“Are you going to be okay here tonight?” he asked. “Maybe you should stay with your sister.”

His words broke her out of her post-date-acceptance haze. “Halcyon is allergic to Snooze, and I don’t want to leave him alone again. I did that last night to be with Avery. Snooze will alert me if my non-serial killer stalker returns, and Halcyon lent me a pistol and a shotgun. I know how to use both, in case you were wondering.”

“This is Louisiana. Kinda goes without saying.”

“We’ll be fine. Whatever this guy is up to, he doesn’t seem to be on a direct attack. Like you said—if he wanted to hurt me, he could get me coming out of my car.”

Luke nodded and gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Then I’m going to head out. I’ll pick you up at six tomorrow, if that’s okay. And if you hear anything tonight, call. No matter the time. I’ll have my phone with me.”

He headed out of the cabin and she engaged the dead bolt behind him. Then she reached up and touched her shoulder where his hand had been.

Good Lord Almighty. Forty-eight years old and she was having her first official schoolgirl crush.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Marina waited until her flushed skin had returned to normal before sending Alexios a text. The LeDoux were definitely gunning for her but there was another party who had an interest in her fading into the sunset. It took several minutes for Alexios to show up, and she began to worry that things had taken a turn for the worse and Alexios and his condo were long gone.

She could tell by his slumped shoulders and the tightness of his expression that things were still wrong. His movements were stiff as he crossed the living room and sat on one of the kitchen stools, and his red T-shirt was wrinkled. She looked down and almost gasped. His socks didn’t match. Whatever was going on in his world, it was bad.

He noticed her gaze and sighed. “My dryer is on the blink. These were the only two clean ones I had left.”

“You wash your clothes?”

“I have to if I want them clean.”

“Of course. I was just…I guess I thought you just imagined what you wanted to wear and it was there. Or you walked into a closet and came out clothed. I never thought about gods doing laundry.”

“Demigod,” he corrected. “Gods don’t do laundry. They have underlings for that.”

“And your appliances break just like ours? This is all so fascinating.”

“Our equipment doesn’t work exactly as things do on earth, although the dryer eating one sock is a regular occurrence, hence why I had loose singles left in my drawer. But the method of power is different and since my connection to my world is sketchy, so is everything else. My television cut off right in the middle of A Godwink Christmas this morning, and I’ve never seen that one before.”