“Don’t do that,” I sighed. “She’s already had five of them. Plus two bowls of ice cream.”
“She knows what she wants,” replied Aerilyn as Angel ate the cheese pastry off her hand.
“She usually eats much more sensibly.”
Aerilyn’s gaze panned across the ballroom. “If you wanted your cat to eat sensibly, you should have invited a few wild turkeys to the party.”
Yeah, the gods and demons would have really appreciated the sight of my cat tearing across the room to catch her dinner. And Tessa…she would have been horrified. I guess galas with wild turkey hunts generally didn’t make it onto the cover of high-brow fashion magazines.
“Congratulations on your divine triumph, Leda.”
But the triumphant look in Aerilyn’s eyes made me wonder if the biggest winner in all this was the demons. And Aerilyn herself, as the one who’d masterminded my successful ‘test’.
Aerilyn gave me a little wave, a big smirk, then walked off, probably to get more food. Stash crossed paths with her.
“Who is that?” he asked me, watching Aerilyn go.
“My cousin. On my mother’s side of the family,” I added.
“She looks like she’s up to no good.”
I nodded. “Yeah, that about sums her up. Because I passed Aerilyn’s test, demons once more walk the Earth.”
He shrugged. “Such is the price of peace.”
“Tell it to the gods.”
“They know.”
“They just don’t like it.”
“They never like it when someone makes a decision without them.” Stash patted me on the back. “But your decision allowed you to achieve the impossible, Leda. You excel at that.”
“No wonder I have so many enemies.”
He laughed. “You also have friends.” He waved over the rest of the godly soldiers I’d worked beside in Heaven’s Army.
Devlin, Octavian, Arabelle, Punch, and Patch were all here. I didn’t care for most deities, but I was really glad to see the five of them again.
“Pandora,” the leader Devlin greeted me with a very dignified nod.
Arabelle’s gaze flickered from the gods’ council, to the demons’ council. “You’ve certainly been busy.”
“I live to serve,” I said with a bow.
Octavian snorted.
“So you guys are here on gala babysitting duty tonight,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind too much.”
“No,” replied Patch. “In fact, we volunteered. This is a historic occasion. It’s the first time in many millennia that the two councils have met together in the same room. It should be very enlightening.”
“It will be more than enlightening, bro.” A grin of boyish delight lit up Punch’s face. “It will be exciting. Gods and demons together, all in one room?” He rubbed his hands together in obvious anticipation. “Trouble is bound to break out.”
“Punch, this event is about peace and new beginnings,” Devlin reminded him. “It’s supposed to be a tasteful affair.”
“What things are supposed to be, and what they end up being, aren’t always the same,” Punch retorted. His delighted eyes panned across the room. “But there are certainly some tasteful elements present.”
I saw where he was looking—or, more specifically, who he was looking at—and I felt it was my duty to intervene.
“Try to hit on my little sister, Punch, and the next time I blow up a monster with explosives, I’ll use you as the launching pad,” I promised him.
He chuckled, his eyes still locked on Tessa. “It might be worth it.”
I made a mental note to introduce Punch to Alec. They’d get along splendidly.
“Break’s over,” Devlin told his team. “Back to your posts.”
As they moved off, I tracked down Calli in the crowd. She wasn’t a god or a demon, or even a Legion soldier, but this was my office, and I was going to invite anyone I felt like. I hadn’t seen Calli since yesterday, when Nyx had led off Gemini and Sagittarius in chains. I really needed to speak to her.
“Leda,” she said as I slid into line beside her at the dessert table.
There were more different variations of chocolate cake than I’d ever seen before, all artistically shaped onto tiny plates or into tiny glasses. Angel rose up, putting her front paws at the edge of the table. Calli slid her a glass of chocolate cheesecake.
“You all need to stop feeding her junk food,” I said. “She’ll become complacent.”
Calli watched me grab two glasses of chocolate mint ice cream. “Are you sure you should be dispensing health advise, Leda?”
“Sure.” I licked ice cream off my spoon. “I run like five thousand miles a day, so I’m allowed to eat unhealthy stuff.”
Calli’s brows arched. “Five thousand miles a day?”
“Give or take.”
“You’re sure taking a lot,” she commented as I claimed another ice cream glass.
“Negotiating peace between immortal enemies builds up one hell of an appetite,” I replied. “But this isn’t what I wanted to discuss with you.”
“You wanted to talk about Gemini and Sagittarius.”
“Yes. You know Gemini.”
“I knew her,” she corrected me. “And that was a long time ago.”
“So you think they’re guilty?”
“No,” she said quietly. “Gemini isn’t the kind of person who would kill so many people, especially not so many innocent people.”
“The whole thing feels wrong.”
Calli wrapped her arm around my back, drawing me in closer to whisper, “I looked into this so-called magic-hating organization that Gemini and Sagittarius are members of.”
“And?”
“And it’s harmless. No more dangerous than a bookclub. They don’t even distribute pamphlets or stage protests. They just meet in the members’ basements, where they wax poetic about the grand past none of them remember and romanticize the days before any of them were born. But that’s it.”
“That doesn’t sound like the kind of people who’d take up arms against the gods,” I said. “Or who would kill all those people.”
Calli shook her head. “Something isn’t right here, Leda. Someone’s set up Gemini and Sagittarius. I can feel it in my gut.”
“And is your gut telling you who set them up?”
“I’m not sure who set them up, but…” She lowered her voice further. “What do you know about your friend Gypsy?”
“What about her?”
“Right after Gemini and Sagittarius were arrested, I dug a bit deeper into the pasts of the other bounty hunters. I figured I had to start somewhere, and the bounty hunters managed to get close to you. Especially Gypsy.”
“That’s what makes her suspicious?” I demanded. “That she was a friend to me?”
“She seemed to be a friend to you. If I were behind the curse, I’d try to make friends with the person investigating it, so I could keep tabs on how close they were getting to figuring it all out. That would help me derail the investigation.”