Sin & Chocolate (Demigod of San Francisco 1)

“How big is our window?” Kieran asked quietly, his stomach fluttering in anticipation of what was to come.

“Valens will have people monitoring you in about an hour,” Zorn said, not needing to check a schedule. He made it his job to track Valens’s attempts to keep tabs on his son. Dear old Dad had trust issues. “We’ll need to cut the meeting short if necessary.”

“And we’re positive this Ghost Whisperer doesn’t have ties to my father in any way?” Kieran saw the sign he was looking for. Clare’s Clairvoyance. In small letters below the name, it said, We see clearly in the beyond.

“Without question,” Donovan said. “She’s never spoken to the man, or any of the people who directly report to him.”

Kieran nodded, knowing his father frowned upon many of the traits Hades had passed on to the world, clairvoyance being one of them. As a descendent of Poseidon, his father took the old rivalry of the Olympian brothers to heart.

Kieran took in the shop face, with its extravagant gilded scrollwork and fresh paint. This corner location on one of magical San Francisco’s busiest tourist streets had to be pricy. This woman obviously charged a lot, and still had the clientele to keep her operational. That alone meant she must be good.

But he’d been fooled by such things before. Many times.

Zorn stopped by the door before pulling it wide. Donovan and Jack entered first, and the rest of the Six waited for Kieran to follow.

He took a deep breath, feeling the familiar press of loss and pain from his mother’s passing. He knew something of what he was about to hear, and he dreaded it.

“Let’s get this over with,” he murmured, crossing the threshold into the dimly lit lobby. Soft music drifted through the space and the faint aroma of incense tickled his nose. Silk-draped dark gray walls surrounded a low glass table and surrounding chairs. A plush Oriental rug stretched out across the concrete floor to the cherry wood front desk.

When the woman behind the front desk saw him, her eyes lit up and an excited smile crossed her face.

“She didn’t recognize me,” Kieran said, half turning to Zorn. It hadn’t dawned on him at the time. “Alexis. She didn’t show one glimmer of recognition.”

“Hello, Demigod Kieran,” the woman at the desk said, flicking her hair. Red infused her cheeks. “So great to see you. Clare will be seeing you personally, of course, and she’s ready for you in room three.”

“She acted and spoke to me like she would anyone else.” Kieran turned away from the woman without a word. Usually he gave everyone a passing moment of politeness, something his mother had expressly requested of him and something his father tolerated, but his brain was churning furiously, fitting this next piece into the puzzle of his new favorite enigma. “Most people have at least heard of me, even if they don’t recognize me.”

“Did you give her your name?” Donovan asked quietly as they passed through the curtain of hanging glass beads.

“No…” Kieran spied the door of the room they’d be walking into. Three was a relevant number to the mystics, but it didn’t get his hopes up. Such things never seemed to help them do their job.

“If she’s as she seems, she doesn’t sound like the kind of person who’d be up on current events,” Donovan said, his voice also hushed. He glanced around with tight eyes. He didn’t much like the thought of spirits lingering in the world of the living. None of the guys did.

“But to not know the son of San Francisco’s ruling Demigod is in town?” Kieran asked, stopping outside the closed door of room three.

“Even if she did know, without seeing a picture, why would she assume it was you?” Jack asked.

“I think it proves she’s thoroughly entrenched in the dual-society zone, like the report states,” Donovan said. “People live there for a reason, and unless they are criminals hiding from the government, they have no reason to know what goes on in either society. Politics rarely affect them.”

Kieran nodded, because that was absolutely true. That piece fit, and it connected with her living arrangements.

Her magic and her power level were the odd ones out. Someone like her shouldn’t have slipped through the cracks, which typically meant someone like her hadn’t.

The whole thing was dangerously mysterious.

8

Kieran

“Time is wasting,” Zorn reminded him.

In other words, quit stalling.

Kieran turned the handle and pushed into the room, fighting the gloom that descended on him whenever he allowed himself to think about his mother’s long convalescence.

