Chapter 21
The first day of training was brutal beyond anything Scotty had ever experienced. And she’d grown up in the damned arena. She’d spent countless hours sparring with demons, angels, and Horsemen. She’d nursed a thousand wounds and had broken several bones—most of which she’d kept from her mother.
Her dad had been the suck-it-up-buttercup kind of father, but her mom? Cara was tough as nails in many ways, but she didn’t handle her daughters being injured well.
Her mother would have flipped out hard today.
Today had been like all those other days put together and distilled into nothing but carnage.
And her father hadn’t even been there.
Nonstop waves of Memitim had come at Scotty, Mace, and Blade, and the angels had used not only physical weapons but also their angelic weapons.
For four hours, the Memitim attacked, and when the onslaught finally stopped, Scotty and the guys fell to their knees in the bloody sand, unable to move, rendered quivering jelly.
They’d thought it was over. A handful of Memitim brought water and protein bars, and then Tavin, a Seminus doctor from UG, had come to heal them of their cuts, burns, and crush wounds.
After he left, the battle began again, this time, coming from Ares’s Ramreel security staff. Three hours later, the water, food, and healing routine came again.
This time, though, when Tavin finished, her brother Rath came to tell them they could go home.
The one good thing about their hours of training was that they’d been either too busy or too exhausted to argue with each other, and as they limped in silence to the Harrowgate, they could barely breathe, let alone talk.
“See you guys tomorrow,” she croaked as Mace and Blade stepped into the gate. They both nodded as it closed.
She leaned against a pillar and groaned. She didn’t want to do this for two weeks. She didn’t want to do it for another day. The problem was that both Mace and Blade were stubborn as hell, and she didn’t know how long it would take Ares to beat them into compliance.
Granted, they’d worked together well today, fighting in practiced sync as if nothing had happened. But had it solved anything? She doubted it.
So, how were they going to get their shit together before Ares’s training killed them all?
Maybe she should talk to someone. Instinct had her wanting to talk to Mace or Blade, but for obvious reasons, she couldn’t.
Her mom was just on the other side of the courtyard, playing fetch with her hellhound, Maleficent, and it was tempting to see if she had a few minutes. But Scotty didn’t want to put her mother in an awkward position with her father by confiding something she’d have to swear to keep from him.
Maybe Dawn or Leilani was available.
She sent missives, but they were both busy. Which left Aleka as her next best choice.
Okay, she could work with that. Aleka already knew about Scotty’s idea to end her virginity, so the fact that she had wouldn’t be a surprise.
Who had ended it, however, might be. Scotty sent a message, and while she waited for a reply, she showered and scarfed down a plate of leftover spaghetti.
Aleka replied as she was rinsing the plate.
I’m at the office. Come on by. I’ll let security know to expect you.
Figured. Aleka was always at work. In a way, Scotty got that. She loved her job. But Aleka’s job at the London Museum’s Centre for Demon Anthropology and Archaeology was so tedious.
Scotty took the employee entrance to the building where Aleka worked, and as Scotty stepped inside her sister’s office, Aleka looked up from her desk.
“You look like hell.”
Scotty would have laughed if she wasn’t so exhausted. “It’s good to see you too.”
Aleka plopped a book that had to weigh twenty pounds on top of a stack next to her chair. “I was surprised to get your message. You don’t usually visit me in here.”
Scotty glanced around the dark, dreary space. “It’s creepy.”
“You fight demons in haunted houses, but my office is creepy?”
So creepy. “Everything in here is old. As in, ancient. You can just…feel the vibes. Gives me the willies.”
Aleka moved the delicate, steaming porcelain teacup she’d always treasured a little closer. “You are very strange, dear sister.”
“I’m the strange one? You’re the one who sits around in all this old crap all day.”
Aleka sighed and removed the tea bag from the cup. There was no Earl Grey, hot with her. It was always boring chamomile, tepid. If she was feeling adventurous, a mild green tea. “So, why are you here?”
“To the point. Cool.” Scotty took a seat across the desk from her sister. And then shoved aside a stack of books so she could see her. “I need some advice.”
One perfectly manicured, reddish-blond eyebrow arched. She and Leilani had standing monthly girl days for manicures and whatever it was called when you had your eyebrows done. They’d invited Scotty a couple of times, but she was fine with her brows going feral, as they called it.
“Advice?” Aleka said. “From me?”
“Weird, right?”
