Kicking It(76)

I looked around for other news of the case and found a reference here and there to the missing businessmen, but as far as I could tell they’d never been found. For anything more in-depth, though, I’d be scrolling through old microfiche at the library. I didn’t think that was going to be necessary. My Spidey senses told me that The Parlor had been involved with the missing businessmen. Just like Gareth? I wouldn’t think that way. He would be found. I was on it.

I made a decision and picked up the phone to call Apollo. It rang four times and I’d resigned myself to voice mail when he finally answered and grumbled into the phone, “No. Whatever it is, no. Unless you want my body, in which case you can get over here and tell me in person.”

He hung up. Just like that. I’d never been good at taking “no” for an answer. Well, he’d issued the invitation. I did want his body, just not quite in the way nature—or Apollo—intended.

—

I’d been to Apollo’s home exactly once, when he’d saved me from a watery grave and I’d woken from oblivion to find myself unclothed, with a big, buff, nearly naked sun god sharing his body heat and quite willing to share a whole lot more. In his defense, I had been one step away from hypothermia and he had stopped when I’d . . . reluctantly . . . called a halt to things. I didn’t really want to tempt fate again by dropping in unannounced, but he’d left me no other choice.

I came with peace offerings from Duffy’s—pastries, croissants, chocolate croissants, those little bite-sized cherry and apple pies, and both coffee and espresso, since I wasn’t sure which he preferred. I’d loaded my bag down with every kind of creamer and sweetener known to man and hoped for the best.

The doorman, it turned out, not only remembered me, but succumbed to a bribe of coffee and cream puffs and let me into Apollo’s apartment without buzzing him, although he did consult a list first, probably of crazy stalker chicks to keep out and crazy hot stalker chicks who were allowed to disturb Apollo’s rest. I was glad I fell into the latter category, even if I didn’t agree with the final analysis.

I shut the door to the penthouse apartment behind me with a bump of the hip, since my hands were full, and heard Apollo cry out, but I couldn’t tell if it was at the intrusion or something in his sleep. I’d find out soon enough. I followed the sound and my memory toward his room. Light filtered in through semi-sheer curtains, but it hadn’t woken Apollo, who lay tangled in his sheets, his bedcoverings spilling all over the floor, as if he’d had a rough night. His deeply tanned chest rose and fell more rapidly than normal, and as I entered he thrashed about, still fighting whatever battle his bed linens had lost. I set my bag and coffee tray down on his entertainment center across from the bed and approached cautiously, well aware from my own night terrors that one good thrash could mean a black eye, and there would go my tips for the night.

I called to him softly as I approached, hoping to wake him from a distance. “No, Tori!” I heard him call, and thought I might have been getting through, but then he followed it up with “Don’t!”

As I reached the bed, he lashed out suddenly, grabbing blindly at my hand and yanking me down, then rolling on top of me to pin me beneath him. I looked up, half afraid, into his blind eyes and called, “Apollo, it’s me!” I grabbed for one of the hands that held me pinned and pinched him hard to snap him out of it.

It took another pinch before the veil of sleep cleared his eyes and he looked down into mine, and another second before I thought he was actually seeing me.

“Tori?” he asked. “What . . . what are you . . . Tori, you’re in danger.”

“So I gathered, but that was only in your dreams,” I said, trying to squirm out from under him, but his grip just tightened as he tried to make me understand.

“Lucid dreams,” he said, his turquoise eyes staring intensely into mine. “God of prophecy, remember? Did . . . did you call earlier?”

“I did.”

“Must have been what set me off.”

He rolled aside, but the sheets fell away just enough to reveal his assets . . . all of them. Apparently without a guest present he slept in the nude. So he had been acting the gentleman the last time I’d been here, at least by some definitions of it. I should have looked away. I tried, but managed only to avert my face. My eyes had a mind of their own. And what I could glimpse out of my peripheral vision . . .

“Enjoying the view?” Apollo asked, making no move to hide a thing.

“S’all right,” I lied. Damn, I’d forgotten the empathetic link his stupid “gift” had opened up between us.