“What the hell was the apple doing here in the first place?”
Khristos looked up at the column and shrugged. “I only set it down for a minute. We had some kind of weird tremor, right, Quinn? Maybe a mini-earthquake?” he asked her. “And it fell on the ground and she grabbed it up.”
Quinn’s mouth dropped open.
Khristos shook his head. “Never mind. She’s still a little shell-shocked. You know, the whole body change? I know it’s a delicate subject with women, but as I explained earlier, you know what the gods were like back in the day, right? Ample bodies and lush curves were all the rage. Anyway, the apple fell from the column and then, well, you know the rest.”
Nina nodded then nudged Quinn with her shoulder. “Did he tell you not to touch the apple, doofus?”
Quinn frowned, not liking the ugly guilt she was experiencing. “Well, yes…but I thought he was nuts. I mean, I thought maybe the apple was some rare artifact he was trying to steal. I tried to get it away from him, but in our struggle, I nicked my tooth on it. I thought by keeping it from him, I was saving all of Greece!”
“See?” Khristos said, hitching his angular jaw in her direction.
Nina nodded, her next words laced with typical Nina sarcasm. “Job well done, Indiana Jones.”
Oh, blame, blame, blame.
Nina brushed her hands together as if she were over this. “Then we’re good to go. And thank Christ, too. I thought I was going to have to spend another piece of my damn eternity codling one more cockadoodie whiny woman. But you can take it from here, right, Khristos?”
Wait. Nina was just going to leave her here with her big, big boobies and an utter stranger-slash-alleged-god who said he had to teach her how to be Aphrodite?
Aw, hell no.
She was terrified of Nina. Every time she ran into her when she and Ingrid had a study date, she literally shook in her shoes and avoided her like the plague or, if forced into her company, sat quietly as Nina scowled at her.
But what if Khristos wasn’t being completely honest, like Ingrid said? What if, even though he knew Nina, she didn’t really know-know him? Did you ever really know a person? Wasn’t it true that when serial killers were revealed, all the people who knew them in their everyday lives were all in total shock because they never suspected a thing?
Nina was a beast, but she was the beast Quinn knew, and if something went awry, she wanted the vampire on her side.
Which meant—let the begging and scraping commence.
Chapter 4
Nina stopped dead in her tracks and gave her what Quinn decided was the scariest face ever. “Stop hanging on to me like I’m the last prom date on planet earth, for crap’s sake! He’s not gonna eat your face off, but I will if you don’t get the eff off me.”
Quinn backed off but still hovered at Nina’s elbow. Somehow, Nina seemed like the best bet. She’d lost count of how many times Ingrid had reminded her of what a badass Nina was.
“How do you know he won’t eat my face off?” she asked as the group made their way up the sidewalk to her small basement apartment.
Upon Quinn deciding her trip of a lifetime was officially over due to her new powers—and the discussion had with Khristos about how she couldn’t be trusted to know what true soul mates looked like in her fragile, heartbroken state—Nina demanded they come back to New York immediately and consult with Marty and Wanda before Khristos took over.
So now two things weighed heavily on her mind. What exactly did Khristos mean when he said she wouldn’t know two soul mates if Cupid threw them at her? And how they’d gotten here—without an actual plane—was still hard for her to form complete sentences about.
“FYI, speaking from my vast experience in face-eating, faces can be a little bony. I prefer other parts of a body, like a nice, fleshy upper arm,” Khristos growled from behind her, his tone teasing.
Quinn jumped, tucking her light sweater around her as though the flimsy material would protect her from this hulk of a man. Gone was her bravado, now replaced with sheer terror. Ingrid had filled her head with so many vivid images of demons and Hell and vampires running amok, Quinn couldn’t shake them.
She stopped by the big maple tree just before her apartment building and turned to face him, keeping Nina close. “Listen, I don’t know what goddesses teach their offspring, but where I come from, my mother taught me never to trust strangers, and as far as I’m concerned, you’re a stranger. I don’t care if you come with a recommendation from the Masters of the Universe and the FDA, you’re still a stranger to me. As a result of your stranger-ness, I now have lady pillows like a porn star and I glow. So, until I feel more comfortable—back…off!”