Carmen studied him for a handful of seconds. “Ashanti heard about Setsuna. She wants to see you.”
“Is she here?” Jono asked.
“No. She went chasing after Tezcatlipoca before losing him in the veil. She’s home now, but she’ll come out to neutral territory to speak with you.”
Surprisingly, Patrick shook his head. “It’ll have to be tomorrow.”
Carmen’s eyes narrowed. “This isn’t up for discussion.”
“Zachary knows I went to see Eloise. He says hesawher. I have to go and make sure she’s okay.”
Nadine looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t know you’d gone to visit her.”
Patrick grimaced, his jaw clenched tight. “I couldn’t keep ignoring her forever.”
“Might’ve been for the best,” Jono murmured.
Nadine shot him a sharp look, the question in her gaze easy enough to read. “Not friendly?”
“Friendly enough on the surface.”
“They worship Persephone,” Patrick said in a flat, emotionless voice.
Nadine jerked as if she’d been hit, brown eyes going wide. “Theywhat?”
Carmen reached for her drink again. “Setsuna always did warn you about them.”
“Don’t talk about her,” Patrick ground out.
“Human lives are fleeting. Her death was always going to happen.”
The callousness of her words had Jono stepping between the two so that Patrick didn’t do anything he’d regret. If he laid a hand on her in plain view of the police, that would turn into an ordeal they didn’t have time for.
Carmen tipped her head back to look Jono in the eye and smirked at him. She looked and smelled human, probably wearing an artifact to help hide hints of her true self the way Sage used to.
“Watch your words,” Jono said in a low, harsh voice.
“I speak the truth. Ashanti would say the same thing, for all that she and Setsuna guided him when he was younger.”
Jono reached out and covered the top of her drink with his hand. Rather than take it from her, he curled his fingers in toward his palm, shattering the delicate glass and causing the rest of her drink to spill all over her expensive-looking clothes. Carmen hissed at him, the sound nowhere close to human, but she didn’t move.
“You don’t get to play word games with Pat using Setsuna’s name.”
Carmen snapped her teeth at him but didn’t seem cowed in the least as she brushed shattered glass off her lap. He supposed that’s what came from living so long—a sense of inevitable life. But she wasn’t immortal and could still be killed. Fenrir rumbled a question through his mind, but Jono mentally shrugged off the offer of murder.
He wondered if some bit of the god had come through somehow—his aura or his eyes maybe, if not his voice—because Carmen’s demeanor changed just enough that Jono could see Naheed reach beneath the bar counter out of the corner of his eye, most likely going for a weapon.
“We’re on the same side until after Samhain,” Jono reminded her, moving so that he could once again see everyone in the club.
“And after, we will no longer be bound by alliances,” Carmen said in a low, sweetly dangerous voice as she waved off Naheed’s protectiveness. “None of this changes the fact Ashanti wants to see Patrick.”
“Tomorrow night. We’ll make the time.”
“Now.”
“Jono’s right. We’ll meet with Ashanti tomorrow night at a place of her choosing. We’re going to Salem tonight, and I need to deal with the SOA tomorrow at some point regarding the attacks,” Patrick countered.
“You are not going to Salem tonight,” Nadine said with a frown.
