focused on Cameo. “You lost your memory?” It wouldn’t be the first time. In fact, it happened whenever she experienced a moment of happiness.
She grabbed a handful of popcorn from the bowl on Torin’s lap and said, “Yep.”
One word, and still he cringed, all the world’s sorrows seeping from her voice. Whatever had overcome the demon’s sadness, even for a moment, well, it must have been a miracle.
Maddox stood up and stepped over the still unconscious Sabin to grab a handful of popcorn for himself.
Torin moved the bowl out of reach. “Dude! I’m done sharing with you guys. You’re ungrateful assholes. Which is my least favorite kind of asshole! Get your own buttery goodness.”
“Fine. I will.” Maddox stepped on the guy’s nuts, using them as a ladder as he reached for all that “buttery goodness.” Rather than taking a scoop of kernels, he took the entire bowl. “Got my own.”
Torin punched him in the thigh with a gloved fist. “Jackass.” As the keeper of Disease, he could start a worldwide plague just by touching another living being skin-to-skin. Thankfully, they’d discovered a cure a few weeks ago, which had given all of them a new sense of freedom.
Maddox jumped back when Cameo reached for a second scoop, barking, “Mine!”
She smiled without humor. “Want me to make you sob so hard you lose your appetite?”
As he shuddered, he threw a handful at her. “Here. Eat and stop talking.”
Baden strode into the room, every step measured and intent. He was one of the tallest and most stacked with muscle among them, with dark red hair and a face Cameo liked to call “Jamie Fraser beautiful.” He used to host the demon of Distrust and, despite that, he used to be nice. As Paris had said, the Gentleman of Olympus was now a bastard.
Baden was rarely without a scowl that promised pain and bloodshed.
Miserable SOB. He was giving Cameo a run for her money. Several thousand years ago, he’d been beheaded, and his spirit sent to a prison realm. The bands circling his arms somehow made him tangible to the living.
His head tilted to the side. “I finally come back from the dead and you guys turn my home into a shithole?”
Nearly everyone else in the room deadpanned, “You’re welcome.”
Bastard or not, he was still a brother by circumstance, and they’d treat him as such.
“Typical.” Baden tripped over a blow-up doll, cursed and lifted the plastic beauty for all to see. “Did Paris order a stripper?”
“Lola!” Paris leaped toward the doll to draw her in for an exaggerated hug. “Where you been, girl? Why you been ducking my calls?”
Aeron, the former keeper of Wrath, grabbed the doll and tossed her across the room like a beach ball. “Probably because your wife would stab your precious Lola with a butcher knife. Meanwhile, my wife would patch her up and I’d be stuck with another stray.”
That, right there, was the difference between marrying the current keeper of Wrath—Paris’s wife—and an actual angel—Aeron’s wife.
As everyone laughed, Maddox met Baden’s dark gaze. The guy motioned to the hallway with a slight tilt of his chin. Understanding, Maddox finished off the popcorn and tossed the empty bowl at Gideon, keeper of Lies.
“Make more,” Maddox commanded.
“Yeah.” Lucien kicked Gideon out of his chair.
“Don’t worry.” The blue-haired punk flipped them both off simultaneously. “I won’t spit in the kernels.”
Gideon couldn’t speak a word of truth without suffering agonizing pain, so Maddox heard the unspoken truth. There would be a special topping on the new kernels—exactly what he’d hoped to hear. Or not hear. Whatever!
“Fine,” he said, being sure to grumble. “I’ll make more.” He strode toward the door, bumping shoulders with Baden along the way. His friend stiffened, even hissed upon contact, and Maddox frowned. “Why don’t you pretend to be useful and help me?”
“Wow. It takes two guys to work a microwave?” Cameo asked.
Moans and whimpers rang out. The girl could tell the funniest joke in the world, but everyone around her would only want to stab their ears with a pencil.
Baden followed Maddox into the hall, maintaining distance between them to prevent any more contact.
As soon as the others were out of hearing range, Maddox said, “What’s wrong?”
“An easier question to answer is what isn’t wrong.”
Been there. “Why don’t you start with the reason you cringe every time someone touches you.”
Baden ran his hands over the serpentine wreaths now circling his biceps. They were a gift from Hades, the king of the underworld. “I spent multiple millennia without