“We couldn’t,” Jono corrected, eyeing the handwritten label. “The mission came from a general, and the gods made it clear they didn’t want us to gossip about how they fucked up. Marek, you need to drink all of this.”
“I’m not sitting up,” Marek mumbled.
Leon Hernandez, who’d been standing behind the couch, turned and headed for the kitchen in Marek and Sage’s apartment. “I’ll get you a straw.”
Emma didn’t watch her partner leave, more interested in burning a hole through Patrick’s head with her glare. “You should’ve told us you got another mission from the gods. How are we supposed to help you if we don’t know what’s going on?”
“Technically, the mission came from the government,” Patrick said.
“The Norns say otherwise.”
Marek raised his hand and patted at Emma’s face. “Shh. Too loud.”
Marek didn’t look much better since Patrick had half carried the seer out of his office. He’d called Emma and Leon to give them a heads-up because Marek belonged to their pack, and they were always overprotective of their friend when the Fates fucked with him.
Patrick had told Setsuna he was taking a long lunch in order to bring Marek home. The Art Deco building—more an enormous mansion from a bygone era—that Marek had bought some years back had been sectioned off into individual apartments. He and Sage owned the top two floors while Emma and Leon lived in the level below. The rest of the space was rented out to certain members of the Tempest pack. Patrick and Jono still came over for pack nights when they could, though work had been getting in the way of a lot of things lately.
The entire place felt like a home to Patrick’s senses, the threshold surrounding the building strong but easy for him to work with. Casting magic within the building was never a fight, not how it could be in some of the places he’d ended up in over the years.
Leon came back and handed Jono the straw. Jono unscrewed the cap of the potion bottle, stuck the straw in, and passed it to Emma. She lowered the potion bottle and pushed the straw into Marek’s mouth.
“Drink,” Emma ordered, and Marek obeyed. “Is Ethan after this staff?”
Patrick rubbed at his mouth. “Yes.”
“All right. So what’s the plan?”
Before Patrick could answer, the front door opened, and Wade came inside, shoving the last bite of a candy bar into his mouth. Sage walked in behind him, her wool coat slung over one arm. She unceremoniously dropped her Birkin bag by the door, along with her coat. Patrick hadn’t heard them arrive because of the silence ward wrapped around the apartment.
“Has he lost another color?” Sage asked.
“Possibly a shade of blue,” Patrick told her apologetically.
Sage patted his shoulder on the way over to her fiancé. “It’s not your fault.”
“Kind of feels like it.”
Sage knelt by Marek, smoothing his hair back and talking softly. She took the potion bottle from Emma and held it for Marek while he finished the medicine.
Leon sat down on the other end of the couch and pulled Marek’s feet into his lap. Despite being engaged to Sage, Marek wasn’t part of Jono’s god pack. He remained a member of Emma’s Tempest pack, and whenever the Norns knocked him down like this, Emma and Leon were always extra touchy-feely with him.
“What’s this staff do?” Leon asked. “And how can we help?”
“We don’t know.” Patrick shrugged in the face of Emma’s disbelieving stare. “The government didn’t know what it was when they had it. Speculation is it’s within the realm of necromantic magic, but we can’t be certain because no one has seen it for years.”
“Medb ended up stealing it and keeping it hidden in the mortal world. We couldn’t get a straight answer out of her on where it was located though,” Jono said.
“Is that what the whole mess in December was about? Not just Gerard’s missing fiancée?” Emma asked.
“Something like that.”
“Who’s Aksel Sigfodr?” Wade wanted to know as he sat down on the arm of the couch next to Leon. “And why do you have to go to Chicago?”
Patrick looked over in surprise at where Wade was squinting at the memorandum that had been in his back pocket. “Stop pickpocketing your pack leaders.”
Wade snorted, a faint curl of smoke puffing out of his nostrils. “How else am I supposed to know what’s going on?”
Leon reached up and swiped the piece of paper out of Wade’s hand. “There are Pop-Tarts in the pantry. Go eat a box.”
“Hell yes,” Wade said, perking up.
He made a beeline for the kitchen while everyone else stayed put. Leon frowned at the piece of paper before looking over at Patrick. “This looks like a Pollock painting, not a memo.”
“Eyes Only and the spell is geared to my magic’s signature. You won’t be able to read it,” Patrick said, stepping forward to retrieve what Wade had momentarily stolen. “If you had magic and tried, it’d burn up.”
“Wade can read it.”
“Magic doesn’t work on dragons.”
“Then tell us what it says and who Aksel Sigfodr is.”
Patrick sighed before sitting down in the closest armchair. “This was supposed to be an off-the-record mission.”
“Yeah, packs don’t work that way,” Emma replied dryly.
“The federal government does.”
“That’s nice. You’re still going to tell us.”
Patrick made a face, knowing he couldn’t keep quiet on this mess. Emma’s pack was too entangled with theirs, and willing to help them fight on any number of fronts. It had taken Patrick months to come to terms with the fact that he had people he could call for help. Setsuna might be putting a lot of faith into the joint task force, but Patrick didn’t trust its existence would remain outside the bulk of the SOA’s awareness.
He’d come to learn that having allies in unexpected locations was never a bad thing. Jono had drilled into him that pack was family,
