Page 17 of Battle of Witches
“Ido notgive off pervert vibes!”
Kaine just chuckled and crossed his arms. I was reasonably certain he enjoyed every minute of Ravyn telling Loki he didn’t want to be at a party with high school kids. I vividly remembered Ravyn’s high school years and was still glad I lived through it as a bat. I was a tall beanpole with bad vision that loved history and books. The meatheads would havelovedto try to bully me, and sometimes, I just didn’t feel like beating their asses.
Loki could handle the gods just fine, but could he actually handle a high school junior with all those hormones?
“You clearly haven’t been around teenagers in a very long time. Even if youaren’tgiving off perv vibes, they’ll make it a thing, give you a nickname, and it’ll take exactly two minutes for everyone at the party to call you that. Give it five, and it’ll be trending on social media,” Kaine said.
“It’s true,” I said. “Some puffed-up high school king is going to take one look at you, not give a shit he doesn’t have a drop of magic in his body yet, and you’re a god, think you’re there to take his girlfriend and squad, and make it his mission to destroy you. It’ll be horrifically petty, but I’m guessing it’ll piss you off.”
Actually, if it wasn’t so fucking crucial that we catch Valentine tonight, and this might be our only chance, I would fuckingadoreit to be a bat on the wall if Loki crashed a high school party and took on the King. I mean, Ravyn and Ripley handled theirs like a boss but watching Loki destroy a seventeen-year-old bully would have been beautiful. Especially since Beyla was going to that high school now. He’d really be doing the world a favor.
“No. Get here there and get back to us. I want her to enjoy the party, but she knows not to go outside the house. Beyla knows how to make friends, or she wouldn’t have been invited in the first place. No one needs god mojo at a high school party, but we’ll need it if something goes wrong again. Focus. You have the attention span of a fly at a picnic.”
“Excuseyou, but I can focus on more than one thing at once, even if it seems like my attention span is a moody, little bitch. Have you Googled meat all?”
“Have you Googledme,asshole? Does it sound like I find this shit remotely amusing on my busts?”
New idea. I really needed someone to make a buddy cop movie with Kaine and Loki where Kaine was forced to be Loki’s partner. They always caught their man because they were a force to be reckoned with, but the shenanigans were epic. If Loki could write all the smut under that pen name when he got bored, he could write me that fanfic.
Ravyn decided to play interference. If we sat here and let Loki and Kaine have a pissing contest over who had the best articles about them online, we’d never leave and get Valentine.
“We’re going to behave, Kaine,” Ravyn said. “After last time, we weren’t even sure you would let us come. We allwantthem to go down. Whatever Asfrid is planning, she’s had a long time to do so, and she’s not exactly announcing it on her social media posts. Loki just likes fucking with you, but we’re all going to do exactly what you say.”
Loki didn’t like authority, but I knew he liked Kaine. He’d poke at him because he found it amusing, but Loki wasn’t going to destroy his career and put Beyla at risk for revenge. Loki played the long game.
He’d be on his best behavior to make sure Kaine got his man, and we got a lead on Asfrid, but I’d bet everything he had something planned to fuck up their lives thatwouldn’tblow back on Kaine once they were caught.
And I was here for it.
Chapter14
Loki
Iseriously didn’t needanyoneto explain teenagers to me. They weren’t that different back in my day, even if we didn’t send them to high schools. God teenagers were just as much hormonal assholes as their mortal counterparts, and I raised several of them.
I even got really bored one year and thought I’d like to teach at a high school. I shapeshifted into a hot, little witch, got the credentials I needed, and got myself a job. That wasmuch easierthan explaining why a god wanted to teach history. None of my answers would have been good ones when they found out I was Loki.
For one, they really didn’t want to unleash a bored Trickster on their kids. Secondly, and I found this outafterI got the job, and a mob of parents wanted my head, they really didn’t want their kids finding out what utter dicks their creators were.
Yeah, they had their big, fancy creation myths, but some of the gods were just trying to one-up someone else. Like, Selene created the werewolves because she wanted to. She put a lot of care into their creation and stayed with them for a long time. Then there was this whole boom of other gods creating shifters with various predators.
Yeah, I kinda yoinked bear shifters from someone else when I made the hybrids, but all the deadly animals got taken when they copied Selene. Man, all the shifter parents at that high school weremadwhen I told their kids that. They didn’t even ask me to teach from the books. They fired my ass. I lasted a grand total of two weeks as a high school history teacher, but Iknewhow to handle teenagers.
I also had faith in the team Valentine put together to take down a wolf. My goal was to keep that kid safe. If I had to crash her party to do it, I would. Asfrid had been two steps ahead of me this entire time, and I didn’t trust Valentine was acting alone. Asfrid got what she needed out of him, so he was expendable. She sacrificed the other hybrids easily enough.
I only agreed to leave that party because I trusted Bjorn’s visions. But I was going to make sure that girl had an entrance people would be talking about all year. So I portalled myself into Kaine’s living room and waited. They planned to have this massive fight on the front lawn where Kaine forbade her to go to the party, she’d have a teenager tantrum, and Kaine would ground her and pretend to go to work.
I knew it was fake, but I adored drama. Especially when it wasn’tmydrama. This wasn’t my circus or my monkeys for five minutes, and I planned on enjoying it. I was lounging on Kaine’s couch with his banshee. Rowena and I had a view out the front window. I forgot how much dragons liked gold. Kaine had gold and treasure everywhere, and if I didn’t like him so much, I would have stolen some of it for funsies.
“Showtime, kid,” Kaine said.
Beyla looked like she was ready for it. I knew she was terrific at ballet, but she also seemed super excited at being involved in one of his cases. I’d seen her dance, and that kid could go pro if she wanted. Beyla wouldn’t have grown up on horror stories about the Cult of the Aether Sisters, but I knew Kaine would have filled her in on why a stupid werewolf was conspiring with her mortal enemies to kidnap her.
I got why Ravyn liked this kid. She didn’t look the slightest bit afraid. She had total faith Kaine was going to stop the bad guys and wasrevelingin this shit.
Oh, she was good. She flounced out of the house after Kaine and gave the door a nice, hard slam. Were those angry tears?
“I hate you! You made me leave all my friends to go to that shitty high school. Everyone there is fucking weird, and I never asked for any of this. There are going to be popular people at the party. You’re ruining my life!” she yelled, pretending to fling stray magic at one of Kaine’s golden garden gnomes.
