Page 8 of Anarchy
“You’re still a horny plonker who leaves glitter everywhere,” Felix said.
Balthazar fell out laughing. Felix didn’t say that to be mean. It was just the kind of relationship he had with the vampire, and we needed it to make Balthazar comfortable again. We all knew Felix liked Balthazar. Balthazar flipped his hair out of his eyes.
“If you became modern British instead of Tudor era British, you could rock the glitter too. A little eyeliner, some glow sticks in your dreds, some good glitter, and I might actually want to be seen in public with you.”
“First off, the Tudor Dynasty was after my time. Secondly, if you ever come near me with glow sticks and glitter, I’ll put a curse on your cock way worse than Helena did.”
“Et Tu, Brutus? That’s low, man.”
We were in such deep shit, but I couldn’t help laughing. Balthazar was totally unpredictable and liked to give Felix a hard time. Honestly, I didn’t trust Balthazar not to attack Felix like some vampire fairy godmother and give him a makeover. I liked Felix, but I’d risk his wrath holding him down while Balthazar did it because it would be hilarious.
“You’d better not, Felix. I’m fond of that dick,” Ripley said.
“I am too, and you already have a cock on your face as a cat. So don’t make me get creative with your human face too.”
“You’re all traitors!”
“I’m notreallygoing to throw glitter at Felix, but it would be fun. I’d have a lot more fun if we all pretended to have accounts at Silvaria’s bank so we could watch her get busted.”
Screw vampire makeovers. Thatwouldbe a blast. She probably banked somewhere they wouldn’t let you open an account without a million-dollar deposit and had personal vaults for things rich people didn’t feel safe showing off to their rich friends.
It would beepicif she got arrested in front of every rich supernatural who was at the bank that day. They’d call their friends. I was pretty sure there would be several taking photos and videos to post it on social media.
“It would be beautiful, but Kaine is going to know damned well none of us can afford to bank there,” Ripley said.
Balthazar just sat there smirking.
“I could if I kept my money in the country. Liberating money from bad people paysextremelywell. The money I stole from Dorian and Silvaria is just a blip. I’m going to use it to get a custom purple paint job on my motorcycle, a new seat, and heated handlebars.”
“I might be able to afford it, but I just choose not to. I find those people insufferable. The supernatural community pays me a lot of money to fix problems that would ruin them and then keep their secrets,” I said.
“If they treated me the way they treat you, they’d have to keep paying me for my silence, but I’m a petty asshole,” Felix said.
“I’m equally petty,” Ripley said. “A lot of those people are on the boards of the three buildings on these grounds. Ravyn and I both adored our time at the Academy of the Profane, but some of the board's policies were cruel. They are receptive to my ideas, and Ravyn’s now that we work here, but if some rich donor wants something, they get it, even if we disagree. That’s why we have a werewolf porn section now.”
“I found those books entertaining, though I haven’t found a shifter to confirm their accuracy yet. I really hope we get Bram back,” Reyson said.
I wanted Bram back because I liked him, but I also wanted him back, so I never had to listen to Reyson talk about shifter cock ever again. I didn’t care that he was curious and wanted to experiment. He just brought it up at totally inappropriate times, and he was creeping library patrons out, staring at their junk pretty hard.
I got what Ripley was saying, though. The Library of the Profane had the biggest resources of supernatural books and history in the country. People didn’t come here for fiction. There were other libraries for that.
I got wanting to branch out and put a fiction section in. Progress was always meant to happen in the world. Putting only one niche area of fiction in this library because someone donated enough just seemed ass-backward. Ripley enjoyed it, and so did Minerva Krauss, but there were so many other genres of fiction that the rest of the world enjoyed too. Why limit it to just one when this library had everything else?
“I know it would be entertaining to watch Silvaria get arrested, but I don’t think we should be there,” Felix said. “We need to focus all our energies on Dorian Gray. Balthazar can find all the social media posts from everyone that was there when it happened. I’m sure there will be photos and videos. Silvaria is just another witch Dorian manipulated. He probably had another waiting in the wings.Thatis what we need to be worried about.”
Yes, we did. I didn’t know why so many of my people were dumb enough to fall for Dorian’s pretty face, but we were going to make damned sure he couldn’t do it again.
7
Bram
This wasn’t going well. Talvath usually never lost his temper over anything. I’d been with him where things had gone down, and I was fighting my Hellhound because I was losing it. Talvath was calm, cool, and collected the entire time.
This was different. Someone had betrayed Talvath this time, and they were willing to hurt every demon in Hell to do it. Our sigils in the hands of people on Earth would be catastrophic, and there was no telling how many people Dorian and Silvaria gave them to. Collecting souls would be dangerous, and it would put our entire realm in danger of the sun dying.
I didn’t know who would do that or why. Even if I hadn’t gone looking, Talvath was important in Hell. Someone else would have gone to investigate why he hadn’t returned from a soul collection. It would have been found out.
I was trying to convince Talvath to see reason and go back to the library, but it just pissed him off. So I was dividing my time between him and Anod, his seer. Talvath was holed up in his office trying to figure who betrayed him, and I was back trying to talk to Anod.
