Chapter
One
CLAYTON
The garden was a soothing place for Clayton. Flowers didn't yell at him about treaties or ask him to fetch a special coffee variety that had been extinct for three decades, like so many visiting dignitaries were wont to do.
The weeds also kept their thoughts to themselves on their opinion of his gardening choices and didn't run off, leaving the base deserted without so much as a, “Here are the keys, Clayton, she's all yours.”
He released ahumphso dignified and proper that his mum would have been proud.
In her defense, his boss, Samantha, would probably have warned him about going away on her errand if she’d known their resident guardian team would be leaving shortly after.
Of course, Clayton knew that Marshall's team was big, honking, and important, but did they have to leave him behind every single time they went out? Clayton was trained in thefinest Guard facility in America and had graduated with top marks…with a few insignificant exceptions.
It was for the best he hadn’t been able to train in England. They wouldn’t have made those exceptions for him back home.
He was ready for anything the field could throw at him. Except for that Fourteen person. The man was terrifying.
…Maybe it was for the best that Clayton stayed behind. Fourteen wasn’t part of the latest mission, but he had a bad habit of showing up whenever he bloody well felt like it.
The scary-beyond-all-reason assassin had taken an intense dislike toward Marshall, the leader of Fire, the Boston chapter house’s resident Guard team. That meant Fourteen would randomly show up at a mission and snipe or capture a bad guy first, and Marshall was completely fed up with it. He couldn’t do anything about it, either, because Fourteen was firmly attached to the Stillbringer, Cym, who had the weight of a god behind him.
The entire Other community was in an uproar about Cym’s appearance, and currently, everyone and their brother was falling over themselves trying to give Cym anything he wanted.
Some people were deeply loved by the gods. What must that be like? Clayton would likely never know. His fate was so epically bad that someone had written a song about it. Samantha had put a stop to it, though, by threatening to subject the composer’s entire family to a magical audit.
No one wanted that. Even a hint of demon taint in a magical household was social suicide at best and a total wipeout at worst. The Guard took demons seriously.
It was nice to have friends in high places, so maybe it was okay that Clayton wasn’t beloved by the gods.
Clayton continued to putter around the front of the chapter house building, making it a bastion of tidiness and order. And if he had one or two fantasies about swooping in at the last minuteto save a beautiful person from their untimely demise, thus earning a pat on the back from Marshall and/or possibly even a hug from the brusk but lovely Adelle, Clayton’s thoughts were nobody's business but his own.
Deep into his thoughts, he missed the first few attempts to get his attention. The not-so-gentle boot to the seat of his pants startled him so badly that he squeaked and threw his trowel high into the air.
He and his assailant silently followed the trowel's journey through the air as it made its way back down to bury itself an inch into Clayton's thigh.
“Ahhhh!” His scream echoed off the house across the street.
“Ahhhh!” His assailant agreed. The two of them screamed at one another and his leg until Clayton came to the conclusion that no amount of noise was going to fix his current predicament.
He was considering hobbling to his trusty med kit when his assailant reached over and yanked the trowel out.
The fountain of blood that resulted was rather impressive.
“Why?! Why would you do that? Now I'm going to pop off in my own garden, and the peonies haven’t been weeded yet.”
Clayton's eyes started doing the painful, bulgy thing they did when he got really upset. He stood up and proceeded to pump out an alarming amount of blood all over the log edging surrounding his roses.
“Don't be a giant baby. Just shut up and let me fix this.” His assailant was short, but she was strong, so she had no problem manhandling him back to the ground. She reached into one of her many pockets and started pulling out random items: a box of paperclips, a sheet of sandpaper, a very crushed packet of oyster crackers, and... “There we are!” She held up a wrinkled bit of cloth triumphantly.
“Um...” Clayton offered unhelpfully.
“Now don't worry a bit, it may be old, but it'll still do the job.” She shook the bandage firmly as if removing a few wrinkles would give it more credibility.
“I don't think that's necessary, ma'am. I can just pop over to the infirmary for a clean bandage, and I'll be good as new.” He eyed the cloth warily and scooted backward across the lawn until a flower pot stopped him.
“Nonsense, you'll be dead before you make it to the top of the stairs.” His assailant’s voice was cheerful, and she plopped down on top of him to keep him from moving.
