Chapter Two
We split into the men’s and women’s showers, and I joined Sin as we waited for Gwen, Laetitia, Cearra, and Alyssa to fight it out over the two shower stalls. Lost in thought, I tugged my t-shirt over my head.
“Tori?”
“Eh?” I realized I was standing in just my bra, holding my shirt in front of me. I quickly lowered it. “What?”
Sin frowned. “You okay? No lingering potion effects?”
“No, just tired. The gang takes these games way too seriously.”
“Well, it’s more training than play,” she pointed out, stripping off her damp top. She hadn’t been running around getting shot at, but she’d been wearing the same hot gear as the rest of us. “Speaking of training, how’s that going?”
I peeled off my jeans. “Good, I think. Aaron says I’m making excellent progress. I should be, considering how hard he and Kai push me.”
She sat on the bench in front of the scuffed green lockers to pull off her socks. Gwen and Laetitia exited the shower stalls, wrapped in towels, and Alyssa and Cearra took their places.
“What about Ezra?” Sin asked. “Does he help with your training?”
“No.” My mouth twisted. “He doesn’t help. He …”
She waited a moment. “He what?”
He wasn’t even there, that’s what. Not anymore. Which was freakin’ stupid, considering he lived in the same damn house where I trained for two hours, four days a week.
I’d thought everything was okay between us. He knew I didn’t hold the fact he was an illegal demon mage against him. I didn’t care—much—that he had a real live demon embedded in his body, or that it occasionally tried to control him. He was my friend, and that’s all that mattered.
Yet, he’d begun to withdraw. First, Kai or Aaron had begun taking me home instead of letting me sleep over at their house, which I used to do almost every weekend. Then Ezra had stopped coming to the Sunday and Monday dinners I cooked for the four of us. Then he’d stopped joining us for my workouts and training. I’d scarcely seen him in the last two weeks.
Having learned not to ignore the things that bothered me, I’d asked Aaron and Kai what the deal was. Ezra was having trouble sleeping, they’d said. Apparently, his insomnia was so bad he’d been missing workouts and napping at weird times—like my twice-weekly dinners. When I asked if he’d seen a healer, they’d hesitated. Any mythic looking at him too closely was a risk; what if the healer somehow detected the demonic spirit inside him?
A hand waved in front of my face. I straightened sharply, blinking the changing room and Sin’s concerned face back into focus.
“Sorry,” I blurted, then hastily changed the subject. “Are you excited for Monday?”
Her eyes lit up. Topic change successfully completed.
“I can’t wait!” she gushed. “It’ll be so cool hanging out with you and the guys for a week. I’ve been dying to see the Sinclair Academy since my sister started there. It was really nice of Aaron to arrange for me to visit.”
A faint blush tinted her cheeks at the last bit.
“He’s a pretty cool guy,” I teased. “We’ll have a blast. It’s too bad you can’t stay for the whole two weeks.”
“My parents wouldn’t like it if we missed Christmas with them,” she pointed out. “They’ve been moping since September, and it’s only Lily’s first term. Are they going to sulk for the next five years?”
I snorted. My dad would’ve loved dumping his kid at boarding school.
“Besides,” Sin added, “Aaron probably wants some time with his parents and best friends without me and my sister hanging around.”
I cringed. My Christmas plans were still a source of chagrin for me. Not that I didn’t want to spend two weeks on holiday at a fancy mage academy with the guys, but there were … complications.
“Something wrong?” Sin asked, watching me closely.
Cearra and Alyssa had just stepped out of the shower stalls, so I smiled reassuringly and grabbed my towel. “Nothing. Let’s get cleaned up.”
I brooded through my shower, meaning I took too long. Sin was already getting dressed when I got out, scrunching my blazing red curls with a second towel. She headed upstairs and, alone, I hurriedly dried off and dressed in a pair of jeans and a royal blue V-neck sweater.
A few guys were hanging around the fitness equipment at the center of the large room, its walls covered in action movie posters from the eighties. With more guys waiting to rotate through their showers, there was probably still a line.
