“I’m going to tell you something,” Raika said. “But if you tell anyone else—”
“You’ll throw us into a pit full of mind-flayers and sword spiders,” Scotty finished. “We know that. It’s your standard threat. Spill.”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Raika blurted, “I sneaked a peek into one of Amber’s sketchbooks.” She took a big swig of her wine. “Hoo, boy, was she pissed when she caught me. Have you ever seen her angry? I mean, really angry?”
Scotty and Aleka both shook their heads. Amber had inherited her father’s ability to explode like a bomb, sending lethal shockwaves out in all directions. As a result, she worked hard not to let herself get lost in fury.
“She didn’t kill anyone,” Raika said, “but she blasted me so hard my skin burned off. Hurt like a motherfucker until I healed. I advise you not to go through her sketches without permission.”
“Okay, that might explain why you didn’t date for a couple of days, but not for your entire life.”
Raika ignored Scotty, her gaze locked onto a guy a few tables over. “That male is staring at you, Aleka.”
Aleka sniffed dismissively. “He’s not staring. He’s leering. He’s probably a demon, and he looks like an asshole.”
He did. His cocky leer and puffed-up chest gave him a douchebag air. “You’ll never know unless you talk to him,” Scotty teased.
“This is a Schrodinger’s Asshole situation,” Raika said. “Is he an asshole? Is he a demon? Both? You won’t know until he opens his mouth.”
Scotty laughed, and they turned back to their food—and the previous topic. No way was she letting Raika get away with not filling in the gaps of this juicy story.
“Well?” Scotty prompted. “What does your lack of a love life have to do with Amber?”
“It was her sketches. There was one of me in a dirt grave. A faceless male was shoveling dirt onto me. When I asked her, she said she didn’t know who he was. Just that he was my lover.”
Scotty blinked. “So, you haven’t been with a guy because of that?”
Raika took another swig of her bloodwine. “If I don’t take a lover, I won’t end up in a grave.”
“Amber’s visions don’t always come true,” Aleka said. “Not in the way she sketches them, anyway. Remember that time she tranced out and said Uncle Reseph would be in a plane crash, and he scoffed because he never flies, even with Aunt Jillian?”
He had tried to get Jillian to stop flying, though. Amber had assured them that Jillian hadn’t been involved in her vision, so she’d continued with her job as a pilot and head of DART’s air transportation department.
Raika rolled her eyes. “How was anyone supposed to guess that a plane would crash on top of him?”
As a Horseman of the Apocalypse, he’d survived the freak accident, but it had taken weeks for him to fully heal.
“Still,” Aleka said, in that haughty way she had when she was sure she was right, “you can’t live in fear of relationships.”
“Says the girl who spends every waking moment by herself in a dusty old office, and who won’t attend an event if Sabre is going to be there,” Scotty said, which earned her a sharp glare.
“I—” Aleka broke off and glanced down at her comms unit. “Oh, my—oh, my gods!”
Alarmed, Scotty glanced down at her own comms. “What is it?”Breaking news? Nope, nothing.
Aleka looked up, her eyes wide with shock. “They did it.”
“Great.” Raika rapped her long nails impatiently on the table, getting Aleka’s attention. “Who did what?”
“Wraith and Serena.” Aleka’s emerald eyes grew liquid, but she was smiling, so it couldn’t be bad news. “I asked them to help look for Harvester’s blood. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. And they did it. They have her blood!”
“No fucking way!” Scotty leaped to her feet, uncaring that everyone in the joint was staring at her. “You’re serious? We can bring back G-ma?”
A slow, victorious smile spread across Aleka’s face. “And save Eva. I just need a couple of days to prepare.”
Scotty grinned, finally feeling like her life was back on track. In just a couple of days, Eva would be healthy, G-ma would be alive, and her team would be back to normal.
Things could only get better from here.
