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I picked up my phone, sighing as I gazed at the photo I’d brought up on my browser. Box whined again. I smiled at him and shook my head.
“It’s okay, boy. This is a tough one. I don’t expect you to pull it off that quickly.”
Over the past week or so, I’d been showing him pictures of air-conditioners and electric fans, hoping that visual exposure would somehow teach or encourage him to transform into one. Genius, you say? Totally. How Box could even see anything without a pair of eyes was anyone’s guess, but it seemed to be working to some extent.
One time, he’d actually stretched his body into the circular shape of an oscillating fan. The jury’s out on whether he would have the proper mechanical ability to blow cool air right into my face, but hey, you never know until you try.
Naturally, the more permanent solution would have been to go out and buy an AC unit in the first place. Still, until Florian and I knew whether Loki was just making false promises or actually planning to pay us a fair price for retrieving his sword Laevateinn, we needed to keep our expenses under control.
Artemis paid us a little, sure, but after the initial construction work we did for Paradise, that stipend shrunk. Commensurately so, I hate to admit. It wasn’t like we did much else to help around the place apart from some random chores and minor repair work.
Priscilla, though? I didn’t know how much she made, but she deserved every penny for all of the delicious meals she lovingly prepared for everyone who lived in Paradise. And whatever her salary was, it must have been pretty sweet. I mean, she could afford to collect artifacts. I still wasn’t over the fact that she kept a staff of fireballs in the kitchen.
I put my phone to sleep, folded my hands behind my head, and sighed again. “I guess we’re just really going to have to go to Loki and get our paycheck.”
Florian lumbered in just then, giving Box a quick, cautious glance before stepping towards my bed. “It’s the best option we’ve got. Beatrice Rex still expects you to pay up for that invisibility bracer, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t remind me.”
I rubbed my hand against my face. It wasn’t going to make me invisible in the conventional sense, only enough to disguise my spiritual signature so that entities like Belphegor and his friends could no longer track me. That was all that mattered, really. If I wiped myself off the map, then I’d have far fewer arcane ambushes and supernatural surprises to deal with.
“We should visit Loki soon,” Florian said. “He said to just go over to Happy, Inc. headquarters whenever we were ready. Are you feeling better?”
I sat up and nodded. “I think so. You?”
Florian sat on the foot of my bed and nodded back. “I’m okay. But it really felt like Belphegor was punching me out from the inside of my brain. Stabbing, more like. The worst kind of pain.”
My hands flew to my forearms to rub down the goosebumps forming on my skin. The sheer memory of the agony was enough to make me shudder. “Don’t remind me. What could she possibly want from you now?”
He shook his head. “Dunno, but she’s right. I still owe her.”
“What exactly for?” I cocked an eyebrow. “I needed her help for something specific. The fact that you owe her a favor means you needed something too.”
Florian threw his hands up, then plonked down onto the lower half of my bed. “It wasn’t even by choice, you know? I told you before, I was in hibernation for a while. When I woke up, I was in Belphegor’s garden. Nasty place, just a bunch of carnivorous plants, and a lot of toxic ones, too. The kind that spit acid in your face. Anyway, that alone meant that I owed her, me waking up in the Crimson Gardens.”
I scoffed. “That hardly seems fair.”
“Not really, no, but she reasoned that she could have crushed me to death, fried me up in oil, turned me into nut butter.” He made a shape with his arms around himself. “I was in a seed form at the time. In a fetal position, but there was this thick membrane around me, like a shell.”
“Or an egg. Or a cocoon. Man, you alraunes ar
e weird.”
Florian shrugged. “Point is, she spared my life and allowed me to grow in her garden, taking in the nutrients and whatever form of sunlight they had down there. That was the favor. And now she wants me to return it.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “Listen, I might not understand what Belphegor is going to need from you, but I’m here. I’ll help you any way I can.” Box nuzzled up against my foot just then, making an odd, wooden noise that might have passed for a vague bark. “And Box will, too. Won’t you, boy?”
Florian sat up, folding his legs under him, making sure that Box was nowhere near his toes. He frowned at the mimic for a moment. “Might as well take him along when we go to see Loki. You never know. If things go super sideways, maybe Box could eat his face off.”
I chuckled. “Box would probably love that. Wouldn’t you, boy? Would you like to eat a rat bastard trickster god’s face? Of course you would.”
I rubbed Box across the top of his lid, tickling with the tips of my fingers – not at all expecting him to open wide, show me his rows of spiky teeth, then lick my hand affectionately with his huge, snakelike tongue.
Huh. That was new.
4
Florian and I didn’t have to wait in the lobby of Happy, Inc. headquarters for very long. Within minutes we were ushered through the locked security doors by a woman who introduced herself as Katherine.
