Page 33 of A Subtle Scar
“I didn’t! I—how about I make you breakfast, Chandler? As an apology for being cautious about the herb witch magic. My French toast—”
“Thanks, but no, thanks. Have a nice day,” I said and closed the door in their faces.
Damn. Not only did I need more coffee, I also felt tempted to break open that bottle Hades had sent and spice up my coffee with it. So much for a relaxing vacation.
I’d just about finished my breakfast of buttered toast when my phone rang on the dining table next to me. I smiled when I saw the caller’s name.
“Detective Rice, missed me?” I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the ceiling.
“That obvious, huh,” she said. “Remember when you offered your help with our vic?”
“The one with the symbols that make no sense?”
“That’s the one. And she was the first in a series. Deacon hasn’t been able to get much more info from the deceased, but he tells me that spells were used on them. The Magic Evidence Unit is massively backed up because they’re still in the process of hiring new people, and Deacon isn’t trained for forensic magic, so any help you can offer would be appreciated.”
“Mmm.” I tapped the rim of my plate with my butter knife. “I would love to drive out there and help you. It would be good to get out of the city, you know. But there’s a small problem: HR put me on vacation.”
“They do that. They’re mean like that. How long are you out for?”
“Well, see, there’s this thing. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about it. It’s called the IIAT, the International—”
“International Investigative Assistance Treaty. Yeah. Had to file that for Hawkes over the holidays.”
“Oh. Well, then you know how to file one. That’s lucky,” I said, grinning like an evil supervillain. I had outsmarted Julia, and while the circumstances were bleak, I couldn’t help but feel satisfied.
“Just double-checking, there’s no issue with this being a domestic case there for the IIAT?”
“No, it offers blanket coverage.”
“Perfect,” Rice said. “You get yourself here, I file the thing.”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll be there in a few hours,” I said, my mood improving by the second as I hung up.
Yes, murder was bleak, and yes, I felt for the victims, but at least I didn’t have to waste my time sitting at home now, wondering how to get rid of the two immortals. I would just get away from them, and with any luck, they’d end up distracting each other with each other and give up on this idea of a threesome finally.
With any luck, when I returned, they’d have gone like a spell of bad weather.
Chapter Nine
Really,Ididn’tseethe point in bubble tea, but I had resigned myself to tasting every version thereof on the menu.
“You didn’t have to blame me. In front of him,” Hermes said. “Would it have been so hard to support me? You would have destroyed herb witched doughnuts if you’d been in my position.”
“Hmm, I probably would have,” I said, stirring my matcha lemon concoction. “But after all the ridicule you had for my sophisticated fashion sense and my hair—which is completely free of split ends, I might add—I felt you deserved it.”
Hermes sagged down onto the table next to me. His entire upper body barely fit on the small plank of wood. We were both still watching the apartment building because Chandler might get flustered if he saw us in the hallway where we’d spent the last night, talking in whispers.
Hermes moaned. The boy behind the counter looked over, and I motioned for him to make another of the matcha lemon latte things for me.
Hermes said, “Fine. Your hair is nice. I like pulling it when I’m inside you. There, how’s that?”
I cocked my head. “That’s the thing we don’t talk about. You are talking about that now?”
Hermes shrugged. Honestly, he was a grown god, and he was behaving like a preschooler who’d been told no for the first time in his life. If this was going to go on for much longer, I would have to consider blowing him to cheer him up, and I didn’t want to do that. I’d much rather spend some time with Chandler, who just seemed so…well, he seemed like those wooden boxes you kept really expensive china in. The boxes were solid wood, smooth, near indestructible. But the china inside? Bone-brittle pieces of art, colored with the finest brush strokes and the sharpest colors, a lot like experiences colored a person. Or scarred them. And I wanted to explore that, and not suck Hermes’s dick. That god needed to grow up.
“Who cares?” Hermes very nearly wailed. “Ronny, what’s wrong with me? This isn’t normal. Look at the waiter.” He waved at the waiter who was making the tea, and since Hermes had given up on talking quietly, the waiter heard him. “Under normal circumstances, I’d be fine fucking him instead of a human who threw me out of his apartment.”
The waiter’s eyes grew huge.
