Page 13 of Battle of Witches
“He really is,” Ravyn said. “Would he be welcome to study with your seer demons in Hell when this is over?”
Lilith agreed, and that was why I was so glad it washer.She’d done nothing but help us, but she didn’t treat us like property. Bjorn learning everything he could about his gifts was what was best for Bjorn, even if he had to go to an entirely different realm to do it. She knew that and wasn’t going to force him to stay.
I felt someone in my personal space stroking my arm. I looked down, and there was Ravyn’s fucking mom. She looked just like the twins, just much shorter.
“He’s a big one, isn’t he?” she said to Ravyn.
Was Ravyn’s mom hitting on me? Right in front of her dad like that? And in front of mymom?
“Please don’t grope my boyfriend, Mom.”
“His biceps are bigger than my thigh!”
“Mom!”
“Okay, sorry! I knew the two of you would be powerful as soon as you started growing in my womb, but this is all just amazing, and Iknowyou’re going to beat the Cult of the Aether Sisters.”
Ravyn’s dad cleared his throat.
“We have a proposal for you. We don’t like being so far away, especially with grandbabies to spoil. There’s a building for sale near the academy. We’re thinking of buying it and moving our apothecary there. So we’ll be close, and we think we can make more money there.”
Ravyn and Ripley both lit up. They looked like they wanted to scream, but Michael was nursing, and they didn’t want to disturb him.
“Seriously? Is it the bar by the academy that humans managed to buy and no one wants to go to?” Ripley asked.
“Yes! The development company that bought it has bled so much money into so many failed bars in that location, they are practically giving it away, and they think they are the ones screwingusover.”
“Are you going to move the workshop over and everything?” Ravyn asked.
“Oh, yes. They expanded the kitchen to add a smokehouse while doing this last cowboy version. I guess they thought barbeque would get people in the door. We can turn the kitchen into the workshop and convert the smokehouse into a room where we can cure intention soaps and candles.”
“We’re going to need a whole brick of your bad juu-juu soap, ten bundles of dragon’s blood sage, andGet Out of My Housecandles for every room,” Killian said.
“We need it for the museum, too. The stank of Valentine and Gertrude Von Stein is everywhere. I already saged the place, but Valentine is like a wolf shaped STI. You think he’s gone, but he just returns and ruins your day.”
“I’d kill him, but I like the cranky dragon and don’t want to ruin his career,” Loki said.
“I’m exhausted, and the baby is finally sleeping. So, I think I’d like to take a nap now,” Ripley said.
We all said our goodbyes and left. I liked this little slice of normalcy and wanted more of it. But, in the morning, we were back to evil hybrids and idiot werewolves.
Chapter11
Ravyn
Iwasn’t a clingy witch. I didn’t need or want to be up a man’s butt all the time, especially since I was built to be polyamorous. But I thought I’d lost Killian. I spent two months trying to wake him up and failing. I was so far up that boy’s butt that he could burp me out. I was finally getting used to the fact that he had his body back, and fucking Asfrid had to go and mess with it.
I loved going to work. There was not a single day I woke up and didn’t want to go in. Until now. I just did not want to be cataloging Asfrid’s fucking things while she was out there with Valentine plotting.
Sasha had gotten most of the grimoire scanned, and Loki had translated it. Things got pretty dark after the necromancy spell, but nothing we could use or figure out what she was up to. Also, how many dildos did a group of hybrids need?
Every time we got items, even if they didn’t come from a group of notorious murderers, we got a peek at their culture. We always got carved effigies, and we got photos if they were painted on a wall and couldn’t be moved. We got their altars and an insight into who and how they worshipped.
It was always a thing that right before we opened things up to the public, we’d order takeout and throw out theories about the art we got. My art historian was this amazing siren from the Czech Republic. He’d sit there listening to our ideas while he sipped his beer. All of us were history buffs, but after a few beers, we’d start throwing out some totally bizarrewrongtheories. He’d laugh with us, and then as the night wound down, he told us what it really meant.
That had been a museum tradition since I got hired, and we all loved it. We had none of that here. I got that a lot of things probably were destroyed in the fire, but I would have guessed there would be important things they would want to bring to that underground bunker just in case they survived—something precious to them they would like to preserve.
There were no religious effigies or altars that were brought to me. We had items here from during that time from people who also worshipped Loki, even if he didn’t create them. If anything, I’dincreasedmy offerings to Lilith now that I’d met her. The hybrids had nothing with them that would indicate the worship of any god. If I weren’t dating Loki, I wouldn’t know they were hybrids orwhocreated them.
