“You think I took him home and just taught him… whatever this is?” I snap.
“Or is he mimicking something he heard in bed last night?” Imani asks. “Did you fuck the god?”
Torin removes my hand. “I am killing it with my newfound knowledge. As a god of love, I approve of all of the sex stuff I read last night.”
“No! Stop! Do not repeat anything you saw in those books. Those were… just… why did you grab those books to read out of all of them? I have so many books and you picked the… the…”
“They were the only ones with pictures… and so many dicks. All the dicks. Big dicks. Thick dicks. A lot of dicks. While I excel at picking up languages quickly, pictures do hasten the process.And from the pictures, I have deduced that you are averyhorny man.”
“I’m going home,” I decide.
Imani’s arm stops me. “No, no you’re not. I have to hear how the god of war and love only learned sex terms.”
“He said he read… some books while I was sleeping.” I look over at the man who is grinning like a fiend. He knows what he’s done. He’s enjoying every minute of it. Is this karma for the bike? Is this what I get for wanting to put him in rollerblades to see what happens to him?
“I would like to borrow these books,” Imani says while I die inside.
“I would like to feast,” Torin declares.
Yes, this is good. Let’s forget this topic and move back to the donuts. “Which one would you like?”
“I want it long and hard,” he says proudly in perfect English. He grabs a long donut and a regular donut, looks me in the eyes, and presses the long one against the hole of the second one before winking at me. Then he laughs and heads over to stare at the building while consuming the donuts.
“I’m going to go home and die of shame. He is now in your hands,” I announce.
“Riley the Perverted Peasant, come over here,” Torin says. “Come look at this.”
I grab a donut and, since I’m nosy, head over to see what he’s looking at while pretending I didn’t hear his moniker for me. “What is it?” Kit’s paw reaches out for my donut as though I’m just going to hand the whole thing over to her. I peel off a piece and feed it to the familiar who chews loudly in my ear.
“Can you feel that? Or is it only me?”
I move to stand beside Torin and unusual magic floods around me, which is definitely different from the last time we’d stepped up to this building. Suddenly, I feel the familiartingle of magic rushing into my arms even though no one has touched me. And the magic that is now pouring into my mind is incomprehensible. Usually, when I acquire new magic, knowing how to use it is like second nature, but this? I have no idea what this is. The magic is wild, out of control, and I don’t even know where it came from since no one touched me.
Pain eats at the tips of my fingers as I stumble, and then I’m falling but it shouldn’t take this long to hit the ground. It’s like the world has dropped out from under me as I flail, reaching for anything to grab on to while darkness consumes me. Everything is so dark.
I hit the ground on my hands and knees as that unfamiliar magic washes through me, like it’s bubbling out of control. I want it gone. Ineedit gone. I reach out with aching fingers still covered in my gloves, knowing I need to replace it with different magic before it consumes me.
“Vinny! Vinny!” I shout, reaching into the darkness behind me to touch him and use his magic to replace whatever the hell this is inside me, but as I do, I realize that I don’t hear anyone. “Kit? Kit!”
Where the hell is Kit? She was just on my shoulder and now she’s gone. I pat my shoulder, searching for her, but did she fall off when I fell?
“Kit?”
Anxiety eats at me as it sinks in that not only can’t I hear anyone in this dark world, I can’t feel my connection to Kit. I never used to experience anxiety, and I don’t even know what to do with it. It’s such an unfamiliar feeling and it makes me infuriated at myself for being so weak.
Fighting to calm myself, I press my finger against my pendant, but all of the magic it holds is still intact, telling me that there must be a reason I can’t reach Kit.
My stomach tightens while I slowly rise to my feet and wave my arm in the darkness until it smacks against a wall that I back up into. There shouldn’t be a wall behind me. Where the hell did it come from?
“This is really peculiar. Didn’t expect you to just dive on in,” Torin says. “Massive balls on you, eh?”
Relief floods through me at the sound of Torin’s voice.
Never thought I’d be so damn happy to hear it.
Chapter Six
Torin
