17

They were serving pizza at Demeter tonight, but I skipped straight to dessert. There was nothing like a triple brownie sundae to get your mind off of witches, mass poisonings, and angels. I couldn’t do anything about any of those things, but I could conquer this mountain of chocolate. Licking the syrup off my spoon, I stole a quick glance at the head table. Yeah, I was a sucker for punishment.

Nero had vacated his seat for Nyx. Nearly everyone in the canteen was staring at her—while trying to pretend that they weren’t staring at her. I couldn’t really blame them. Not only was Nyx a drop-dead gorgeous supernatural version of Snow White, she was the First Angel, and it wasn’t every day that the First Angel came to dinner.

Nero sat to her right. When my eyes slid to him, he turned his head to look back at me. I hastily returned my gaze to my dessert. Chocolate was always safer than angels.

“Hey, Colonel Sexy Pants is looking at you,” Ivy whispered to me.

“Does he look upset?”

“No, more like perplexed. He has this cute little crinkle between his eyes, so adorably confused. That’s a new look for him.”

“I guess I defy his understanding of the world.”

She chuckled and took a bite out of her pizza. Ivy ate even more than I did, and she still looked like a supermodel. She must have burned a lot of calories being awesome.

“Leda, you excel at defying boundaries,” Drake said. His arm was wrapped around our former roommate Lucy. Those two sure were getting cozy.

I shrugged. “Why merely defy boundaries when you can break them down with a wrecking ball?”

“Who’s the wrecking ball?” Lucy asked.

“Leda is the wrecking ball,” Ivy told her, then glanced back at me. “Are you going out with us to Bloodfire tonight?”

“I don’t know, Ivy. After how spectacularly last night ended, I’m not sure I want to go out again.”

“Are you referring to Three Wishes or to your little field trip to the witch university?”

“Both. I think I’ll stay in tonight and try to make a dent in that mountain of books beside my bed.”

“How studious of you.”

I grinned at her. “I know, isn’t it? Wow, I think I’m cured. I’m a good girl now. I always behave myself and never, ever talk back.”

“There will be a parade of fifty dancing angels the day that happens,” Soren said as he walked up to our table. He dipped his head to kiss Ivy on the lips.

“I’m not that bad,” I protested.

He gave me a hard look. I smirked back at him.

“You’re cool, Leda,” he said with a chuckle, then returned his attention to Ivy. “Ready to go?”

“Absolutely.” Ivy stood and took his hand. “Are you sure you won’t come with us?” she asked me as Drake and Lucy rose too.

“I’m sure. Have fun.”

“Ok, if you change your mind, you know where to find us,” Ivy said.

Then she and Soren walked away, hand-in-hand, followed by Drake and Lucy, also hand-in-hand. I looked around the room. There sure were an awful lot of couples here. I supposed it was only natural. We lived and worked together at the Legion. It was inevitable that couples formed. People needed companionship.

Other people. Not you, I told myself as I went to go put my dinner tray away. I didn’t need to play love roulette right now. I didn’t want it. Challenging that statement, Nero was suddenly beside me. My heart stuttered a surprised beat in my chest.

“You really have to stop doing that,” I told him. “It freaks me out.”

“If you were more aware of your surroundings, you wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. His tone was so cool, so professional, that I almost wondered if I’d imagined that whole scene in his office earlier.

“No matter how aware I am of my surroundings, I have a feeling I still wouldn’t sense you unless you wanted me to,” I replied with equal coolness.

“Yes.”

I nearly laughed at the cold certainty of that single word, but the look in his eyes stopped me. His tone might have held no emotion, but his eyes burned with fiery intensity. I didn’t know what I saw in those eyes, but it scared me.

“I have a job for you and Fireswift,” Nero said, waving Jace over. “You will read through the records of all the witches the Legion captured last month, the ones who joined the demons’ army. I want you to look for any connections between those witches, anything they have in common. If we can find a common link between them all, we might be able to determine which other witches are still free and doing the demons’ bidding. And that will lead us to the witches behind the string of recent attacks on the supernatural community.”

* * *

After his jealous speech earlier, I was surprised that Nero had assigned Jace and me to work together again. But then again, maybe it hadn’t been jealousy. Maybe it had been just angel possessiveness at work. Or maybe he was simply a professional soldier and could separate his feelings from his work. Assuming he really did have feelings. He’d told me many times before that he couldn’t afford them.

Jace and I had been sitting in the library for over four hours, reading through the Legion’s files on the nine witches we’d captured in the Wicked Wilds last month, looking for connections that weren’t there, grasping at straws that slipped through our fingers.

“Let’s go through this one last time, and if we have no new brilliant insights, we can call it a night. What do you think?” I asked him.

“That I wanted to call it a night three hours ago,” he said with a heavy sigh. He sat up straighter and rubbed his hands together to wake them up. “Ok, let’s do this.” He glanced down at our notes. “Are the nine witches from the same coven? The answer is no. The nine witches represent six different covens, some of them not even based in New York.” He slid the sheet of paper over to me.

“Did the witches go to school together?” I read. “No, their educational backgrounds are all over the place too. We decided that those nine men and women seemed to share absolutely nothing in common with one another except for their desperation. The reasons for their hopeless situations are all different, but it was that feeling that led them all to the same place: into the demons’ service.”

“In other words, we know nothing,” Jace summarized. “Colonel Windstriker won’t be happy.”

“Well, he’ll just have to deal with it. We can’t turn straw into gold. If there is nothing there, then there is nothing there. Glaring at us won’t change the facts. Those witches had nothing in common… Wait, maybe we’re going about this in the wrong way.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were trying to find a connection between the witches.”

“Because that’s what Colonel Windstriker told us to do,” Jace reminded me.

