You’re not making things any easier on me by thinking things like that. And that. Christ, Francesca! I’m not going to make it if you think about using your mouth on me like that! He swore into my mind, grabbed my behind with both hands, and hoisted me up onto the sales table. There was a tiny little tinkle of glass, no doubt from the couple of remaining bottles of understanding (the least popular item that Mom sold), spread my thighs, and surged into me with a strength that left me breathless.

For about three seconds. Then I pulled his head down to my shoulder, dug my fingers into the thick, tense muscles of his behind, and pulled my knees up to clutch his hips.

The sharp, hot pain of him biting me made me moan, but it was the sense of our spirits joining together, of our beings bonded as he both took life from me and returned it, that sent my soul spinning toward a climax I knew would rock my world.

Dimly, as if from a very long distance, I heard a familiar voice calling, “Goddess Fran! We have returned!”

“Bullfrogs! They’re back! Hurry, Ben, hurry!”

His mouth was hot on my flesh as he drank from me, his hips pistoning as I urged him on with thrusts of my own, wanting the physical completion but also that shining moment when we were truly one entity.

“Goddess? Didn’t Imogen say she was headed this way?”

The voice was louder. I sobbed my wordless plea into Ben’s mind as our bodies raced.

Bite me, he ordered.

What?

Bite me!

I didn’t stop to question that command. I nuzzled aside his hair until the tense cord of his neck was exposed, then gently bit.

A surge of ecstasy shot through Ben that was instantly translated to me, sending both of us over the edge. He lunged into me, his back arched, his mind and mine filled with an exquisite sense of rightness.

It wasn’t until we had managed to separate that I realized something was wrong.

Chapter 21

“Ow. I think . . . Ow!” Ben stood with the shredded remains of my jeans in his hands, his eyebrows raised when I reached behind me. “My butt hurts. I must have sat on something.”

“Goddess Fran!” The voice that bellowed was sufficiently loud to stop the nearby hum of conversation for a good thirty seconds.

“Oh, for the love of the moon and stars . . .” I stuck my head out of the torn side of the booth. “I’m right here, Eirik. And no, you can’t come in. Go to my mother’s trailer. We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” I pulled my head back in, and glared at Ben, who stood laughing. “What is so funny?”

“Turn around, Francesca,” he said, making a twirling motion with his finger.

“Why? What did I sit on?” I turned my back to him, trying to peer over my shoulder at my own butt. “Whatever it is, it stings like the dickens.”

I felt the soft brush of Ben’s fingers, then a painful pinch.

“Hey!”

“It says ‘rstandi,’ whatever that is.” He held out a small piece of curved glass with a hand-printed paper label.

“Oh, goddess! I sat on one of the bottles of understanding. Ow! Ben!”

He chuckled again as he picked out the remaining bits of glass. “You aren’t injured badly, Beloved. Besides, there are benefits to having wounded yourself in such a manner.”

“Benefits? Are you nuts? You try sitting on glass and then we’ll talk about the bene—jumping Jeremiah!” His mouth was hot on my poor, abused flesh. “Ben! That’s my butt! You’re licking my butt cheeks!”

“I’m healing you,” he murmured against the swell of one cheek. “I would take my time over the job, but duty is pressing, so I will make this quick.”

I was torn between the pleasure of his mouth on flesh that was surprised to receive such attentions and shock that he wouldn’t mind at all healing me in such a fashion, but didn’t have time to dwell on such considerations. It took him only a minute to fetch a pair of pants for me, and by the time I returned with him to my mother’s trailer, the Vikings were lounging around telling stories about how many women they had on the train ride down.

“You are the lustiest ghosts I’ve ever met,” I said as I eyed the couch. A little smile hovered around Ben’s lips when I gingerly eased myself onto the cushions.

“We have had nothing but ale wenches since you sent us to Valhalla,” Finnvid pointed out. “Having mortal women who do not smell of hops is a pleasant change.”

“Change-of-subject time,” I said, relaxing when I realized my butt didn’t hurt at all.

As if I would let you go out with a sore ass.

“I’m at a loss as to what we should do to find my mother. You didn’t answer me before, Ben, because we were . . . er . . . distracted, but the watch said something about there being other resources—do you know what those are?”

“Yes. A professional diviner like Absinthe’s mentor would probably help, but diviners are dangerous, and I would not wish for you to consult one.”

