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So it didn’t surprise me that I was faced with shocked gazes when I’d jumped on the assignment that Ace, the lead demon in our particular group, had thrown at me.
To find a professor and pick her brain about the fact that, somehow, in a twist of fate that I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around, the “old gods” were waking up and coming back.
Which meant that everything I knew about reality, about life, about theafterlife, and my position in it, was wrong.
I’d always viewed the “old gods” like the Greek Olympians as stories the humans told themselves. I’d read the stories—like I’d read many of the other books that Ace had weighing down the shelves in his library—as tales.
Not facts.
No more real than their stories about houses made of candy and children being pushed into ovens.
I figured the gods were ways for the humans to teach lessons on life or morality, never meant to be taken literally.
Which was why when I’d read them, I hadn’t exactly committed much of it to memory.
But if the entire fucking world—and underworld—was about to be turned on its axis, I needed to do my part to figure out what the fuck was going on.
It had nothing to do with the fact that what I remembered best about one of the Olympian books I’d read was the author’s picture on the back of the book jacket.
She’d been photographed in a darkened corner of a library, her arms folded in a very posed way over her subdued black blazer. Her light blonde hair was pulled back in a somewhat severe bun which wouldn’t have been attractive for many people, but her face was delicate and beautiful enough to pull it off.
She looked young to be a professor. Though, admittedly, I didn’t know as much about those things as humans or the demons who’d been around longer did.
I’d been trying to learn as much as I could as quickly as possible, but it was generations of information that I needed to retain. So things like ages for higher education or to hold positions, yeah, it wasn’t exactly priority in my mind.
Young or older than I thought, she was beautiful.
And from what I remembered about the book, very educated on the topic of the old gods.
I mean, if Ace was sending me to her, she had to be one of the best around.
A college campus was a strange thing at night, it seemed. The institution itself loomed large and intimidating, as if daring people to seek knowledge there. But the people who milled around were laid-back and casual, laughing, joking, making out in dark corners.
By the time I got there, the faculty offices were closed for the night, but something inside me said that I wouldn’t find this particular professor in her office anyway.
She’d chosen the library as the backdrop to her book jacket photograph for a reason, hadn’t she?
With that in mind, I made my way around the campus, sticking to the shadows to avoid the security who milled around, looking for threats, and—in one circumstance—guiding a drunken, naked student back toward his dorm while he argued with him about which Power Ranger was the best. Whatever the fuck a Power Ranger was.
Eventually, I found myself in a place that I imagined would give Ace a fucking hard-on to step inside. The massive two-story structure that seemed to go on endlessly, nearly every inch of the place stacked with books.
Down the center of the library was a sort of study station full of long, wide wooden tables with little copper lamps giving off warm, soft lighting for anyone there trying to study late at night.
It wasn’t exactly a packed place, not so late into the evening, but there were a fair amount of people milling around. From students at the desks, to librarians and custodians doing their jobs, and yet another couple making out in the shadows.
I don’t know what it was that had me looking up and toward the back corner, but it was almost as if something was pulling me in that direction.
Curious, I followed that feeling as it led me toward a smaller open area in the back where several tables were pushed together in an attempt to have enough room for the many stacks of books on their surfaces.
No less than three travel mugs were on the table as well, along with two extra pairs of glasses, notebooks, a tablet, and a bag of hard candy. The strawberry and cream kind.
Then there she was.
Bent over a book on the table, her elbow resting on the desk, her head resting a bit against that hand as she read.
She wasn’t as formally dressed as she’d been in the photograph, though her hair was still pulled back in that severe bun. She had on a pair of navy blue slacks and an oversize, thick-knit sweater in an off-white color. There was another sweater on the back of one of the chairs. And if I wasn’t completely mistaken, what looked like a blanket folded up on another one.
It was cool in the library. It probably had something to do with the health of the books or some shit like that, but I regretted my decision not to bring an extra layer.
