Page 39 of Whiskey, Thieves, and Bastards
If anyone could pull this off, it was us.
Medusa’s plan was a good one. The gods were on board, even Athena. My half-sister was a good person. I was glad she was coming through for Medusa because that was the one thing we always disagreed on. Medusa was still mad. She probably would be for a while, but I had a feeling she would forgive her.
Athena didn’t play favorites. She used her math to pick her heroes and if she did have a favorite among them, she never would have told anyone. Athena wouldn’t have lied about it, either. If she was openly admitting Medusa was her favorite, then she meant it.
It would have been weird for all the girls to go out and leave Athena, but no one was going to invite her because of Medusa. But Medusa was who she was.
“You should come. It’ll give us a chance to reconnect and maybe put all this behind us.”
I knew my half-sister. She always said she was a loner, but she liked her heroes and priestesses. She just didn’t know how toaskto hang out. She probably got why she wouldn’t have been invited, but she really wanted to go. I hoped they resumed their bond before Poseidon ruined it.
But for now, my girl needed her night out. Most of her girlfriends didn’t have access to their wardrobes because of the Coalition, so Persephone and I were dressing everyone. We let them tell us what they wanted and conjured their outfits.
And Medusa! She’d gotten some of her confidence back now that she could turn her snakes and gaze off as well as her new fury powers. It was sexy as fuck.
Kat and Calamity wanted black-leather outfits. So did the furies. Jezebel wanted a hot little red number that matched her hair. Persephone was in her signature pink. But Medusa? She was a green witch first, so I went for cottage core, has a hex jar in her bag for emergencies vibe.
I’d known her thousands of years and she’d never looked lovelier.
I watched them go and then turned to the rest of my co-mates.
“So, I’m a little on edge since she’s already been taken once. Are we really going to let her go on her own?”
“Kat will eat us if she sees us,” Pax said.
“She already beat my ass once this week,” Benji said. “She’s strong as fuck.”
“Not to mention my wife if you ruin her fun. You should bemuchmore afraid of Persephone.”
“No shit,” Cas said. “She erased literally every trace of New Eden Asylum.”
“You should probably fear all of them. They are much stronger than you,” Hephaestus said.
My half-brother was the strong, silent type. He only spoke when he had something to say. Hephaestus was more of a loner than Athena was. He could really take people or leave them. Which is why it was such a shocker that he bonded with Medusa the way he had.
And he wasn’t wrong. That group was the definition of strong, powerful women.
“She needs to learn and she can’t do that if we’re chasing people off,” Cas pointed out.
“Before anyone asks, I’m not creeping in the shadows. It’s morally reprehensible to spy on your mate when she’s doing mean things to stupid boys. You wait until she gets home, gives you the highlights, and then you commiserate how stupid the boys were.”
“Guys, I’m not saying ruin their night. I’m saying have a guy’s night out somewhere close enough we can get there if the cops show up or things get out of hand,” I said.
Because I wasn’t that kind of man. She could leave me whenever she needed to. I was just a little overprotective right now because she’d been taken.
“There’s just a bunch of small towns around here. One has a college, but they all go to the same bar near the college. There isn’t a strip club or anything. Our guy’s night out would be eating at the diner.”
“That soundsmuchbetter than a strip club,” Hephaestus said.
“Totally. Persephone is okay with strip clubs if she’s with me. If I went to one without her, she’d light my asshole on fire.”
I laughed because that was totally true. Persephone had a temper on her. Hades and Persephone were weirdly devoted to each other. They went to strip clubs together. They were that weird couple at the pool that sent the young twenty something a drink to see if they wanted to play.
“Then she’d light mine on fire for bringing you because she’d think it was my idea,” I groaned.
“Technically, it is, asshole. You’re the one who wants to be there if something goes wrong. My wife can handle herself. So can the furies and I’m betting the vampire could do some damage to us since she’s an original. Not to mention your mate can just turn the entire bar to stone. You’re overreacting.”
“He’s not,” Cas said. “We haven’t been able to identify what they are using to disable supernaturals, but it’s potent and no one can remember anything that happened after they were hit with it until they wake up at a Coalition facility. We aren’t crashing their night. We’re going to have dinner at the twenty-four-hour diner in case something goes wrong and we’ll be back before they get home.”
