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“That Raguel guy. Did he strike you as the type to be an archangel?”
Florian and Beatrice both turned towards me, blinking, but unresponsive.
I cleared my throat. “I guess the question was more for Florian.”
“Well,” Florian said, “for starters, he didn’t have that kind of regal aura I would’ve expected from an archangel, you know?”
“What?” Beatrice Rex poked a finger against my shoulder. “What’s all this talk of archangels and ragu-elles? I don’t like being left out.”
I filled her in quickly, leaving out very few details. She stuck a finger against her chin, thoughtful.
“Blond beefcake with a buzz cut, you say? Sounds like he could be my type.”
Florian chuckled, leaning one elbow against the shop counter. “What is your type, anyway?”
Beatrice giggled, then flipped her hair. Now? This was the time they picked to start being flirtatious with each other again?
“Guys, please, can we focus?”
Beatrice collected herself quickly, her expression going serious once more. “Well, to be perfectly honest, I do tend to associate archangels with a very specific set of names. You know, like Gabriel. Michael. Raphael. Those sound way more like archangels.”
Florian chuckled again. “Or ninja turtles, am I right?”
The two of them high fived, and I stuck my head in my hands. Florian barely knew about the modern world. How’d he ever hear about ninja turtles?
But then a familiar voice spoke up from nearby, drifting out of one the aisles in Beatrice’s shop, and my mood went very quickly from frustrated to mildly infuriated.
“My, my,” said the unmistakable voice of Quilliam J. Abernathy. “Sounds like someone has a bit of a pest problem.”
I whirled on my feet, turning to face him, remembering so suddenly that there definitely were creatures on this known earth who could be smugger and smarmier than even the angels themselves. Whatever Quilliam was supposed to be surely counted, for example.
“The only pest around here is you, Quilliam.”
He scoffed, tucking aside a lock of his hair. “Not to Beatrice Rex, I’m not. I’m a loyal customer.”
This again. I gritted my teeth. It seemed that he was a loyal customer everywhere in the Black Market, which somehow gave him a free pass against being labeled a potential kidnapper and a bona fide arsonist.
I gave Quilliam the once-over, frowning when I found his arms loaded with leather goods. He’d picked out a satchel and a couple of leather-bound notebooks, all courtesy of Beatrice Rex’s collaborative collection with the Fuck-Tons, naturally. He also had what looked like a particularly loopy brown leather belt.
“Is that a harness?” I scoffed, making sure not to expose that I only knew what a harness was because the Fuck-Tons had been so generous with their knowledge on BDSM gear. “Kinky. I didn’t know you swung that way.”
Quilliam’s face creased as he scowled. I’d hit a tender spot. I enjoyed getting a reacti
on out of him, especially when it meant that I’d punched through that pretentious, cool as a cucumber veneer he liked to believe he could keep up at all times.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of insult? Who cares if I’m into that? And it’s not a harness, dimwit. It’s a book belt, not that you’d know the difference, since you’re about as well read as a box of rocks.”
The tips of my ears reddened. He was right. I was being a jerk about the harness thing. Then again, Quilliam had that effect on me, where words just fell out of my mouth in a rapid-fire attempt to push his buttons harder and faster than he could push mine.
“A book belt?” I plucked the thing out of the load of shopping in his arms. “That’s the dorkiest, dumbest thing I’ve heard of.”
It wasn’t. I was lying. I’d fucking love a book belt, but again: anything to set Quilliam off.
“Give that back,” Quill snarled, snatching the belt out of my fingers, then setting all his stuff on Beatrice’s counter. He seemed to remember that we weren’t alone, his eyes flitting between her and Florian, and he cleared his throat, straightening his back and lifting his nose even as the red cleared away from his skin. “Like I said, dumb as a pile of bricks. Not that I’d expect anything from someone who didn’t even finish high school.”
Ouch. Now who was being the jerk? “That’s a low blow and you know it,” I said, scowling. “How do you even know that about me? And what’s with you going around and loading up on all this dork shit, anyway? Grimoires, book belts? Either you’re planning another terrorist coup or you’re preparing for your next semester at some shitty, overpriced gated wizard academy.”
Quilliam stepped forward so quickly that I almost recoiled and backed away. Almost.
