“Oh, whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
How can anybody be so sweet and trusting?Milo had no idea. Life at MIT had taught him to expect a backstabbing at any moment, especially when precious funding was on the line. The usual response to a plea for help at MIT was always ‘What’s in it for me?’ or, depending on how seasoned the recipient of the plea was, ‘That’s going to cost you’. Sammy, on the other hand? He would give and give and give and never once think about asking for anything in return.
“We, I mean, I need your help with a letter.” Milo held the letter from the SBW out to him. Sammy took it with a curious expression. Before he started to read, he glanced at Quirion.
“Why don’t we go to the store and get comfortable on the couches? By the way, Quirion, how is Mildred?”
Quirion shot Milo anI told youlook before he answered. “Well, she’s fine. Why would you ask?”
Sammy was clearly already thinking about the letter while leading them to the couches in the store, or he would have picked up on Quirion’s tense tone. Or not. Sammy wasn’t always that attentive.
“Last time I saw her, I got the impression she was growing restless.” Sammy had reached the turquoise couch and was gesticulating for his guests to sit down. “I would hate for her to leave without getting a chance to say goodbye.”
Quirion shot Milo another look, this one worried. While Sammy might not always be attuned to other people’s reactions, especially when he was pre-occupied with something else,whenhe was paying attention, he was always spot-on.
“What makes you think she was restless?” Quirion tried for nonchalance without being able to quell the anxiety in his tone. Despite his blasé attitude when he talked about Mildred, he truly cared for the toad, as evidenced by the crease between his brows.
“I can’t really put it into words. I just thought she was…waiting for something. The right time? It’s just this feeling I had when I looked at her.” Sammy sat down only to jump right up again. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No, thank you, Sammy. We had something before we came here.” Milo pointed at the letter. “We’ll keep an eye on Mildred if you take a look at this.”
“Oh, yeah, of course. Sorry, I just thought…” Sammy’s gaze finally landed on the pretentious letter and a few seconds later he started squealing. “Milo, that’s wonderful! Just imagine, getting all the funding you need. That should propel your research about nanobots forward like the silver leaves did for these dragons inThe Last Hero, I think? You know which ones I mean. Sir Terry.”
Milo had no clue who Sammy could referring to. He had read Terry Pratchett’s books but not with the same zeal as most other people he knew. Still, he knew better than to answer with a negative. That would only make Sammy start searching for the right book and passage to prove he wasn’t making things up. They didn’t have time for that. He wanted to get this letter written and back into the mail, and allowing Sammy to follow his usual workflow meant they would be still sitting here in three hours, no letter written, but with quite a lot of completely unrelated questions answered. So he nodded with a knowing smile, as if he were in on this particular reference.
Sammy beamed and went back to reading over the letter again, a habit of his to ensure he got everything right. Milo caught Quirion’s gaze. The green demon was doing his best not to smirk and was failing miserably. Milo shook his head in silent warning and Quirion mimed zipping his lips. He, too, wanted to get back to the library sometime soon.
“Oookay. What I get from this is that you want to answer in kind, to show how seriously you’re taking their proposal. Who is theSociety for the Betterment of the Worldanyway? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Uhm, they are a group that—”
“They’re a group of stuck-up, arrogant scientists and businesspeople who think they know the answer to everything,” Dre’s voice cut off Quirion’s attempt at explaining what his former fellow scholars were doing. Milo turned his head and saw Sammy’s mate standing next to the coffeemaker with a linen bag of deliciously smelling food in his hands. He shook his head. “So that’s why Zenobia insisted on giving me four portions instead of the two I ordered.” He shrugged and turned around to find plates and cutlery.
Milo felt his stomach grumbling. Quirion treated him to Zenobia’s cooking—current high priestess of the goddess in unbroken line since before the pyramids were built—but not as often as Milo would have liked.
“They’re dedicated.” Quirion defended the members of SBW even though he’d said something similar not two hours ago. Apparently, sibling rivalry trumped scholarly antagonism.
Dre snorted. “Dedicated is one way to describe it. I’d say pig-headed and so in love with their sense of self-importance, they can’t see anything past it. The money’s good, though. Deep pockets.” He furrowed his brow, or rather, the scales above his eyes did a strange wriggling motion that could be interpreted asfurrowing. “Weren’t you one of their founding members? I think I can remember something.”
“Yes, I was. We had differing opinions on some core elements of the society.” Even though Milo had no siblings, he had seen enough interactions between the demons to recognize a warning elder brother tone when he heard it. Following the universal law of annoying little brothers, Dre blithely ignored it and kept on needling.
“Ha! I can’t imagine. I don’t know all of them, but I dare say that Nyx woman and this ice elf, what was his name again? Something from a song, I think—ah, yeah, I remember, Rasputin Icebringer,” Dre snorted. “They’re worse than you when it comes to everything scholarly. And that’s sayinga lot.”
His mission of aggravating his older brother fulfilled, Dre came around the counter with two plates full of steaming food in each hand. He put them on the table with Smaug and Drogon before sitting down next to Sammy. When his mate didn’t immediately start eating, Dre gently pried the letter from his hands, put it on the couch next to him and held the cutlery out to Sammy. “Eat,mo grah thu, you need your strength if you want to help your friends.”
Without protest, Sammy took the knife and fork and started eating hisspaghetti vongole. Whatever else Dre was—and Milo knew for sure Quirion hada lotto say in that regard—the attentiveness and love he showed his mate was absolutely heart-warming.
Milo decided to table the topic of SBW and how to write that blasted answering letter in favor of the deliciousness that was Zenobia’s cooking. He had gottencarbonara, his favorite, while Quirion was feasting onpenne a la putanesca, his preferred dish when he was in Rome. How Zenobia always knew these things was a little unnerving. Then again, Milo was working for an over seven foot tall demon with claws that could rip him in half in onego and an allergy against spelling and grammar errors in books, so what did he know?
They ate in companionable silence and when they were done, Milo got up to tidy the dishes. He put them in the small dishwasher Sammy had in the store and was just about to return to the couches when the windchime above the shop’s door sounded and several teenagers poured in. They were the early afternoon crowd, consisting of bookworms who loved the tranquil atmosphere in Sammy’s shop and those who didn’t have a stable home to go to after school.
Sammy got up and greeted them with a smile, pulling out a tray laden with sandwiches, bowls with salad and fruit and, today, warm slices of pizza. About half of the teenagers fell on the food, thanking Sammy while already chewing. It hurt Milo’s heart knowing that if it weren’t for Sammy, these kids wouldn’t get a decent meal all day.
While Sammy was busy distributing the food and making sure everybody was comfortable, a few of the kids sat down on the couch next to the one Quirion and Dre were on. Milo glanced at the two demons. The teenagers simply saw two very tall and muscular men and were by now familiar with Dre, but they kept a distance to Quirion, who got up, taking Milo with him.
“Perhaps we should come back later,” he suggested.
Dre shook his head. “No, Sammy wouldn’t appreciate it if you took this from him now.” He looked at his mate, who was chatting with two boys in skater clothes. “Give him five minutes, then you can go upstairs, and I’ll hold the fort here.”
