Painted Blind Part 18

"We are?" Rory stuck his head out the door, spotted the van and waved. "Have a nice day," he shouted.

I was irritated, but I tried to keep my voice friendly. I really did need his help. "I came to apologize. You'll think I'm crazy, but..."

Rory interrupted, "Uh, why don't we go somewhere more private before..."

"Rory," a woman's voice called from the kitchen. "Was someone at the door?" She came around the corner drying her hands on a dish towel and blinked at the sight of me. "Oh, h.e.l.lo."

"Mom, you remember Psyche Middleton?"

Her gaze went from Rory to me and back again.

Rory cleared his throat. "She needs help with homework." He jerked his head toward the hallway and strode off.

"It's nice to see you again, Mrs. Keene." I followed him down the hall.

"I'm baking cookies," she called after us.

Rory opened a door and motioned me inside.

I crossed the threshold into a castle. The gray walls had been lined to give the illusion of stone. Dark carpet, velvet drapes and a mahogany poster bed made the room look like a small royal chamber. A sculpted dragon stood on the dresser, and a green stuffed version stood waist high on the floor next to the bed. One entire wall was filled with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and in the corner sat a computer desk equipped with two large monitors. Here was a guy that spent a lot of time reading and a lot of time gaming.

After a nervous glance down the hallway, Rory shut the door. "Let me just say two things. One, most of this," he gestured around the room, "was my mom's doing, and two, I've never had a girl in here, so it never mattered before."

"I like it." I fingered a velvet curtain. "It's cool."

His shoulders relaxed. "Thanks... I like it, too."

Rory dropped into the computer chair, and I sat on the bed. We used to play together in his room all the time when we were little, but this was beyond weird. Rory looked out the window; I looked at the carpet.

Finally I broke the awkward silence. "So, you probably heard how they found me in the mountains?"

"You almost froze to death," he replied. In a town like this, it's pretty hard to keep a secret, especially when you end up in the ER.

"I was seeing this guy, and he threw me out." I wasn't sure which part of that surprised him more, but there was obvious confusion in his eyes. I went on undaunted. "I want to talk to him again, but I can't. So, I made a deal with his...uh, mom." I reached into my messenger bag and drew out the rolled parchment tied with ribbon. "Aphrodite." I offered the contract to him. "See for yourself."

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the doc.u.ment from my hand, but the ancient characters she'd written stopped him dead. His eyes widened on me, and he quickly scanned the English text. "So you're trying to..."

"Win back Eros, the G.o.d of love."

Rory fingered the signature. "Aphrodite. She exists. You've seen her?"

I nodded. "She looks younger than our parents."

"Incredible." He rolled the doc.u.ment closed and offered it to me. "Collecting one point four million ads is the first task. What are the others?"

"I don't know. I have to complete one to get the next. She probably figures I'll fail at this, and she won't have to bother with the rest." And she was probably right. Even with Rory's help, the task was impossible given a year. With only two months, we were grasping at straws. I explained the details of the task then said, "I called my agent yesterday. The ad debuted in Cosmopolitan and will run in Vogue this month. She said sales were up. Cosmo's circulation spiked to three and a quarter million." I rolled the contract carefully and returned it to my bag. "I wondered if we could get a lawyer to order a recall. It totally violated my contract."

Rory sat back and folded his arms. "How so?"

"It was right there in the paperwork I signed: no nudity."

"If your contract said 'no nudity,' why'd you pose for it?" Rory's tone was cutting.

My temper flared. "I wasn't nude, and I have the original to prove it!" I pulled it from my portfolio this morning. Now I handed it to Rory. The original was completely different from the billboard. The background was a swirl of blue, and I was standing in an open clam sh.e.l.l, but all the other features of the painting had been added later. In the photo it was obvious I wore something under the wig. The strings of the bikini showed at my neck, across my chest and on my hips. They'd posed my hand to cover most of the bikini bottom, but the flesh-colored fabric stood out behind my fingers.

Rory studied the photo, and when he handed it back, he didn't meet my eyes. "I'm sorry I thought..."

"It's what everyone thinks," I answered.

"I don't think they will issue a recall. They edited the strings off, but it's not like they put your head on someone else's nude body. It is you, and you're basically covered. Legally, I don't think you have a case. Plus, the courts are slow. You'd miss your deadline."

