"I have plenty of fun," Hel responded, her gaze slipping to me and a small smile playing at her lips.
I swallowed hard and took a sip of my drink. It was going to be a long evening of thinking about Hel in ways that I should not, and it was going to play havoc with my mind.
Chapter 12
HEL
There was an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I made my way into the hotel and through to the Jinx speed dating event, like I was doing something wrong in coming here, even if I was completely single and had no intentions of changing that.
The room was as brightly decked out as ever, with Jinx's signature pink hearts. It really was obnoxious. Then again, I showed up regularly, as did lots of other people, so it wasn't as if it was putting anyone off.
"Good evening, Hel," Venus said.
"Evening," I responded to the Roman love goddess. She looked as classically beautiful as always, but that had never been enough to tempt me. Not wanting anything serious meant avoiding anything with the other gods. That was a recipe for disaster and one I intended to avoid for as long as I lived.
"So, you know how it goes," Venus said. "Make yourself a name badge, and one of the sheets. Everyone has a number. Just write down if you want the contact information of anyone you're interested in. If it's a match, you swap."
"Got it," I said.
"But are you actually going to write down anyone this week?" she asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe. You never know." I took the items from her and made my way into the room and over to the bar where I was meeting Longmu. We hadn't known one another that long when it came to the gods, but we'd bonded over our enjoyment of events like this. Though Longmu was looking for love, whereas I came with more immediate goals in mind.
"Hey," I said as I sat down, not at all surprised when one of her dragons popped up between our chairs in a flash of blue.
"Luilan! You're not supposed to be here," she chided the Chinese dragon even as she tickled him under the chin.
"He's never going to listen to you if you do that." I flagged down the bartender and ordered myself a glass of wine.
Longmu raised an eyebrow. "Wine?"
"What about it?" I asked as I touched my card against the reader to pay for it.
"I thought you didn't drink and have sex."
"I don't."
"Already doubting how good the options are tonight?" she asked as Luilan wrapped himself around her arm, stopping her from drinking more. It was times like this that I was glad to have Garmr and not five mischievous dragons who were incapable of not making a mess.
As if he knew what I was thinking, his tail swept across the bar and knocked Longmu's drink over her.
She jumped to her feet and let out a string of curses in a variety of languages, causing pride to well up within me when I noticed a few Scandinavian ones in the mix.
"That's not very goddess-like," I said as I picked up my glass and took a sip.
She sighed. "Go home," she ordered the dragon.
He gave her a blank look.
She rolled her eyes and repeated the instruction in Cantonese. He disappeared into a puff of smoke, leaving her drenched in white wine.
I gestured to the bartender to get her another one while my friend sat down with a frustrated sigh. "You'd think he didn't understand multiple languages," she muttered.
"Maybe he only knows you're serious when you speak to him in Cantonese?"
"This is the last time I hatch dragons from a stone," she muttered.
"I wasn't aware you'd done that more than once."
