bridge of his nose, and stared at her. "It's awful, isn't it?"
"What?"
"Loving an immortal."
Erin had a sudden urge to clean out her ear. "Excuse me?"
"Oh, come on, don't play innocent with me. Why do you think Chrissy was working here?" He pointed to the dolphin tattoo on his left forearm. "I'm an oracle for the Greek gods. Which is why I'm so damned tired and cranky all the time. They have the most annoying habit of bursting in when you least expect it." He sighed disgustedly. "The least they could do is pay me, but oh no, I was lucky enough to be born into this. And benefits..." He snorted. "No sleep, no pay, no peace. Got to love it."
She disregarded his tirade. "So, you're like the Oracle of Delphi? I thought they were all women."
"Those particular oracles are, but not all of us are female. Obviously. We are merely human channels to the various gods."
Totally baffled, she stared at him, wondering if maybe this was a dream, too, or if the Big Guy had lost his mind. Something wasn't right, at any rate.
"Okay, so you're an oracle. Want to tell me why you hired Chrissy if you knew she was a dream-sucking monster?"
He shrugged. "She is a god and I have no choice except to serve her. She wanted a chance to scope out human targets. I merely provided her a safe cover."
"You sold me out?"
"No," he said, his stern look turning gentle. "They weren't supposed to drain you the way V'Aidan did. Trust me. What he did was wrong. And you can rest assured he is being adequately punished for it."
Her heart stopped at the forbidding note in his voice. "Punished how?"
"What do you care?" he asked, pushing the glasses back up on his nose. "You're rid of him. Right? No more Skoti in your dreams. You have your life back to yourself."
"I want to know." No, she needed to know what had happened to him.
John took a drink of coffee. "Why, they sent him to Tartarus, of course."
Erin didn't understand the term, and at the moment she wished she'd paid more attention in school. "Is that like jail?"
"Oh, no, hon. It's hell. They killed him the minute they took him back to his realm."
Erin couldn't breathe as tears welled up in her eyes. The weight in her chest was excruciating. It wasn't true. It couldn't be true. "They killed him?"
"Didn't you know?" he asked simply. "Didn't he tell you what they were going to do to him? V'Aidan was never one who played by the rules. He'd already been banned centuries ago from taking human form and banished from this realm."
"Why?"
"Because he would pretend to be human. Skoti are not supposed to have any creativity of their own. They're not supposed to want love. Not supposed to want anything except a single night of dream surfing, hopping from one person to the next. He'd behaved for centuries, until he found you. Even after they stripped all his skin from his immortal body, he couldn't stay away from you."
John sighed. "Hypnos had already banned his transformation powers, so he decided there was nothing more to be done with him. Since V'Aidan wouldn't obey him, they sent him to Tartarus for the rest of eternity."
"But he didn't hurt me. Not really."
"Didn't he? You look awful from here. Like you've been crying for months. And I swear you've lost at least ten pounds since all this started."
"That's not his fault."
"No?"
"No. I don't want him to suffer because of me."
His gaze searching hers, John pulled an envelope out of his desk drawer and handed it to her.
"What's this?"
"Open it."
Frowning, Erin did as he said and saw the three pictures of her and V'Aidan at the carnival. Her hand shook as grief and agony swirled in her heart. "Where did you get these?"
"M'Ordant sent them to you. He thought you might like them as a souvenir."
She stared at V'Aidan's handsome face. At the love in his eyes.
"I have to see him," she insisted.
John shook his head and sighed again. "Well, I'm afraid it's too late now."
"It can't be. Please. I need to see him again. Please, tell me there's some way I can reach him.
John narrowed an intense gaze on her. "That depends on whether or not you really love him."
Erin still couldn't believe what she was doing. She'd allowed John to teleport her into the Underworld, where he'd told her M'Ordant would be waiting to guide her to V'Aidan.