Page 46 of Chaos
He started petting my hair. If I could have purred like Felix was still doing now that he was a man, I totally would have.
“We can do whatever you want and no, I don’t have to leave here to do anything. Your people call it astral projection. It’s a little different for me. I hope to get more information on Dorian tomorrow. Oh, and someone will come tomorrow that has information. I can feel their putrid soul growing closer.”
I knew Gabriel and Balthazar were all about unleashing Reyson and letting him do his thing with getting information. Still, there were enough spirits at the Library of the Profane without stacking up a bigger body count.
“Let’s avoid killing them if we can,” I said.
Reyson just sighed and continued to pet my hair.
“You’ve got Chaos, Ripley. You might as well use me.”
I planned on it. But only when the time was right.
Chapter 36
Ripley
M
y bed was full that night. Felix might have used to be a large tomcat but he always started on the pillow on the other side of my bed and ended up somewhere in the center. Yeah, my cat used to hog the bed and I’d fallen out a few times. I used my magic to conjure up this massive king-sized bed so Felix could monopolize it without kicking me entirely out.
Felix had a human body now, and Reyson had a permanent invitation to snuggle at night. Reyson saw there was plenty of room and thought I should invite Balthazar since he saw us snuggling on the sectional. Then, it just felt weird to invite Balthazar and not Gabriel, even if it was awkward to go ask him since he wasn’t super obvious with the flirting like Balthazar was and hadn’t informed me, I was going to marry him like Reyson had done.
Still, they had all agreed with it. Balthazar was happy as a clam to sleep spooned against Reyson. Felix insisted Gabriel sleep next to me that night. They smashed me between hot male flesh, and I was quite content. I had to keep reminding myself I didn’t want to ruin this by fucking all of them.
This was so ass-backward too. There always seemed to be more witches than warlocks at any given time. There were female-only covens that would take warlock lovers but never any male-only covens.
It was pretty standard in the witching community for several witches to share one warlock. This right here? Me sharing a bed with two warlocks, a vampire, and a god? That was straight-up shifter shit. I was so here for it though. Those witches who insisted on sharing one man instead of making a man share them hadno ideawhat they were missing. All we did all night was snuggling.
We made it a point to get up and down to the library pretty early. Reyson could sense someone who knew something was making their way to us. At least it was just one instead of an entire line of them outside my library.
We were all dying to get ahold of them, but we needed to play this cool, or whoever it was would bolt. I would count a god and a vampire getting face marks on my glass very creepy, and whoever walked up was going to think that too. I had to grab them by the arms and move them away from the glass at the front.
“If we’re going to snatch this person and bring them to the atrium, we can’t tip them off until they get inside. We aren’t breaking my library, remember? We need to coax them into the atrium where it’s safe to fling magic if something goes wrong.”
“Why are we being nice to this person again?” Balthazar said. “Just let Reyson knock them out and carry them there. Fuck, I’ll punch them in the face and get them there.”
“I’m not exactly inclined to be nice to them either,” Gabriel said. “They wanted a god. I say we let them meet him.”
I crossed my arms and glared at both of them. Wewere notunleashing Chaos in my library.
“My library, my rules. Reyson can come out to play when it makes sense.”
Felix was looking out the window like a sane person.
“It better make sense soon because there’s a warlock headed this way, and his aura is almost entirely black.”
Well, fuck. Black auras were never a good sign. Most people didn’t walk around with those. They were generally dead or in jail. I had a feeling the reason this one was just strolling up to my library had something to do with that deal he made with a demon. Those angry spirits here wouldn’t have been dumb enough to cheat him into the library, right? I’d never seen him before, but I didn’t know everyone with a library card.
I wanted everything to look totally natural when he came in, but we were all just standing in the foyer discussing his gross aura. Balthazar was complaining he could smell the stink of his blood from inside. We looked like a bunch of kids with our hands in the candy drawer when the warlock strolled in. Seriously, it was fucking awkward. We all just stopped talking and gawked at him. Balthazar put his hand over his nose like he couldn’t deal with the stench. The warlock just glared at us.
“So, I don’t have a library card, and I don’t want one. I think every single building on this site is for uppity, pretentious assholes and I feel dirty just setting foot here. So, which one of you assholes is responsible for summoning me here?”
“You know what?” I said. “We’re doing this another way.”
I cocked back my fist and punched him in the face.No oneinsulted my library. I should have hit him with magic because it hurt my hand, but I’d never wanted to hit someone that badly before.
He stumbled backward and flung a curse at me. Felix tackled me to the ground and it just narrowly missed hitting me in the face.
