“Well, it doesn’t matter.” Her phone rang again, interrupting her, but she ignored it again.
“You’re not going to answer that?” I asked.
“It’s my day off. Why would I take a call from work?”
“What if it’s a homicide and they need you at the scene?”
“There’s like fifteen other detectives they can call right now. We have bigger fish to fry today.”
I cocked my head. “Like sitting in your Prius, eating cheeseburgers, and talking about shit I already know?”
Dakota smirked. “You ready for this? The Nephil aren’t offering pacts to provide power to humans. They’re using their pacts to limit natural abilities.” She exhaled, exhausted and proud of her hypothesis.
I bit my lip, again thinking of my shadow magic.
“There, I said it. That’s my theory. Imagine if a Sorcerer went to a university and learned how to access their innate power and use it without the threat of killing themselves, of getting addicted, or going insane? You don’t think they could eventually work that power like a muscle, growing into something that could harm a Nephil? See, I think the Nephil created the universities to protect themselves—and collect a few servants in the process. But as long as they hand out pacts, they can’t be threatened by their own power.”
I recalled fighting Hephaestus in his shop. I hadn’t even burned a hair off his knuckle. But manipulating the darkness around me with my untrained powers, I’d somehow fought and killed Medea, a powerful Empousa who had lived for centuries. What if Dakota was right? What if a Sorcerer’s innate power could not only threaten, but harm or kill a Nephil? What if that’s why the Nephil hunted down Sorcerers, why they created universities to filter out the weak and offer pacts to the strong? What if they were just protecting their own asses?
“To circle this all the way around,” Dakota said, “you killed Medea. A Cursed who had power granted by a Nephil. However you did it, you tapped into the dormant power that lives within you. Joey, you activated something that—in my opinion—could kill a Nephil.”
I swallowed, considering the implications of that statement. “Xander does this thing sometimes,” I said, “where he’ll talk a lot, thinking he’s being clever by setting up a big reveal. It’s quite annoying. You’re falling into that same habit—which really hampers your charm level.”
“You think I’m charming?”
“I never said charming. I said it lowers your charm level. You could be a two out of ten, and this conversation drops you to one. That’s still lowering a charm level, but it doesn’t mean charming.”
“Okay. Grade me then. What charm level am I? Out of ten—obviously.” She burped, smirking at me.
Though my heart still weighed like solid lead in my chest from witnessing Mel’s murder and knowing now that I could have saved her, I found that Dakota’s company eased my pain just a little. She was definitely a fifteen on a scale of ten. “I don’t know. Maybe a six.”
“A six? Are you serious?” Shaking her head and mumbling under her breath, she started the car and pulled into the road. “That’s bullshit.”
“Bullshit? You’re the one who thinks that Xander is sexier than me.”
“I don’t think that,” she said.
“You don’t?”
“No. Literally everyone in this world knows that. You’re like… like that skinny white guy from Fantastic 4, and Xander is Michael B. Jordan.”
“The new Fantastic 4?”
“I don’t know. The one with Michael B. Jordan.”
“You think I look like Miles Teller?”
“I don’t know his name. He’s super nerdy, though—oh, he’s also in the new Footloose, where Blake Shelton sings the title song.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s fucking Miles Teller. He’s an amazing actor.”
“He’s a dweeb.”
“You’re a dweeb,” I said, really laying into her. “Well, your charm level just dropped to four.”
“Okay, Miles. Get the fuck out of my sight before I demolish you!”
I stared at her from the corner of my eye, my mouth agape. “Are you quoting Whiplash right now? You saw that movie?”
“Uh, duh. I fucking loved it.”
“Thank you!” I said, throwing my arms in the air, not only flipping my fries onto the food-covered floor but enticing a sharp pain across my abdomen.
“Really?” Dakota asked. “You’re going to just throw your fries on the ground?”
I glanced at her floor mat, then back at her.
“I would have eaten them!” she cried.
I laughed under my breath. “No one—literally no one—I have ever met has seen that movie. It’s so underrated.”
By the way, if you haven’t seen Whiplash, I invite you to put this book down and watch it. You won’t regret it. Miles Teller crushes it as a young drummer trying to impress this hard-ass instructor played by J.K. Simmons, the dude who plays J. Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man. So good!
“Right?” Dakota giggled, biting her lower lip and glancing at me like she might actually be flirting.
I kept my head facing the cracked windshield, but watched her from the corner of my eye. For a second, there wasn’t any sound but the traffic as we continued down the street, and that was okay. The silence wasn’t one of those awkward, overbearing silences that needed voice. We sat there in a strange yet comfortable quiet, like old friends.
“Why do you keep looking at me?” Dakota asked when I glanced at her for the ninety-third time in less than a minute.
“What?” I asked, returning my attention to the road. We were headed West on Arden Way. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Why were you looking at me? Do I have something on my face? Sometimes when I eat burgers, I can’t help but reenact the Carl’s Jr. commercial from years ago where it gets all over the place. Do I have ketchup or mustard on me?” She ran her tongue around her lips.
“No,” I said, trying to think of grandpas and complex math problems in my head to suppress the image she had
