“Fuck… Wyatt? Wyatt… buddy, are you out there? Are you okay? Deus is the one who threw the tree at you… not me.”
Wyatt comes out of the trees looking a little dirty and more than a little disgruntled. He’s an employee of Superheroes United, and he handles security for Valerie, August’s manager. He’s a pretty relaxed kind of guy who just goes along with things… even getting trees thrown at him.
“So it was a bear after all,” Lex says, even though I’m not quite sure that Wyatt is bi or gay.
“You guys and your bears. Do I need to show you the difference between a bear and a human and why you should not find bears attractive?” Asmodeus asks.
Ignoring that, I ask him, “So… while we slept, you moved all our belongings over to the campsite?”
“Sure did. It took me like four trips to get all of Landon’s books there. I thought about dragging them, but whenever something happens to one of Landon’s books, he turns feral andI really didn’t want to have to be the one to put him down. I want to leave that option up to August.”
“Why would I…” August trails off and smiles at Asmodeus, likely realizing how much work Asmodeus saved him by suffering the weight of Landon’s books. “Thank you for doing that.”
“Does that mean we get to go home?” Landon asks, sounding hopeful.
“No, it means I’ll take you to the campsite, where you can at least sleep in tents for the rest of the night,” Wyatt says as he brushes himself off.
“I’m really sorry that Lex forced me to nearly murder you,” Landon tells him.
“Excuse me, Lex did no such thing,” Lex declares.
Somehow, we end up enjoying the next two days of camping. Landon even tries some of the fish that Asmodeus catches, but he won’t try the squirrel and chooses the hamburgers that were packed instead. He also barely has time to even read one book since August and Asmodeus keep us busy—August with fun little camping games and Asmodeus by trying to teach us how to survive in the wilderness… which I never plan on doing.
“I’m going to sleep for a week when I get home,” Landon says from where he hangs over Asmodeus’s shoulder while we make the trek back to the car. We’ve all decided that August will never lead again and are instead letting Asmodeus go first.
“I… think we have to get back to work when we return. This was supposed to be our vacation,” August explains.
Landon gapes at him. “Excuse me, what? Whose idea was any of that? I’m positive that you are wrong.”
“I’ll ask whether we can have a couple of days off. Hopefully, there’s not much going on and we can have a lot of time off.”
“What if I rob a couple of banks and we live off that? That could be fun. It’d take me like ten minutes tops and we’d be set for life. I’d be your sugar daddy.”
“You… you already are, and no, we can’t become bank robbers.”
“I’m interested,” Lex says.
“Lex, you can start a fire in the bathroom as a distraction while I steal the money from the vault. Deus, with your invisibility, you could do it all for us.”
“I would rob a bank for you without any hesitation,” Asmodeus says. “Tell me which bank and how much and I’ll have it to you by tomorrow.”
“We are not criminals,” I try to remind them since it’s very clear they’re not joking. “Well… we’re not criminals besides Landon… and Asmodeus.”
“How did I become a criminal?” Asmodeus asks.
“How many people have you assassinated?” I counter.
“This week?”
“You killed people this week?” I ask in disbelief.
“Yeah, August was out doing his ‘Look at me, I’m so handsome’ wave to a bunch of people when some man tried to assassinate him. I assassinated him first,” Asmodeus casually says, like this is not a strange occurrence.
“What the fuck, why didn’t you tell us this?” Landon asks.
“I put it in the invoice!”
“We really need to start reading these invoices,” August mutters.
