Page 31 of Discord
I agreed. Taco Bell always made me sleepy.
22
Gabriel
Recovering from the level of magic it took to kill a revenant was always intense. I expected to wake up alone, since I’d be sleeping in as the library was closed that day. Everyone would be dealing with this shit while I recovered. It just needed to be done. I’d recovered from similar states in plenty of hotel rooms around the world.
I didn’t expect to find Ripley in the room with me when my eyes cracked open. Why was she there with me when Bram and Talvath were also injured, and Kaine Dragovich would be coming to question all of us?
She slid a tray onto my lap and hopped in bed with me. I knew she needed to be somewhere else, but it was kind of nice.
“Eat up. I don’t know the first thing about healing Hellhounds and demons, but the academy brought in Old Scratch for a year, and I studied magical cooking with him. I’m pretty much guaranteed to burn all his edibles when it comes to magically getting high, but I can manage to recharge your batteries.”
Old Scratch was a pretty famous kitchen witch. It shocked me the academy got him to teach. I had several of his cookbooks, but he was supposed to be this cranky old bastard, even before he retired. No one even asked him to do book signings anymore because he was such an utter dick about it.
“I don’t remember any recipes in his cookbooks for fixing this. Believe me, otherwise I would have used them.”
“He didn’t publish it, even though it would have helped a lot of people. He was a miserable bastard who cared more about being famous than helping anyone. Not all of his recipes were good. He was teaching at the academy as a form of magical community service. He invited some important people over for dinner and cooked something nasty for them because they left a bad review for one of his restaurants.”
I snorted and dug into my food. As soon as I swallowed the first bite, I felt a tingle in my belly as my magic recharged—badass.
“I respect his work as a kitchen witch, but he has a reputation as being a sensitive snowflake when it comes to criticism. He doesn’t put salt and pepper on the tables at his restaurants because he thinks everything is seasoned perfectly… and woe be to anyone who asks for it. Anyone that dares receives a lifetime ban.”
Ripley just laughed as I ate.
“He’s not sensitive. He just has a massive ego and doesn’t think he does anything wrong. Old Scratch was a miserable teacher. He refused to learn any of our names, and he once wrote an entire recipe on the board wrong. He said to cook it for thirty minutes on five hundred degrees. Everyone’s shit got burnt, and he called us stupid little sycophants who shouldn’t be let near an oven. Ravyn pointed out that he wrote the wrong temperature and time on the blackboard. Hehatedher after that. He loathed all of us because he knew she was right.”
“Sounds about right from what I’ve heard about him. What is this?” I said, picking up a glass of pink liquid.
“Old Scratch gave us a recipe to put into juice that helps with the battery recharge. Any juice will work. Reyson insisted on making watermelon juice. It was his favorite, back before Starbucks existed.”
This was pretty fucking amazing. I could feel my magic coming back as if I’d been in bed for days. Yeah, I could get bitter about not having the same education as Ripley, or I could learn from her. This kind of magic wasn’t common knowledge. Ripley wouldn’t have even learned it if Old Scratch hadn’t poisoned someone who said something mean about him.
I drained the glass. I could always count on Reyson to say some weirdly inappropriate things, but it always made me wonder why he was so obsessed with Oreos and Starbucks when he brought out food from his time. Magic aside, the watermelon juice was refreshing, and I could see myself drinking it even when it wasn’t spelled to replenish my magical batteries.
I felt this surge of energy rush through my body. This waswaybetter than recovering the hard way. I felt amazing. Yeah, things were still fucked… we were still in some epically deep shit, and we still didn’t have Dorian’s painting after all that. He must have moved it after the map was spelled into the painting in the vault. It was probably there at one point and was then moved after they stashed Talvath there.
Still, we’d won just a little. Silvaria didn’t have a demon anymore. It would be hard for her to recruit if she couldn’t show camera footage of a demon being held hostage. Hell wouldn’t listen to Bram, but they’d damn sure listen to Talvath when he was awake, and Silvaria wouldn’t be trapping any more demons at least.
Balthazar seemed to regret it, but Kaine fucking Dragovich was involved now. I was sure he had questions about the revenant. Dragons were probably the least pretentious and judgmental supernatural species on the planet. They mostly didn’t care about anything or anyone, except for other dragons. Most dragons would have said my family in the past were dumbasses… but they wouldn’t have held it against me.
I had no problems sharing some of the things in my grimoire with a fucking dragon.
There were particular side effects to this magical food. We needed to be out there planning, but my cock was suddenly rock hard.
“How are the demon and Bram?” I asked.
“Still sleeping. Reyson could learn demon magic from touching that force field. He could heal them, but he said they need to sleep it off. They are still out.”
“Kaine?”
“Coming for dinner. Reyson is cooking. Balthazar promised him a ton of meat if he ate with us and pretended like this wasn’t an interrogation.”
So, I had a little time and a deathly hot witch I was alone with. I didn’t even have to ask her… she just started nibbling on my neck.
“I’ve made this before. It makes you horny as shit. We’re alone, and everyone is on demon watch. We should probably be with them, but Reyson knows more about demon magic than we do. Want to get naughty with me?”
I grabbed her and kissed her. Fuck yes, I did.
