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I wasn’t the only one who groaned. I pulled out my phone and opened my message change to Lewis, my right hand. “Who wantsactual food?”
“I didn’t order fucking Play-Doh,” Joshua grumbled.
“Play-Doh would be more filling than your kale and salads and gassy fucking bean everything,” I bitched. I snorted when all the other hands went up, glancing over to the vampires. “Are you guys all proper and boring or are you guys good with some of our kebabs? There’s a place near here that’s banging.”
“We’re fine with whatever,” Gavin accepted after they shared a few looks.
We got to work, and Joshua’s order came first along with refreshments. Then mine came and we dug in.
Rita threw some fries at me after I said something snarky, and Elijah actually held up his fingers for a touchdown signal when I caught one in my mouth instead of just making a mess. We all threw fries at Joshua when he lectured us about our eating habits yet again.
“You all truly like each other,” one of the vampires said, glancing between us as if he couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was seeing.
I nodded, wiping my mouth and gesturing to the demons in the room. “This is the original family we formed, plus Ally and Aurthur. The seven of us started all of this and built it from the ground up. It’s been the blood, sweat, and tears of decades of killing ourselves together to make this happen with the owner—our leader.”
“That’s why we were never going to fail when so many others have,” Rita said firmly. “Where even other established councils have failed and been completely taken over.” She gestured between us again. “We’d all die for each other. You can’t buy someone to betray the others when that’s how they feel. Wehaveall almost died for each other at one point or another. The bond doesn’t break then.”
“Amen to that,” I muttered, shivering as I remembered how I’d almost killed Rita and Joshua at different times when I’d shifted forms when I’d been scared and in denial that I could. I hadn’t meant to, but I was just so strong and terrified of what I was.
I still was.
We spent the rest of the day marking which covens had actually done as they were supposed to, and I think the vampire councilmen understood better why we were so angry when one coven released twenty demons.One covenhadtwenty demonsas pets and protection. They fed off the constant pride of the inflated egos of the vamps and had a place to live, but also protected the coven.
And had no lives of their own.
What a shit fucking deal. They basically lived their lives in dorm rooms and were fed basic, bland nothing.
That wasn’t a life worth living.
So we had piles of messes all over the place, plus the covens that basically replied acting like they’d never heard of demons, much less had had any step foot in their covens. Sure, that wasn’t suspicious.
We decided those would be checked out immediately with cloaking charms, but once again we were stretched too thin. We couldn’t leave this alone now that we had started it, and we couldn’t leave people in bad spots, but we couldn’t risk our people to do it.
So what the fuck was the answer?
I didn’t know, but it was my answer to have since I was the boss.
Awesome.
5
“Hey, I got the packets and—”
“Let’s have a talk,Jasmine,” Tracey greeted me the next morning.
I swallowed a sigh, my brain still catching up given how late I’d worked once again. I glanced over at Mason when he went ridged, clearly hearing it as well and knowing it wasn’t what I wanted.
“And let’s skip the part where you deny it,” Tracey added when I didn’t respond fast enough. “You’ve always respected me before, so don’t play me for a fool now. I won’t forgive it after all of the years we’ve trusted each other.”
“I wasn’t going to, and you’re no one’s fool,” I muttered. “It’s sorta just not the day for it. There’s a lot more shit than you know, so if you want to be read in as the Tracey I know and do trust, I’m fine with you coming over and just having a talk. If you’re pissed I didn’t tell you and have an axe to grind, that’s a whole other situation and one that—”
“I’m not pissed, and there’s no axe as long as you promise you were going to read me in,” he said after a moment.
“I was. Maybe not on me specifically, but on what really went down since I know you have a lot of contacts and a far reach.”
“Yeah, that’s part of what I want to talk to you about. I’m getting a lot of demons calling me for info, and I want the real answer before I startgivinganswers.”
That was more than fair and I said as much. Tracey promised to chill a bit and he was fine with keeping it low-key so I could just fill him in.
