Page 41 of Witches and Wine
“Chelsea,” Apollo’s voice called out.
The Greek sun god sat at a corner table, waving me over and smiling so brightly it seemed to sparkle in the dimly lit bar. As I walked through the space, the magic flowing from every patron called to my power, tugging on an invisible thread that made me antsy. No one had looked especially out of the ordinary until I passed a table with two males—one had pointed ears with several small hoop earrings, his hair starch white, and his skin the color of a starless sky. The other appeared human, jet black hair slicked back with gel, sapphire eyes, and a charming smile. That was until a tentacle resembling that of an octopus, suckers and all, emerged from his jacket, nearing my hip.
Batting it away with my purse, I tilted my chin at the curious blue-grey tentacle. “You always let that thing roam where it doesn’t belong?”
The man shot his gaze toward me and stifled a gasp when he saw how close the tentacle was to my waist. It snapped back into his jacket, and the man bowed his head. “Apologies. Theysometimes have a mind of their own. But—” He scanned my body, landing on my face. “—I can see why it was so intrigued.”
“Thank you all the same, but you can tell your appendages—allof them—that I’m spoken for.”
Was I spoken for? Was what I had started with Dion real?
No. I was not going to think about that. I came here for a distraction. Dion or not, it was as good an excuse as any to show them I wasn’t interested.
The two males chuckled, the one with white hair more so cackling, and I sat at the table across from Apollo. Flicking hair from my eyes, I rested my purse on the table after wiping off something sticky with a paper napkin from the dispenser.
Apollo watched me with amusement, folding his hands on the table in front of him. “Is this like a ritual for you?”
Ritual. I hadn’t known I was a witch except for a matter of days, and for some reason, that’s precisely where my mind went first.
“Ritual? Like a spell-casting ritual?” I’d paused mid-way to lining up my pen, highlighter, and stylus to the left and right of my laptop.
The skin at the corners of Apollo’s eyes crinkled, and his mouth opened, but no words immediately followed. “No? I meant, for example, how I have a ritual tuning my guitar before every performance. In fact, I do ittwice.”
“Oh,” I responded a bit sheepishly. Glancing from my laptop squared to the table’s edge and the tops of my three writing implements vertically aligned, I slouched in my seat. “I guess I never noticed I had them.”
It never felt like that around Dion. His very presence relaxed me. He made me forget about patterns and worries. In the forest, I’d damn near forgotten my name and didn’t care. It was just as they had described—unbridled freedom without judgment.
“Chelsea?” Apollo above the noise from the surrounding TVs, startling me.
My elbow slipped from the table, and I winced, also tearing my thumbnail in a painful spot from where I’d been chewing on it. “Hm, what?”
“Wow, where were you just then, Stewart?” Apollo asked, leaning back casually on his seat with his fingers drumming on the table.
Stifling a cough, I pulled up Word documents and spreadsheets for Apollo’s Suns and separated them into equal quadrants on my screen. “Apologies, I’m not normally as distracted.”
“Does this have anything to do with a certain wine god,” Apollo asked, pointing at me. When my gaze snapped to him, he was already flashing me a snarky smile. “Uh-huh. There it is. Wait.” He sat up straight, the grin fading. “He hasn’t been an asshole to you, has he?”
Grabbing the pen, I began to click it furiously. “No. Nothing like that—or maybe? I don’t know.”
“How’s that work?” Apollo pressed his palms onto the table and tilted his head to the side. “Not knowing if one is being an asshole to you or not.”
My magic prickled at my skin, growing as frustrated as I’d felt, and I almost slammed the pen back on the table but stopped short and placed it. “With all due respect, I’d much rather put all of my energy into establishing your first gigs.”
Apollo gave a disappointed nod and drummed his fingers on the table, a staccato-type rhythm only a music god could produce. “Fair enough. Where do we start?”
“You mentioned performing at Dion’s—” Before I could get the rest of my sentence out, memories of him appearing behind me, his beard tickling my chin, lips pressed to the shell of my ear, tantalized me. Undoing one of my shirt buttons from the flushcoursing my skin, I fanned myself as nonchalantly as I could. “—club? Bacchus?”
My flusters did not go unnoticed by Apollo. He appearedamusedby them. “Yeah, that’s the obvious one. But I was also thinking about this place.” Apollo circled his hand in the air, referencing the bar.
After taking a quick survey, I turned back to him with pursed lips. “I don’t see a stage or even a set-up for one. It doesn’t look like the kind of place to hold live performances.”
“Exactly. I could do an unplugged sort of deal with Raven.” Apollo looked to a vacant corner as if he was already picturing himself seated on a stool with an instrument in his grasp.
“Who’s Raven?”
Apollo sulked in his chair, the adjustment making the sun charm hanging from his neck catch the neon bar signs. “My acoustic guitar.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” I quickly added everything to the Word documents. “Do you play anything else besides the guitar?”
