On an unrelated note, Loki’s reward would mean that I’d also have ample cash to invest in a good, solid electric razor, the kind that could work really well for shaving the heads of mouthy, know-it-all angels. Where was Raziel, anyway?
“Anyway.” Florian stretched his arms out, sighed, then put on a dour expression. “I just don’t like the sound of it. You did say that Loki was a god of mischief?”
I shrugged. “And lies, and deceit, and manipulation, the works. He’s a trickster god. There’s one in many cultures, and that’s kind of their thing.”
Florian folded his arms, tapped his foot, and stared at me pointedly.
“What?” I said, throwing my hands up. “I get it. He’s not exactly the most forthcoming entity we’ve dealt with, but come on. If I don’t do him this favor, he’s going to be on my ass forever, and the last thing I need is someone else obsessing over wanting to murder me.”
Florian shook his head. “I just don’t like it. And when whatever goes down goes down, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
“Noted,” I grumbled. “And don’t think I forgot what we were talking about before those frost giants showed up at Human Beans. Florian, I don’t want you to think that there’s stuff you can’t talk to me about.”
He bit his lip, his gaze falling to the ground.
I stepped a little closer, tilting my head. “Florian? Seriously, dude. No more lies, okay? No more surprises. If Beatrice Rex or whoever else doesn’t accept you for what you are, then that’s their damn problem. Not yours. The onus isn’t on you to impress anybody but yourself.”
He smiled up at me weakly. Hey, it was a start. “Thanks for saying that, buddy. But here’s the other thing. When we were at her shop, do you remember her talking about her partner?”
“Oh yeah, I definitely picked up on that. And you looked bothered by it, too. Don’t worry, it’s just a work thing, I’m sure. That’s what she meant. It’s just some random person with, uh, really questionable taste.”
Priscilla loped over just then, helpfully offering us yet another pair of freshly split coconuts. We had other beverages in plentiful supply – Artemis loved her fruity cocktails, and I could brew all the coffee I wanted – but there was just something so refreshing about coconut water straight out of the shell. I accepted gratefully, chugging from the shell like a bowl, watching as Priscilla bent low to the ground, sniffed at Beatrice’s bag, then made a rasping, retching sound.
“Aha,” I crowed, wiping at my chin with the back of my hand. “You see? Even Priscilla thinks it’s terrible, and she loves pink.”
“Ook.” Priscilla straightened up, smoothing down the creases in her frilly apron and nodding sagely in agreement. Then she sniffed at the air, frowned, and shambled closer, bending her face towards me. She sniffed once more – then made the same rasping, retching sound.
Florian chuckled. “Oh, Priscilla definitely knows when something’s off.” Priscilla ooked once more, then hopped upwards to meet Florian’s palm with her own, slapping him a high five.
Jerks. My friends were all jerks. No exceptions.
10
It was so much nicer out in the afternoon, on our trip from the Nicola Arboretum to the Amphora. The sun was no longer so violently sunning it up in the sky, the air a little cooler.
Be proud of me. I was dressed in a proper button-down shirt, one of only two that I owned, and I smelled good, too, this little bottle of cologne that I got as a gift from one of the Boneyard boys. And I’m not just saying that, because I passed the Priscilla test with flying colors. This time, when she sniffed me, she didn’t retch.
It would have all gone so swimmingly, but as Florian and I turned the cor
ner to the Amphora – we were just a single block away – some asshole decided to make his presence known, right there on the sidewalk.
“Mason Albrecht,” a voice called out from behind me, a voice that I recognized for its haughtiness. My blood immediately started simmering. I turned on my heel to find him leaning against a tree. I locked eyes with the magus who had so recently made an attempt to capture – or was it kill me? Neither would’ve made for a happy ending.
“Quilliam J. Abernathy,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing my fist into my palm and cracking my knuckles. “I thought you self-immolated the last time I saw you. You’d have been better off dead. I hope you realize that.”
This was the jerk who pretended to be my friend, even going through the motions of helping me earn some spare cash when all he really wanted was to knock me out and kidnap me for reasons I still didn’t fully understand. I did know a few facts about Quilliam, though. He worked with demons, had access to some extremely dangerous elemental magic, and was a douchebag of the highest order.
He chuckled, holding his hand to his chest in a mock display of flattery. “Aww, you remembered my name. How touching.”
“Of course I do. The J stands for jackass.”
Quilliam raised his eyebrow, the curve of it matching the infuriating angle of his grin. It was a wonder he hadn’t burned himself to death, or at all, but he had to have cast some modified version of his signature fire spell to escape from my clutches. He looked just like the last time I saw him, dressed in sleek, expensive streetwear, his hair falling to his shoulders, the ends of his fingers slender and agile.
The fingers were the most important detail, because those would give away whether he was preparing another spell. When fighting mages, it was always, always crucial to watch their hands, and in Quill’s case, his eminently punchable mouth. But that was the other problem with fighting mages. They had their favorite incantations, sure, but you never knew how many more they kept chambered in their brains. A mage is a dangerous thing, but an educated one is a nuke in the body of a man.
“We don’t want any trouble,” Florian said, glaring. He remembered our last encounter with Quilliam just as well as I did. Florian’s body was tense, his muscles perfectly still, but he was just a hop and a skip away from a tree. Proximity to nature was enough to give Florian access to his alraune magics, but if his skin actually made contact with the tree, it’d make it even easier for him to tear Quilliam to shreds.
“Two against one doesn’t seem fair,” Quill said. “We should make this more interesting.”