Page 42 of Winners, Losers, and Champagne Kisses
Athena and Hera got my mom a cell phone, and she programmed her number into mine before she left again to go find my dad. I immediately called her because we missed out on a lot of mother-son shadow-demon bonding because of the Coalition and we needed to make up for lost time by killing people together.
Mom was tiny, but she was a fierce woman in that small packaging. Like, no one wanted to mess with me because of Mom when I was little. She made it clear that she didn’t care if you were five-years-old. She’d throw down if you were mean to me.
I eventually learned to fight my own battles, but this one we could do together. Mom poofed to us and she was alreadylooking better than the last time I saw her and it hadn’t been that long. If she was with Athena and Hera, I was guessing they were giving her ambrosia, too. It was the right thing to do, but you always wanted your shadow demons in fighting form.
Mom walked over and hugged me. I missed her hugs. She always smelled like Songpyeon, these Korean cakes I loved that she made for me all the time. I had a feeling she hadn’t been baking, but she still smelled the same. I inhaled. It was a comfort scent.
“Ready to find Dad?” I asked, squeezing her.
“And get a little revenge. We didn’t get that where they were holding me. There was no television, so we didn’t know what was going on. The cells in the basement were electronic. Everything just unlocked and when we wandered upstairs to see what was going on, everyone realized we were alone.
“Some of the newer residents who were taken with cell phones ransacked the place until they found theirs. We thought this was some trick and they would just murder us when we stepped out the front door. We figured out what was going on and left. Hera’s people found us shortly after and that’s where I met Athena, who took me to you after I got cleaned up.”
“I should get her a present. What do you get for a god who’s really smart and has a mean resting bitch face?” I asked.
“She doesn’t like being fawned over. Anoint a candle with olive oil and burn it next to some lilies while giving thanks. That’s enough for her,” Medusa said.
I blew a raspberry.
“That’s boring as fuck. If I was a god, I’d want cake, the potato chip flavors you can only get in Korea, and everyone kissing my ass.”
“You basically have that now,” Cas said.
“Oh, yeah. Love you. Let’s go get my dad.”
Between all of us, we had the means to travel anywhere in the world in seconds. We appeared outside this absolutelydirefacility. I’d spent the night in jails that were more cheerful than this place.
It was this ugly beige rectangle surrounded by chain-link fences and barbed wire. It looked like it had been landscaped with herbicide and salt. It just put me in a bad mood, especially knowing my dad was in there.
“How are we doing this?” I asked.
“It’s like New Eden,” Dionysus said. “I was able to portal here because I had the address, but none of the gods can actuallyseethe building or get inside until the sigil is destroyed. It’s going to be somewhere the prisoners can’t get to it. A supernatural wouldn’t knowwhatit does, but they’d think it was what was stopping their magic and destroy it.”
Bitches. I hoped someone was giving whoever invented that sigil Hell in one of the various afterlives somewhere because it had been nothing but trouble so far.
“How did you handle New Eden?” Michael asked.
“We got captured with intel from a seer. One of our friends is one of the good priests and he hates the Coalition. Father Nathan tried to infiltrate them once, so he coached Pax on how he went wrong. Pax transfigured all the silver from the outside and then we gained access to the attic and neutralized the angel tears. Once everyone got their magic back, we used the chaos of everyone getting justice to get to the basement,” Cas said.
Michael was kind of this intense fucker, but I was loving the evil grin on his face right now. I was okay with evil angels as long as they were on my side.
“If you can get Pax close enough to transfigure the silver again, I can handle the rest.”
Mysterious cheeky fucker. Cas was a planner. He needed every single detail ironed out before he would do anything.Honestly, I loved him for it, but that was just not me. I was a free spirit. I grabbed Pax and poofed him to an unguarded wall.
“Do your thing, bro.”
“Benji, what did I tell you about poofing blind people without warning them?”
“That you’d kick my ass and no one would have sex with me for two weeks if I did it again? Kind of an emergency this time.”
“You still had time to warn me.”
“Sorry. I just don’t want my dad in there any longer than he has to be.”
“I get it. Which is why I’m not going to kick your ass and you’re only on a sex ban for a week.”
I nodded. Worth it.
