“It’s… pretty bad.”
I felt my mouth twist.“Thanks.”
“We can help,” Jen said, from where she was now using the towel to clean up my mess.“Maybe braid your hair or something?”
“Gotta comb it out first,” Sophie said, her own perfect red locks rippling down her back.“And you better let me do that before you get wet,” she added to me.“Or you’ll have to cut those tangles out.”
“Cyrus should have been doing it!”Jen said indignantly.“If he wouldn’t let us in the bedroom—”
“Guys don’t think about things like that, and anyway, he was too busy being pissed after finding out—” She cut herself off.
“Relax,” I said.“I already know you went to Tartarus.”
“And you know that because… the guys told you?”she asked slowly, exchanging a look with Jen.
“Something like that,” I said, watching the blonde, who had dropped the bundled-up towel onto the other chaise and turned the hose on the remains of my accident.
That wouldn’t fool Cyrus’s nose, but maybe the sun would help.And if not, I fully intended to blame Mrs.Kovacs’ little yappy dog, which was a barf machine.Or maybe it just got so overwhelmed whenever it got loose and came over here that it reacted poorly.
Too bad it was as old in dog years as its owner was in human, and couldn’t remember to stay away from a pack of Weres for more than five minutes.I was honestly surprised that a coyote hadn’t had it for breakfast yet.But it seemed to have borrowed a few lives from the neighborhood cats, because it, uh…
“What?”I asked because the girls were looking shifty.
“It’s just… I saw your third there,” Sophie whispered.“In Tartarus.”
“Not saw exactly,” Jen corrected, as if the girls had discussed this.
“No, more like she registered the idea of you,” Sophie said, “and when she shared her vision with me, I saw… well, something.Vague and shimmery, like light reflected off a mirror onto a wall.”
“Are you talking about a spirit?”I asked.Because Weres didn’t leave those, according to the seers whom the Corps occasionally worked with anyway.So we presumably didn’t send them out to explore the depths of Tartarus either!
It seemed my Relic was exhibiting more new abilities.
And demonstrating once again that modern Weres had gotten seriously nerfed.
“I’m… not sure,” Sophie said.“My Cat knows spirits.She talks to them all the time; that’s the world she moves in.But she didn’t know what it was…” she trailed off, looking dissatisfied, and I automatically went into interrogation mode.
“Then tell me what you do know.”
“Maybe we should save this for another time,” she said doubtfully, going to the cooler we kept outside for drinks, because otherwise the poor refrigerator ran constantly with all the thirsty kids pawing through it.“Do you want some water or a Powerade or—”
“I want to know what’s been going on,” I rasped.“Although water would help, too.”
“I’m going to finish cleaning up,” Jen said abruptly.She started to take the towel inside, before I called after her.“If Cyrus smells it—”
“I know.I’m going to do a load of laundry.We need one anyway.”
She disappeared inside, and I turned to Sophie, who had returned with an ice-cold bottle of water and a soda for herself.But when she sat on the edge of the other chaise, it wasn’t to fill me in.
Blue eyes met mine soberly.“You know, you really freaked everybody out the other night, right?”
“Sophie, can we talk about—”
“Later.We need to talk about this.It’s like… Cyrus is the brains around here, but you’re the heart—”
I raised an eyebrow.“Are you calling me stupid?”
She shot me a look.“Maybe obtuse.It seems to be a war mage trait.”
