“We’re taking a smoke break,” Keith said.
Jono shook his head. “Patrick.”
“Nope,” Patrick said, holding up a hand in his direction. “Save it. We’ll call this backsliding, and I’ll mention it to my therapist, but don’t even try to fucking stop me from smoking right now.”
Patrick ignored the eyes that followed him deeper through the apartment. Keith, Darren, and Arthur followed after him, the four of them trekking up the narrow set of stairs that led to the snow-covered roof of the building. The wind was icy in a way Patrick didn’t trust. Ducking his head, he conjured up a mageglobe and erected a shield to block the wind, even if he couldn’t block the cold.
He erected another layer around the mageglobe, blending a silence ward in with the shield. Static washed over their small group, wrapping them in a bubble of quiet. Patrick glanced up at the gray sky and the snow that was falling in soft swirls.
“Right,” Keith said, passing out cigarettes as they huddled together. “The team knows what happened in Tír na nÓg, and Gerard is hereby banned from poker night for the next year.”
Patrick snapped his fingers, calling a bit of magefire into the air. They all took turns lighting up their cigarettes on the fire before he snuffed it out. The first hit of nicotine at the back of Patrick’s throat nearly choked him, and he breathed it in deep through sheer muscle memory. It’d been months since his last cigarette, and this was a step backward he refused to feel guilty about.
“Only a year?” Patrick muttered around the cigarette in his mouth.
“He said he’d ask the Old Man about a transfer,” Arthur said.
Patrick grimaced, not sure how he felt about that. “That’s practically a blackmark on his jacket.”
“Yeah, but he’s basically immortal, so does it matter?”
Patrick drew in another lungful of smoke, looking over at the winter-white expanse of Central Park that stretched out before them. The slow, simmering anger from earlier was still present, making his skin itch, but had been overtaken by hurt betrayal that tasted sour on his tongue
“Gerard said he was made for war. I don’t think he could leave this fight. He’d change his name, maybe change his face.” Patrick pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and flicked ash onto the snow between his feet. “Glamour would hide who he was like it hid what he was all these years.”
“He’s a god, right? He has a stake in this fight with the Dominion Sect because of his rank. He wouldn’t leave the fight, only the team,” Darren said.
Keith scowled around his cigarette. “I’m pissed at Gerard, but I don’t want him dead.”
And that—yeah. Patrick could only nod silent agreement to that statement. He shoved his left hand into his jacket pocket, shifting on his feet. “He should’ve told us.”
That was the crux of the whole situation, and Patrick was too angry to care about the hypocrisy of his statement. He’d lived his life as Patrick Collins for far longer than he’d ever been Patrick Greene. His life still paled in comparison to Gerard’s as Cú Chulainn.
If it had only been lying about a name, he wouldn’t be as angry, because he got that. He understood the need to hide. But Patrick had been at the mercy of too many gods over the years to immediately accept and forgive that one of his closest friends had been an immortal all this time.
“Would you want him to give up leading the Hellraisers?” Patrick asked.
Keith grimaced, taking another drag off his cigarette. “I’ve served with Gerard almost my entire career. Always wondered why he never got promoted after some of the missions we’ve done. Now I guess we know why.”
Arthur nodded. “Because he’s a god.”
Patrick drew in another lungful of smoke, thinking about the argument he’d had with Gerard not even an hour ago. “Still immortal.”
“Anyone told Spencer yet? Or Nadine?”
“Not the sort of information I’d trust to send in an email or over a phone, no matter the level of encryption.”
Those two, while not Hellraisers, had worked with the old team enough times back in the day that this was a truth they should hear, especially since Spencer and Nadine were both read into the Morrígan’s staff mission.
Darren leaned his head back so he could blow smoke toward the sky. “Not sure how I’d feel about breaking in another captain.”
“You’d trust Gerard after this?” Keith asked.
“He got us home. Only right we do the same for his fiancée.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Darren shrugged, glancing at Patrick. “We got over it before and still trust Razzle Dazzle here.”
