Athena's Jewel: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Aya Harris Collection Book 2) Read online

  He gave me a weary frown. “Too late. I was already cornered.”

  Even after Theo was killed, and Michelle and Kit Yonas had returned to their apartment below, Mrs. O’Conner still interrogated me every chance she got. It was like she thought I had something to do with the kidnapping and murders. She’d gotten creative with the insults lately.

  “Oh no.” I slapped a hand on my forehead. “What happened?”

  “She accused me of having an affair with an unclean maiden. When I told her to mind her own business, she told me, and I quote, that my little finger is thicker than your father’s loins. I had to flash her my badge before she’d leave me alone.”

  I grimaced and shook my head. Another creative insult to add to the book. I almost wanted to knock on Mrs. O’Conner’s door to start another round. Maybe someday I would, when I had a few glasses of wine in me.

  “Come on,” I told him, unlocking my apartment door, “I’ll make you supper for your troubles. I hope you’re okay with frozen pizza.”

  He grinned and nodded. Already, he’d had a taste of my infamous cooking abilities. Steak and asparagus didn’t sound too hard, in theory. But when you burn the steak and overcook the asparagus, it’s safer to rely on prepackaged food than risk burning down the apartment again.

  Walking in, I saw that we weren’t alone. Johnny, my roommate, was already camped out on the kitchen table. His law briefs were strewn all over the top, files and papers everywhere. A couple of empty file boxes lay on the floor next to him.

  It was unusual for him to bring work home. Usually, he liked to separate work and play. Work hard, play harder was his motto. It had to be a big case if he was breaking his own rules.

  “What’s all this?” I asked, throwing my keys on the counter and letting Gideon in before closing the door.

  Johnny didn’t look up, but threw a finger out and pointed at the key holder he’d installed next to the door last month. I sighed and grabbed my keys from the counter, placing them gingerly on the hook labeled Aya. So what if I’d lost my keys in our apartment a million times? It didn’t mean he needed to go all Super Nanny on me.

  Satisfied with my obedience, Johnny looked up from his notes. “This mess” – he waved his arms over the table – “is my new case. A federal judge appointed it to me this afternoon after the last attorney disappeared. No note. No phone call. Not a single scrap of evidence. Just disappeared off the face of the planet.”

  My eyes grew wide. Sliding into the chair on the opposite side of the table, I grabbed a brief off the top. “Seriously? What’s the case?”

  Johnny pulled the brief out of my hand and placed it back on the pile. “My client is connected to an underground crime organization in Arcana, that’s been under the observation of the SI for some time now. He was picked up on a minor charge, but they want him to testify as a witness for the prosecution.”

  Gideon looked over my shoulders at the papers. “Let me guess, they’ll drop all charges if he cooperates?”

  “Of course. That is, if he survives long enough to cooperate. He was released on bail this afternoon.”

  I watched my friend scan over his notes, restacking the piles of papers in front of him. The federal judge who appointed him to the case probably saw the same dedicated lawyer I did. Despite the danger of handling this case, he’d do his very best to help his client.

  “Just be careful, okay?” I told him.

  The last thing we needed was Johnny getting kidnapped again. We hadn’t talked much about how Nicky had taken him hostage last month. I think we’d come to a silent agreement that if we didn’t talk about it, then it didn’t really happen.

  “I will, don’t you worry.” Johnny kept his nose pointed at his legal pad. “Besides, I don’t have anything to fear until he actually talks to me. The guy was as silent as the grave when I met him in prison today. Couldn’t get a peep.”

  Gideon nodded. “Must be scared. I imagine he confided in his first lawyer, and that’s why he went missing.”

  “Could be.” Johnny answered. “But that’s not going to stop me. The Judge ordered me some extra security, just in case.” He pulled out a chain from under his t-shirt. A small wooden charm hung from it. It was round with tiny gold etchings. “This little guy’s supposed to keep me safe. I guess they enchanted it.”

