Page 29 of Mage Massacres

“Fair enough. I deserved it.” I tipped my head at him.

He grinned at me. “Better the Devil you know than the one who can mute you? Or, wait. Better the Devil you know than the one we’re mated to.”

I tossed my head back, groaning at him. “I got it. Ha. Ha. You’re so punny.”

“No,” Briggs crooned, laughter making his voice shake. “I have another one.”

Murphy bit his lower lip before asking, “So your mate is the Devil, or is he joking? I can’t tell.”

“She’s a lot of things,” I answered evasively. “But that title seems to be the easiest for her to take on.”

“It’s the bad guy vibes,” Briggs informed my siblings, waggling his brows.

“So Stone is also the Devil?” Miller inquired, a bit perplexed about how demonic culture worked.

“Here? Yeah. But in the Underworld, they call him the Devil’s Equal,” I told her.

“You’d like it there, Mills,” Briggs teased. “Lots of pretty flowers.”

My sister scoffed at the wolf. “If they don’t help me create magic, then I don’t want any flowers.”

“Trouble in Paradise?” he whispered to me like I kept up with her love life.

“Not at all.” Her cheeks rounded as she held a tight smile at bay. “Your mate has offered to take care of the trouble I’ve been having.”

I raised my brows at Briggs. “Eight.”

He chuckled. “One hundred and twelve.”

“That’s high,” I argued.

“Are you betting?” Miller asked in disbelief.

“What are they betting on?” Murphy questioned her.

She frowned at him as she shook her head. “How the fuck should I know?”

“How many people she kills while we’re here,” Briggs told them. “Last week, the numbers were low, but the kills were pretty aggressive.”

“Mmm,” I agreed. “The week before that? The numbers were in the hundreds, but she killed most of them by blowing herself up.”

“That’s not what she did.” The wolf rolled his green eyes.

I gave him an unimpressed look. “We don’t know what she did, other than catching her whole body on fire and then dropping Satan’s army.”

“Is this what you guys do now?” Miller seemed disgusted with us. Her face was pinched like she’d bitten into a lemon. “You need to get out more.”

Briggs and I glanced at each other before he responded, “I prefer bets with money on the table, but the outcome of Sloane’s rage is harder to guess than anything we’ve ever gambled on. We know there will be deaths, but there’s no real pattern to the numbers.”

“Guys,” York yelled from down the hall. The door slammed behind him. “Kitchen.”

“Why the kitchen?” Sloane’s complaint was muffled. “What will you guys do when we’re somewhere that doesn’t have a kitchen that fits forty-seven people?”

“We’ll ask you to magic it bigger,” Stone purred. “So you don’t have to hear us whine about not having anywhere to congregate. But look at all the counter space, Kitten. Imagine—”

“Guys,” York shouted again.

“We’re coming,” Briggs yelled back. “Damn, Druid. We heard you the first time.”