“On the downside, the cult still exists and we had no idea.” Shadows fell over his eyes—misery mixed with deep, burning fury. “How many lives have they ruined in the past eight years? How many kids have they twisted and condemned to an early death?”
“That isn’t the only concern.” Justin crossed the room and knelt beside the small pile of our luggage. He unzipped his duffle bag. “There are few different ‘business models’ when it comes to cults. Some of them are vehicles for extreme narcissists to control other people. Some are vehicles for extorting money from members. And some …”
“And some what?” I prompted.
He rummaged in his bag and pulled out a bundled shirt. He unwound the fabric, revealing a shiny handgun.
I was pretty sure that was no paintball toy like mine.
“And some cults are a tool for turning the twisted desires of a single individual into reality.” He pulled back the slide, checked the chamber, then reset it and wrapped it loosely in the shirt. “Those are the ones where the police usually get involved.”
“What’s with the gun?” I asked, eyes narrowing. “Are you even allowed to carry that when you’re off duty?”
“I think I’ll keep it close tonight. We might not know exactly what we’re up against yet, but a bullet to the heart is still a bullet to the heart, even for a demon mage.”
“That’d kill a demon mage, yeah.” Probably. Pretty sure? “But I don’t think it’d kill a demon. They’re tough.”
Justin paled slightly, but his jaw clenched with resolve.
I let my head fall back against the sofa cushions. “Someone feed me. Please.”
“Want me to order pizza?” Justin suggested.
“Only if it has pineapple.”
As he got out his phone, I slid mine out too. Opening my messaging app, I bit the inside of my cheek at the sight of my conversation with Ezra—a string of my texts glowing on the screen, unanswered. My chest ached like I’d been punched under the ribs, and I had to close my eyes.
How would Ezra feel if he knew the cult that had ensnared his parents and thrown his life into a dark, tragic spiral had survived?
Sighing, I swiped sideways to my conversation with Kai, expecting more of the same. Instead, an unread message waited below my last update, in which I’d informed him that shit was hitting the fan and we needed to talk ASAP.
Instead of a text full of urgent questions, as I’d expected, he’d replied with four short words that made me launch upright.
I’m on the way.
My dreams that night featured magma-eyed demons, chalices of dark blood, and fire that glowed scarlet. I woke up aching, exhausted, and murderously grumpy.
Weren’t Aaron and Justin lucky to have me around?
The two guys lurked in the kitchen while a pot of coffee percolated with noisy gurgles, and I slumped on the sofa, imagining a cloud of black miasma swirling around me. My phone hung crookedly in my hand, glowing with Kai’s travel update from thirty minutes ago.
Though he’d tried to leave last night, Makiko had delayed him at the last moment. It’d taken him several more hours to get on the road. He’d texted before leaving Olympia, and a quick visit to Google Maps informed me he was still an hour and a half away. Unless he was ignoring the speed limit.
Since this was Kai we were talking about, I had to assume he was.
The low mutter of male voices trickled out of the kitchen, and I turned my murder-stare toward the doorway. How dare they speak while I was so tired and cranky? Justin, at least, should know better. He knew the signs of Morning-Terror Tori.
A blip of warmth interrupted my tired snit. Justin had now witnessed a terramage-pyromage battle, a blood-drinking mythic cult, and a demon in the flesh—and he was still here. When he’d shown up at my apartment claiming to want to fix things between us, I hadn’t given his declaration much credit. I’d expected a half-hearted effort that would fizzle out when I refused to follow his big-brotherly advice and ditch my mythic friends.
The warmth in my chest inflated at the murmuring of voices. Aaron was ridiculously charming—when he wasn’t being deliberately aggravating—and if anyone could win his way past Justin’s prejudices, it was the boisterous pyromage.
A tired smile stretched my grumpy face, and I pushed off the sofa. Breath held, I tiptoed to the kitchen doorway.
“… system is based on internal regulation,” Aaron was saying. “Individuals are regulated by their guilds, and the guilds are regulated by the MPD.”
“What about individual rights?” Justin asked. “Who protects those?”
“Generally speaking, our guilds are both our protectors and our custodians. There are other systems in place for when that fails—advocates inside the MPD and independent of it. But the protection of a guild is a big part of the reason why we fudged paperwork to make Tori a mythic.”
My mouth quirked down.
“Normally, the MPD would step in to protect a human civilian implicated in a mythic-related crime. That’s part of the so-called injustices the police are always seeing when the MPD bails out a criminal—cut-and-dried cases aren’t always what they seem when magic is involved.”
Justin made a thoughtful noise. “That didn’t appear to be happening for Tori, though. The MPD wasn’t helping her.”
“No. There were internal politics at play … I bet you get that shit in the VPD too. That’s why we had to change Tori’s status to mythic. It was the only way the guild could protect her from the MPD’s overreach.”
I blinked. I’d known my switch from human to mythic had saved me from murder charges, but I’d missed the nuances. To be fair, I’d been so exhausted from my deadly link to a fae lord that I’d been halfway comatose at the time.
“You’re the one who first drew her into the mythic world, aren’t you?” Justin inquired. “How does she fit in? It sounds like she’s involved in bounty work with you and your friends.”
“We’re training her,” Aaron replied. A cupboard door thumped closed, and a glass clattered against the counter. “Some magic is inherent to each mythic, but there’s a lot that anyone can use, and she armed herself right from the start. She’s got a real knack for it, in fact, though she still has a lot to learn.”
“How intensive is this training? Is she ready for your level of … combat?”
“Not yet.” Aaron puffed a breath—a sound usually accompanied by him running his hand through his hair. “Honestly, we try to keep her out of trouble, but half the time, she dives in without a second thought.”
I cringed. Just as I was about to inch away from the kitchen, Justin spoke again.
“Aaron … have you noticed whether Tori is … reckless with her safety?”
A pulse of quiet.
“Uh,” Aaron hedged. “Well …”
“She’s been like that for a long time. I’ve seen it before, when we were kids and later too …” Justin cleared his throat uncomfortably. “I’m not sure if her behavior is subconscious self-sabotage, or the drive to rebel against rules and authority, or just impulsive decision-making, but she’s gotten into serious trouble because of it … and that was without magic or mythics involved.”