Jane Kindred - Seducing The Dark Prince

“At the lab,” Theia clarified, eyeing him suspiciously. “Why do you need me?”

Managing not to choke, Lucien set down his fork to take a drink of mineral water. “We have an excellent staff of researchers but only a handful of lab techs who know the full extent of what we do. I thought it would be good to have someone on staff that I don’t have to hide things from.” Not those things, anyway. He’d gotten used to hiding everything else. “And you’d be well compensated,” he added. “In case that wasn’t clear.”

“You want me to be a lab technician?”

“More than just a lab technician. I mean, that, too. But...” He hadn’t really thought about how he was going to broach the subject of her gift. They’d talked around the reputation of the Carlisle sisters, but he hadn’t actually mentioned clairvoyance outright. “Someone with both technical and esoteric knowledge would be invaluable. Someone who could make...educated predictions of the likely outcomes.”

Theia’s body language had loosened up significantly over the course of the meal, but in an instant she was back to being stiff and tight and on guard.

“Sorry, did I say something wrong?”

“What exactly is it that you think I can do, Mr. Smok?”

Oh, crap. He was Mr. Smok again.

“I...understood you had oracular powers.”

“Oracular.” Her forehead creased with irritation. “You think I can see the future. That I can just look into my little crystal ball and tell you how Smok stock is going to do tomorrow.”

“Well, not exactly—”

“Who told you I had these oracular powers?”

Lucien was beginning to feel uncomfortable under her gaze. She might not have oracular powers, but he was starting to think she could burn a hole in his family jewels with those eyes.

“It’s common knowledge in the community. The magical community.”

“And the magical adjacent, of course.”

Lucien shrugged helplessly. “Sorry. I’ve obviously stepped in it here, and I’m not really sure how.”

“Let me ask you something, Mr. Smok.”

“Fire away.”

“Do you and your kind think my sisters and I are some kind of magical Pez dispensers? Is there a creep board out there on the internet somewhere, some ugly little masculinist corner of the deep web where you guys swap stories about how to hit on magically gifted women?”

Lucien nearly choked again at the word masculinist.

“I’m not sure what you think my kind is, but I think you’re taking my interest the wrong way.”

“So you don’t want to sleep with me to get your magical rocks off.”

Something in her words made him snap, like a percussion grenade had gone off inside him. “Listen, sweetheart, if all I wanted to do was sleep with you, I wouldn’t have wasted the company money on a fancy dinner. I would have just done it, and right about now is when you’d be gathering your clothes and making your exit so I could roll over and go to sleep.”

Theia pushed back her chair and stood, her napkin falling to the floor. “Thank you for the dinner, Mr. Smok. Enjoy rolling over and sleeping next to your hand.”

Still suffering the effects of the mental percussion grenade, he wasn’t entirely sure what had just happened, but it was both delightful and painful to watch her walk away in those heels and that skirt.

Chapter 5

Theia ordered a car on her way outside, and in fifteen minutes she was back at Phoebe’s ranch house yanking off the skirt and kicking off her shoes and grabbing a startled Puddleglum for a forcible cuddle in the papasan chair by the picture window.

Who the hell did that asshole Lucien Smok think he was, anyway? God’s gift to women, obviously. Showing up at Phoebe’s wedding trolling for Lilith blood was bad enough, but making up a job offer to get into her pants was pathetic.

Her phone rang underneath Puddleglum, and she ended up accidentally answering as she wrested it from under him before she saw who was calling.

Lucien’s voice carried from the speaker as she stared at it. “I didn’t think you’d answer.”

“I didn’t. It was my sister’s cat.”

“Her...cat?”

“His butt. Some people butt dial. He butt answers. Goodbye.” Her finger was poised over the button.

“Wait. Please hear me out.”

For some reason, she did.

“I’m calling to apologize. I screwed up.”

“Ya think?”

“I really did ask you to dinner to talk about the job. There was no ulterior motive. I’m sorry I handled the topic of your gift badly. I didn’t realize it was a touchy subject and maybe not for public consumption. And I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m not sure why I overreacted. But what I said was inexcusable.”

Well, damn. That was an unexpectedly sincere apology. But maybe this was part of his game. She wasn’t going to be stupid enough to fall for it twice.

“Okay, well, thanks for calling. Have a nice evening.”

“Theia?”

Something about the way he said her name, almost a plea, made her hesitate.

“Are you still there?”

Theia’s thumb hovered over the button. “Sort of.”

He laughed softly. “Sort of? Listen, the job offer was genuine. I realize I made assumptions, but I think you’d be an asset to the enterprise, gift or no gift. Is there any way we can start over and discuss it?”

She did need to learn more about the Smoks, and the whole trigger-suppression concept was intriguing.

Theia sighed. “I’m not a psychic, I don’t read people’s fortunes and I don’t perform on command.”

“Of course. That’s perfectly understandable. Can I ask...” There was a rustling sound as he changed position. “Can you tell me how it does work? If it’s none of my business, that’s perfectly cool.”

Theia hesitated, and Puddleglum jumped down to wander to the kitchen, offended at no longer being the center of attention. “I’ve been known to have dreams. Visions. But honestly? I don’t even know if they’re anything.”

“I think you underestimate yourself.”

“How would you know?”

“Just a feeling.”

Theia smiled despite herself. “That’s usually my line.”

“Why don’t we put the feelings and intuitions aside then? I’ll be at the lab tomorrow around two o’clock. Just come by and take a look around, see what we do. If it doesn’t interest you, no harm done. You can walk away. And if you do get any impressions of a possible prophetic nature, I’d be happy to hear those, too. But no pressure.”

“No pressure.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Let’s not go that far.”

Lucien gave her that soft laugh again. “I get the feeling you doubt my sincerity. Suppose I can’t blame you. So will I see you tomorrow?”

The word tomorrow seemed to float before her in brilliant blue letters. Synesthesia wasn’t unusual for her, but it was often a precursor to a waking vision. Either way, it seemed to indicate that tomorrow was significant. A sign she should heed. Interpretation, of course, was always the tough part. Was her gift telling her she should go tomorrow? Or stay away?

“Theia? You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Tomorrow it is.”

The same brilliant blue haunted her sleep. Not letters or words this time, but blue in the form of a small dragon. Like the cockatrice she’d dreamed of before, it had webbed, bat-like wings, the joints ending in sharp claws, and stood on two legs, the head and barbed tail the classic shape of a dragon from fantasy—the sort Rhea had collected as figurines when they were kids. But there was something wrong with this dragon. It dragged itself along the desert floor the way a wounded bat might, using its winged forelimbs to “walk.” And above it, the shadow of the carrion-eating cockatrice circled as before. And it was growing closer.