I stuffed the photo into my bag and felt myself crumbling from the inside. There had to be a way, somehow.

"I think we should have a contest," Rory said. His hand swept across the air like a headline. "Win a date with Venus. The entry fee is one copy of the ad. Enter as many times as you like."

No one had ever asked me on a date. What made him think guys would buy magazines to go out with me? I'd probably have more luck going door to door.

"We could offer, like a hundred entries for every billboard," Rory said. His eyes s.h.i.+mmered as the ideas hatched in his mind. "We could make a video and upload it to YouTube, so people know it's legit." He turned to his computer and typed furiously. "And, I'll post it on Dragonslayers Anonymous."

"Dragonslayers?" I muttered.

"It's a website for fantasy junkies like me. A million members, well over half are in the U.S."

That knot from yesterday threatened to explode. "No way." I hated that Venus ad. I didn't want to attract more attention to it. This was exactly the sort of thing that would bring on a panic attack. "I can't." Plus, the press might show up at my doorstep again.

Rory's voice softened. "When we were kids, I told my mom how you were afraid of stuff."

"Stuff?" I said sarcastically. If he wanted to parade my paranoia across the room, he might as well be accurate. I wasn't afraid of small s.p.a.ces, the dark, fast cars or wild horses. I'd ridden every roller coaster at Seven Flags when Dad took me there. I was afraid of heights and...

"People. It told her how you were afraid of strangers and crowds." He had large, light-flecked eyes and a nice chin. They were small things I'd never noticed before. If it weren't for the terrible acne, he'd be more handsome than Travis McDowell. "She said it was probably because your mom left you. She told me you'd grow out of it."

"Guess what?" I grabbed my bag and headed for the door, angry and disappointed. "I didn't."

My dad was in the kitchen when I got home. As long as I lived I would always picture him with his sleeves rolled up standing at the stove. He didn't look one bit like those pompous chefs on cooking shows, but my dad was a genius in the kitchen.

"What's on the menu tonight?" I asked as I dropped my bag on a bar stool.

"Wild mushroom ravioli with pesto." He looked up, and his shoulders relaxed. "I bought a new cookbook." When he smiled, the little lines around his eyes crinkled, but that was about the extent my dad had aged. He was still lean and broad shouldered. "Where've you been?" he asked lightly, but his eyes betrayed him. He was worried.

"Rory Keene's house."

Dad set the lid on a pot and wiped his hands on a towel. "The boy that lived across the street?"

"He's in my chemistry cla.s.s." I guess I learned the art of evasion from Eros.

"Homework is a good distraction."

"Yeah." I wished homework was the extent of my worries. In fact, I totally forgot about the mountain of make-up work that wasn't getting done.

The food smelled good, but when we sat down to eat, I lost my appet.i.te. I ate a small serving to satisfy my dad and prayed it wouldn't come back up. I'd never been like this before, jittery and restless, unable to eat or sleep. Something in me was off, and I couldn't fix it.

I spent that night and most of the next day trying to catch up on school work. I struggled to concentrate and had to redo one a.s.signment twice. Sunday night brought another bout of restless sleep so I woke Monday morning more exhausted than the night before.

I felt miserable. My belly swam with depression-induced nausea, a constant murmur I was getting used to. I was groggy when I dragged myself to the shower hoping to kick-start my system. There I realized something was different. Gone was the oversized bandage on my hand, and in its place was a gauze wrapping, which was now soaked from the shower. I pulled at the end and started unwinding, tossing the long strand over the shower curtain as it unraveled. When I pulled the last of the gauze away, there was no gash-not healed into a scar, but gone. I opened and closed my fist, then checked the other hand just to be sure. It was as if Theron never cut me. My awe sprang into panicked hope. Someone had done this, and it wasn't a mortal.

I switched off the water and threw on clothes, barely pausing to dry. Did Eros come himself after all? I paused at my bedroom door and listened for even the slightest movement. I sniffed the air. Did I imagine that hint of cinnamon? I crossed the room and pitched forward over an invisible foot. The body groaned as I landed with a thud on top of it. I jumped to my feet, and Aeas appeared clutching his abdomen.

"Good morning to you, too," he muttered.

"I told you to get out."

"And I left," he answered, "but I'm back."

"You're not welcome here."

