Page 67 of A Subtle Scar
At the same time though, Deacon annoyed me. I had no doubt that the way he was acting was coming from a good place, which was the only reason I hadn’t told him to cut it out and mind his own business.
Deacon’s view of Charon and Hermes as assholes who were playing with me for their own enjoyment didn’t sit right with me. Of course this was going to be nothing but a brief fling, and I’d soon tell the immortals that, but I’d had flings with people who barely cared enough to remember my name.
Back in Geneva, when I’d been young and bright-eyed when it came to relationships, I’d been crestfallen when Antonio, hot and Italian, had asked me to leave his apartment after the deed. I’d been too stunned to realize he’d not even asked for my phone number until after I got back to my dorm room. It had taught me to not miscalculate like I had with Antonio anymore. Yet Charon and Hermes were not like that, and Deacon had no reason to act like they were.
Either way. Antonio was the past, and Deacon simply someone I was working with on a case.
I pushed the door to the office open. “What’s this? Have you found anything?”
Hermes was on his phone, showing Charon his Insta feed, of all things.
“Baby,” he purred when he saw me.
Florence, the chill forensic tech, settled back on her desk chair. “He found me a police officer to go on a date with.”
“Did he? Well, that’s some multitasking. Congrats, Florence.”
“Congrats to you three,” she said and winked at me. I probably didn’t want to know what she’d overheard those two talking about in here.
“Baby,” Hermes purred again, and he’d managed to get all cozy in my personal space. He wasn’t touching though, instead managed to ogle me in a way that made me very self-conscious, and I did not get self-conscious. “You look so handsome today. I haven’t found your murder humans, but I did discover a spell. And I met other humans. Here, let me show you.”
I didn’t give consent to being treated to Hermes’s timeline, but now that I was seeing it, I had to look.
The one of him in the field, holding the doughnut box he was still cradling now was getting some remarkably good traction. In the one on the subway platform, his amber eyes looked downright smoldering. Sherry had posted one where she was feeling his pecs, along withIt’s all real divine muscle.
The rest were mostly of him, showing off how good he looked in tight tees and ripped jeans, how delicious he looked next to a pool (very delicious), how right he looked, holding a delicate cocktail glass with something too pink and no doubt too sweet in it.
“This is Mitchell,” he said, enlarging the one with the guy in a suit at the subway station. “We talked.”
“Well, how nice,” I said, seizing my jealous impulses by the throat. I wasn’t even sure where the jealousy was coming from. “Bet you offered him a doughnut.”
“I did, but he doesn’t eat sugar.”
“Ouch,” Florence said, shaking her head with what I thought was a remarkable display of exasperation.
“What?” Hermes said.
“For someone who chastises me for calling the phone in my pocket a pocket phone, you’re so very slow when it comes to people,” Charon said. This alpha god had sneaked up on my other side, and he put his hand on the small of my back. “He can learn, darling, and he means nothing by it.”
“What?!”Hermes sounded confused, and he looked from Florence to Charon and me, his eyebrows creased in confusion. “I was being nice to humans. I thought that was supposed to be pleasing? And since no one was burning anyone at the stake, I didn’t even really mind.”
“You can make friends with whoever you want, Hermes,” I said, straightened, and shuffled a little away from Charon. I didn’t want to make anyone think I needed the comfort, for whatever reason. “You were saying you found something? A spell?”
Hermes nodded. “Yes. But first, I found doughnuts.” He opened the box toward me with a frank and frankly disarming smile.
I didn’t want to want one, but I’d been craving a doughnut ever since Hermes had ruined the ones I’d picked up at the farmer’s market, and so I went for the last chocolate one.
“Thanks,” I said and took a bite. Chocolate was divine, especially since I’d only had coffee this morning.
“Good choice,” Hermes said. “What I found is a spell humans liked to make. Courtly witches, you see. They’d start it at a Solstice or Equinox—the Equinoxes would be preferable since toward the Solstices, power tends to grow, meaning the strength of the spell would grow as well. Very strong spells could be worked to the next quarter of the year, not so strong ones toward the next full moon.”
Florence put her phone aside and searched dates before I could ask the question. Moon study was a thing, but mages didn’t really depend on it for the strength of their workings.
“April sixth. It says here it’s called a Pink Moon,” she said.
“The name is less significant than its proximity to the Equinox,” I said, drawing on what I could remember from what I knew of moon studies.
“Indeed. The magic users I knew in Prague were always focused on it,” Charon added.