“I consulted Absinthe,” I pointed out.

“Yes, but she is just an apprentice.”

“Still, I’m having a hard time seeing diviners as people to fear.”

He made a little half shrug. “Nonetheless, you should be wary. They demand too much in payment. There is another resource closer to you, however, and one that will think kindly about helping you.”

“Who’s that?”

“Tallulah. Or rather, her mate, Sir Edward.”

“Hmm.” I thought about that. Tallulah was a renowned medium, although mostly people consulted her in order to talk to their deceased relatives. Despite the constant, nagging worry that seemed to grow daily, I refused to consider the idea that my mother might be in that class. “My mother isn’t dead, though.”

Ben noted my stubbornly raised chin, but simply said, “Sir Edward’s abilities, and those of Tallulah, are not limited to conversation with the dead. We will consult them as soon as possible.”

“You go with the Dark One, goddess,” Eirik said, waving a hand containing the remote to my mother’s tiny portable TV. “We do not care for mediums.”

“You don’t? Why?”

“Archaeologists are always using them to contact us in Valhalla. They wish to know the location of our villages, and where we buried our dead. It is most annoying.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so after warning them to stay out of trouble, we went to see Tallulah and her ghostly boyfriend. She had only one person with her, so it only took ten minutes before we were shown into the small booth containing a table, her scrying bowl, a crystal ball, and three chairs.

“Fran!” She looked up in surprise as we took the chairs opposite hers. Ben placed some euros in the small stand to the side, where payment was made. “What are you doing here?”

“We wish to talk to you and Sir Edward.”

“You can do that any time,” she said, frowning toward the stand. “I do not require payment for that.”

“This is a professional consultation. We want you and Sir Edward to find my mom.”

Her eyebrows rose, her dark eyes speculative, first on me, then on Ben. “I am not a diviner. I do not have the power to locate your mother, Fran. If I had, I would have offered to do so when you told me she was missing.”

“Sir Edward—”

“He is limited in what he can see from the Akasha,” she said, shaking her head.

“But the two of you together . . .” Ben let the sentence trail off, his gaze just as speculative as hers had been. “You helped Fran once before, when her horse was stolen.”

“We did,” she admitted slowly, her gaze now on the table before her. Her fingers twitched as if she wished to touch the scrying bowl or the baseball-sized glass orb that sat in a mound of midnight blue velvet. “This is more difficult, however. Someone has gone to much trouble to hide Miranda’s whereabouts. If that person should discover that we sought to uncover his actions, it could be dangerous not just to me but to Sir Edward and Fran and you, as well. Are you willing to risk your Beloved’s safety for that?”

“Yes,” Ben said without hesitation, and I was comforted by the fact that despite his past differences with my mother, he would do everything possible to locate her. It didn’t escape me that he was also determined to move heaven and hell to keep me safe, but that was fine by me. I had the same plan with regards to his safety.

“Very well,” Tallulah said, rising from her chair. “Remain here. What you ask will take both Sir Edward and myself a little time to prepare.”

I didn’t have time to do more than envision three different types of grim deaths for Ben, my mother, and myself before she returned. I smiled my thanks when Tallulah returned, carrying, much to my surprise, Davide, my mother’s fat black-and-white cat. She plopped him in my lap before retaking her chair, hesitating between the glass ball and the scrying bowl, but eventually settling on the highly polished black metal bowl.

Davide looked at me with profound disdain.

“You smell like tuna fish, cat,” I told him. His whiskers twitched, and he dug his claws into my arm when I asked Tallulah, “Is he giving you trouble? If he is, I’ll put him in Mom’s trailer. Stop it, cat, or I’ll see to it you don’t have any claws.”

“I told you before that he is no trouble to me.”

“Er . . .” I looked back at the cat. He flattened his ears and hissed silently at me, but at least he stopped digging his claws into the flesh of my arm. “Then why did you bring him out here?”

She smoothed the cloth over the table and poured a little water into the scrying bowl. “He is your mother’s familiar. He will provide a bridge to her.”

“That’s just an old wives’ tale. Or more accurately, I guess, an old witches’ tale, because my mother never used a familiar, and if she did, she would have hardly chosen a fat, grumpy cat to be one.” Davide’s lips thinned, his whiskers held flush with his face, his eyes shooting lasers at me. Or they would have if he could have managed it.