Page 6 of Disabling Relics for Dummies
“You’re dating Ripley, Felix. You’ve been around Ravyn. You know she doesn’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. Would you and Ripley be together right now if she hadn’t aggressively pursued you? Ravyn hasn’t done that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. Ripley has had her heart broken but not totally stomped on how Valentine did Ravyn. Ravyn hasn’t dated since then. We can all see how the two of you look at each other.”
“I’m not blind, Felix, but I’m not going to rush her either. I’m letting her do this on her own time. She’s not running back to Valentine now that he’s back. Ravyn is up to something. I’m not sure what, but it’s not jumping back in bed with him. She’ll tell me that when she’s ready too.”
“Oh, good. We have revenge mode Ravyn. That’s a good sign.”
“Minerva Krauss has been after Ravyn to write a book about some of the things she deals with at the museum. If she cracks some of the mysteries behind the Cult of the Aether Sisters when that shipment comes in, it’ll put her mark on the entire world. We all know that wouldn’t be possible without Valentine. She couldn’t exactly tell him not to bring the items to the museum because this is a pretty major find. Gertrude Von Stein was the one who arranged it, anyway. It’ll be subtle because it involves work, and Ravyn is a professional, but it’s going to happen.”
“How do we help?” Felix asked.
“You don’t. She hasn’t even told me what she’s up to. This is Ravyn’s fight. Yeah, we all want to castrate Valentine, but we aren’t the one he wronged. She has a lot on her plate right now. Even if someone other than Valentine brought those items, this discovery is pretty major. Add to that, her twin sister just got kidnapped and everything that happened in Hell.
“I get that you and Ripley want her happy, and I want that, too. I always have. I’m just saying this is not the time to worry about relationships or playing matchmaker. Valentine called earlier, and something on that ship shut down all the instruments. He’s brought in some warlock claiming to be an expert on the cult, but we can’t even find a quote from him in any of our research. There’s too much going on to worry about that right now.”
“You’re probably right. Ripley is just so happy, and she wants that for her twin.”
“Please tell me she hasn’t abducted Ravyn and having a come to Lilith talk about men with her. The twins are close and talk about everything, but they have a long, hallowed tradition of never listening to each other when it comes to men.”
“Oh, shit. The last time the twins disagreed onanythingmajor was when Ravyn was involved with Valentine for the first time, and Ripley didn’t like him. We’d better get in there before it gets ugly.”
It rarely got ugly with the twins. They didn’t get mad if one of them borrowed the other’s clothes without asking. If they were involved with a guy and he started putting the moves on the wrong twin, they never got mad at each other. They always blamed the guy and got their revenge on him. The twins rarely got upset if one of them didn’t like their boyfriends, except in the case of Valentine.
Ripley swooped in and was totally supportive when he sent her that book. She never once saidI told you so.I would imagine Ripley was unloading everything she didn’t say about Valentine for the first time now that he was coming back. Ravyn wasn’t going to react well. Valentine nearly drove a wedge between them for the first time. I’d be damned if he did it again.
Felix and I ran out, and the twins were just sitting with everyone laughing. Bram was about to pierce Ripley’s nose. Ravyn was relaxed and egging her on. So what the fuck was actually happening right now? I agreed with everything Felix said to me, but I still didn’t appreciate being pulled aside and ambushed with it.
Ravyn wouldn’t have either. If Ravyn and I happened, it would be on her time. Ravyn loved her romance novels. We’d be a slow burn romance, not a fast burn like Ripley and her familiar. They had to get that.
Ripley’s nose was pierced instantly, and she had a lovely blue jewel in her nose. Balthazar was already sporting two spikes in his lips. Reyson was next. I honestly didn’t want to be in the same building as the God of Chaos if he had a god tantrum because it hurt. But, oddly, no one else seemed worried Reyson was going to smite the entire room when he got a hollow needle shoved through his nipple.
Reyson seemed to find the clamp amusing. When Bram shoved the needle through, I held my breath, but Reyson started laughing like a madman.
“That was a little kinky. Do the other one now.”
Reyson was just so fuckingweird.And I decided I was going to get my septum pierced.
Chapter6
Ravyn
The piercing party was just my twin sister trying to have a fun way to invite me over and make sure I wasn’t going to go back for seconds when Valentine came back. I wasn’t even mad about it. If I had listened to her the first time, it wouldn’t have blindsided me when he sent me his memoirs about screwing his way through a village of skinwalkers on a dig.
Skinwalkers were highly secretive. They’d been around for ages, and no one knew what they were capable of. They generally lived and married among each other and kept to themselves. If Valentine had been accepted into one of their remote, isolated villages, writing about their culture would have been fascinating.
Instead, he wrote about what skinwalker women were like in bed and how he bravely fought off any men whose women he took to bed. How did I fall for that the first time?
My sister and I got each other. She asked me point blank what my intentions were when Valentine’s ship got here. I told her I wasn’t sure yet, but it would involve a little revenge and definitely no fucking. That was enough, and we all went and got pierced.
I was so obsessed with Killian’s new look. Herockedthat septum piercing. We were back to our stalemate and at work at the museum. We were cloistered in our archives with my laptop and the one I gave him trying to figure out this mysterious warlock Valentine was working with.
Valentine liked to talk about himself. Honestly, his work was fascinating, and that’s my excuse for falling for his crap. I knew about the team he worked with. He was a cheating asshole, but he was thorough. Every supernatural race was represented in case rites needed to be performed and to make sure digs were done with respect to that culture. Every single one of them was an expert in something.
He vetted everyone rigorously. If I looked up any member of his team, there would be peer-reviewed papers in the subject of their expertise. Some of them were published authors, and my sister had their books in her library. Valentine’s books were pulp and had a certain reader base. His team wrote much better books.
The Valentine I met a few years ago wouldn’t have hired a warlock claiming to be an expert on the Cult of the Aether sisters without receipts to back up that claim. He wouldn’t have brought someone on his team that wouldn’t even tell him his first name.
I hadn’t even met Doctor Key, but I was giving him so much stink eye.
