A Vigil in the Mourning (Soulbound #4) - Hailey Turner Page 0,48
fury. She’d dropped her glamour, and the sexual desire she exuded was enough to make Jono’s nose itch.
“I wasn’t the one who took him.”
“Back off,” Sage said, appearing by his side in the mess of broken furniture Hermes had dropped them into.
Jono craned his head around, trying to see where the messenger god had gone, but Hermes seemed to have disappeared. Whether back through the veil or to explore the empty club, it was anyone’s guess.
“How much time did we lose?”
“It’s Friday morning,” Naheed said from her position by the stairs, the pistol in her hand pointed at the floor.
Which meant they’d lost hours since their arrival at Ginnungagap on Thursday night. Traveling to the other side of the veil was worse than traveling over the International Date Line in terms of losing time.
Jono glanced around the VIP area, noticing the vampires from the start of their meeting were no longer around. He pulled out his mobile to check the time, seeing that it was past sunrise by a good twenty minutes. Lucien was a daywalker though, one of the few vampires who could exist in sunlight without being killed. Jono doubted he’d have a difficult time getting back to wherever his Night Court called home.
“The bargain was made,” Lucien said, glaring at him.
“You’ll acknowledge our god pack?” Jono asked.
“As long as you pray to Ashanti.”
“Keep your word and we’ll keep ours.”
“Covens pray to their chosen gods to keep them alive. You will be no different in your actions, but I’ll know if you renege on your promise.”
Jono narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t Ashanti’s priest.”
Lucien’s smile was a hint of the monster he was in human form. “I am her child. Now get the fuck out of my club.”
Sage pushed gently at his arm, and Jono took the hint for what it was. He turned around, listening as Emma and Leon fell into step behind him. The only people left in the club were human servants, and none of them cared about their passage out of Ginnungagap.
Jono shivered as he stepped outside, less from the cold and more from the feel of power against his skin as they crossed the threshold of the building and what lived in its walls.
“Nothing left to hide, eh?” Emma said in a low, angry voice before stalking toward her car.
Jono winced, not knowing where to start when it came to the god in his soul. “Em.”
“Save it. Let’s just get you back home.”
That she was still going to escort him back to the flat and stay there, despite how angry she sounded and smelled, left Jono feeling absolutely horrid.
“I really bollocksed that up, didn’t I?” Jono asked once he and Sage were in the Mustang.
“If you’re talking about the bargain with Lucien? You were more successful than Patrick would’ve been. If you’re talking about keeping secrets from your friends? It could’ve gone better,” Sage said in a neutral voice.
Lawyers never did sugarcoat anything these days. Jono rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “Bloody hell.”
Sage glanced over at him before refocusing on the road. “When are we telling Patrick about this?”
“When he gets back.”
The faint unease that rolled through him made Jono shift in his seat. Fenrir’s worry was difficult to parse.
The Æsir are restless.
Jono grimaced. “Maybe sooner.”
He hoped Patrick was okay in Chicago.
9
“I can’t believe the SAIC signed off on this,” Kelly said as she shut the car door behind her.
Patrick squinted at her over the rims of his aviator sunglasses. “Something interesting came up the other day.”
Benjamin eyed him dubiously as he and his partner stepped onto the icy sidewalk. “Funny how that happened the second you arrived in Chicago.”
Patrick shrugged, not in the mood to explain himself on a cold and windy late Friday morning. He’d spent ten hours yesterday on conference calls with Setsuna and the Illinois State Attorney General’s office arguing about being allowed to interview Dean Westberg. His explanation to Setsuna about immortal interference in the campaign was enough to get her to listen, but coming up with a plausible excuse for the local government offices spearheading the Westberg investigation was a different problem.
Blaming the Dominion Sect seemed like the best way to circumvent the god issue. It wasn’t as if Patrick would be lying. He’d just have to figure out a way to make that connection without perjuring himself later on.
“The media is going to have a field day once word gets out about our visit. That might put the people he’s targeting at risk,” Kelly said.