Asher threw his hands up in exasperation, basically yelling back. “That wasn’t even a real French accent! He was just putting on airs.”
I blinked at him, impressed. “Dude. I didn’t know you could speak French.”
He shook his head. “Naw, I don’t. But you know how it is, speaking to the dead. Language doesn’t really matter since we understand each other regardless, but you catch bits and pieces of someone’s mother tongue every now and again.”
Florian folded his arms and huffed, way too invested in this for someone who’d just known Marcel for one short afternoon. “I, for one, find it hard to believe that someone who cooks so well could be a heartless murderer.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense!” I said. “For that matter, it’d make him an even more effective murderer. He knows his way around a knife, and he knows all about fancy ingredients and herbs and stuff. What does he know about poison?”
Florian sniffed. “Well, now you’re just being dramatic.”
The statue of the fox on the ground shimmered as a portal in the shape of a leaf appeared behind it. Artemis’s head poked out, glowering.
“You all sound completely insane right now. What if someone hears you? Everybody get in before I kick all of your asses. Priscilla and I are watching our soaps. I don’t want to hear about food unless it’s a whole truck of Snacky Yum-Yums. Now get in here before I start breaking faces.”
Sterling coughed softly and lowered his head, suddenly contrite. “Actually, Asher and I were just heading out.”
“Fine,” she said, firm, and angry, but polite. “Good. Go home. Take care of yourselves. Have a safe trip. The rest of you, haul ass and get in here before I lock the portal.”
Samyaza, Florian, and I shuffled in dutifully, obeying the grumpy lady who owned the land where we squatted. I waved limply at Asher, quietly happy, at least, that we were on the same page. Something was up, and we were going to get to the bottom of it.
And maybe it was the strangeness of the day, or the curious meal we’d just had, but I was feeling pretty tuckered out. I figured getting an early night’s sleep would help me think more clearly in the morning. Running back through things in my mind, it definitely did sound kind of crazy to believe that Marcel had anything to do with the murders.
But again, really? A celebrity chef just happened to be drifting through Valero? I couldn’t shake the feeling that Beelzebub had to be involved somehow. I clutched my stomach, frowning at how we’d all indulged in his sin that day. Gluttony! The Prince of Gluttony. But then, wouldn’t Dionysus know something about that?
Florian went off to his hut, still feeling slighted from our discussion. Samyaza did the same, giving me a wordless wave and a tight smile. Hey, at least he was on my side, too. Better paranoid than complacent, especially about something that could be so potentially dangerous for the magical community, and for my kind in particular. I yawned, rubbing at my eyes with one hand, then remembering the book I still held in the other. Huh, almost forgot.
I waved over towards the approximate middle of Paradise’s dimensional space. We thought of it as the rec center, a cozy outdoor nook where Artemis had set up a couch and a television underneath the stars. Perfect for enjoying a good Korean drama, I suppose.
“Priscilla,” I called out, walking over and hoping to meet her halfway. “I got something for you.”
She clambered up from the couch, stretching, then peering as she tried to make out the thing in my hand. I held it up, making sure the cover, and therefore, Marcel Dubois’s smiling face, were in clear view. Priscilla’s eyes went huge. She went down on all fours, loping on feet and fists, stampeding right for me as she grunted in feral excitement.
Uh-oh.
Priscilla picked me up in a bear hug – more accurately, a gorilla hug – lifting me clear off the ground. You know when people say that someone doesn’t know their own strength? Yeah. She was probably inches from shattering my hipbones into tiny little pieces. Artemis came running, flapping her arms wildly and shouting for Priscilla to put me down.
“It’s okay,” I grunted, burying my hands in the fur of her shoulders, digging my fingers in and trying to push myself out of her embrace. “She’s hugging – ouch – hugging me. Probably to death.”
Priscilla took the hint, relaxing her grip and placing me gently back down on the ground. She smoothed my rumpled shirt down with her palms, sweeping strands of my hair out of my face, her eyes twinkling with adoration and what looked to me like gratitude. Racked with pain and probably bruised until morning, I presented her with the book. She took one look at it and swooned, collapsing into a heap on the ground.
Artemis reached the two of us, huffing and panting. “What the hell just happened? She never behaves like this. Priscilla, what’s gotten into you?”
A huge, muscled arm emerged from the tangle of fur and happiness on the ground, holding out the cookbook. “Ook,” Priscilla said.
“Oh wow,”Artemis said. “Mason, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever done. That’s so cute.”
I puffed my chest up, then flinched when my ribcage rebelled and delivered a jolt of pain to my system. “We met him, actually. Seems like a decent enough guy.”
“Ook,” Priscilla said, stroking a loving finger across Dubois’s autograph as she leafed through the pages.
Artemis cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t mean that. I can tell when you’re lying. You’re not very good at it. Also, the five of you were arguing about it very loudly outside.”
“If you ask me,” Samyaza said,
