Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Riley
“I know Lt. Lindsey is expecting you back at work tomorrow, and I felt like it would be dreadful for you to have to sleep in that shitty apartment of yours. So out of the goodness of my heart, I thought I’d move you into my house,” Mickey says as he waves around at the nice four-bedroom house he lives in with about seven undead… that I can see.
“That is so kind of you!” Torin enthuses.
I am nowhere near naive enough to believe that Mickey is doing something kind. “Torin, he wants something.”
Mickey ignores me and continues. “And since I so generously offered my house, you shall offer yours, Torin.”
Torin is confused.
I am not.
“Mickey wants you to open a Door in his house so we can go back to your palace without making the trek all the way back to the field. But Mickey, I’m not sure Torin should waste magic making another Door. The media coverage he just got is probably going to tank his followers.”
Torin has the balls to look offended. “Tank them? Excuse me, I think you are confused. What is better than showing off my very important Riley and my adorable mount?”
“Is that his label?” Mickey teases. “This is my ‘Riley’?”
Torin freezes, stares off into space, then drops to the ground and sets to work making a Door right there, as though draining what little magic he has is better than answering this question.
“If you open this Door, can you close the other one and kind of… replenish your magic?” I ask curiously.
“I can and I will. It’ll be an equivalent exchange,” he assures me.
It really doesn’t take him long at all to open a Door, which is good for us but also concerning if it’s this fast and easy for the horsemen to do it.
Torin must read my expression because he explains, “It’s easiest for me because I’m opening a Door to home, a place where my magic is already in every crevice.”
“I see. But the problem with opening it here is that Mickey knows where it is.”
“I see no problem with this,” Mickey says as he’s over there telling Tommy what to throw in his suitcase while another undead pushes a large suitcase over to him.
I want to complain, but Torin’s palace is huge.
It could probably hold over a hundred people without issue, and it’s evident Torin doesn’t care.
Plus Mickey’s house really is smack-dab in the middle of everything and filled with undead who would guard the Door.
And to be able to live in Torin’s palace instead of my small apartment…
“The only hitch in this scheme is that our phones don’t work over there,” I say.
Mickey waves off my concern. “I’m working on it. I brought an IT guy back from the dead and he’s trying his best. Until then, the undead will stay here with our phones and run over anytime someone texts us. They don’t mind.”
The millisecond the Door is open, Mickey bolts through, suitcases trailing after him.
“I… sure hope it’s correct,” Torin says. “If it’s not… how much did you like Mickey?”
“It would be karma if it wasn’t and he found himself in some realm where everyone has to do hard labor.”
“Mickey would never survive,” Joy says as she lugs another suitcase through the Door while Torin and I watch.
“If you don’t want him just moving in, I will happily kick him out. Just say the word and it will happen,” I promise.
Torin doesn’t seem to mind; he actually appears pleased by this. “We’ll simply put him in the south wing, and you’ll only have to see him when you want to.”
“I like the sound of that.”
When we pass through the Door, we find that it’s thankfully correct and Mickey is already deciding where to go. Torin shoos him off in the right direction and then pulls me into a large empty room with soft floors.
“What is this room? Is it like a sex dungeon?” I ask, looking around.
“It can be,” he says as he reaches out and lifts Kit off my shoulder. “If you can knock me to the ground, we will make it just that.”
“What’s that mean?” I ask. He sets Kit on a bench and walks me to the middle of the room.
“You’re going to learn how to fight even if Kit has been knocked off. You become absolutely disoriented when you’re looking at yourself from a distance, and I can tell you fear it. So let’s learn how to do it.”
I stare at myself through Kit’s eyes and then decide that I have better things to do and reach for Torin’s waistband. But of course I miss because my perception is completely off.
“Fine, rules have changed. You get my pants down, we’ll stop.”
I grumble a bit but mutter, “Fine.”
“Let’s start with something easy,” he says, putting a lightweight ball in my hand. “Just throw it to me.”
I try to judge the distance between us, but the instant I throw it, I discover that he’s farther to my left than Kit makes him appear.
“I hate this,” I declare.
“I know you do, but it could save your life, Kit’s life, and mine.
When those wolves had you down and you tried helping me with that earth magic you’d borrowed, maybe the wolves wouldn’t have gotten you through the Door if you’d been able to use it properly, but you couldn’t because your perception was off.
I’m not trying to guilt you. I’m just trying to help you get over your hatred toward this and realize how important it is. ”
I nod, knowing he’s right. “Okay. Fine.”
He sets it in my hand and I toss it again, this time knowing he’s a bit farther to my left. He has to jump to the side, but he does end up catching it. “Closer. I’m throwing it back.”
When he tosses it, I completely miss it, and when he doesn’t rush over to grab it for me, I realize he expects me to find it. Cursing the ball to hell and back, I trail after it and end up on my hands and knees to even feel it.
“This is humiliating.”
“Why do you think that?” he asks.
“Because…” And what am I going to say? I used to be unstoppable and now I’m not? I’m going to tell that to a god who has suffered more than I have? Finally, I settle on, “I’m frustrated.”
“It’s okay to be frustrated.”
“I want to go back to how I used to be. And I get so… discouraged.”
“This is just a hiccup in the road. You are the strongest person I know, Riley. There is no one here knocking you down but yourself. You’ve spent far too long avoiding what’s happened to you instead of accepting it.
It is very clear that everyone at your little magic unit respects you highly.
Let me see the confident Riley they saw. ”
“You don’t understand. This… curse or whatever it is, it’s going to take everything from me. My hands ache. It’s progressed to my feet. It’s just going to destroy me.”
Torin walks over and kneels down in front of me before cupping my head in his hand.
“I wish I could stop it. But until we figure out why your curse relates to the Doors, then we just have to keep fighting. It’s hard to fight.
I thought about giving up so many times over the past two hundred years. But fighting led me to you.”
“You need to stop with this sappy bullshit or I’m not going to be able to let you go when you decide to fill your harem full.”
“Hmm…” he mumbles before grabbing the ball and putting it in my hand. “Throw it again.”
Kit’s completely focused on him, much as I want to be. I’m lost in his words and actions, and I don’t know what to do with them; even worse, he doesn’t seem to know either. So I stand up and throw the ball.
“That was closer,” Torin says as he tosses it back. While I can’t catch it, I do grab a practice sword off the wall and manage to use the tip to slow the ball’s rolling. Then I pick it up and try again.
It takes well over an hour before things kind of start to click. It’s not good. And the moment he moves to a new spot, it’s like I have to relearn it all again, but it doesn’t take as long as it initially did.
And then he throws something that’s not a ball.
At first, I’m confused and feel over it before my eyebrows arch when I realize it’s lube.
Kit makes a disgruntled noise and scampers to a safe distance as Torin’s hands slide around me and he lifts me off the ground, pinning me to the wall.
I wrap my legs around him while his lips crash into mine.
“I was going to ask if you guys wanted pizza, but I see you’re quite busy,” Mickey says as he steps in and turns around in the same motion.
I bite back a laugh while I drop from Torin’s arms. “You know, we could do pizza first.”
“I really want pizza. Riley, I want to eat pizza off your body—” Torin’s eyes get wide at this idea.
“That was not on the menu,” Mickey says.