“Yes.” Aleka didn’t miss a beat. “Is it about work?”
“Kind of.” She sank back in her chair and tried to figure out how to begin. She finally settled on starting at the beginning. “Last week, Ky sent us to Alaska to hunt a wendigo. While we were there—”
“A wendigo? Seriously?” Aleka sprang forward in her seat, practically panting with excitement. “Did you actually see it? Did you get pictures?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” Scotty said. “But the images are of dead wendigos, and they’re gruesome. You’ll puke. Anyway, long story short, Blade and I got trapped together and had sex.”
Aleka’s eyes shot wide, and she sat there, stunned, before sinking back in her seat. “Um, okay. Wow. I guess you lost your virginity, after all.” She took a sip of the tea. “So, are you together, then?”
“It was a one-time thing to save his life,” Scotty said. “Nothing more.”
Aleka pondered that as she watched Scotty from over the rim of her cup. “Does Mace know?”
“Yeah, and that’s the problem. He’s not handling it well. And Blade is being weird too.”
The cup made the tiniest clink when Aleka set it on its matching saucer. She’d always been so freaking proper, and living in London had only made her waxed, stiff upper lip even stiffer. “You said this was sort of about work. I’m guessing the tension is affecting your job?”
One could say that.
“We let a bunch of bad guys escape and nearly got some people killed on our last assignment.” Scotty let out a huff of air and flopped back in the chair. “Kynan is so pissed he’s making us train with Dad for two weeks.”
“Ouch.” Aleka winced. “You really screwed up. That sucks.”
One could say that too.
“We just spent all day in the arena. My hip is burning from a Memitim fireball, my leg hurts from being hamstrung, and I can barely move my arms. I don’t want to do this for two weeks, and it’ll only stop if we can all put this behind us.”
“How are you going to do that?”
The hell if I know.
“That’s why I’m here. I need some ideas.
I mean, this is why we made that pact in the beginning.
To prevent exactly this.” Scotty shook her head, unable to comprehend the mess they were in.
She and the guys had been a solid trio, a well-oiled unit, for as long as she could remember, rarely going more than a few hours without touching base with each other.
Which made what she was about to say almost inconceivable.
“Maybe we need some time apart. I don’t want to break up the team, but right now, we can’t work together. ”
Aleka picked up the cup, but instead of drinking, she gazed thoughtfully into her flower broth. “Oh, I know!” she chirped. “Maybe you should sleep with Mace and make it even.”
Scotty rolled her eyes. “Very funny.”
“Sorry,” Aleka said, still looking a little amused. “I’ve never been in this kind of situation, so I’m not sure what advice I can give you.”
“Yeah, well, sleeping with one of them is what caused this. I don’t think doing it again would help.”
Aleka thought on that for a minute, finger on her chin the way she’d always done when she worked on puzzles. Word puzzles, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles…Aleka loved them, and she always did the finger thing.
“You know,” Aleka said slowly, “I was kidding about sleeping with Mace, but honestly, what could it hurt?”
Scotty gaped at her utterly dense sister. “What could it hurt? Are you serious? That could destroy our friendship.”
“It’s already in jeopardy, Scotty. Do you honestly think Mace will get over it? I don’t know him that well, and even I can tell you he won’t let this go.”
Aleka was probably right, but there was more to consider.
“And what do you think that would do to Blade?”
“Well, let’s look at this from his perspective.” Aleka set down her cup. This time, the clink was louder. “Do you think Blade wants you? Romantically?”
“Ah…” Scotty really hadn’t thought about that. Seemed unlikely, given their oath—their broken oath. “I don’t think so.” Which, she had to admit, kind of hurt, even if it was for the best.
“Then he shouldn’t be jealous if you sleep with Mace once.”
“I guess…”
“Look,” Aleka said, “Blade hasn’t been his normal self, either, right? He probably feels guilty about what happened. You probably feel guilty. If you sleep with Mace, no one has any reason to feel guilty or left out. Everything will be equal and fair.”
Okay, maybe her sister had a point. Actually, the more Scotty thought about it, the more sense it made. She, Mace, and Blade had always shared everything. There were no secrets between them. They’d all been equal in every way.
Until now. Maybe the way back to the status quo really was to sleep with Mace.
What’s the worst that could happen? Their friendship could be put in jeopardy? It already was.
The best that could happen, though, was that things would go back to the way they needed to be.
She could practically hear her father demanding she calculate the odds of success, as one did before any conflict.