I looked at the clock. Six eleven a.m. Definitely too early to call Apollo. I debated it anyway and decided that I’d have a better chance of catching him in the mood to humor me if I gave him a few more hours of sleep. I could use more myself.
But those hours of sleep turned out to be more elusive than an invitation to The Parlor’s inner sanctum. After half an hour or so of tossing and turning, I gave it up and rose. My oversized Arctic Monkeys T-shirt was crinkled beyond belief, but there was no one to see or care, since Nick’s and my schedules weren’t syncing up at the moment, so I just pulled my wild mane of hair back into a scrunchie and booted up my computer. Undercover work was all well and good, but there was something to be said for public records searches. The owner of the club would be a matter of public record, and if the place had ever been featured in any kind of press piece, any partners or major players would likely be mentioned, maybe even pictured. A few keystrokes and all would be revealed.
And sure enough, there she was, in an old issue of L.A. Days, a free daily that was more advertisement than actual news. THE PARLOR IS A GAMBLE, the headline read. It went on to talk about how the club had been investigated as the common denominator in the disappearance of a couple of out-of-state businessmen who were seen to enter but never to leave.
“Which is just defamatory,” says club owner Ariana Weaver. “Of course they left. The police have been through The Parlor from top to bottom. If the men had stayed behind, someone would have located them. I don’t see where my mail goes when it’s picked up, but I trust that it’s not still hiding out in my mailbox.”
My heart started to beat faster, as if my body was trying to tell me what my mind was smart enough to figure out for itself—that this was important. There was a picture of Ariana, standing beside her glass-block bar, just as I’d seen her today, in the wraparound aviator shades, but this time in a black satin jacket with a hood lined in red pulled up around her face, making her seem mysterious, as if she had something to hide. Probably that was the impression the photographer had been going for, given the headline and the direction of the story. But the really telling thing was that she didn’t look a day older last night than she’d looked in the picture, and the article was dated fifteen years ago. I wondered what she was hiding behind those aviator shades besides maybe crow’s-feet.
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.
He smiled at me over his shoulder and finally wrapped a sheet around himself towel style and went to check out my bribes. Maybe not the delicacies he’d been offered up on Mount Olympus, but pretty darn near the best L.A. had to offer.
He grabbed an espresso and both of the chocolate croissants and came back to bed. “I hope one of those is for me,” I told him.
“What do you have to trade?” he asked suggestively.
I growled and rose to help myself to one of the tiny cherry pies instead, biting it in half like it was his head. He laughed.
“Here,” he said, holding a croissant out to me. “I can’t stand to see you commit pastrycide.”
I bit into one of the croissants, closed my eyes in delight, and nearly sank into the bed, which was every bit as comfortable as I remembered. Hopefully, the sugar rush would hit soon and make up for my lack of sleep.
A pillow hit me upside the head, careful not to crush my croissant. “None of that,” Apollo said when I glared. “If anything’s going to pleasure you to sleep, it’s going to be me. Now spill. What’s going on that’s so important you had to beard the lion in his den?”
The lion’s den? Come to think of it, with that wild mane of golden hair, his tawny skin, and broad chest, it was an apt comparison.
I told him about Gareth, The Parlor, the invitation-only games, and the disappearances. Then I told him about Ariana Weaver. He got more and more thoughtful as the tale went on.
When I finished, he didn’t say a word, and I finally asked, “What?”
“I think you should drop the case. If it had anything to do with my dream . . .”
“Tell me about it,” I said gently.
“I saw fangs. You paralyzed, being sucked dry . . .” The haunted look was back in his eyes.
“Vampires?” I asked doubtfully. I thought about Ariana Weaver—dark glasses, dark clothing, a club that meant she’d be active at night and probably asleep by day . . . But I just couldn’t buy it. For one thing, she’d been captured on film. “Do vampires really exist?”
Apollo shrugged and the sheet he’d wrapped around his hips began to slip. “Depends on your definition. There are certainly things that go bump in the night. Some like the taste of blood. But I’m not sure that’s it. There was something . . . different . . .”
“Different how?” I prompted.
“Maybe if you’d let the dream play out . . .”
I stared down at the crumbs now decorating Apollo’s previously clean sheets. There was just no way to eat a croissant neatly. None. “So you’ll help me?” I asked.
He looked at me steadily. I could feel it even without meeting his gaze. “I’m trying, Tori. You told me to stay away, to give you and Nick a chance. I’m trying to honor that, but every time you pull me back in.”
“I know,” I said quietly, “but—”
“Have you tried calling the police? Having the wife file a missing person’s report?”
