaway?” The anger remained in Owen’s voice.

  Heather moved closer to him. She wanted to see his eyes.

  Yes, they were still green. And tired. There was no innocence left in these eyes.

  Owen was so very different from her. He came from another place—another time. He had all the wrong friends, and less than no societal status. Until recently, he’d called a dumpster home.

  And yet, so much about them was similar. Heather knew the exhaustion that came from living a life that wasn’t entirely one’s own. The powerlessness of it all.

  Owen’s finger traced the line of dried blood on her cheek—the only wound on her person that wasn’t zombie makeup. Almost like he cared about her.

  Overwhelmed by emotion, Heather took another step forward…and kissed him.

  If he was shocked, he didn’t show it. His lips were soft and gentle. Heather put her hands on either side of his face, but he didn’t touch her in return. He just let her kiss him. It was a brief kiss, but not awkward in any way. On the contrary—it felt like the first right thing Heather had done in all her life.

  And that scared her to death.

  Her whole body trembling now, Heather broke off the kiss. With one last look into those golden green eyes, she turned and ran.

  5

  Kai was waiting for him in the diner.

  Owen had taken his sweet time getting back from Harmswood. After his encounter with the Arachne…and Heather…he’d biked straight back to the Xanthopoulos house. When he saw the light in Kai’s room on, he shifted into a cat and went to hang out in the woods for a while. He hoped the space and fresh air and extra time would help him think things through.

  They didn’t.

  When his stomach started to growl, he wandered down to Mummy’s Diner. He and Kai had both taken the night off work because of the Thriller rehearsals, so the chance of running into her was pretty slim.

  He was wrong about that too.

  Not that he had any intention of complaining about the presence of a beautiful young woman who knew him so intimately—as intimately as he’d allowed anyone to know him—and who genuinely cared about him. A beautiful and powerful young woman, whom no one would ever dare cross lest they face the wrath of her fury. Because she was a Fury.

  Owen wasn’t afraid for his best friend. Secretly, Owen almost hoped the Arachne was stupid enough to try and take on Kai. He’d pay to see such a thing. He’d sell tickets. Kai would turn the Arachne to ash on the spot. Assuming Kai’s mom didn’t get there first.

  For Owen, finding Kai alone was a treat. Ever since she’d fallen for that werewolf, they seemed to be attached at the hip. Owen missed the days when it was just Kai and him. He missed the fighting and the teasing and the marathon petting sessions. Their friendship hadn’t been the same since Finn showed up and Kai’s powers blossomed. The change had also allowed Owen to finally shift out of cat form—a thing he’d not done for almost a century, thanks to the curse. Everything had changed.

  Owen supposed he should be grateful that he and Kai were still friends at all. He was certainly grateful that Kai’s parents had offered to let him stay with them, helped pay for his school, and given him a job as a busboy at the diner. The entire Xanthopoulos family had done so much for him.

  But so far, none of his face-to-face conversations with his best friend were as satisfying as their face-to-cat conversations had been. Before she’d gone full Fury and discovered his true nature, Kai used to spend hours talking to Owen. She had shared with him the secrets of her every emotion, getting excited about school events and her new job at the sweet shop, venting about parents and teachers and little sisters…and Heather.

  Owen suddenly remembered the pressure of Heather’s lips on his. Surely one kiss couldn’t erase the years of friendship he’d built with Kai. He would never betray his best friend.

  He just prayed Kai didn’t make him choose between his love for her and his…whatever…with Heather.

  Owen sauntered to the back booth by the kitchen and forced the defeat he felt into a teasing smile. He wanted to pretend it was just like the old days for a little while longer.

  “Has anyone ever told you how gorgeous you look when you’re angry?”

  “The snakes do, every time,” she said. Kai's Fury form, the one with the wings full of legendary vengeance feathers, also came with wolven facial features, fingertips of fire, and Gorgonian hair snakes. Kai had only taken her true form once that Owen knew of, to avenge Finn.

  Stupid werewolf.

  “Does having all those extra brains writhing around help solve problems…or is it just a giant boost to the ego?” Owen asked.

  “Interesting question.” Kai raised an eyebrow. “You looking for either?”

  “Your presence is always a boost to my ego.” Owen smiled again.

  Kai wasn’t fooled. “What is going on between you and Heather?”

  Owen deflated into the booth seat opposite Kai. “I don’t know.”

  “But there is something between you two?”

  Owen searched his mind again for an answer—any sort of answer—and came up with nothing. He touched his traitorous lips, fearful of each word he was about to speak. “I don’t know.”

  “Sweetie, this isn’t very helpful.”

  Owen snapped his fingers and pointed at Kai. “Now that I know.”

  Kai laughed a little at that. Owen had missed the sound. Not just the laughter itself, but because it was prompted by something he’d done to make her smile.

  Owen opened his mouth and tried to speak. Twice. He ran his hand through his hair a bit like he did when in cat form. Resisted the urge to lick his paw and do it again. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Kai. “Just start, and we’ll take it from there.”

