Page 32 of A Subtle Scar
“He tried to get into your apartment,” Hermes said.
“And we felt your wards alerting us of trouble,” Charon added.
Oh, this fuckery. “He wasn’t trying to get into my apartment, he was trying to make a delivery. Right?”
The guy looked at me, lines of despair carved into his forehead where he was breaking out in sweat. He nodded frantically and held up a box.
Hermes growled, and Charon snatched the box from the guy’s hands.
“There is magic in this,” Charon said. “What did you do, human?” he asked the delivery guy, ice in his tone.
I ran my hands through my hair. What was it with these two?
“Charon, give me that package. Hermes, let that man go. You, do you need me to sign for that?”
“N-no,” the delivery guy managed.
“Hermes, unhand the man,” I said again because movement was not happening. “Now.”
Hermes pulled his fingers free of the guy’s lapel, and it looked as if that took him effort to do.
Once free, my delivery person ran to the stairwell rather than the elevator and booked it down the stairs. Bye-bye convenient online shopping.
Charon shook the package, and I could hear the glugging of a bottle of something in there, just before I spotted the label, which said Scotland on it.
“That’s probably booze, and if so, it’s my booze. Hand it over, Charon,” I said.
“But it could be—”
“Read the label.”
Both immortals leaned over the package.
“Oopsie,” Hermes said. “Well, that’s a funny misunderstanding, isn’t it?” He had the decency to actually look a little guilty, I had to give him that. He also looked not at all terrible, unselfconsciously rubbing the back of his head. It brought out his biceps and pecs, and his tee rode up over his firm abdomen. Oh, the inappropriate thoughts of lazy mornings.
“Hmm. At least it gives us the chance to ask if you slept well,” Charon said, and looking at Charon made me realize both of them had changed their clothes at some point. Tight denim and an equally tight tee for Hermes, a combo which he’d worn yesterday too, but this was a different set, and Charon was wearing a black lace-up shirt over tight black pants. The shirt was cut very low to reveal a pale, hairless chest.
And I needed to not look at them and drool over them. “I’ll take that,” I said and grabbed the package from Charon.
“Hmm, did you sleep okay? You seem a little agitated,” Hermes said. Damn, but he looked good in the morning light with those rosy lips and his smooth dark skin.
“Agitated? Well, let’s see. You just scared the mailman for no good reason whatsoever, you woke me in the middle of the night, again for no good reason, and then you ruined my magic doughnuts. For no good reason. And while I do not get agitated, I am most certainly annoyed.”
The two of them processed that. There was that exchange of a look between them again, and Charon said to Hermes, “You are responsible for two of those things.”
“What? No, I’m not! We both decided to come over here last night and explain everything to the human—”
“To Chandler, you ass. He has a name.”
“Well, I know that! Of course I know that! And we agreed we would explain. And when I see herb witch poison magic in my lover’s pantry, I will of course obliterate it—”
“Your lover?” I said. And yes, maybe I sounded agitated. I was clutching the package to me as if it were a life raft. Where was my coffee? How was this happening before coffee?
“Uhm.” Hermes looked confused, and the immortal flexed his biceps when he ran his fingers through his pretty blond hair, again. “Baby, we don’t have to label it yet, if you don’t want to, but—”
“I think that threesome is getting to be more and more off the table, not that it ever really was on the table,” I said.
Charon gave Hermes noticeable side-eye and growled. It sounded different when he did it, like night animals, the killing kind, frightening prey before the strike. “How do you always manage to mess everything up, Hermes?”