  “That’s complicated magic.” Gideon grabbed the charm to get a closer look at it. “One of our mages tried to charm a gun to never miss last week. It went wrong and nearly zapped him of all his strength when he touched it. Left him in the hospital for a week. But this looks legit. It should help, at least.”

  “Until this case is over, I’ll avoid walking down any dark alleys by myself,” Johnny said, tucking the charm back under his shirt. “And I won’t answer the door to any strangers. That’s how I got in trouble last time.”

  He raised a single eyebrow at me and then went back to his notes. I squirmed in my seat, but didn’t say anything.

  What could I say? Sorry, my psycho brother kidnapped you. Won’t happen again?

  Even if I apologized every second of every day, it wouldn’t make up for what happened. Not that I felt like Johnny was holding it against me. He was too chill to hold a grudge like that.

  Gideon pulled a frozen Tony’s pizza out of the freezer and twirled it in the air, grinning at me. I left Johnny to his work and joined him in the kitchen, leaning down to pull a pizza pan from one of the bottom cabinets.

  Gideon’s arms closed around me, pulling me in tight. His lips brushed along my neck, causing a row of goosebumps to appear. As he planted a row of kisses on the bottom of my jaw, I leaned into his embrace. He’d only been out of town a few days, but I’d missed him.

  I turned around and pressed myself against his chest, locking eyes with him and sliding my hands under his jacket. Pizza would have to wait. The smoldering look in Gideon’s eyes had me edging toward my bedroom. A few more steps and we could be alone.

  My fantasy was shattered when a knock came from the door. Groaning, I withdrew my hands from Gideon’s muscular stomach and went to answer it. Johnny still sat at his table, intent on his work, oblivious to the world around him. I threw him some shade and grabbed the door knob. He could’ve answered the door. Then, Gideon and I could’ve made a hasty retreat.

  Nonetheless, I opened the door to a man dressed in a dark suit. He had a thick head of grey and white hair, dark brown eyes, and a thin mouth that stretched into a frown. His skin was weather-beaten and tanned, as if he’d just gotten back from a vacation in the Bahamas.

  A shimmer over his body transformed his skin into a blackened and papery thin veil that matched the coal-like irises of his eyes. I’d met creatures like him before. He was a shapeshifter. They had the ability to be anyone and anything they chose. No doubt, there was a man walking around the world somewhere with an identical face, unaware that a shapeshifter had used him for inspiration.

  Something in the way he stood made me think he had a military background. I couldn’t stand that straight if I wanted to.

  “Um…hi.” I cocked my head at him, waiting for a response.

  “My name is SI Agent Lorne Carson,” he said, raising his chin and looking down his nose at me. “I am here to see Agent Ward.”

  Gideon dropped the pizza pan on the kitchen floor and scrambled to the door. He was beside me in an instant, tugging on his coat and straightening his shirt.

  “Good evening, sir,” he said a little too loudly. “What can I do for you?”

  “First, you can introduce me to your lovely friend,” Agent Carson said, his frown still in place.

  “Of course. This is Aya Harris. Aya, this is my boss, Agent Carson.” The words tumbled out of his mouth.

  From the feeling I was getting, this meeting wasn’t planned. I’d never seen Gideon so nervous.

  “Great. Now, if I could speak to you in the hall for a moment, Agent Ward. We have some important business to discuss.” Agent Carson stepped aside, motioning for Gideon to follow hi
m.

  My stomach clenched as I shut the door behind him. A personal visit from the boss wasn’t a good thing. Maybe Gideon was in trouble for all the time he’d spent in Arcana this last month. Or maybe they were going to blame him for Nicky getting away. Either way, they were both my fault, but I doubted Agent Carson would care.

  I busied myself with throwing the pizza in the stone cold oven and pacing the floor. The horrible feeling I had from my vision of the HQ taking me, was nothing compared to the dread I felt right now. I could protect myself from the HQ. I couldn’t protect Gideon from his boss.

  The door to my apartment opened ten minutes later. Gideon walked in, his face flushed. He caught my eyes and nodded at my bedroom door. I followed him in, shutting the door behind me. Johnny didn’t need to be disturbed with our troubles. He had enough on his plate.

