Page 2 of Wildfire

“Is... is he dead?” Wilder demanded, even though his breath was trying to freeze in his chest.

The man looked up at him. “What?” He glanced back down at the student and blinked like it was a surprise to find a corpse there. “Oh, you mean him. Wait, are you talking to me?” His eyes widened even more as he looked back up at Wilder, as if the body had been shock enough, but someone speaking to him was beyond comprehension.

Wilder glanced all around and back at the man, holding out his hands to indicate the empty hallway. “Who else would I be talking to?”

The guy gave a lazy shrug and grinned, far too casually to be keeping company with a dead body. “Dunno, you professorial types are always talking to yourselves, aren’t you? I think all those books make you funny in the head.”

“Maybe if you read a book or two, you would realize that ‘dunno’ isn’t a word,” Wilder pointed out. He didn’t have a problem with the slang, really, but he was surprised and bothered and feeling wrong-footed, and when he felt uncomfortable, he tended to ignore his therapist’s advice.

He hopped to his feet, grinning at Wilder like a man who belonged in a madhouse. “S’pose so, huh? Dunno what I’d do with all them fancy words, though. My head might explode if I filled it too full.”

Wilder opened his mouth and closed it once, and then twice. “Matthew,” he said, unintelligently.

“Huh?”

“His name is Matthew. I just remembered. One of his term papers is in my bag.”

The man looked once again down at the body between them, then gave Matthew a little nudge with his toe. Matthew didn’t rouse. “I guess you don’t gotta worry about grading that one.”

Even for Wilder, that was a little flippant. He looked at the man, expecting to find the same inappropriate grin in place, even as he joked about the death of a student. He was frowning, though, looking at the body like a puzzle, and one he wasn’t enjoying.

“Disappointed?” Wilder asked.

He looked up at Wilder and shook his head. “No. Just can’t figure it out. He’s the second one like this. Can’t see what killed him—he’s just gone.” He looked around the hallway. He seemed to think he’d find the young man standing somewhere else and no longer lying on the floor. Then he shook his head. “Gone.”

He was right. There was no sign of what had killed Matthew. He was just pale and cold, eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

“Uncle H is gonna be pissed,” the guy muttered. “Nothing to be done now, though. I gotta get back to work. Later, Prof!”

“Hey! You can’t just leave. We need to call—” Wilder’s head snapped up to stare at the man, but he found himself alone in the hallway with his student’s corpse.

A Nightmarish Good Time

One more dead person, this time a student at Banneker College of Magic. A mage. A senior. Hermes needed a drink, but when he found his way to Hysteria that night, it wasn’t to let go.

This was the second time in as many weeks that he’d come across a dead body with no soul attached, no lingering spirit waiting for him to help guide them to the underworld, even though he’d felt the pull when they died. Some souls could make it to the underworld on their own, but they always left a residue, a trail. They were traceable. These were justgone. Someone was soul snatching, and Hermes had a bad feeling that if he didn’t find out who, the fallout was going to be all on him.

After he’d left Banneker College of Magic, ditching the mortal professor to deal with the death of his student, Hermes had pulled out his phone and checked Hebe’s Instagram. His sister compulsively updated her feed every time she left her apartment... or cooked... or her cat did something cute. That Friday night, she’d gone to Hysteria with her girlfriend. If there was anyone who knew what the hell was going on, it’d be his gossip-queen sister, so it was worth tracking her down.

Okay, okay, and hewasgoing to get a drink. No self-respecting god visited Dionysus at his club to stay sober, and Hermes would really love to blow off some steam while he still had his freedom.

Then, he could stop thinking about unfortunate dead mages with rich daddies who’d promised them the world, or about who the hell was stealing their souls. Or how, if he didn’t play this right, Hermes was going to end up chained to the bottom of the clouds right next to his evil stepmother extraordinaire. Already, he was on thin ice with Zeus.

The last person Hermes had found with no soul was a woman, a spiritus mage. He’d felt her sharp fear, the rending of ties between her soul and body, and by the time he’d gotten there—mere seconds later—she’d been gone.

Okay, and there was one time before that, on Santorini when a bonkers cult, the Fidelis Filii, had tried a ritual sacrifice to rescue Cronus from Tartarus. The body of their leader, Charles Paget, had disappeared into the chasm they’d opened up before Cronus could rise. Hermes had never found hide nor hair of his soul either, but with his body missing, he hadn’t paused to fret about it.

When he got to Hysteria, Hermes sped past the line of people waiting outside the club and passed, unnoticed, between Dionysus’s formidable bouncers. Even relatively early on a Friday, the music was pounding, throbbing through Hermes’s chest and lungs. It stopped him in his tracks at the edge of the dance floor. If Hysteria was open and Dionysus was in DC, the place never had a quiet night.

He cut through the crowd pressing in on each other. Hebe’s Instagram story had been full of videos of dancing, and it was tempting to head out that way. But he wanted to at least make an effort to talk to his sister before he lost himself in gyrating bodies and whatever drugs anyone nearby could offer him.

Instead, he shuffled to the bar, darting between people faster than they could jostle him around. And there, his luck finally won out. About damn time.

“Hebe,” Hermes called when he saw her lithe form leaning against the bar. She was in a bright pink crop top and black jeans that—good gods, were those “mom” jeans? They rose high on her waist but were loose enough to make her ass look bigger. He was never going to be able to keep up with the trendiest trends. But hell, maybe he should try a crop top. He wasn’t a substantial god, but he was trim and could imagine showing off a smooth swath of golden abs would garner some attention.

When she heard him call, Hebe turned her golden head and beamed at him, waving.

And then, from her other side, a pale, dark, scowling thing leaned out and narrowed her eyes at him.

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