Page 59 of Clinically Bewitched
Because Ineverwoke up feeling good. I woke up feeling prepared, or rested, or occasionally caffeinated if I timed my alarm correctly. Butgood? Comfortable? Relaxed?
That wasn’t normal.
That wasn’tme.
My body was warm. My sheets were soft. There was a pleasant weight against my side, like...
My eyes snapped open because there... lying next to me in my bed,mybed, inmyapartment, inmysanctuary, was Athena.
Naked.
Completely, utterly, cosmically naked, with her dark hair spread across my pillow.
Mypillow! The one I bought specifically for optimal cervical spine alignment. She had one arm draped across my chest, her face peaceful and serene as if she belonged there.
Like this wasnormal.
Like she hadn’t just violated every law of physics, personal boundaries, and basic human decency by materializing in my bed like some kind of spiritual home invader.
I screamed.
Not a dignified shout of alarm.
Not a masculine exclamation of surprise.
Iscreamed! A high-pitched, sustained sound. The kind of sound that would have made a horror movie victim proud. The kind of sound that, if my colleagues ever heard it, would haunt me for the rest of my professional career.
I scrambled backward, or tried to, but my legs were tangled in the sheets—my Egyptian cotton, 800 thread count, nowcontaminatedbedsheets—and instead of achieving a tactical retreat, I achieved something closer to a full-body spasm.
My knee hit the nightstand, and pain exploded through my patella.
I didn’t care.
I kept scrambling, as my sheets wrapped around my torso like a very expensive straitjacket, until I finally,finallytumbled off the edge of the bed and hit the floor with a thud that probably woke my neighbor downstairs.
“What?” I gasped, staring up at the ceiling, my heart rate somewhere in the range of acute tachycardia. “How?”
How is she here?
HOW IS SHE HERE?!
I paid for a hotel room. Three nights. $347 per night plus taxes. I had the receipt. I hadproofthat she was supposed to be at The Meridian, safely contained in a room with earth-toned decor and welcoming energy,not in my apartment.
And more importantly...more importantly,how had she gottenin?
My apartment had a security system. A good one. The kind that sent alerts to my phone if someone so much as breathed near my front door. I had a deadbolt. A chain lock. A doorman downstairs who was supposed to prevent exactly this kind of cosmic home invasion.
And yet somehow,somehow...she’d bypassed all of it.
She had gotten into my building.
Into my apartment.
Into mybed. While I wassleeping!
I sat up, still tangled in sheets, my back against the bed frame, and stared at the ceiling.
This isn’t happening.