  “What happened? Why is he here?” I didn’t wait long to pelt him with questions. “Are they blaming you for Nicky? Because if they are, I’m going to go down to SI headquarters myself and…”

  “No, sit down.” Gideon sat on my black and white patterned comforter and patted the bed beside him.

  “What is it?” Reluctantly, I sat beside him. “Is it bad?”

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he busied himself with picking at the cuticle of his thumbnail. His shoulders were stiff under his leather jacket, like he was standing at attention. In the past few weeks, I’d come to know Gideon as a very casual guy when off duty. He liked to throw back and relax when the job was done. This stiffness was cause for concern.

  He sucked in his cheeks and pursed his lips before turning to me. “At first, I thought I was in trouble. I’ve been spending so much time in Arcana, I figured he was here to chew me out and take me back to Texas.”

  I nodded. That had been one of my first thoughts, too.

  “But, he didn’t say anything about that. In fact, he’s reassigning me. I’m off general investigations.”

  I tried not to let myself freak out. If he was off general investigations, maybe they were demoting him to something like office duty. I’d hate to see Gideon cooped up. He really was good at his job and he loved helping people.

  He gave me an unsure smile. “My boss wants to assign me permanently to your brother’s case. Starting next week, I’ll be tracking Nicolo down, exclusively.”

  My heart sunk. As much as I wanted Nicky to end his reign of crime, I didn’t want my boyfriend hunting him down. It seemed like a conflict of interest.

  “Is that a good thing? Is it what you want?” I asked, staring into his hazel eyes. A tiny part of me hoped he’d turned it down.

  “Yeah, it’s good. It’s a promotion, really.” Gideon blinked and frowned.

  Who was I to dampen a good opportunity for him? I had to be happy for him, even if it meant celebrating the eventual doom of my brother.

  “Okay, then,” I said, forcing a smile on my face. “Let’s celebrate your promotion. Screw pizza, I say we go out for something special.”

  I jumped off the bed and strode toward the door. Gideon remained glued to his spot on the bed, watching me with distress written all over his face.

  “What? What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “There’s one other thing.”

  I cocked my head at him, waiting for him to continue. His tone of voice wasn’t very promising.

  “Just know, that I tried my best to argue against it, but Agent Carson insisted.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. Dread began to spread throughout my body. “It can’t be that bad. What did he say?”

  He sucked in his cheeks again. “Agent Carson said that my partner, Rita, has been filling him in on the situation in Arcana. He says that with my new position, there are some things that have to change.”

  I turned my head and stared at the bright red makeup case sitting on the floor next to my full-length mirror. Every morning, I sat cross-legged in that very spot, putting on my makeup. This morning, when I applied my MAC eyeliner, I had sensed that it was going to be a bad day. I didn’t know why, but the feeling had come on very strong. Standing here now, I felt the same chill wash over me.

  “What things?” I asked in a whisper.

  Gideon blew out a large breath. “He said that because you’re still a person of interest in the Nicolo Harris case, I’m forbidden to have a personal relationship with you. He said that we have to end it and keep our relationship professional.”

  I nearly tripped over my own feet in shock. “Person of interest? How can I be a person of interest? I tried to help you catch him.”

  “Rita filed her reports with the SI and named you a person of interest. I can’t change that.”

  “Why would she do that?” I felt myself losing control. My talons were beginning to protract. I clasped my hands into tight fists. “That’s not right.”

  “Well, you did lie to us at first about your connection to him.” He saw the look of fury flash over my face and scrambled to speak before I could argue. “Come on, you know that’s true. It would make anyone look suspicious. I know you’re not a part of Nicky’s crimes, but Rita was never convinced of your innocence. She only did what she thought was right.”

  I didn’t know what made me angrier: having to break up or the fact that Gideon wasn’t upset at Rita for essentially ruining our relationship. If she were in this room, no one could’ve stopped me from having a go at her.

  “So, you’re okay with this? With breaking up?”

  We had hardly started dating. I wasn’t even sure we could call it breaking up.

