Blood Pact (Darkling Mage 7)

I shook my head and shrugged, mouthing my reply. “I don’t fucking know, dude.”

“Mother,” Bastion said.

“Sebastion,” Luella said. “And your little friends.”

I turned towards the pool area’s glass doors, and there she was: Luella Brandt.

“Mother,” Bastion said again, his tone chilly. “I thought you’d be in bed by now.”

“What, and miss out on all this enjoyable conversation?”

She batted her lashes innocently as she removed her dressing robe. It was too late to look away, but considering what I’d seen her wear the first time we met, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Luella Brandt could rock a bikini if she wanted. She looked fantastic wearing a black one-piece with beige stripes. It went remarkably well with the unusual swimming cap she had on her head, which had a huge beige flower appliqué.

Luella dipped her toes in the water, her expression hardly changing as she stepped into the pool, eyes piercing Bastion like a pair of steel daggers. Sterling and I may as well have been invisible.

“Did you bring your friends here to celebrate? Did I interrupt you bragging over your accomplishment of throwing your life away for a faceless organization? I do apologize.”

“Mother.” Bastion’s voice rang with warning. “Don’t start.”

The water sloshed as Luella swam her way to the center of the pool. She nodded at me and Sterling in turn.

“Gentlemen, I do hope you’ll forgive me,” she said. “And I am so very thankful for the time that you so valiantly rescued my son from the clutches of an insane angel by stabbing him deeply in the back with our family heirloom.” The water splashed again as she brought her hand to her lips, gasping audibly. “Goodness, listen to me. I must sound crazy. Except for the fact that this all actually happened. What a life we lead in the arcane underground, eh? Behind the Veil.”

Sterling grimaced as he swallowed a mouthful of beer. “And that was before your son became a Scion, too.”

Bastion hissed. “Sterling.”

“Just saying,” Sterling said, shrugging.

“I really cannot overstate my gratitude, though,” Luella said. “Especially to you, Dustin. How difficult it must have been to plunge a blade into the fruit of my loins, one of your dearest friends.”

Bastion growled.

“It was nothing.” I somehow managed to keep a straight face as I answered. “Bastion would have done the same for me.”

“Indeed, he would have,” she said. “Sebastion really does have the sharp sense of justice his father possessed. It’s the same thing that has taken the two of them down this same accursed path.”

Her voice was so cold that the temperature must have dropped a couple of degrees. We were all silent after that, the only sounds the clinking of ice in Bastion’s drink and the splashing of pool water as Luella did her laps.

That’s probably a generous description, considering she wasn’t actually swimming. Luella lay on her side, the way you might in bed or on a rug on the floor as you read something, as if resting on an invisible platform. The force of her magic propelled her lazily across the surface of the water, a human rowboat.

“Mother,” Bastion said. “I hardly see the point of swimming if you aren’t going to engage your limbs to do any of the work. Why bother?”

“I like the warmth of it,” she said, stretching across her back this time, her body perfectly still as it made a slow, deliberate circle in the center of the pool. She stretched her arms over her head and threw a glance at Sterling. “I like to be wet.”

Sterling choked on his beer.

“Come on,” Bastion muttered, nodding at me. “We can take this somewhere else. I don’t want to talk with her sniffing around.”

“How rude,” Luella said. “I can hear everything you say, my sweet son.”

“That’s the point,” Bastion said.

Luella sighed, finally splaying her arms to her side, running her fingers and hands through the water. “Fix me a drink before you go, Sebastion, won’t you? Surely you don’t hate your dear mother so much that you would find that too much of a burden.”

Bastion thrust his face into one hand, massaging his temples with his fingers. “I don’t hate you, Mother.”

He lifted his other hand, gesturing to the sound of clinking glass. I looked over my shoulder, and I’d seen Bastion use his specific brand of magic enough times to be unimpressed, but I couldn’t help but watch with my lips parted as a whiskey glass, a ball of ice, and the bottle itself began to dance in their own lazy, drifting orbit. Bastion poured Luella a glass, then gestured again, sending it floating off into the swimming pool.