"Then why do I feel like this?"
She still hadn't moved from her spot on the floor. "Apparently you can't hold your Sprite, buddy."
"Wha . . . ?"
She pointed at the two empty green plastic bottles on the night-stand. "Did you know that when you get drunk, she gets drunk too."
"She?"
Tory gestured toward the strange sound Ash had been hearing, but ignoring. He looked to see Simi lying on the floor, under the TV with her legs propped against the wall while she slept on her back and snored. That would have been bad enough, but the fact that she was in her demon form, complete with horns, tail and wings made his stomach shrink.
What had he done?
And then his gaze fell to the three-dimensional hologram on the floor that was a perfect replica of Atlantis. It even had tiny people moving around like some glowing white movie . . .
Oh shit.
Shit, shit, shit. It was all he could think to say as disbelief overwhelmed him.
Tory rose slowly and folded her arms over her chest. Narrowing her gaze on him, she approached the bed. "You don't remember anything about last night, do you?"
"I remember us . . ." He looked down to see the blood on the sheets that substantiated that part of his memory. They had slept together. The memory of her touch was branded in his mind and on his skin.
"But you don't remember the Sprite?"
He shook his head.
"Interesting."
He didn't know why that one word frightened him, but it did. "Interesting?"
She nodded. "You're a very cuddly drunk and quite the chatter-box too."
He felt the blood leave his face. "How chattery?"
"Very . . . Apostolos."
Ash sat up, mortified by what he might have said to her. Please gods, please . . . surely he hadn't told her what he was. Surely he wouldn't have been so stupid as to lose the only person he'd ever found who didn't see him as a whore. And it was then he realized she didn't have her glasses on. "Did I—"
"Fix my eyes? Yes. Then you summoned your demon and the two of you fought over taking me to Atlantis. Simi's the one who made the map on the floor so that we could all stay here because she said going there while you two were drunk might be bad since you'd probably destroy it before your mother had a chance. And then you shrank me down to toy size and took me through the city street by street, telling me about every piece of it, until you both passed out. Thankfully when you did so, I got bigger."
Still his stomach churned. "Did either of us physically take you to the real Atlantis?"
"I should tell you yes, to make you sweat. But Simi won the battle and we stayed here."
He let out a long relieved breath that he'd listened to his demon. Thank the gods for small favors there.
But it still didn't change the fact that he'd exposed himself to Tory. Completely. Utterly.
Damn.
He swallowed as he met her unflinching gaze. "Are you mad at me?"
"Furious. Truly. But I understand the lies. I mean, really, who's going to believe that this hot twenty-one-year-old buff stud Goth guy sporting a black backpack is an eleven-thousand-year-old omnipotent god who travels with a demon companion? Right? It's ludicrous."
Ash cringed as all of his secrets poured out of her mouth.
"By the way, you do know that you and I have met before."
He paused as he tried to recall the event and couldn't. "When?"
She sat down on the bed beside him. "1988. You were playing chess with my grandfather in the park when he had his heart attack. I was seven."
Now that Ash remembered vividly. Theo had just moved his bishop to take down Ash's queen when the old man grabbed at his chest and started groaning.
His tiny granddaughter with big brown eyes and a flurry of brown pigtails had come running. "Papou! Papou!"
Not wanting the child to see her grandfather die—if that was to be Theo's fate that day—Ash had summoned Simi to watch over the girl while he called an ambulance. "Watch her, Simi. Keep her happy and make sure she has everything she needs and wants."
Then he'd gone with Theo while Simi took Soteria back to Theo's condo to wait.
How had he forgotten that?
He shook his head as he looked at her and finally saw the little girl's sweet features in the face of the woman before him. "I remember."
"You know, I thought you were Billy Idol."
Now that he couldn't understand at all. "Billy Idol? I don't look anything like him and I've never had spiked hair."