“She wasn’t there to see the angel descend,” Orangesicle continued, “so I gotta tell the story. I’m always here to help my woman.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Sadie. “The angel was magnificent, his wings glorious, his face beautiful, his hot bod to die for.” She winked at me. “I heard the story from Marcy June too. She says Raziel’s a hunka hunka. She won’t stop talking about his tight ass and how she wants to get some of that.”
Orangesicle’s little old man face settled into a displeased frown. Damon didn’t react at all, though according to Sadie, he had the hots for her too.
“You’d better not be checking out anyone’s ass but mine,” Orangesicle said, clearly still content to ignore all of Sadie’s rejections. He pointed his butt at her and wiggled it, giving me a plain view of his round bubbly behind.
Sadie made a show of checking him out and waggled her brows at him, making my own climb up my forehead.
This was new.
“Don’t worry,” she told him. “I wasn’t even there to check out the angel’s ass. Or his impressive pecs, or long shiny locks, or hard abs…”
She looked back at me, mischief rolling through her light eyes. “MJ’s been very descriptive. At every opportunity.”
“Man,” I said, “I’ve missed you guys.”
“Hey,” Orangesicle snapped at me while Damon smiled like he’d just finished off a blunt. “Don’t call my woman a guy. She’s all lady, trust me on that one.”
“Uh, ew, no thanks. Moving the hell on…” I was so not going there. If Sadie wanted to have some kinky-shit threesome going on, I didn’t want to know.
Okay, maybe I did want to know, but not then. Not in front of the pygmy troll who was barely waist-high and that was including his tall fro-hawk. Maybe he was just the right height for—hell, I had to force myself from the subject before I went down a path with no return.
“So Selene and Professor Whittle are for sure okay?”
Sadie nodded, finally whisking her attention from the tiny troll whose personality made up for his small stature. “A hundred percent back to normal.”
“Professor Whittle isn’t fun anymore, then?” I couldn’t help the disappointment that rushed through me. I made him cool and then missed most of the show he put on in his Creature History class.
Sadie grinned wickedly, and a lightness spread through my body, relaxing more of the tension I was apparently holding absolutely everywhere. I so needed some time alone with Ky to get some release. Jeez, it was like a health requirement at this point. I wasn’t used to being wound so tightly; it was no way to live.
“Whatever you did to Wendell was still in effect last I heard. Trust me, MJ’s told me all about that too. She’s surprisingly gossipy for someone who’s decent at kicking ass. Now,” she said, eyeing my charges, causing Val to press against my leg, “you have a shit-ton of explaining to do. Start talking.”
“While we move,” Damon said, glancing around us.
Sadie gave her partner a sharp nod. “Definitely. We’re too exposed with them like this.”
She faced me again. “The supe world’s in the crapper. The Voice has been trying to get into the academy basically since you left.” She huffed. “Well, before then of course. It’s time to teach them some manners, preferably in a way that involves me using my short swords.” Sadie brought her hands to her hips, framing the short, curved swords that hung from either side of her belt. I’d never seen her without them. She probably showered with them. She smiled, a bit of bloodlust peeking through, and I couldn’t blame her. The Voice had killed most of her fellow Enforcers—while they slept. Even pregnant women. Even apprentices barely out of the academy. They’d attacked in vast numbers so they could kill as many Enforcers as possible before any could call out an alarm and wake the rest. There probably weren’t many on the right side of this war who didn’t want justice for the Attack.
“Okay, let’s go through the mountain pass,” she said.
“I already tried that,” I said. “It won’t let me through.”
“That’s okay. It’ll let us carry you through. And your, uh, friends? I see you picked up a new stray … and an egg. What kind of egg is that?”
“And is it safe to bring back to the academy?” Orangesicle added.
I purposefully ignored his question, because how could I possibly have the answer to it? I’d received the egg from some rando dragon while in Happy Land, where magical creatures went to spend the rest of their lives once they’d mastered inner peace or whatever. I didn’t know what the requirements were of an eternity in an alternate dimension, since I sure as shit hadn’t mastered inner peace. It’d taken me a small eternity to master a stupid fucking pendant, and even then I’d probably just gotten lucky.
I ignored the way Orangesicle stared at Egg with squinty, disapproving eyes, and faced Sadie instead.
“It’s a dragon egg,” I told her, as if peeps were given dragon eggs all the time.
She blinked. “A dragon egg.”
“Yep.” I petted its dark, iridescent, scaly surface, approximately the size of a deflated volleyball, making Why whine—probably with jealousy, the doof—and hug the leg opposite Val like the little bear that he was. I ran a hand along his back, trying to reassure him before he attempted to scale my body, as was his way, and then did the same for Val, because being left out sucked.
“You vanish from the academy, make us think you’re probably dead, and now show up with a dragon egg and more strays.”
I shrugged. “I never did anything to make you think I was dead.”
“Yeah.” Sadie snorted. “Other than disappearing in the middle of a battle where Gorky Gower and his crew were trying to kill us all left and right.”
“It wasn’t quite like that,” I said.
Damon was shaking his head, casting suspicious glances around us again. “We gotta move.” Even though the Sedona day was quiet, the sky bright blue and calm, I had no doubt he was right.
“We do.” For the first time, Sadie gave her full attention to Val. “But first, who’s this stray? I need to know before we bring anyone else into the academy.”
“Best friend,” Val corrected, and Sadie visibly startled. Orangesicle transferred his narrowed gaze from Egg to Val, and Damon didn’t do anything. He was as chill as chill got, all the while still remaining alert and being great at his job. Something to strive for…
“It talks,” Sadie said.
Val was the size and shape of a Shetland pony, with several exceptions: he was pink like a pig, and covered in fine, fuzzy hair just like a pig, along with a curlicue spring of a tail. But he also had light brown horns like a reindeer, two of them, short, fuzzy, and blunt. Val wasn’t like any creature I’d ever seen before, and by the way Sadie and Orangesicle gaped slightly as they studied him, I guessed they’d never seen anyone like Val either. He had said he was one-of-a-kind…
Val pointed his chin up. He was roughly the same height as the pygmy troll. “I do talk. And I’m a he, not an it.”
Why squeezed my leg, trying to climb it, stepping on my bare foot in the process, sharply reminding me I wasn’t wearing shoes and I was still in my cutoff jean shorts and Betty Boop T-shirt, stained blue from Happy Land’s icing grass.