“I know, but I think we need to look at the attacks instead.”

“The victims of the recent attacks—the vampires, us, and the shifters—have nothing in common either,” he replied.

“Well, we are all supernaturals.”

“So is a third of the population of New York.”

“They are supernaturals, and they were attacked by supernatural means,” I said. “More specifically, by witchcraft. The attacks themselves were all clearly the work of witches. The vampires’ were killed by animal venom. The attempt to blow us up was powered by Magitech. And the black cloud that tried to kill the shifters came from plant poisons. The specific venom, Magitech, and poison are all experimental new spells found in only one place: the New York University of Witchcraft. The witches are in this so deep, you can read the writing on the wall.”

“But we knew that already. This just brings us back to the witches, and we can’t find anything they have in common.”

“We couldn’t find anything the nine witches in Legion custody have in common with each other, or anything that links them to the four New York coven leaders,” I said. “But what if the two groups of witches aren’t connected at all? What if the witches behind the recent attacks aren’t working for the demons?”

“Each attack used magic from a different department, a different coven,” he said. “And since the coven leaders don’t get along with one another especially well, I think we can rule out the possibility of them all working together.”

“Maybe two covens are working together, but not all of them,” I agreed. “Morgana and Constantine are allies at the moment, and so are Aurora and Gwyneth. One of those allied pairs might be behind this, and they could have stolen supplies from the others.”

“But why attack vampires and shifters? And you’d have to be crazy to attack soldiers of the Legion,” Jace said.

“Whoever is behind this killed almost a hundred people, and they very nearly succeeded in killing even more. They are crazy.”

“If the witch covens don’t even get along with one another, then you’d think whoever is behind this would have attacked witches, not other supernaturals.”

“I don’t know. Maybe the supernaturals they attacked were helping their enemies?” I suggested. “I think that instead of pulling our hair out trying to figure out what links the witches, we should concentrate on what links the victims.”

“To do that, we need records on all the victims.”

“Yeah, which means we’ll have to continue this tomorrow,” I said.

“Thank the gods.”

I chuckled. “Hey, do you want to stop by Nero’s office and ask him for the records?”

“I think he’d prefer if you stopped by instead,” he said. “Colonel Windstriker was giving me a look earlier.”

“Define this look.”

“A look that said he was going to set me on fire if I stepped out of line.”

I thought back to Harker and how he’d set all those vampires on fire. Nero’s magic was even more powerful.

“Ok,” I said. “So he could set you on fire, but he won’t. Don’t worry about it. Nero always has that look. I just ignore it. Besides, you don’t have anything to worry about. You never step out of line. You’re the perfect soldier.”

“You don’t understand. This isn’t about being the perfect soldier. This is about him thinking I’m trying to make a move on you. And it’s about the consequences I’m going to face.”

“Were you planning on making a move on me?” I smirked at him.

“No. But I don’t think it matters to him. Paranoia and jealousy don’t mix.”

“Jace, he’s not going to set you on fire for talking to me.”

“I’m not too sure about that. That angel has it bad for you.”

“He only wants me because I turned him down.”

Jace snorted. “You turned down an angel? You’re even crazier than I thought.”

I shrugged. “Sanity is overrated.”

“Leda,” he said seriously. “No one who knows what’s good for them says no to an angel.”

“Then I guess I don’t know what’s good for me.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “But you do realize that rejecting him only made him more determined. That’s how angels are. Trust me. I know. That’s how my mom got my dad. He chased her for years, and for years she turned him down, which made him even more determined to have her. And once he finally got her, he wouldn’t let her go. He worships the ground she walks on, just as she’d planned.”

“Well, I’m not trying to ‘get’ Nero.”

Quite the contrary actually. I was trying to forget all about him. I just wanted him to leave me alone—if only my body would get the message. But no matter how many times my mind told my body to stay cool, as soon as Nero was nearby, every cell in me went hyper alert, like I’d been hit by lightning.

“Just watch out, ok?” Jace said. “Angels are very possessive.”

“I don’t plan on being possessed.”

“The way he’s acting… You must have led him on somehow.”

How about biting him and tearing his clothes off after I drank the Nectar to receive the gods’ first gift? And thinking about doing that and more every single day? Gods, I had led him on.

“I’m not that interesting. He’ll grow bored of chasing me eventually,” I said.

“Ok,” Jace replied, obviously not convinced. “I’m going to meet up with Mina and Kinley now. You want to come?”

“I don’t think your other friends are ready to stop hating me yet.”

“Give them time.” He set his hand on my shoulder. “You can get the victims’ records from the Colonel, right?”

“Well, since you’re too chicken to go see him, I guess I have to,” I grumbled.

“You’re awesome,” he said, grinning.

“Why is it people always flatter me when they want me to do something?” I demanded.

He left the room, chuckles trailing behind him. I gathered up all of the papers we’d spread across the table, then left the library, heading for Nero’s office. He was probably still there—well, unless he’d found another eager and willing fairy to make out with him. Bah, who cared? I hurried down the corridor, determined to get this over with so I could get back to my room and that tower of textbooks waiting for me. Voices poured out of Nero’s open office door, freezing me in my tracks.

“Colonel Fireswift wants to interrogate the four coven leaders,” Nyx said.

“I’m sure he does,” replied Nero gruffly.

“Colonel, this situation is getting out of hand. The Legion of Angels must always be in complete control. And right now, you aren’t. People’s fear of punishment is the only way we keep order. As soon as people think they can get away with something, they will grow bold. Every day, there’s a new attack. If you don’t put an end to them, I will give Colonel Fireswift his wish.”

“Understood.”

“Good, now I want to talk to you about Leda Pierce.”