“There aren’t.” Spencer caught Anil’s eye and gave the god pack alpha a firm nod. “I’ll be in touch. Thanks for the assist tonight.”
“Your help was appreciated as well,” Anil replied.
Wade hit the window button to roll it up, and Spencer took the car out of park. They left the Queen Anne neighborhood behind for Downtown Seattle, the storm having not let up. It had actually gotten worse, but it didn’t feel reactionary at all.
“So what is this thing?” Wade asked, poking at the mageglobe burning between them with the piece of the Ouroboros Mirror encased inside.
Spencer reached over to smack his hand, but Wade pulled away too quickly. “Don’t touch that.”
“You know it smells like hell, right? It’s gross. Almost as gross as the vampire stench coming off your wool coat.”
“It’s in the trunk.”
“I have a better nose than you.”
“Oh my god.” Spencer stabbed at the call button on the steering wheel to activate his phone through the Bluetooth connection. “Call Patrick.”
Wade cackled, clearly finding Spencer’s aggravation amusing. Fatima didn’t seem perturbed at all, chirping at Wade and butting her head against his torso. Traitor.
When the call picked up, it wasn’t Patrick who answered, despite it being his phone. Jono’s voice filled the car through the speakers, his British accent still as strong as ever. “Did Wade make it to you all right?”
“I don’t know why you sent him at all.”
“Pat thought you could use the backup. Some that wasn’t bound up by the SOA’s red tape. I agreed.”
“Yeah? You couldn’t have sent anyone else? Or, I don’t know, ask me first?”
“Hey!” Wade protested. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You nearly set a cemetery on fire.”
“It was for a good cause.”
Spencer rolled his eyes. “Jono.”
“Sorry, mate. Wade does know what he’s doing, and of the four of us, he was the only one we could spare who technically has the clearance for your case,” Jono said.
Spencer knew their god pack had grown, that it was never going to be just Patrick, Jono, Sage, and Wade. But he also knew Sage had a toddler to care for right now, Patrick rarely traveled anywhere without Jono these days, and Wade might not be a werecreature, but he was still god pack. What’s more, he’d been in the thick of things with the whole mess concerning Patrick’s soul debt. Wade knew all about the Morrígan’s staff and the raided Repository. The rest of their god pack didn’t.
Spencer still remembered the underlying reason why the end of the world had almost happened. The gods had made sure very few did. The official government story still revolved around Ethan Greene and the Dominion Sect making bargains with demons and hunters, but lost to the world’s memory was the framework on how to steal a godhead. The presence of gods in the Battle of Manhattan had merely been a good chance to proselytize, according to opinion pieces.
“Some bits of what you’re dealing with sound too similar to what we all went through. Pat wanted to be sure you had support. He knows from experience the SOA isn’t the best at offering that,” Jono said after a moment.
Some of Spencer’s anger slipped away. He knew Patrick meant well, that sending Wade wasn’t supposed to be seen as an insult to Spencer’s capabilities. He’d done it out of concern for Spencer’s well-being, not anything else. He sighed heavily. “You could’ve warned me. There’s a town out here now that’s going to have a new cryptid for its local legends. You can thank Wade for that.”
“Iamlegendary,” Wade said, sounding smug.
“A legendary pain in my arse” was Jono’s dry reply.
He sounded fond, not angry, and Wade’s laughter held no meanness in it at all. “Don’t worry. I can make people not see me, and if anyone did, who is going to believe them?”
“Local cryptid,” Spencer repeated. “Conspiracy theorists abound.”
He glanced over at the young man, taking in the changes from the last time he’d seen Wade well over a year ago, when Spencer had made his way back to New York City after Patrick returned. Wade had gotten a little taller, growing into lean muscles and carrying a confidence that Spencer had seen sparks of a few years ago. At twenty-one, Wade was still snackish, still mouthy, and still willing to spoil Fatima rotten, if the bit of candy bar he fed her was anything to go by.
“Tell Patrick I’ll eat whatever demons Fatima doesn’t. Spencer is on his own with the vampires though,” Wade said.
Jono groaned. “I thought Pat was joking about that.”