  “It’s doubly hard because I know for a fact that the topic of Heather is something you do not want to discuss. I know that my talking about her will make you angry. Like I can tell you’re angry now. Your face has that lovely flush and it’s gone a degree or two hotter in here.”

  “It could just be the kitchen.” Kai put her hands over her brazen cheeks.

  “French fries?”

  Owen sat back as José placed a steaming plate of fresh, hot fries between them. With all the fretting about the women in his life—the good, the bad, and the complicated—he’d almost forgotten how hungry he was. His stomach rumbled again madly; he barely managed to stop himself from drooling.

  “Thank you, José, but we didn’t order these,” said Kai. “Are they supposed to be for another table?”

  Owen spun around in the boot
h to look back over the restaurant. The only other customers in the diner had long since finished their meal.

  “Changed the oil,” said José. “Had to fry up a test batch. Let me know how these—”

  “Haaaaaaht,” Owen said with his mouth full of burning fry.

  “Pig.” Kai pulled the plate closer to her side of the table and grabbed the ketchup.

  “Caaaat,” Owen corrected, mouth still on fire.

  José tousled Owen’s hair and went back to the kitchen. Owen growled after him, but it was all for show.

  The diner employees were the first family Owen had had in…well, ever. He barely remembered his own mother’s face. What memories he had of her had been reduced to flashes of mousy blonde hair and stale dish water. As for the baron…he’d been as much an employer as a guardian.

  Once upon a time, Owen had been sacrificed for his family’s well-being. For the decade afterward, he’d attended to the baron’s well-being. His continued lengthy existence was purely for the Arachne sisters’ well-being. In a hundred-plus years, no one had cared about his well-being.

  Until now.

  Kai picked up a fry, blew on it with those perfect lips, and dipped it in the ketchup. “How did you even know who Heather was? I mean, apart from when I pointed her out to you on your first day of school.”

  Owen remembered. The Gothwitches and the Goon Squad: what Kai had named the popular kids who had taunted and tortured both her and Bellamy for most of their school years.

  “I actually saw her before then,” Owen admitted. “In the basement that day. I was watching from the small window over the bookshelf. Her face appeared in the mirror.”

  Kai paused with the next fry halfway to her mouth. “If you saw her that day, then you saw me, too. As the Fury.”

  Owen took the fry from her hand as if she had offered it to him. “I did.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He swallowed and shrugged. “Finn carried you upstairs after your fainting spell, and I stayed by your side until you woke up. You explained the whole thing to me in fairly great detail. Told me how Heather had been revealed as the one responsible for the wolf’s curse…and what sort of magical creature you’d finally realized yourself to be… Admitting I’d already seen it all for myself seemed redundant, really.”

  “And this prompted you to get to know Heather on a more intimate basis? Behind my back?” The fry she was holding burnt to a crisp. She didn’t even notice.

  “Oh, absolutely,” Owen said without pause. “I did it all on purpose because I am a horrible person. And a fantastic schemer. Second to none.” He offered her a fry in return for the one she’d charred to death. Kai smirked, but she took it. “We just keep getting thrown together,” he added. “You know how awkward I am in those sort of situations. Or any situation that requires my having to be human.”

  “Funny, I’ve managed to avoid Heather for years. I rarely find myself ‘thrown together’ with her.”

  Owen was tempted to bring up Finn’s curse, or Bellamy’s adventure. Heather had been present both times.

  “I try,” he said. “The more I avoid her, the more we keep crossing each other’s path. It’s uncanny.”

  “Right. Uncanny.” Kai’s cheeks were flushed again. Owen tried to calculate the odds of devouring the rest of the fries before she incinerated the plate.

  “Milkshake?”

  Owen looked up into José’s round, smiling face, with its thin mustache and all those bright teeth. “What?”

  “I’m trying out a new flavor. Triple dark chocolate.” The glass he placed in front of Kai was a rich brown, topped with a gorgeous swirl of whipped cream, a dusting of what was probably chopped hazelnuts, and two picturesque cherries. The glass he sat in front of Owen was plain vanilla, no toppings. “I only had enough for one,” said José.

  Owen didn’t mind—vanilla was his favorite anyway. Kai was the one who liked all that bitter chocolate nonsense. Shame about the cream, though. “Cheers, José.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Kai said with a grin at the ridiculous confection. “I appreciate it. Really I do. But Owen and I are kind of trying to have a—”

  “The fries were good, yeah?”

  “Yes,” Kai answered.

  “I don’t need to change the oil again?”

  “The fries were delicious,” said Kai. “Evenly crisp. The oil is perfect.”

  “Excellent,” said José, with an even bigger smile than before, if that were possible. “I’ll leave you kids to it then. Enjoy.”

  Kai watched the stout cook walk cheerfully back to his kitchen. “I know what he’s doing,” she said under her breath.

  Owen was too busy downing half his milkshake to care. Blended ice cream was truly the most amazing of inventions. “Doing?”

