Torin gives me a look and I quickly turn my head away, fully prepared to make a joke out of all of this.
“The man coming through that doorway is not good,” he states.
“I assumed as much. But guess what? It’s not my problem. My problem is that I have to work until five and I want to take a nap.”
Torin watches me for a second. “I don’t know if your friends have any idea how ‘not good’ it is.” He grabs a few ancient texts and tosses them into a bag.
“Those aren’t meant to be checked out of the library. I’m sure Ms. Percy explained this.Or did you pretend you didn’t know English again when it came to something like that?”
“She sure did, while running a finger down my chest and fluttering her lashes at me,” he says as he zips up the bag and heads out the door.
Keeping pace with him while he walks, I ask, “Can you even read those?”
“If they talk about sex enough, I’m sure I’ll blast right through the texts.”
“Are you going to use them to blow up the city?”
“I wouldn’t blow up this city… the pizza is too good.”
“Did you know other cities have pizza too? Unlike us, there are cities actuallyknownfor their pizza.”
Torin pauses and appears to debate this for a moment. “Let us go to this place known for its pizza.”
“I still have to work. I can’t just pack up and drive across the country for some pizza.”
He reaches out and takes my hand, setting something strangely warm into it before he closes my fingers over it. I open it up and look down at the most beautiful gem set deep in a gorgeous bluish black metal, much like his scythes. It shimmers unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“Go sell that and then I bet we could.”
“I’m not selling this for pizza! It’s gorgeous! Hang on to it.” I have to force it back into his hand where he stares at it in disgust like he’s disappointed it’s not pizza.
Torin seems perplexed why I wouldn’t sell some precious heirloom-looking thing forpizza. Pizza!!! Instead, I’m left helping Ms. Percy deal with the aftermath while really wantingto just go home since I feel mentally exhausted and my hands ache. When Torin realizes we’re not leaving, he parks himself in a corner of the empty library and flips through the ancient texts until we’re finally free to go.
When we step out, he looks at the spot where the horses were tied up this morning and narrows his eyes. “Where are my horses?”
“I… bet… a thief stole them.Did I not tell you how many horse thieves are in the area? They run rampant in these parts.”
His expressive eyes shift to me. “Did you ask the thief to take them?”
“Me? Gosh, no… I would never pass up an opportunity to get my balls smashed.”
“You nearly got them smashed earlier waving around that succubus magic,” he mutters.
“Yeah, but that would have been fun for me.”
Torin’s eyes widen. “I will make it very fun for you and yet you continually turn me down!”
“That’s odd.”
The sigh this man heaves when he discovers that the nearest subway station has an escalator gives me enough joy to make me forget about my hands for a short while.
Chapter Ten
Torin
There’s silence, so much silence that I’m drowning in it. My footsteps echo off the walls as I spin and look around at the destruction, the blood, the death. It’s everywhere, familiar faces I’ll never see again.
I rush forward, running through empty hallways while I scream their names, but when I reach them… I already know that it’s too late.