This time, the thought reminded him of Alexis debating, aloud, over the price of that blanket.

If there was one thing that drove Kieran to his knees, it was the memory of the large, sorrowful eyes of the children in the hospital in Galway. The sight of their suffering, and their tiny, frail bodies, had stayed with him.

He clenched his jaw with the memory.

He hadn’t been able to do much for them or their parents, for fear of stepping on the local governing body’s toes. Not nearly enough. He believed in karma, and his bucket had to be next to empty.

The least he could do was buy a good, warm blanket for a sick kid, even if that “kid” was actually a teen. Or so the file had said. He’d be fifteen now, infected with a terminal ailment affecting one percent of magical people. Apparently, a non-magical teen girl lived with Alexis as well. He hadn’t been able to verify this, but then, he didn’t need to. He’d seen the fear and sorrow on Alexis’s face when she mentioned the kid. It was the same look he’d seen in the mirror for years as his mother deteriorated before his eyes.

It was a look he’d do nearly anything to banish.

“Demigod Kieran, how nice of you to visit…”

The low, thick voice jogged Kieran out of his reverie. He didn’t even have time to point out the inconsistency to Zorn—the magical government knew about Alexis’s wards, but not about that potent, dangerous magic. Something still wasn’t lining up…

“Demigod Kieran.” Kieran found himself facing a middle-aged woman sitting on the other side of a rectangular table. Her elbows rested on the table’s surface and a smile sat on her slightly wrinkled face.

“Yes,” he said, taking two steps toward the empty leather chair facing her.

“Hello.” Her smile widened and her eyes glimmered. “I’m Clare. Please, sit down.”

His guys filed out of the room, though Zorn gave Kieran an assessing look before shutting the door.

He was alone with a clairvoyant…and possibly his mother.

His gulp was loud in the quiet room.

“Now, let me get up to speed,” Clare said, moving her hand to touch a deck of tarot cards resting just off to her right. Various bells waited to her left, each with characters inscribed on its surface. Candles of various colors, heights, and smelliness glowed on either side of the table. “You learned of your mother remaining in this world from an Oracle?”

“From a Ghost Whisperer, like yourself. Her services were a gift. A passing amusement.”

“But she heard the voice of your mother.”

A familiar heaviness pressed on his chest. Though he’d asked Zorn to explain the situation to her before setting up the meeting, hearing a stranger talk about something so personal sent shock waves of unease racing through him. He maintained focus so as not to accidentally lash out.

“Yes,” he said.

Clare took her hand back from the tarot deck and reached with her other hand before lightly resting her two fingers on the second bell. “You believe she is trapped in this world?”

“That is what I have been told, yes.” Told by a handful of Ghost Whisperers, plus one Necromancer who’d felt her, but hadn’t been able to summon her spirit.

Clare’s brow lowered and she touched the third bell. “Hmm,” she said, her eyes losing focus. “And you want to help her cross over?”

“Yes.” A wave of sadness threatened to drag him under. He struggled to the surface, and a strange tingling sensation crawled into his shoulder and through his middle. “I want her to finally be at peace.”

“Yes, I see.” Clare picked up the last bell of four before jerking it. The toll pealed through the room, crawling up his spine. She set the bell down before picking up the first bell. This time, she held it daintily before gently moving it side to side, the toll higher and slow.

Kieran tried to ease his stiffness. Tried to stop the flutter of hope in his belly that this woman, unlike all the others, would have answers. That she’d be able to help his mother find peace, once and for all.

“Let’s see…” Clare picked up the tarot, movements slow. Dramatized. She shuffled them, a highly practiced movement, before laying them out in a cross-like pattern. “Now…”

One by one she read the cards, mostly mumbling. She asked him a few questions along the way, and stopped often, tilting her head and listening. Halfway through, she stopped what she was doing altogether.

“She’s here,” Clare finally said, putting her finger up. “She is…speaking…” Her voice dipped lower, and each word took on a different lilt. “Live…happy…”