fuck about, and while Douglas does fuck about it’s not in a way that makes him easier to stop. I don’t want to freak you out, but honestly, the biggest advantage to having you around is that if Yelena discovers Sofia is living with somebody she cares about, she will definitely want to torture you to death in front of her. And that could buy us time.”
That earned me a look from Flick. “You were, like, in a whole other building when they were handing the tact out, weren’t you?”
“Just being honest. There’s a good chance that this does not end well for you. If there was ever a time to get out, it would be now.”
She squeezed Sofia’s hand a little tighter. “I kind of feel that would be a shitty thing to do.”
I felt a momentary pang of anger that this completely mortal chick was happy to face an unknown but psychotic vampire for somebody she wasn’t even screwing while my girlfriend had hung me out to dry like a pair of socks.
“This”—Sofia’s voice had a noticeable tremor to it—“this is the bit where you tell me you’ve got a plan, right?”
I didn’t. Or maybe it would be better to say I had several. Technically this was my best opportunity to get another lead on the whole cryptic vision quest/save reality/resurrect Nimue thing, but while that was the big picture it wasn’t likely to come looking for Sofia with murder in its eyes. “Short term,” I tried, “I can stick with you, and if Yelena attacks she’ll at least find somebody she can’t instantly eviscerate. Longer term we need to either get you some protection or work out how to get you in control of your weird my-magic-husband-is-god-of-the-sun powers as soon as possible.”
“Which we do … how?”
“Fucked if I know. I still think getting you high might actually work.”
She gave me a stern look. “You are not getting me high.”
“Not even a little bit?” Okay, I should probably stop with this line of questioning because it was beginning to look a bit sexual-groomingy.
“I mean”—she had that sincere expression she got when she was trying to be helpful while also being firmly convinced that I was a sucking vortex of self-destruction who would drag her down with me. Which to be fair I often was—“I think we’ve got some wine?”
Should I have been worried how up for that I was? What, after all, could go wrong if I spent the evening getting drunk with two undergraduates. Apart from everything. “I’m not sure that has quite the same sacred oracle vibe.”
“Well, no,” Flick was already up and rooting through the fridge. “But it does sound like a pretty good plan for an evening. And we could light some incense, get some candles, make a whole big thing out of it.”
I eyed her suspiciously. “Do you have incense and candles?”
“Please, I’m twenty, have blue hair and listen to post-punk bands from the ‘70s, in what world would I not have incense?”
A worryingly short time later I was sitting in a mostly dark kitchen-diner, drinking Sainsbury’s Lambrusco Rosato out of chipped mugs with two girls a shade over half my age. This was not going to look good in court.
It didn’t take very much wine at all for Sofia to noticeably loosen up. “Right.” She set a half-burned-out tea-light in front of herself and fumbled with my lighter. “Let’s do this.”
“What exactly are we expecting to happen?” Flick was cradling a mug that I suspected she’d stolen from the student union, and looking justifiably suspicious.
“Best case scenario,” I said, “she starts giving off sunlight that makes it impossible for vampires to bite her. Second best case scenario we get some useful information.”
“Worst case scenario?” Flick topped up her wine.
“Well, we’re playing with divine power that none of us understand, so I’m not sure there’s really a floor here.”
Sofia finally managed to get the candle lit. She laid her hands flat on the table and stared into it in a way that looked surprisingly like she knew what she was doing, although there was a good chance she was going off movies.
“Feel anything?” I asked.
“Slightly warm, but that might just be the wine.”
Flick raised an eyebrow. “Babe, you’ve had like half a mug.”
“It’s a big mug.”
“It’s a normal sized mug.”
This was getting a bit off-topic. “Okay, even if it’s the genuinely negligible amount of alcohol, warm is still a sun thing, so let’s focus on the warmth. Maybe it’d help if you shut