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“What about the new juice glasses?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together.
“The ones that dissolved into piles of glitter when you poured liquid into them?” Ry demanded. “I assumed they were a practical joke.” His eyes darted to Rumple. He wasn’t wrong to suspect Rumple; that was his sort of thing.
“I need to get back to my workshop,” Mikhail muttered, his face pinched. “I made some dog toys for Shadow. I don’t want him getting surprised, or hurt.”
“I’ll go,” Gavriel offered. He’d been feeling super guilty ever since we’d moved Shadow out of Precious’s room. The sweet dog had whimpered for days, and Gavriel had definitely been on Shadow’s shizz list.
Perception pushed his way through the crowd and bowed slightly to Mikhail. He was sort of dressed as an angel—there was a golden pipe cleaner halo stuck on his head, anyway. Talk about phoning it in.“Maker, can I see the chime?” he asked politely.
For some reason, a Protector dressed as a fairy, wearing what looked like slightly gold-tinted plastic wrap, fluttered along behind him. I could see her nipples as clear as day right through her outfit. She’d rubbed red lipstick on them, it looked like. Or maybe raspberry sauce. Not a bad idea, actually.
“Hey, Adoration,” I muttered. She didn’t even glance at me. She was fluttering her eyelashes at Percy so fast, I worried she’d dislocate an eyelid.
Her voice was breathy as she spoke to Mikhail. “Yes, Maker, show it to Perception. He’s so quick, so clever, I’m sure he’ll see whatever it is that can be fixed.” She rubbed her fingertips over his arm.
Perception didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he held the chime up to the wildly changing lights and shook it a few times, humming slightly when glitter fell out. “That’s unexpected.”
“Ugh, I hate glitter,” Adoration murmured. “No wonder it ruined the naming ceremony. Well, glitter and thatchild.” She tutted. “We all heard what happened, of course.” She made a fake sad face and squeezed Percy’s arm.
Sunny shot me a look that said three words, very clearly:Tarp. Shovel. Hole.
I casually took the cup of beer Righteous had been holding and stepped closer to the long-haired, hot-but-in-a-skanky-way Protector. I leaned in. “Hey, Adoration?” I murmured, while Perception examined the chime. She was still touching his arm, though he kept shaking it slightly, like he’d felt a fly land on it. “Are you okay? You’re having some sort of seizure thing there.” I pointed to her face with my cup.
And then I “accidentally tripped” and spilled the beer on her. Well, more or less spilled it. I was a lot shorter than her, and so I had to spill it a foot and a half, upward, which took some doing.
Bull’s eye!It went right up her nose. Sunny gave me a quiet thumbs-up.
“What the fuck?” Adoration yelled as beer dripped down her hair and all over her costume. A glob of charcoal gray, almost brown smut appeared on the very tip of her nose.
I giggled. “Brown noser.” She stopped fluttering, shooting me a look that was not at all adoring. Which, funnily enough, seemed not to be good for her digestion.
“What was in the canapés?” she muttered as she let out an enormous belch that smelled vaguely of fish.
I took a quick sniff. “Smells like sardines. Open your mouth; I’ll check again.”
If looks could unmake, I’d have been exploding into glitter-sized pieces of Feather right then. Which, apparently, wasn’t any better for Adoration’s intestinal situation. She let out an enormous fart as well, which was even worse.
Perception stopped messing with the chime for long enough to ask, “What in the world is making that stink?”
Adoration raced away, apologizing as she knocked over other guests. Sunny and I burst into gales of laughter, while Hope used one of her fans to waft away the foul air. All the people who had been standing behind Hope took a good, long look at her exposed backside while she waved.
“What’s it like to have a hot wife?” I teased Sunny. Hope really was the most gorgeous woman in any realm, a walking wet dream, though I’d been told she’d shave my hair off if I kept calling her that. My Naming abilities were hard to turn off, and apparently, quite a few of the others in the Limen had started having actual wet dreams about her.
“I keep telling ya—once you go beaver, you’ll never leave her,” Sunny sassed, adding an exaggerated wink.
Finally, Perception handed the chime back. “Mikhail, if I had to guess”—we all grinned; guessing was what Percy did best—“I’d say the chime is working perfectly. But it’s… This is going to sound nuts. Is it… Could it be playing a practical joke?”
For a moment, there was silence. Then Rumple laughed so hard, everyone jumped back. “Revel,” he wheezed when he could finally speak again. “He was the one who helped me make the chime. It was his essence that went into it.”He asked for the chime, humming over it slightly, his eyes glimmering as he examined it. “Revel was always the life of the party, playing jokes and teasing. This is exactly what he would do.” He let out a shuddering breath. “I think Perception has it right. My little brother would definitely play this sort of joke.”
I slid under Rumple’s arm and hugged him. I’d seen the wetness in his eyes, and knew that even if he was smiling, he was missing his brother. We all missed him.
“So, I guess the name of this place is going to stay smutty?”
Everyone around us groaned.“I don’t know, little one.” Rumple handed me the chime. “Maybe you can fix it?”
I perked up at that. I would have liked to think everyone around me had full confidence in my abilities as a Namer, but at least a half-dozen Protectors sprinted for the exits, and another fifty ducked and covered like an old-fashioned tornado drill.
“Oh ye of little faith,” I mumbled, holding up the chime. I sang as clearly as I could, “The Spiritual Cloisters!”
