Page 66 of House of Pain
“Yeah. The Tigers are going to lose their Book and accommodation,” Alecto said. “We’ll see how those arrogant fuckers feel about public showers with regular students when they have to live in the common housing.”
That drew a burst of laughter from them all.
Blaze couldn’t help but marvel at how perfectly cruel and calculated Alecto’s plan was. It made the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
“You’re truly evil,” he muttered, coming closer to where she sat. Blaze pinched her thigh, just hard enough to draw her attention to him.
“And what if I am?” Alecto’s eyes were full of dark excitement, challenge burning brighter than the stars in the night’s sky.
He didn’t think a half witch could be so…witchy. Rumor had it that their mortality fucked up their sense of what it was to carry their power.
But it seemed that not every half witch was mortalenough.
“I think that’s hot,” Blaze teased, his voice low enough so only Alecto could hear him.
25
Blaze wasn’t used tothispart of Avalon Hills, the filthy, bustling Upper West Side where he and Val now made their way towards a huge warehouse looming in the distance.
They passed multiple shops and cafés, most of them filled with large, bold men and their tattooed bodies. Even Blaze felt uncomfortable.
“Are you sure we’re in the right part of the city?” he asked Val as they crossed the street.
“Of course,” Val answered. “Helsgate is right there. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to mistake the location of the only black market in Avalon Hills.”
From the way Val strode through the streets without fear or a second thought, Blaze was sure Val knew her way around this part of the city well.
All of them were aware that Val grew up basically on the streets, with two parents more involved in nursing their addictions than their child. But Val never got into details of what she did to survive or how she even made it out alive and in one piece.
Most importantly, how she managed to make her way to Venefica.
Finally, they reached the warehouse, walking through the broken gate, and two large satyrs greeted them by the entrance.
The fur lining their legs was shiny black, hooves polished and pristine as if all they did all day was lounge around and let someone tend to their every wish.
Even their naked chests looked like they were carved out of marble, every muscle chiseled to perfection, gleaming in the dim light of the streetlights.
“Why are you here?” one of the satyrs asked.His bright amber eyes were anything but kind as he glared down at them.
“We’re here to see the Imp Queen,” Val answered, her voice light as a feather.
Blaze straightened his back, blinking. “We are?”
Val threw him a glare, and that shut him up real quick. He turned to the satyrs, nodding.
The second satyr, with one of his black horns broken, snorted.
“The Imp Queen is busy,” he sneered. “She doesn’t have the time to take meetings with witches and warlocks who haven’t even graduated Venefica.”
Blaze wasn’t sure why Val brought him here with her when Rogue would have been a much more useful ally in a place like this.
But when she turned to him with an eyebrow cocked, Blaze knewexactlywhat he had to do.
He slipped a hand in the inner pocket of his leather jacket, fishing out his wallet. With a heavy sigh, Blaze took a bunch of bills out and glared at the satyrs through his eyelashes.
They perked up real quick at the sight of money.
Blaze held out a hundred for each. “Is the Imp Queen still too busy to see us poor students of the best witchcraft academy in Inathis?” The satyrs exchanged a glance, so Blaze counted two more hundreds. “How about now?”