Upstairs, chatting voices washed over me. More members besides our paintball party had arrived for the monthly meeting, bringing the total number of mythics in the pub up to nearly thirty. New energy added a bounce to my step as I cut behind the bar and grabbed my apron. Ramsey stood at my usual station, filling a row of glasses with ice.
“Hey!” I greeted, eyeing the group at the far end of the bar. They were clustered around something, but I couldn’t see what. “Thanks for covering for me.”
“No problem,” he said with a grin. “Tell me about the Tori Bait and Switch.”
“Why does it need a name?” I gave him a quick rundown of my antics as I watched the cluster of members, which included Darren, Cameron, Cearra, and Alyssa, my least favorite guild bullies. No group of people was perfect.
I nodded at them. “What’s going on over there?”
Ramsey slid two glasses of ice toward me. “Moscow Mules,” he requested as he poured bourbon into a shaker. “Over there … well, that would be—”
The group shifted, opening a gap, and I saw it wasn’t an object that everyone was focused on. It was a person. A person so petite I hadn’t seen her over the others’ heads and shoulders.
“… our elusive new contractor,” Ramsey finished. “She just arrived.”
My brightening mood soured again. I grabbed two lime wedges and squeezed them violently over the glasses of ice.
Our new demon contractor, Robin Page, was the final reason I’d scarcely seen Ezra. Because of her, he’d been avoiding the guild entirely. That, at least, I understood. Ezra was an illegal demon mage, so he avoided all contractors as a precaution.
She’d taken away his one haven outside the guys’ house, and though she had no clue about any of that, I was still pissed at her.
Reaching past Ramsey, I lifted a bottle of vodka from the well. “In the five weeks since she joined, she’s shown up, what, twice before this? Real dedicated, isn’t she?”
“I heard she had the flu,” Ramsey replied with a shrug. He slid me a can of ginger beer.
“Likely story,” I muttered darkly as I poured vodka into the two glasses, then added the beer.
Robin stood amidst the mythics with her shoulders hunched. She barely topped five feet, her figure and features equally petite. Her thick brunette hair brushed the tops of her shoulders and her slender hands were twisted in the long sleeves of her black sweater. She looked painfully uncomfortable.
“Well?” Darren demanded aggressively, his voice carrying over the other conversations. “What’s your training background? How long have you been contracting?”
Robin shrank in on herself and irritation flashed through me. Didn’t she realize letting Darren get away with that crap attitude was a big mistake?
“You killed the unbound demon, didn’t you?” Cearra asked, sniffing like she totally could have done it herself, given the chance. Never mind she hadn’t even participated in the hunt on Halloween. “How did you manage it?”
I knew how, but only Robin was aware that me, Aaron, Kai, and Ezra had been present when she and her demon had slaughtered the unbound beast.
Robin mumbled something too quiet for me to hear.
“Why are you a contractor, anyway?” Darren sneered, his assholery worsening the longer it went unchecked. “What use does a little girl like you have for a demon?”
“Who ordered the Moscow Mules?” I yelled. “Come get ’em before I throw them at you.”
Gwen and Cameron hurried over. Darren was looming over Robin, waiting for a response, while she stared at the floor. Holy hell, this girl. How hard was it to hold a conversation?
I glanced across the mythics surrounding her—and noted the complete lack of smiles on their faces. No friendliness in their eyes or their questions. Darren was the most obvious bully, but no one was exuding warmth or welcome.
Right.
Until recently, I’d been the new girl—and seven months hadn’t done a whole lot to dim the blah memories of my first week here. The hostility levels had been off the charts. The Crow and Hammer was a haven for most of its members, and we didn’t appreciate strangers butting in.
I glowered at Robin’s bowed head, then let out a disgusted sigh and raised my voice. “Hey, new girl! Over here.”
Blue eyes, half hidden behind dark-rimmed glasses, flashed in my direction, then Robin slipped around Darren in one quick move that left him blinking stupidly. She minced up to the bar.
