Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,11

shoulders. Maybe it was hysteria or shock or the heat, but she didn’t hesitate to wonder out loud what was next. “But Nina’s not here right now, is she? I am. Me and my gigunda boobs and sparkly skin—here with you and the man who claims he’s got an apple keeping him on a leash. We need to figure out if this guy is for real, right? Because my boobs aren’t kidding around. I really, literally grew boobs. So the natural question is, what’s next, right?”

Khristos sighed and rolled his head on his neck before answering. “We go back to wherever you live, Quinn. I move in with you, and I teach you the ways of Aphrodite.”

Oh.

Simple enough.

Wait. Move in with her? “Move into my apartment with me?”

“You’re not moving anywhere, pal!” Ingrid exploded, her face redder than ever. “You’re staying right there until I get someone here to help me. Now go over there, and do it now.”

Khristos lifted his wide shoulders in an easy gesture of defeat. “Okay, but I’m telling you—”

“Now!” Ingrid bellowed, pointing her finger to the steps leading up to the Parthenon, her chest rising and falling with the obvious effort it took for her to yell.

Quinn cocked her head in Ingrid’s direction as the dust of crushed rock swirled around their feet. “Why are you yelling?”

“Why the hell aren’t you?”

She paused a moment. Yeah. Why wasn’t she yelling? Or freaking out, for that matter? For that matter, why wasn’t Ingrid freaking out?

Sure, she was yelling and ordering this man around as if she knew what she was doing, but she didn’t appear any more freaked out than Quinn.

Quinn scratched her forehead. “You know, I don’t know. I should be pretty traumatized right now, shouldn’t I? I mean, a total stranger appears out of nowhere and tells me I now have the powers of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, shortly after my boobs inflate like someone used a bicycle pump on them, to name just one ailment. I should be trussed up in a straitjacket right now, but…”

“It’s shock. You’re in shock. When something like this goes down, it happens to every…um. It happens.”

Every what? Everyone? “So the last time you saw a friend’s dirty pillows grow right before your very eyes, they went into shock? Does this kind of thing happen often with you? Because remind me to leave you home if I ever take another post-breakup trip. I mean, what’s next? Nicki Minaj’s ass?” Quinn teased with a snort.

But wait…

Ingrid took Quinn’s hand in hers and gave her a grave look. It was just like the look Ingrid had when she’d found out the One Direction tickets she’d paid three hundred dollars for online were total fakes.

When Quinn had squawked at the amount of money Ingrid had lost, her friend reminded her, with just such a face, that Harry was priceless.

“Look, while we wait for Nina to get in touch with me, there are some things I have to tell you—about my bosses. And I’m just going to say it. You’re probably going to freak out, but we need Nina here like now, so I don’t have a choice but to explain. How she gets here to Greece alone is going to leave you in the fetal position, shitting chickens, but I have to prepare you.”

She was hot and tired and this I-know-something-you-don’t-know business was old. Quinn threw her hands up in the air, blowing her hair from her face in an exasperated huff. “Okay, you win. Prepare me.”

Chapter 3

Well, if nothing else, she now completely understood why Ingrid never wanted her to see where she worked.

Because vampires, and werewolves, and demons, and zombies, oh my.

Quinn stared up at Ingrid while Ingrid stared back down at her, with Khristos still in the distance on the Parthenon steps, scrolling through his phone.

She repositioned herself on Ingrid’s backpack, where she sat cross-legged, and held up a hand. Because Ingrid’s lips were moving, but the words coming out weren’t making any sense. “Stop. Let me process. Please.”

Quinn licked her lips and took a sip from her last bottle of lukewarm water. “Okay so, you used to work for a veterinarian named Katie in upstate New York, aka Deliverance-Land—Nina’s words, not yours. And one dark and stormy night, while trying to save what you all thought was an injured, escaped cougar from the exotic animal farm down the road from her practice, your veterinarian boss was scratched by the injured kitty and that turned her into a