I blinked. What did I just… My brain had troubles processing that GC was a man just a few moments before, then he shifted into a bull and ran into the forest.
“Show-off,” spat Paz. He sat down and took a swig from GC’s flask, which he’d left on the ground.
“Okay, who’s next?” asked Sariel.
The archangel studied me for a moment but looked away when I tried to catch his gaze. Just his usual, strange self. I shrugged and resumed by attempt to make myself small and insignificant.
“Francis? Care to share something?”
Francis shook his head, and Sariel left him alone. If it had been literally anyone else, I knew he’d have insisted.
“Pazuzu?”
“Fuck you, man. Why don’t you go next?”
Paz certainly wasn’t in a good mood. And now he was avoiding my gaze, too. As if I’d done something wrong, something that had offended him deeply. Well, it wasn’t my damn fault that GC had taken off his underwear and his dick did happen to be quite impressive! Not that I was going to do anything about that… It was just an observation.
“How about our one and only trash princess?”
I could feel the hate in his voice. I shook my head, just like Francis had done earlier, but it had no effect on Sariel.
“Tell us about yourself. Come one, kuchka, this is your chance to make us like you.” He grinned, and I knew it was all bullshit. Everything that came out of his mouth was bullshit.
“I don’t want you to like me,” I whispered, and finished my Cuba Libre, hoping the rum would give me some much-needed courage.
“Oh, you don’t? Too bad. Your life would be easier.”
“I doubt that,” I murmured. Since the night he’d threatened me and spilled my food all over the floor, I felt like my voice didn’t work quite the same when he was around. I’d stood up for myself then, and it had only made things worse. It was painful to admit it, but I was afraid of Sariel. GC and Paz annoyed me, Francis mystified me, but the archangel legit terrified me.
“We don’t have all night,” he insisted. “Share something about yourself. Now. Or you’ll regret it.”
I sighed. I looked around me, but no one seemed to be willing to step up and defend me. For the first time ever, I wished GC had been here. At least, he liked me enough to want to fuck me, and that was, in this moment, better than the scorn I felt coming from the VDC guys. Paz was angry because I’d dared to look at GC’s cock, which… come on!... had been impossible to avoid. And Francis… was just Francis. I couldn’t read him. Maybe he really wanted to hear what I had to say and that was why he wasn’t putting a stop to Sariel’s crappy attitude.
“I… I don’t know what to share,” I started. “My parents are Bulgarian, they immigrated to the US when I wasn’t even born. They… err… own a diner. I help them run it, sometimes. I mean, when I don’t have school.”
“Bla bla bla.” Sariel rolled his eyes. “That’s boring, and we know the story of your life already.”
“You do?”
He smiled meanly. “We have our ways.”
Mages. Lorna, for sure. I gulped. What exactly did they know about me? How much? I instinctively pulled at the wristbands I’d put over my long-sleeved blue shirt until they covered my fingers. I could never be safe enough, and my wristbands had never betrayed me. I was wearing my uniform blazer and a pair of black leggings that were of better quality than what I usually owned and didn’t show how old they were.
“Quit sulking,” Sariel said, sounding bored now. “It was inevitable, and you know it. Now, share something we don’t know.”
He wasn’t going to let this go, was he? I was trapped. I couldn’t tell them about my parents, about my childhood, about my old school… It was all too sad and dull. It all proved how human I was.
“Okay, let me think.” I had to make something up. Or not. If I lied, they would probably be able to tell. Lorna wasn’t here, but I was pretty sure, if I remembered well, that the brown-haired guy sitting next to me was a mage, too. He would be more than happy to tell Sariel I was lying if that got him into his good graces. “A dream,” I tried, and when no one stopped me, I continued. “I had a dream once. Not just any kind of dream. A lucid dream.” Did Sariel just tense a little? Francis was now watching me closely, curiosity dancing in his mossy green eyes, and even Paz had put his cup down. Really? The mention of a lucid dream had gotten their attention? “It started silly. I was dating a guy then, we’d had a fallout, I was angry at him, and in my dream, I was walking on these dark, foggy back alleys. I was looking for something. Out of the blue, these men in black suits appeared from behind every corner, and they had knives. They started throwing knives at me, but it was like I knew they weren’t actually aiming for me. When I looked back, I saw my boyfriend with a bunch of knives stuck in his chest. And that was when I woke up inside the dream.”
I paused for a moment. Wow! I hadn’t thought about this dream in a long, long time. I’d had it years ago, and this was the first time I realized that, maybe, being sorted into the Violent Death Cabal wasn’t a mistake. I hadn’t told anyone, not even my best friend from back them, but my boyfriend had hit me. Nothing too horrible, just a slap across the face, but that had caused our fallout. And, oh my God, that night I dreamed that men in black suits were throwing knives at him! If that didn’t describe my subconscious as violent, then I don’t know what did.
“Anyway, as I told you, it started out stupid. But I woke up, not for real, not in the real world…” I looked around me to make sure my blabbering hadn’t confused them. Sariel, Paz, and Francis seemed completely entranced by now. “I was angry. I knew I was inside a dream, my dream, and I knew that my boyfriend, with all those knives stuck in his chest, wasn’t real. And then I... I don’t know. I guess I addressed the dream itself. As if my dream was a person. I called it, and it appeared as this shy, chubby man, who apologized for having displeased me. And I told him: ‘You are my dream. You can do better than this. What is this? So fucking obvious. Men throwing knives? Seriously? Did your muse die or something? You’re my dream, I’m a pretty inspired person, and you’re just disappointing me right now. Do better.’ Yeah… like, I lectured my dream, and the dream wasn’t just… a concept, or… something you can’t see or touch. It was an actual guy.”
I paused and waited for the inevitable burst of laughter. It didn’t come. Paz was holding his jaw in his hand, listening to my every word, Francis was sipping his drink from time to time, trying to make as little noise as possible, and even Sariel had his brows furrowed in deep concentration. Well, okay.
“The chubby guy apologized and asked me to give him a second chance. I agreed, and he told me to follow him. He took me to this beautiful, old antique shop, I went in, and he introduced me to a tall, elegant woman who told me she was the Keeper. The chubby guy left, and I let the Keeper show me around.”
“And during all this time, you were lucid,” Paz said. It wasn’t a question. He wanted to make sure.