Chapter Twelve #2
“Says the guy who wanted to flex by trusting his fast-track girlfriend with secrets of the Olympus pantheon?”
Not a second too soon, Rizon took the hint and acted on it. With the asshole properly cowed and back on his knees, Apollo could refocus on Kaw.
“All right. What’s the sitrep on the new dream team?”
As he tied that off with clean enunciation, proud to have kept his command but curbed his urgency, Irowen became the new stress ball spokesperson for them both.
“Holy shit, Fancykins. You’re right. If we find Natasha, we likely find Ito now too. One’s got your string, and the other’s going to tell us where Genny is if I have to hogtie his vocal cords.”
A subtle set of corvid clicks came from the atrium. Apollo glanced over, glitching a brow with clear demand. This was not the best time for Kaw’s version of a polite ahem, but when the bird didn’t elaborate, he finally prompted, “What is it?”
Your action plan is valid, the crow offered. But we have to talk about the timing.
Apollo absorbed that with a quizzical tilt of his head. “Clarify.” But before Kaw could start, Irowen jolted.
“Damn. The timing.” She paced away and then back in, her head tracking as if an invisible readout floated midair in front of her. “Because the Natasha we both met earlier, at that double dimension café, wasn’t Natasha. Which meant . . . what? Where’s the actual Korra now?”
“Fuck,” Apollo muttered.
Exactly, Kaw concurred.
“I have an educated guess about that, but only a hunch,” he offered.
“Which is better than nothing,” Irowen snapped. “So, as you’re fond of saying, clarify.”
He fixed her with a searching stare. “Last night, you originally showed up at the DeLux to hunt down Korra, right? Because you were certain she’d be there for the celebrity speed dating fundraiser event?”
Irowen ticked a terse nod. “She was on one of those local entertainment shows in the early morning, confirming she’d be there.
I’m pretty sure that appearance was actually her.
She went on and on about adoring Reks Byrd, and about how she was proud of him for selling out a week’s worth of shows across the Tokyo Metropolitan area. ”
In the aviary, Quil was the new bird to eagerly address him.
That is all correct, Anax. So, Korra could have been setting up her story for the assistant even then.
If she headed for Tokyo to hand off the string to Ito but was then accidentally spotted by a fan, nobody would be the wiser.
She could simply admit to the assistant standing in for her at the party, claiming she missed Byrd too much and had to fly and be by his side.
Before Apollo could finish processing all that crazy logic, a caustic snort spilled from Rizon. “Little bitch,” the demigod groused. “Can’t believe I promised her the VIP Weekend package at Float and matching ink at Zeus’s shop. She wasn’t even that great a piece of ass.”
Apollo thanked himself for sensing what the bastard’s commentary would do to Irowen’s thin-stretched composure. “Not worth it,” he admonished, already hooking a restraining arm around his little monster’s waist as she hissed and lunged toward Rizon.
“Ohhh, no,” she snarled back. “I’ll make it worth it, Baby. Believe m—”
“You want to punch a pig or save your sister?”
As soon as that succeeded in mellowing her by some manageable degrees, he lifted his focus back to Kaw and Quil.
“Assuming Natasha left on one of the typical midday flights from LA International to Tokyo, we have to assume she’s set to meet Ito fairly soon. Perhaps at the airport itself.”
Agreed, Kaw answered. But which one?
Quil swiveled on his perch, obviously calculating a comparison of the two main airports for the Tokyo metropolis. If she rushed to book the flight, she could probably only get Narita. But Haneda—
“It was that,” Irowen broke in, already resharpened back to the subject. But while she’d clearly tossed her murder wish for Rizon like a gum wrapper, she didn’t step away back into her own space. Her proximity was voluntary now, and Apollo readily admitted how nice it felt.
Damn it; really nice.
Yeah, even with the weird crick that developed in his neck from angling his focus toward her.
“She’s headed for Haneda. I’m positive of it,” she told the crows.
“On Yohane Air, flight five-oh-seven, which left LAX yesterday at eleven forty-eight a.m.” She pivoted her own head now, as if possessing some preternatural powers herself, at least about the new perplexity in Apollo’s stare.
“Amazing what people will scribble on a notepad but then leave behind for just anyone to read.”
Without anyone noticing, he scooted down a hand and gave her pert ass a fast pinch. “Also amazing that people assume ‘just anyone’ won’t be breaking and entering their place and then reading their private notes.”
Kaw flared his feathers again. Okay, so we’re headed to Haneda . . .
“Soon,” Apollo replied. “Just as soon as Miss Steed and I grab showers.” To Irowen’s irritated frown, he defended, “We have a supernatural portal and a couple of hours. What we also have is body stench that’ll get us noticed faster than Godzilla rising from the bay.”
Her forehead furrowed. “But if we want to force Ito and Korra out into the open—”
“Not if they know we’re coming from fifty meters away.”
Rizon managed a knee-bound form of a cocky shuffle before continuing, “Your Godship, neither Natasha nor Ito knows I’ve contacted you yet. I will be honored to lend my presence to the mission as a decoy to draw her—”
Laughter wasn’t about to be an option, though he valiantly fought the temptation to spew some raucous barks. Luckily, he’d logged a lot of practice at rerouting exasperation into more constructive uses.
“You’ll be more honored to kiss my boy Hades’s pretty ass, darling.
” Extending the last syllable on the jeer sent a needed hit of composure, as well.
“I hear he’s been jonesing to build a new playroom down in his realm.
For his kids, okay?” he rushed out, compensating for Irowen’s saucy glance and Kaw’s ew, humans glower.
“But rigging swing sets and jungle gyms for a few centuries should be a decent start phase for your punishment, I wager.”
The demigod jerked his head up, pale eyes flaring. “A—A start?”
“Well, executing you isn’t an option, demigod.
” It was equally fun to roll a cowboy-cool shrug.
“And with the pantheon’s population in decline, Priapus will have my balls if I harm any inch of yours.
But since you’re not the only idiot of your kind and others might be wondering how to get their own sticky fingers on a magical lyre string, you get to be the Fuck Around and Find Out poster boy. ”
As soon as he dipped an instructional nod toward the three crows, they swooped over and aligned into positions for dragging him to Hades’s ferry dock. Before they took off, Quil tossed a fast wink and telepathic chortle.
This is going to be fun.
Apollo quirked his lips, quietly chuckling in return. But that was as far as he took the sentiment. Fun wasn’t exactly the word that came to mind as he anticipated having to follow Irowen back through the den and toward the master bathroom for her shower.
Because that was where his fun had to end.
Could he really do this? Leave her alone in his bathroom, knowing she was about to get gorgeously, delectably naked under the water?
And concentrate on cleaning off for himself, already knowing what he’d be thinking about the whole time?
All the filthy things he longed to do to her in the sinful steam and suds . . .
Fun and fuck my life were never meant to belong in the same sentence, yet here he was, mentally stringing them as tonight’s unluckiest god in existence.