“Not today,” I said.
A contemplative crinkle formed between Ivy’s eyes, but she didn’t comment. I was avoiding Nerissa at the moment, but I hadn’t told anyone. I really didn’t want to get into it.
“After a week with Heaven’s Army, how does it feel to come back down to Earth?” Ivy asked me, smiling.
I returned her smile. “It’s good to be back.”
“Did those gods give you a hard time?”
“No, not really. The soldiers in Heaven’s Army…well, they weren’t what I’d expected. They weren’t like the gods I’d met before, the Seven. Being with them felt a lot like it does here, with my friends. Some of them seemed almost human.”
“Besides the earth-shattering magic,” said Alec.
I nodded. “Well, there is that, yes.”
“And how long will you be staying here?” Alec asked. “Don’t get me wrong. General Windstriker is a competent commander, but he’s not nearly as much fun as you are.”
I chuckled. “Nero was hard on you, was he?”
“You have no idea.”
“He was just trying to make us stronger, so we’ll survive the battles to come,” Drake said.
Alec rubbed his arm, like it still hurt from one of Nero’s training sessions. “His efforts to help us survive felt an awful lot like trying to kill us.”
“That’s just his way of showing he cares,” I laughed.
“It seems the General has other ways of showing he cares.” Ivy flicked her gaze to my new necklace. “Nice bling.”
The noise level in the canteen had finally settled down after Ivy and Drake’s grand entrance, but it now spiked again. Even before I turned and saw her, I’d felt her enter: my kitten Angel. It appeared her morning hunt had been a success. She sauntered across the canteen, dragging a dead giant rat with her.
“I swear that cat’s grown a few inches since yesterday,” Alec commented. “That’s not natural.” He looked at Drake. “Is it?”
Our resident cat expert weighed in. “She has grown.”
Basanti’s eyes followed Angel’s progress across the room. “She’s certainly bigger than Storm.”
Storm was Basanti’s cat, a gift from her angel lover Leila.
“Storm is normal,” Drake said. “Angel is not.”
“Who are you calling not normal?” I demanded.
“Your cat,” Alec told me.
“She’s bigger than any house cat I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure,” said Drake. “In fact, she looks more like a monster than a cat.”
“The universe has a twisted sense of humor.” I sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if my kitten turned into a monster.”
Angel plopped down at my feet, purring with contentment as she ate her breakfast.
I looked fondly upon her. “But I’ve never seen a monster that was so cute.”
“True,” Ivy agreed, reaching down to give my kitten a cupcake to go with her dead rat.
Like a true cat of mine, Angel grabbed the cupcake between her paws and proceeded to lick off the creamy icing.
Alec blinked. “Your cat eats icing.”
“Yes.”
“She’s going to make herself sick.”
“Angel has an iron stomach. And she loves icing. And cheesecake. And pizza with extra cheese.”
“I thought cats couldn’t eat dairy products.” Alec glanced at Drake.
But Drake didn’t answer. His attention was on something else—or, more accurately, on someone else.
“You have sprinkles in your hair,” he said, fishing candy pearls out of Ivy’s crimson mane.
He ate one of the sprinkles, then offered another to Ivy. She licked it right off his finger. Then they both laughed. Alec snorted, Basanti rolled her eyes, and we all wondered once again why Drake and Ivy weren’t a couple. No one understood it. Perhaps the fact that they’d been friends since birth was holding them back, but in all honesty, they already were a couple. They were just the only ones who hadn’t realized it yet.
“It must be nice,” Alec sighed. “I’m still trying to find my one true love.” He set his hand over his chest. “A woman to warm my heart.”
“More like warm other things,” Ivy teased him, finally disengaging from her sprinkles hunt with Drake.
“Ivy, I assure you that I—” Alec’s eyes locked onto the doorway to the canteen. “Oh, hello, there.”
I turned to check what had gotten him so excited. I wasn’t overjoyed with what I found.
“Stop looking at my little sister like that,” I warned him.
Ok, so Tessa was nineteen years old now and technically an adult, but she’d always be my little sister. From across the room, Tessa gave me a little wave—and Alec a big wink. To make matters worse, she was wearing a pair of skintight pink hot pants and a crop top that had about as much fabric to its credit as a washcloth.
“I told you to stop looking,” I hissed at Alec.
He pretended to look away, but that pretense evaporated as soon as Tessa slid into the seat between him and me. As usual, Tessa basked in the attention. At the age of six, my sister had discovered the joys of makeup. At seven, during our trip to the big city, she’d had her first spa treatment. And by eight, she’d had a line of boys following her around wherever she went.
“Sorry I’m late. I had to pick up the latest edition of Magical Weddings.” Tessa slapped the magazine down on the table.
I recognized the flower-filled picture on the glossy front cover. Well, I should have. It had been taken at my wedding two weeks ago. Overlaid on the picture, in a flamboyant cursive font, was the line ‘a wedding fit for an angel’.
I dropped my face to my open palms. “Tessa, why is that picture on the magazine cover?”
“I know. I told them to use the one of the aisle instead.” She rolled her eyes. “But what do I know? I’m only the one who designed the whole wedding!”
“I meant, why is my wedding even in a magazine at all?”
“The editor of Magical Weddings was interested in doing a piece on me…” She flipped forward a few pages, past advertisements for Bewitching Moisturizing Lotion and Stardust Shampoo. “…ah, here it is. A feature on ‘the visionary Tessa Pierce, the most exciting thing to hit the wedding planning market since magic candles’.” She pointed at a picture of herself, standing in front of the angel mural at the Purgatory train station, her gloved hands crossed demurely in front of her body. She was wearing an elegant silk suit whose creation had required at least ten times as much fabric as the outfit she was currently wearing.
“Very smart outfit,” Ivy commented.
Tessa grinned at her. “Thank you. It’s an Estelle Annette original.”
“Couldn’t you have let Estelle dress you today?” I sighed.
“Oh, Leda, Estelle is far too busy to make house calls.” Tessa giggled. “But I hope someday she’ll lend her clothing designs to my event designs.”
“It’s good to have goals, but that still doesn’t answer why my wedding is in this magazine.” I tapped my index finger on a photo of me in my wedding dress.