I pointed at the stool in front of my station and she obediently climbed onto it—so short she looked like a kid getting into a booster seat. Eyes downcast, she waited a long moment, then peeked up at me through thick lashes.
We studied each other. Six weeks had passed since I’d witnessed her and her demon’s unbelievable victory over the unbound demon—and she’d witnessed me and the guys flee the scene. If she told anyone we’d been there, it would raise a lot of awkward questions. Possibly dangerous questions.
She wilted under my assessment. Jeez. How had a girl this easily intimidated become a contractor?
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Tori.”
Sliding her small hand into mine, she shook my fingers. “Robin.”
“Want something to drink?”
“Um—”
“Hey!” Darren shoved his way over, followed by Alyssa and Cearra. “Where’s your infernus? Are you even a contractor or just a wannabe pretending—”
“Darren,” I snarled, “shut your hole before you contaminate my bar with your stupidity.”
His jaw flexed. “I’m just asking what everyone else is think—”
“No one asked you, dipshit.” Leaning closer to a wide-eyed Robin, I added in a low voice, “Don’t let him push you around.”
Her uncertainty waned as a new thoughtfulness entered her expression. She straightened on her stool and, turning to face the others, slid her hand under the neck of her sweater. She pulled out a flat metal disc on a silver chain, its face carved with runes—her infernus, which housed her demon’s spirit.
“Would you like to see my demon?” she asked in a light alto. “Right now?”
I resisted the urge to face-palm. Politely doing what Darren wanted wasn’t what I’d meant. Not even close.
He smirked and folded his arms. “Yeah, let’s see it.”
She ran her thumb down the side of the pendant. Crimson light shimmered across it, then the eerie glow burst from the metal. Power spilled onto the floor beside her stool and stretched upward, forming a humanlike shape. The glow solidified, then died away.
A demon stood in the pub.
Gasps rushed through the watching members. I didn’t move, clutching a bottle of vermouth so hard my fingers ached.
Compared to the other demons I’d seen—and fought—this one was like a puppy next to a timber wolf. A couple inches shy of six feet tall, he was the epitome of lean and mean. All hard muscles on a slender body. He looked fast, even standing still—or maybe I only thought that because I’d seen how swift and agile this creature was.
I hadn’t gotten the best look at him in the park, but now I studied his strange clothes—a mix of light armor, leather straps, and dark fabric that left much of his reddish-brown skin exposed. Small horns poked out of his tangled black hair, and a thin tail snaked behind him.
I took one glance into the demon’s glowing crimson eyes and looked away. Bad memories.
“Seriously?” Darren’s scoffing voice broke the tense silence. He stepped closer to the demon as though to show everyone that he, a mere human asshole, was taller and broader than the scary fiend from hell. “This is your demon? I’ve never seen such a small, pathetic demon in my life!”
I controlled my expression. Aside from me, no one here had seen this demon in action. They didn’t know how lethal he was.
Cearra whispered loudly to Cameron, “Do you think she got it for cheap because it’s a runt?”
Robin’s lips thinned unhappily but she said nothing.
“Forgetting something, dumbasses?” I said acidly. Why did I feel the need to defend this girl? Ugh. “Robin and her demon killed the unbound one on Halloween. Obviously they’re not weak.”
“Not weak?” Darren blustered, reaching for the demon. “This thing couldn’t—”
“Don’t touch him,” Robin interrupted mildly.
Darren hesitated, then contemptuously shoved his palm into the demon’s armored chest—and lurched off balance when the demon didn’t budge, as solid as a brick wall.
Robin rubbed her thumb over her infernus.
The demon’s hand flashed out. He grabbed Darren by his throat, swung the larger man around, and rammed his back down onto the bar. I jumped away as the demon, hand wrapped around Darren’s neck, bent the sorcerer painfully over the bar, with his spine curved backward and legs kicking helplessly.
Robin nudged her glasses up her nose, swiveled on her seat to face the bar, and smiled hopefully. “Could I have a water, please, Tori?”
I glanced at her demon. He was unmoving, crimson eyes staring vaguely at Darren as he held the man down on the bar with one hand. Darren spluttered and struggled, unable to break free, while everyone else gaped uncertainly.
