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He reddened at the ears, fuming, then squinting even harder at my forearm. “I’m not sure what I’m looking at.” He snapped his fingers. “A tattoo. You got a new tattoo. A very bad one, by the looks of things. I can’t even see it.”
I rolled my eyes. “No. It’s an enchanted bracer. I bought it, custom-made from Beatrice Rex. Blends into my skin.”
“That’s very clever. Saves you the trouble of having someone attempt to deactivate it, or chop your arm off to do so. But – oh. Oh goodness.”
Raziel stared at me hard, his gaze narrowing even more. Then he firmly shut his eyes. I looked down at my chest and my shoulders.
“What?” I said. “What is it?” I’d changed into a tank top to be comfier for the evening, but my sigils weren’t glowing at all.
“I can’t see you,” he said softly. “I can’t detect you anymore, Mason.”
“Excellent. I hope
it’s good enough to hide me from everyone, especially that Raguel guy.”
“Wait, wait.” Raziel lowered his head, staring fixedly into my eyes. “Did you just say Raguel?”
“The angel of justice? Blond, beefy, kind of a jerk? Yeah, that guy. Florian and I ran into him.”
“Please tell me you at least tried to play nice. Please tell me you didn’t antagonize him.”
I kept my gaze on the ground, rubbing my chin, then forcing out a yawn. “Boy, it sure is late. I’m getting so sleepy.”
Not good enough. Like a long suffering kindergarten teacher – or a mother, actually – Raziel pinned me to the spot with a drawn-out, castigating lecture. I sulked, sucking on my bottom lip and playing with my thumbs. I was in for a long night.
18
It was weird waking up in Paradise and feeling so palpably that something was now very different. There was a certain comfort in knowing that the bracer was protecting me at last, hiding my essence from prying eyes. I woke up feeling refreshed, more rested and calm than I’d been in a long, long time.
Raziel had wandered off and left Paradise long before everyone turned in for the night, but not before berating me for the better part of an hour about giving celestials the benefit of the doubt, lest I incurred even more divine wrath. At least I managed to calm him with my promise that we would go out and eat stuff when all this Belphegor business was over.
But as I discovered coming out of my hut, Sterling was still lingering in Paradise. He’d made it very clear early on that the artificial sun of Artemis’s domicile afforded him a rare and nonlethal way to bask in the sun’s glory again. I could see why he liked hanging out. But as I told him the night before, it simply wouldn’t be feasible to take him along with us to Belphegor’s gardens. We had another appointment, as Florian helpfully pointed out. Our last one, I hoped.
Sterling looked visibly disappointed when I explicitly reminded him that it was daylight out, and there was no way he could come with us to the Beauregard or the Crimson Gardens without bursting into flames.
“Aww. You’re right. Fine, then. Guess I’ll stay here and nap.” He turned to Artemis. “If that’s okay with you?”
“Hey, mi casa and all that. Pick a hammock.”
Sterling swung his legs, then his whole body into a hammock, slipping on a pair of sunglasses and placing his hands behind his head. Where did those even come from? Also, where exactly had he found a pair of board shorts to change into? I placed my hand above my eyes as a visor, glancing around Paradise to look for a gift shop.
“Catch up with you boys after work. Uncle Sterling needs his beauty sleep.” He pulled a wide-brimmed hat over his face – again, what the hell? – then almost immediately started snoring.
Artemis took up one of the hammocks next to him, balancing a split coconut on her stomach. “You boys off to hell again?”
Florian nodded. “Belphegor’s, yeah. The sooner all this is over, the better.”
“Agreed,” Artemis said. “Especially with all those hellephants roaming around. Gotta watch out for hellephants.”
I blinked at her, confused. “You – you meant elephants, right?”
She lowered her sunglasses, fixing me with a glare. “I said what I said. They’re huge, those things, and angry. Pretty sure they can breathe fire when they reach maturity, too. Native to the prime hells. Consider yourselves lucky that Belphegor isn’t asking you to trim jungles for him.” She pushed her shades back up her nose, then settled back into the hammock, sighing. “Not yet, at least.”
Florian bent closer to me. “We’re totally going to die, dude.”
I elbowed him in the ribs. “We’ll be fine. You’ll be fine. Shush. Hellephants? Pssh. As if.”
Artemis suddenly sat bolt upright, which is a feat when you try it in a hammock, let me tell you. “Wait,” she cried out. “Watch out for the bed.”
