Blood of an Ancient by Rinda Elliott

dimensions and took in his usual angry expression as he stared hard at the goddess. At least he no longer wore the harem pants and vest Blythe used to picture him in. Now, he filled out a pair of faded jeans and a skin-tight, sleeveless yellow tank. The yellow was all Blythe…the sleeveless part of it too. Arms like his should never be covered. I did have to admit that his gorgeous black skin looked good against the color.
    “I want to talk to you outside,” Phro murmured close to my ear. She poofed away.
    When I walked outside, she spoke through gritted teeth. “Make sure he didn’t follow. Do that dimensional surgery you do.”
    “He’s inside. What’s the problem?”
    “I think maybe I knew him. From before, I mean.”
    I’d had a feeling Frida had a bug up his butt when it came to the goddess, and I could easily imagine why. “Please tell me he’s not one of your famed spurned lovers.”
    “Well, if you say please like that.”
    Great. My spirit guide, the goddess of love, had slept with Frida and had just now remembered him. “I take back what I said earlier. Your look isn’t hooker. It’s cold-hearted slut. And there’s no maybe you knew him. Either you did or didn’t. How could you forget being with someone who looks like him?”
    She shrugged and flipped one braid over her shoulder. “It was one measly year out of how many?”
    “A year? You spent a year—” I snapped my mouth shut and counted to five. Then ten. When I felt sufficiently under control, it was my turn to talk through a clenched jaw. “I’m going to go wash my Jeep. Keep an eye on the witch and come get me if that little vampire somehow wakes up and gets loose. He seems to freak Blythe out, so it could be bad to have her waking up to him.”
    “Or it could be fun.”
    “Yeah well, as angry as Frida—wait, what’s his name?”
    She had the grace to at least blush on that one.
    “A year. In bed with that beautiful man for a year and you don’t remember his name, Phro? I’d do more than glare at you if I were him.”
    “Luckily he can’t do anything to me. Just like Fred couldn’t. I’m not really the same things they are. Didn’t we establish all this at some point?”
    Her mention of Fred coming so close to what I’d seen sent tension in to tighten my hands into fists. “I thought I saw Fred when we were pulling in here.”
    “This sort of backwoods Bates Motel would have certainly appealed to the farm boy.”
    “That’s just it. I don’t think he was really a farm boy—or his last incarnation wasn’t as one. Before he disappeared in that swamp, his face…even his body changed to someone older with darker skin.”
    I looked around at the little motel and shops, and felt a creepy premonition crawl over the surface of my skin. “I think I did see him and I think he wanted us to stay here. But why?”
    “Because low class appealed to him?”
    Annoyance curled my lip. “Can it, Goddess. I’m trying to be serious here. My spirit guide, my real spirit guide—sort of—wants us here. Maybe he can somehow get to me here or something.”
    “Then where is he now?”
    “I don’t know. But we’re staying here until I figure it out, so drop the bitching. And try to make friends with Frida.”
    I glared at her, then got into the Jeep and drove it to the car wash.
    The temperature couldn’t be much over forty degrees, so I grabbed my leather jacket out of the back of the Jeep before I hung the floor mats on the wall clips. I turned the switch to the foaming brush, dropped in the money and the stupid high-pressure water came on instead. Of course, I wasn’t holding the wand so it shot out of its holder and flipped wildly through the air. Freezing water drenched my jeans, my hat. I wrestled the wand under control and used one hand to aim the water at the mats and the other to pull off my now-frigid hat. With my hair sticking to my cheeks and neck, I shivered and unloaded a few things I couldn’t risk getting wet.