  “Of course I’m not.” He stood up and stepped closer to me. “I really like you, Aya. You’re beautiful and fierce and… you scare the crap out of me,” he added with a laugh. “I want to see where this goes.”

  “But…?” I waited for the sentence that would seal our fate.

  Gideon took his time, running his index finger up my jaw and tucking a stray strand of blonde hair behind my ear. His touch left a burning sensation along my skin. I resisted the urge to lean into him.

  “But, until I capture your brother, we have to end this.”

  Closing my eyes, I welcomed the sudden darkness. Just when things were starting to come together, they fell apart again. It was a pattern in my pathetic life.

  I could tell him about the Harpy Quorum and my vision. I could beg him to stay and ignore the SI’s orders. Who were they to tell us how to live our lives? But this was Gideon’s job. He talked about it all the time. He couldn’t envision himself without it.

  I couldn’t take that from him. If that meant waiting until Nicky was caught, I’d have to be patient. My brother was too smart to get captured by just anyone. Gideon would have to pull out all the stops. In the meantime, I’ll handle the harpies myself. It was better that way.

  “I should go,” he said.

  My eyes flew open. “Now? Already?”

  He met my gaze. I thought I saw desperation in his eyes, but I couldn’t be sure.

  “It’s better this way.”

  I swallowed hard. No use delaying the inevitable. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.

  “Okay.” It was all I could say under the circumstances.

  Gideon frowned. Maybe he thought I would shed some tears, do some proper begging. But at the moment, I felt numb. No, the tears would come much later tonight when I was alone in bed and reality had sunk in.

  Without warning, he pulled me close and pressed his lips on mine. His hands trailed to the back of my head, tangling in my hair. I replied with a similar hunger, pressing my chest against his, and running my hands over his muscular back. The taste of his lips was sweet and tangy. His tongue slipped into my mouth, sending tingles down my spine. I could stay like this all day, feeling the heat of his body against mine.

  My hands began to work downward, finding his belt. His breath grew heavier, matching my own. He planted hot kisses down the curve of my neck, stopping at the collarbone. I couldn’t hold back the groan that escaped from my mouth. I didn’t want h
im to stop. We could stay in my room forever, hiding from the SI and the HQ. We were safe here. Just him and me.

  Gideon grabbed my waist and shoved me back a step. We stared at each other, a blush working its way up his neck. I imagined I looked similarly flushed, with my hair tussled and knotted. He grimaced and dropped his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Aya.”

  Without another word, he turned and rushed out of the apartment, leaving me staring at an empty room.

  Chapter Three

  I spent the next day around the apartment, not bothering to change out of my baggy pajama bottoms and matching baby blue cami. It was my only day off this week, so I didn’t feel bad for giving myself an extended pity party. Delivery food plus sappy romance movies were the quick fix for a relationship gone sour. Add in a little Ben & Jerry’s and sweet red wine, and I was living the dream.

  By the time midnight rolled around, I was nursing a wine and sugar hangover. The pain in my stomach successfully distracted me from thoughts of Gideon and the HQ; thoughts that I’d ignored for most of the day. Slipping into my white Egyptian cotton sheets one leg at a time, I curled up as the covers absorbed my body heat.

  Tomorrow, I’d have to get up like usual and get ready for work. The world would go on turning, whether I liked it or not. There would still be bills to pay and museum displays to change. My boss would still send me dangerous items to add to the collection, and Angel would still be there to enthrall me with tales of her latest date. Life would go on.

  But tomorrow, I’d also have to figure out how to deal with my vision. If the HQ was on my trail, I’d have to be super careful. I wouldn’t walk down the street alone. I’d keep Angel in the museum with me at all times, and maybe even hire a temporary guard at the museum. There was enough money left in the budget for that.

  I turned over and felt my eyelids grow heavy. All of those worries could wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I needed to regroup and refresh. I needed to heal.

  The darkness of my room was suddenly broken by a blinding light which chased away the shadows and illuminated every nook and cranny. I sat straight up in bed, my brain still heavy with sleep.