  “He’s trying to keep me calm,” she said.

  “Why?” Owen asked around his straw. It’s not like José was the one admitting feelings for Kai’s sworn enemy. Besides, trying to keep Kai calm these days was sort of like asking the wind not to blow.

  Kai spun her straw in the whipped cream. “He can tell that I’m arguing with you,” she said.

  “Are we arguing?” Owen asked casually.

  Kai ignored him. “He’s probably worried I’m going to go full Fury and rip your face off.”

  Owen paused mid-sip. “Could you do that?”

  “Maybe? Probably? I don’t know.” Kai took a sip of the thick shake. “Wow this is good. That man is a genius in the kitchen.”

  Owen continued to stare her down.

  Kai swallowed. “No, I’m not going to rip your face off, okay? Even if I could. Not intentionally, anyway.”

  Right. The rest of his story could wait until she’d had a bit more triple chocolate therapy shake and the flush in her cheeks had dimmed.

  “The first time it happened was at the dance,” he said finally. “The Midwinter Masquerade. After the Goblin King stole Tinker, and Bellamy rallied us all to figure out how to get him back.”

  “Hmm.” Kai licked whipped cream off the side of her glass with that lovely tongue. Owen was rather jealous that he hadn’t gotten any whipped cream. And then he imagined having his face ripped off and remembered just how much he had to thank José for already.

  “I did wonder why you didn’t let Finn tear her throat out after the dance. She was in exceptionally high Gothwitch form that evening. And did you notice her dress? She didn’t have a spot of glitter on her. It took me a week to get all the twinkle out of my hair—I swear I don’t know how Bellamy puts up with that dust on her wings every day. Was Heather even in the gym when the snow globe exploded?”

  “She was,” Owen said into his empty glass. “She was dancing with me.”

  Kai didn’t look at him. She toyed with the cherry on top of her whipped cream instead. “You were dancing with Heather?” She said it all so calmly. Too calmly. “How did that happen?”

  Owen decided to spare his best friend the details of his dashing rescue, so he stuck with the basics. “It’s sort of a blur. One minute I was dancing right beside you, and the next I was yanked away by Bellamy’s pushy older sister. What’s her name?”

  Kai froze. The cherry landed on the table in a plop of wasted cream. “Oh, crap.”

  “That was definitely not her name,” said Owen.

  “Merri,” said Kai. “Her name is Merri.”

  “That’s the one,” said Owen. “She pulled me away, and next thing I knew, I was being shoved right into Heather’s face. Only Merri didn’t know Heather’s name. She called her…Taylor?”

  Kai sighed. “Trust me, Merri knew her name perfectly well. Taylor is Heather’s older sister. Back when they were in school, Taylor was to Merri a bit like Heather is to me.”

  “Ah,” said Owen. “Selfishness runs in the family, then. So, throwing me at Heather and calling her a different name was some sort of…vendetta on Merri’s part?”

  Kai’s dark brows furrowed. “I’m not sure, exactly. I’d have t
o ask Bellamy. But I do know one thing.”

  Owen recognized the look on her face. Nurses had that look when their patients coughed up blood. Officers had that look when they informed a mother that her son wouldn’t be returning home from war. Sea captains had that look when they rescued a skinny cat from a gang of ship rats.

  Pity.

  As if he didn’t feel doomed enough already.

  “Bellamy told me once that whenever Merri and Bright played their epic pranks, a side effect was that they invariably created a couple out of two incredibly unlikely people.”

  “What?” This time it was Owen’s turn to be shocked.

  “I assumed that the match Merri and Bright made that night was Bellamy and Tinker…or their own match. But now that I think about it, those pairings weren’t unlikely in the slightest. They were both bound to happen one way or another. You and Heather, however…”

  “Are you telling me I’ve been cursed? Again?” Owen clung to the empty glass. He felt the milkshake start to curdle in his stomach.

  Kai reached across the table and took his hand. “It’s not a curse, I promise. It’s not even a spell. It’s more like…destiny on fast forward. Merri and Bright are a catalyst. They are so powerful together that they clear a path between two people who might have taken forever to end up together—or might never have taken the chance, due to their extreme differences.”

  “Two unlikely people,” muttered Owen. “Highly, highly unlikely.”

  “If you think about it,” said Kai, “Heather’s a witch and you’re a cat. It kind of makes sense.”

  Owen could hardly believe his ears. “You’re actually taking her side? Have you gone mad?”

  Kai shrugged. “I would happily fight Heather until the day I die. But no Greek in her right mind fights destiny,” she said. “That’s just the way of the world.”

  Owen caught a twinkle in Kai’s eye right before a cheeseburger appeared on the table in front of him.

  “THIS IS A REALLY BAD TIME, JOSÉ,” Owen growled.

  “Some lady ordered a hamburger and I accidentally made a cheeseburger by mistake. I didn’t want it to go to waste. And you’re always hungry.”