He was sleeping under a wool cloak with only a sash over his chest.

"Why are you wearing your native clothes?"

"Eros didn't give me time to change before he threw me out." Aeas sat up. "I can't step foot in the kingdom without the pendant." His skin p.r.i.c.kled with goose b.u.mps, and he rubbed his arms to warm them. Fall in Montana was no time to be wandering around s.h.i.+rtless.

I dug jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt out of my dresser and tossed them to Aeas. "I don't have the pendant anymore." I showed him Aphrodite's contract. "She kept it as collateral."

He started to read then sat on the end of the bed. His eyes went over the words several times before he leveled his gaze at me. "How did you find her?"

"The fortune teller. She used to be..."

"You've seen Alia?" he interrupted.

"She goes by Gina now."

Aeas drew his brow together and studied the contract again. "She had no right to send you to Aphrodite."

"Look, I know you're his friend and all, but she did me a favor. He moved the portal, so I couldn't come back." I slouched onto the opposite side of the bed feeling defeated. "Anyway, you can take him the contract and tell him his mother has the pendant. That should get you back into the kingdom. Or you can fly to Naples and ask her for it yourself."

Aeas threw off his sash. "She wouldn't give it to me. I doubt she'd give it to Eros until your bargain was over." He held the jeans up in front of him. "Are these women's clothes?"

"The sweats.h.i.+rt is unis.e.x. The jeans are men's actually."

He and the jeans disappeared. "Why do you wear men's pants?"

"They're less flattering."

"Always hiding, just like him." He reappeared wearing my clothes. "How do I look?"

"Like a freshman." He gave me a puzzled look, but I didn't explain. "So what are you gonna do?"

"There is only one thing I can do-stay and help you complete the tasks."

"Stay where? Here? My dad will skin you alive if he finds you here. Eros will understand once you show him the contract. He'll let you back into the kingdom."

Hands on his hips, Aeas replied flatly, "No. He won't."

The alarm on my phone buzzed. "We'll have to talk about this later. I am going to be late for school."

"Then let's go."

"Oh, no. You're not coming with me." Been there, done that with Eros. He caused enough trouble.

"Well, I'm not going to stay here and let your dad skin me." Aeas pulled his leather shoes onto his feet. "You won't even know I'm there."

I lost track of Aeas the moment we got out of the car, but he'd promised to stay with me all day and not cause trouble. The morning pa.s.sed in a blur. I was too restless to hear anything my teachers said. I kept my head down and bided the time until third period when I would see Rory.

"I've been looking for you all morning," Rory said when I slid into the seat behind him. "Thought you might have skipped."

I considered it, but I was too far behind in my cla.s.ses already.

Rory set his arms on my desk and murmured. "I surfed around the Internet last night. That picture of you has gone viral. Did you know you already have fan sites?"

He might as well have punched me in the stomach. My mouth watered like it does right before I puke.

Rory saw the look on my face. "That's not a bad thing, Psyche. It makes your task easier."

I looked around, not knowing where Aeas was. "The seat next to me was Savannah's," I said quietly. "No one sits there anymore."

Rory wrinkled his eyebrows in confusion. He thought I was talking to him.

"Beauty and the Beast," a girl sang as she pa.s.sed Rory and I hunched over my desk.

"Hailey," I snapped, "why don't you pick on someone with an IQ as low as yours?"

"Hot off the presses." She tossed a magazine onto my desk. There smeared across the cover was that same headline, "Beauty and the Beast," with a close-up photo of Rory and I leaving the burger joint last week.

My eyes burned at the cruelty. "Rory, I'm sorry."

He forced a smile. "I can't help it if I'm beautiful." He turned to Hailey. "You can keep your gossip rag. Psyche and I know where we were this weekend." He winked at me.

"Fame is dangerous," I warned, trying to match his playful tone, but I was amazed he could shrug this off. "It's going to your head already."

"You need a new lab partner," he replied, "since we already established that the seat next to you is empty. My partner's gone. Wanna pair up?"

"Yes," I replied. Chemistry just got a lot easier.

Rory skated through our lab like it was remedial freshman science. I stood back and watched as he filled the beakers, mixed, measured and made careful notes.

"Do you really think I can get over a million magazines with a contest?" I asked.

Rory stirred a substance on the burner. "Most definitely."