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I sighed. On one hand, that meant even less time for us to fulfill our duty. On the other, it meant I had some agency in this. The stronger our force, the faster we could get this done. If we secured the Codex by evening, then we could hand it over to Mrs. Boules by midnight. Good. Fine. I could work with that.
“So we’re going soon? In – what, a couple of hours?” I checked at my wrist for the watch I wasn’t wearing. “What time is it now, anyway?”
“Dawn, I guess?” he drawled. “Five, six in the morning.”
“How are you awake then?”
He shrugged, gesturing at the shutters over my window. “No sunlight in the hideout means I get along fine. Plus I’m plenty well-rested from waiting for your bag of flesh and bones to recover.” His eyes came to rest on my chest and his lip turned up. “Also I’m very well-fed at the moment.”
My jaw flew open and I reached for my bandages, as well as for the covers, pulling them up around my torso. “What – how could you?”
“Hey, they brought you back, and Carver said he needed help cleaning you up. So I helped.” He grinned in a distinctly perverse manner. “You’d think I’d get a ‘thank you’ out of that, but no. Vampire saliva has powerful coagulant properties, you know. We’re like leeches. You could have bled to death otherwise.”
“I – you – Sterling, how fucking dare you, I – ”
He laughed, resting his hands behind his head and stretching out his legs. “Relax. I’m kidding. Carver took care of everything. He wouldn’t even let me touch you.” He feigned coughing into his fist, as if he meant for me to see the smile he was hiding there. “He didn’t say anything about the shirt he cut off of you, though. It was like a sponge.”
I recoiled. “Sterling, you’re the fucking worst.”
He lifted a finger. “Listen, the Lorica and all these other arcane idiots have rules about this shit. I’m not allowed to drink from you losers, but nobody said anything about protocol if I found some wine spilled from the bottle.”
I gagged.
“It wasn’t even that good, honestly. I mean you’re magical, so it was still a nice little treat. On the whole, though? Very meh. Your blood is like a passable California red, but the kind you can get at a gas station.”
“Hey!” What the hell, why was I offended? This psycho was talking about my blood. Still, it kind of hurt. A gas station, really?
“So yeah, don’t flatter yourself into thinking I’m dying for more now that I’ve had a sample shot.” He tilted his head, his eyes refocusing on my bandages. “Although – with your wound still open, I can still smell it. Can’t say I’m not tempted to rip you open for another taste.”
“Dude, Sterling, I try so hard to get along with you, but every time you talk to me like this it’s such a struggle and all I think about is picking up a knife from the kitchen and – ”
“I heard screaming.” Gil strode in, rubbing his eyes, clad in teddy bear pajamas and fluffy slippers that I guess were meant to resemble some kind of stuffed animal. I tried to contain my surprise, but he caught me, narrowing his gaze. “Hey. Don’t judge.” He pointed at me. “You’re half naked.” Then he pointed at Sterling. “And you’re just a pervert. Are you scaring him again?”
“Wasn’t scared,” I mumbled.
Sterling studied his fingernails. “I was just telling him that he didn’t have to worry about me gunning for his blood anymore.” He angled his head so Gil couldn’t see, then grinned at me. I scowled back.
“I wasn’t scared,” I said again, louder this time. “I was just concerned. I’ve got one day left on Dionysus’s timer and we’re nowhere close to shutting down the Viridian Dawn.”
“Won’t be long now,” Gil said, checking his phone. “Carver wants us to hit the place at two this afternoon.”
“So Amaterasu agreed to take the sun away after all?”
“Better,” Gil said. He pointed at something glinting and metallic on my desk. “We found that on your body when we came to retrieve you.”
It was a mirror, very much like the one Amaterasu had shattered when she attempted to blind me and drown out all the shadows in her realm.
“So you guys came to get me? Thanks, I guess. Wait. So that means you passed her trial?”
Gil scratched his beard. “Trial? Nah. We just had tea. She was really nice. Said she’d never met a werewolf and wanted to ask questions. We had a great chat.”
I threw my hands up. “But you’re the one who told me not to trust entities.”
He shrugged. “A sun goddess doesn’t seem the type to drug and poison someone, you know? Plus she did a tea ceremony and everything. It would’ve been pretty rude to turn her down.”
“I don’t believe this. What about Carver?”
“Oh, much the same,” Carver said, stepping into my room, like he was waiting to be announced. “The two of us caught up, had a little stroll through one of her gardens. Did you know she had gardens outside that crystal? Simply sublime.”
