Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,83

deep breath and let it out in a sigh as she gently pulled her hand away and turned to face him. “Fine,” she said. “But just so you know Ares, talking to you right now is like talking to someone on a porn meet-up site who doesn’t want anyone to see their face.”

All he really caught from that was “porn site.” He tried not to smile when he asked, “How would you know this, exactly?”

She shrugged. “I have a fantastic imagination.”

But then it hit him. She’d called him Ares. She believed him! Now he couldn’t help the smile that claimed his face. It felt like something had been sitting on his chest before, and now it had lifted away and he could finally – finally – breathe. After fifty years of suffocation.

But she wasn’t smiling. Instead, she looked resigned.

She turned away from him, wrapped her arms around her chest, and paced the length of the candy closet. Ares found himself held rapt in her emotion, in her every movement. “Leia… what happened that night?”

Annaleia stopped and looked up at him. She sank to the floor and sat cross-legged. “Hand me the M&M’s.”

Without taking his eyes from her, he reached up behind him, grabbed the bag, and gently tossed it to her as he joined her. She caught it, also without looking, and tore the end off one side.

Ares sat down across from her and crossed his legs the same way.

“What you guessed earlier was mostly right” she said. She shook out an M&M and rolled it between her fingers absently. “Jarrod Sterling came to the diner one night when you weren’t there. It was November of that year. He told me that I had something he needed, and in exchange he would give me something I needed as well.”

Her voice took on a hollow quality, one filled with memories and the past.

“He was telling the truth on both counts. But more so on mine.” She looked up at Ares, meeting his gaze. “He told me that there would be an accident. The accident would kill me. But it would also kill my mother – and my unborn brother, Joshua. It was going to happen in the early hours of Christmas morning.”

Holy hell.

“I’m telling you, I have the worst luck during the holidays,” she said, shoving the candy into her mouth and then pouring half the bag into her mouth right after it. She chewed hard, swallowed, and Ares knew she’d be thirsty. He was in his own home; his spells were simplified here, verbal and somatic components no longer strictly necessary.

Annaleia glanced down when the drink appeared on the floor beside her right thigh. It was a Mountain Dew, in a bottle, which was wrapped in a thick koozie, and stored at 32.05 degrees Fahrenheit. Droplets of slush slid slowly down the sides of the bottle. It was cold.

It was her favorite non-alcoholic drink. She would always joke about wanting it at 32.05 degrees, just a hint above freezing.

“Damn,” she whispered, reaching down and grasping the bottle by the koozie. She seemed lost for a moment, her expression unreadable. Then she said softly, “You remembered that too.”

Ares didn’t know what to say. The absolute truth was, he did remember everything about Annaleia. Especially right then and there. It was as if she’d never left, she’d never vanished. As far as he and time were concerned, they could simply be hiding out in his closet, not wanting to study for tomorrow’s economics exam.

Leia put the bottle to her lips and took a long pull. But after she swallowed, she winced. Then she laughed. “It’s a lot sweeter than I remember it being.”

Ares chuckled too. As he spoke, he surreptitiously switched the drink out for another one with a twitch of magic. “You know, I’ve noticed that about humans. You don’t look much older than you did fifty years ago, but as far as your taste buds are concerned, you’ve been around for seventy-plus years. And for humans in general, as time passes they enjoy sweet liquids less and less, but their taste for sweet foods remains the same.”

She nodded. “Yeah… I’ve honestly wondered if that’s because the human body can’t digest sugar the same when it’s older, nor the saturated fat that’s sometimes attached to it. Maybe that’s why we actively begin disliking sweet drinks. It’s way too easy to down a lot of liquid in a very short period of time, so it’s more important for the body to make