I’d thought everything was okay between us. He knew I didn’t hold the fact he was an illegal demon mage against him. I didn’t care—much—that he had a real live demon embedded in his body, or that it occasionally tried to control him. He was my friend, and that’s all that mattered.
Yet, he’d begun to withdraw. First, Kai or Aaron had begun taking me home instead of letting me sleep over at their house, which I used to do almost every weekend. Then Ezra had stopped coming to the Sunday and Monday dinners I cooked for the four of us. Then he’d stopped joining us for my workouts and training. I’d scarcely seen him in the last two weeks.
Having learned not to ignore the things that bothered me, I’d asked Aaron and Kai what the deal was. Ezra was having trouble sleeping, they’d said. Apparently, his insomnia was so bad he’d been missing workouts and napping at weird times—like my twice-weekly dinners. When I asked if he’d seen a healer, they’d hesitated. Any mythic looking at him too closely was a risk; what if the healer somehow detected the demonic spirit inside him?
A hand waved in front of my face. I straightened sharply, blinking the changing room and Sin’s concerned face back into focus.
“Sorry,” I blurted, then hastily changed the subject. “Are you excited for Monday?”
Her eyes lit up. Topic change successfully completed.
“I can’t wait!” she gushed. “It’ll be so cool hanging out with you and the guys for a week. I’ve been dying to see the Sinclair Academy since my sister started there. It was really nice of Aaron to arrange for me to visit.”
A faint blush tinted her cheeks at the last bit.
“He’s a pretty cool guy,” I teased. “We’ll have a blast. It’s too bad you can’t stay for the whole two weeks.”
“My parents wouldn’t like it if we missed Christmas with them,” she pointed out. “They’ve been moping since September, and it’s only Lily’s first term. Are they going to sulk for the next five years?”
I snorted. My dad would’ve loved dumping his kid at boarding school.
“Besides,” Sin added, “Aaron probably wants some time with his parents and best friends without me and my sister hanging around.”
I cringed. My Christmas plans were still a source of chagrin for me. Not that I didn’t want to spend two weeks on holiday at a fancy mage academy with the guys, but there were … complications.
“Something wrong?” Sin asked, watching me closely.
Cearra and Alyssa had just stepped out of the shower stalls, so I smiled reassuringly and grabbed my towel. “Nothing. Let’s get cleaned up.”
I brooded through my shower, meaning I took too long. Sin was already getting dressed when I got out, scrunching my blazing red curls with a second towel. She headed upstairs and, alone, I hurriedly dried off and dressed in a pair of jeans and a royal blue V-neck sweater.
A few guys were hanging around the fitness equipment at the center of the large room, its walls covered in action movie posters from the eighties. With more guys waiting to rotate through their showers, there was probably still a line.
Upstairs, chatting voices washed over me. More members besides our paintball party had arrived for the monthly meeting, bringing the total number of mythics in the pub up to nearly thirty. New energy added a bounce to my step as I cut behind the bar and grabbed my apron. Ramsey stood at my usual station, filling a row of glasses with ice.
“Hey!” I greeted, eyeing the group at the far end of the bar. They were clustered around something, but I couldn’t see what. “Thanks for covering for me.”
“No problem,” he said with a grin. “Tell me about the Tori Bait and Switch.”
“Why does it need a name?” I gave him a quick rundown of my antics as I watched the cluster of members, which included Darren, Cameron, Cearra, and Alyssa, my least favorite guild bullies. No group of people was perfect.
I nodded at them. “What’s going on over there?”
Ramsey slid two glasses of ice toward me. “Moscow Mules,” he requested as he poured bourbon into a shaker. “Over there … well, that would be—”
The group shifted, opening a gap, and I saw it wasn’t an object that everyone was focused on. It was a person. A person so petite I hadn’t seen her over the others’ heads and shoulders.
“… our elusive new contractor,” Ramsey finished. “She just arrived.”
My brightening mood soured again. I grabbed two lime wedges and squeezed them violently over the glasses of ice.
Our new demon contractor, Robin Page, was the final reason I’d scarcely seen Ezra. Because of her, he’d been avoiding the guild entirely. That, at least, I understood. Ezra was an illegal demon mage, so he avoided all contractors as a precaution.
She’d taken away his one haven outside the guys’ house, and though she had no clue about any of that, I was still pissed at her.
Reaching past Ramsey, I lifted a bottle of vodka from the well. “In the five weeks since she joined, she’s shown up, what, twice before this? Real dedicated, isn’t she?”
“I heard she had the flu,” Ramsey replied with a shrug. He slid me a can of ginger beer.
“Likely story,” I muttered darkly as I poured vodka into the two glasses, then added the beer.
Robin stood amidst the mythics with her shoulders hunched. She barely topped five feet, her figure and features equally petite. Her thick brunette hair brushed the tops of her shoulders and her slender hands were twisted in the long sleeves of her black sweater. She looked painfully uncomfortable.
“Well?” Darren demanded aggressively, his voice carrying over the other conversations. “What’s your training background? How long have you been contracting?”
Robin shrank in on herself and irritation flashed through me. Didn’t she realize letting Darren get away with that crap attitude was a big mistake?
“You killed the unbound demon, didn’t you?” Cearra asked, sniffing like she totally could have done it herself, given the chance. Never mind she hadn’t even participated in the hunt on Halloween. “How did you manage it?”
I knew how, but only Robin was aware that me, Aaron, Kai, and Ezra had been present when she and her demon had slaughtered the unbound beast.
Robin mumbled something too quiet for me to hear.
“Why are you a contractor, anyway?” Darren sneered, his assholery worsening the longer it went unchecked. “What use does a little girl like you have for a demon?”
“Who ordered the Moscow Mules?” I yelled. “Come get ’em before I throw them at you.”
Gwen and Cameron hurried over. Darren was looming over Robin, waiting for a response, while she stared at the floor. Holy hell, this girl. How hard was it to hold a conversation?
I glanced across the mythics surrounding her—and noted the complete lack of smiles on their faces. No friendliness in their eyes or their questions. Darren was the most obvious bully, but no one was exuding warmth or welcome.
Right.
Until recently, I’d been the new girl—and seven months hadn’t done a whole lot to dim the blah memories of my first week here. The hostility levels had been off the charts. The Crow and Hammer was a haven for most of its members, and we didn’t appreciate strangers butting in.