I use my stockings to wipe my feet dry and slide back into the hospital slippers. She shows me around a little more on the way down, revealing stylized nooks and crannies everywhere. A pair of chairs and a beverage station tucked between fresh towel shelves. A hammock with a heated massage pad next to a set of French doors.
“You have a really amazing business, Sylvia,” I say when we get back to the main floor.
She blushes, pushing some of her curly hair behind her ear. “It’s been a long time in the making, but we’re really proud of it.”
“I would be, too.”
Mist materializes behind Sylvia and then Apollo is scooping her off the ground into a bridal hold. She wraps her arms around him without so much as a yelp. He must do it to her often. That makes my heart happy for her.
“Did you have fun?” he asks after planting a brief kiss on her cheek.
“Always,” she says.
“Good, because we have work to do for Mark’s wedding party,” he says as he plops her back on her feet.
“I know,” she says with sing-song annoyance. “He only texted metwenty-fourtimes today.”
She nods for me to follow and we walk back to the room with the floating purple crystal. There’s a new doorway open to the right. Inky black runes that glitter with gold wrap around the archway of the entrance.
Bastian and Rhazan emerge from the room, speaking a language I can’t place but sounds familiar. His secretive smile lights my body like warming in the sun on a cold day. He extends his hand to me and I go to him, happy to be back at his side.
“You need to thread some of your magic into this spell,” he says, placing my palm against the wall with his markings.
“Wait,” Jade says, scowling at me. “You guys haven’t—”
“Jade,” Rhazan interrupts her. “It is not our business.”
She pouts, mumbling something I don’t catch.
“Haven’t what?” I ask, looking at Bastian for some context.
His expression gives nothing away and he ignores my question.
“Infuse this with your magic so you can come here when you want,” he says.
I huff, doing as he says. The spell takes and takes until I’m feeling lightheaded. Bastian pulls me up into his arms just as Apollo had done to Sylvia, though I am much less graceful. I yelp and reach formy skirt to hide my panties instead of clinging to him. My other arm goes wide from the weight of my bag and I wobble in his hold.
“Stop squirming, pink flesh,” Bastian growls at me.
“My modesty!” I complain weakly and everyone laughs.
Bastian’s tail smooths over my ass and then squeezes between my legs, pinning my skirt closed. I scream at the intrusion and hide my face in the crook of his neck as I hug my bag to my chest.
Rhazan clears his throat. “We’ll make you some fortifying tea so you can soulbind at our location.”
Jade steps up to the doorway and runs her fingers along the runic symbols. They light up with hot pink, then orange-like molten gold like Rhazan’s skin ornaments. Threads of light stitch across the arch until the entire thing is glowing with the combination of their magic.
“See you guys next weekend for dinner?” Jade asks Sylvia.
“Only if Nai Nai makes the cookies,” she says.
Jade scowls. “My cookies are nah wo swan shen-muh ah?”
Sylvia shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means, but they’re always burned.”
“Crispy is not burned!”
“It resembled a lump of coal.”