Laughter bubbled up in my throat but I swallowed it down. Oh man. This girl had more spunk than I’d realized. She was showing Darren—and everyone else—that she wouldn’t be pushed around.
As I grabbed a rocks glass and reached for my ice scoop, Darren wheezed and scrabbled at the demon’s wrist. The hellish creature didn’t move, still as a statue—then his head snapped up.
His crimson eyes swept past me, seeking something at the other end of the bar.
Red power blazed over his body. His form dissolved into light and streaked into Robin’s infernus. That fast, the demon was gone again. Robin slid the pendant back under her sweater, giving Darren the side-eye as he shoved off the bar and staggered away, massaging his throat.
At the other end of the bar, Aaron, Kai, and Ezra stood in surprised silence. Their hair was damp from the shower and Aaron held a hoodie in one hand, his white t-shirt rumpled. They must’ve just walked in from the basement. They’d walked in and …
And the demon had looked at them.
Tension prickled through me as I faced Robin again. She gazed around the bar, avoiding my eyes, acting like nothing strange had happened. But I knew what I’d seen. At least … I thought I did.
Demons couldn’t make a single move without their contractor’s command. Why had Robin made her demon look at the guys? Could she see through the demon’s eyes—and if she could, what had she seen? Whatever had happened, I didn’t like it.
I filled the glass with ice and water and slid it in front of her. I’d wondered if Ezra’s avoidance of contractors was on the paranoid side, but now … now I was glad for his caution. He needed to stay away from Robin.
Which, unfortunately, meant staying away from his guild.
Chapter Three
How could my wardrobe fail me now? I rifled desperately through the hangers in my closet. No, no, no. Why didn’t I have a dress that was sexy and classy, formal without being stuffy, flirty but not too flirty, and most importantly, expensive looking?
I dropped my hands to my sides. Well, the last one was easy. I didn’t have any expensive-looking dresses because I was too broke—and too cheap—to buy an expensive dress.
Groaning, I sat on my bed and asked myself, again, why I’d agreed to this plan. Wait, had I agreed? I
remembered the conversation, but I didn’t recall explicitly saying yes.
“Again!” Kai had commanded during a training session weeks ago. “Don’t slow down.”
“I—I can’t,” I panted, my legs trembling and arms as limp as marshmallows bobbing in hot chocolate right before dissolving into sugary goo. “I need a break.”
“Keep going!” he barked, holding the blocking pads between us.
Teeth gritted, I jumped forward and unleashed the pattern of blows I’d been repeating for the last … I didn’t even know. So many repetitions my limbs would be twitching in my sleep. Pounce, right jab, left hook, side kick, retreat. Pounce, right jab, left hook, side kick, retreat. Over and over and over.
“Good,” Kai finally said. “Take a breather.”
I stumbled back and braced my hands on my aching thighs. “You’re a sadist. I’m glad I’ll be getting a break from this over Christmas.”
“Who said we won’t be training over Christmas?” Aaron asked, the words interspersed with panting breaths as he ran hard on the treadmill. Sweat darkened the back of his t-shirt. “We never go more than a few days without a workout.”
“You can’t make me workout on my own,” I informed him with petulant satisfaction. “I’ll have a blissful two weeks to eat Christmas cookies nonstop on my sofa while you three are gone.”
Kai smirked in a way that made my spine prickle with warning.
“No, you won’t.” The treadmill beeped as Aaron slowed to an easy jog. “You’re coming with us.”
I straightened out of my exhausted slouch to peer at him. “Coming with you where?”
He arched his eyebrows. “My parents’ place? We’ve only been talking about it since November.”
“Yeah, I know.” And I’d shrivel with jealousy and loneliness every time they brought it up. “I don’t see what that has to do with my Christmas.”
“Well, initially, nothing,” Aaron admitted. “But that’s only because you left us with the impression that you wanted to spend Christmas with your brother.”
The Alchemist and an Amaretto: The Guild Codex: Spellbound / Five Page 2
