Page 62 of House of Pain
She was a beauty; Blaze couldn’t deny it.
A cruel beauty.
Val rolled her eyes and waved her hand in a dismissive gesture as she made her way towards the altar.
The floor around the altar was covered in white chalk lines, curving into different symbols for the locator spell they were going to perform on the Tigers’ Book.
A whole heap of white wax candles was burning atop the altar. Whenever the wax warmed, it turned black, dripping down the length of the candle, leaving a dark trail behind.
It hit Blaze then that it looked as if the candles were crying.
“I don’t think it’s smart to have Rogue participate in all of our meetings and spells,” Andro said.
Blaze rolled his eyes at his best friend. It was as if Andro just waited for a chance to start an argument with Val.
“Rogueisgoing to participate in the Inner Circle meetings every week,” Val argued, crossing her arms.
Andro shook his head, standing his ground. “He’snot. He might be the perfect tool for our plans, but it doesn’t mean that he should be in the Inner Circle meetings. It looks bad in front of the rest of the House.”
Rogue looked nothing more than bored when he chimed in, “I’m right here, you know?”
“Shut up,” Andro and Val both snapped at him.
Then Val turned to Andro and pointed a finger. “I don’t give a fuck what the rest of the Snakes think of him attending our meetings or helping us with Inner Circle business. He needs to know the strategy, and I’m not about to repeat myself every single time. Besides he has been more useful than some of you.”
Blaze arched a brow, crossing his arms. “Really? How?”
Alecto was the one to answer this time. “He got the orb back from the Tigers.”
An icy blue gaze met Blaze’s and for a moment they just stared at each other. Alecto seemed to be determined to stand with Val with this one. On Rogue’s side.
Blaze glanced at the demon, who gave him a smug smile.
And for the very first time Blaze had the urge to go over there and push that bastard as far from Alecto as possible.
Confused at his own reaction, Blaze blinked and averted his eyes back to Andro and Val.
Andro was opening his mouth to argue some more, but Val shut him down. “I’m the High Priestess, Andro. Don’t forget that. My wordisthe last.”
“And here I thought we had democracy,” Blaze mused, lighting up a cigarette.
Jolene snorted. “Yeah, sure.”
Andro apparently wasn’t done arguing. “We don’t even know why the fuck Rogue is here instead of a fucking Guardian. Have any of you ever stopped to think about it? To figure out what the fuck went wrong?”
Blaze had to agree with Andro on that one.
In the past weeks, he had been so preoccupied with Alecto and their mind games that Blaze completely forgot all about it.
“Listen, we’ve already figured it out,” Val assured him, rolling her eyes. Then, she snapped her fingers, and their Book, lying on the altar, swung open.
Not so gently, Val flipped the pages and then waved for Andro to come closer. With an arched brow and a challenge in her eyes, Val stabbed a finger at the page.
“You see, here is the spell for the Guardian,” she said. Andro inspected the page. Once he was done, Val flicked through a few more pages to another spell. “And this one is a spell for calling a demon. Apparently, Jolene was right when she pointed out first that it was due to the use of blood magic that we summoned the demon instead of a Guardian.”
“I fucking knew it!” Andro bellowed, his eye twitching as he stared at Val. “And you said you didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I didn’t,” Val scoffed, rolling her eyes. She snapped the Book shut. “It was my mistake. I didn’t read both spells beforehand, so I didn’t know.”
