“Nine weeks,” I answered as I finished snapping on my bra. He had been going since he was seven, and while I missed him terribly when he left, he loved the friends he made there. The camp was half focused on survival, and the other half was STEM education. My baby was a budding genius and got a special scholarship to this camp. Not that I was surprised. He got his wicked smarts from his mama. But his absence left me itching for a more exciting life. It sounded like Grim had something for me.
“So, you’ll come then?”
I could tell it pained Grim to ask it of me. My pants were already on, and I donned a forest green tank top. This didn’t seem to call for formal attire.
“Of course.”
“Good, good,” he muttered more to himself.
Before I hung up, he said, “And Miranda, bring the blade.”
My eyes tracked to my closet. I didn’t lower the phone even after the call ended. I kept the Blade of Bane stored in a sheath between my formal dresses and my sweatpants. An unpleasant churning started in my stomach.
Whatever the god of the dead was about to ask me, I had a feeling I already wouldn’t like it.
ChapterTwo
THE BADASS
“Miranda, you understand duty,” Grim said, swirling a glass of brown liquor while avoiding meeting my gaze. We sat in his penthouse apartment atop the pyramid hotel, surrounded by upscale luxury.
My fingers grip the couch cushion beneath me. I feel like a kid who’s been called to the principal’s office even though my boss is in unusually informal shape.
Grim’s usual pristine black suit jacket was carelessly discarded on a nearby chair, and his shirt was only partially buttoned. As he spoke, his fingers tapped restlessly against his thigh. To my surprise, he was barefoot, his feet planted firmly in the plush white carpet. I couldn’t stop staring at them, which unsettled me.
“I suppose I do understand duty,” I replied slowly. Needing to do something with my hands, I reached over and straightened a pillow.
Grim and I might share a sense of duty, but I found myself thinking of the person who linked us–Vivien.
Vivien often boasted that I was a badass because I used to be in the Special Forces and because I’m a single mom. But the military was a lifetime ago and being a single parent had made me softer in some ways. Although I would never admit that to Vivien, With Jamal away at camp, I found myself floundering for direction and orders. I enjoyed being her scary, tough as nails friend. Though sitting across from her husband, the god of death, I began to think she had a type she aligned herself with.
“I take my duties seriously,” Grim said with a wry smile.
A deep line forms between my brows.
Grim was the god of the dead, and he was comparing our sense of duty.
How many feet of shit was I about to dive into?
I pushed back the cuticles on one hand. “I imagine sorting souls for the afterlife on a daily basis would require a certain level of commitment,” I said, my eyes dropping back down to his bare feet.
He nodded, expression absent as if his mind was elsewhere.
I wasn’t used to hanging out with my boss, and I didn’t know why I was there. I moved to pushing back the cuticles on my other hand.
“And when I’m unable to perform my duties, it can…well, it eats away at me. I don’t know if you can understand…” Grim said, sounding distracted.
“This isn’t a sex thing, is it?” I asked incredulously, unable to believe I even had to ask.
“What?” He straightened and blinked. “No.”
I sank back into the couch, relieved. “Oh good, because if the duties were in regard to my friend, I mean, she’s kind of your problem now.”
Grim seemed flustered. “No, there’s no problem. I mean I perform with her just fine. That isn’t what–”
I took the opportunity to reach for the glass of red wine waiting on the coffee table for me. It was divine, a testament to Grim’s godly taste and wealth. But it wasn’t a 1992 Celestial Cellers Pinot Noir, I thought glumly.
Grim rubbed his forehead and chuckled. “I feel I’m beginning to understand why you are so close with my sekhor.”
