Page 10 of All Out of Flux
“Just? I’d love if you could do me a little favor.”
5
LEON
Iflexed my fingers, curled them into a fist, over and over, struggling to work away the pain. Why this hurt had lingered so much more than the other two dragons, I didn’t know. Why it only stayed in my right arm, I wished I knew, too. At least that meant I could keep that hand closer to the window on the passenger side, away from Max’s eyes.
Why was I still trying to keep these things so secret from him? He knew about both Tiamat and Bakunawa. Maybe it was the awareness that Bahamut was something yet greater, that I’d done something especially naughty. And foolish. Maybe I didn’t want him to know I was in any pain at all. The idea of him feeling sorry for me hurting somehow hurt me, too.
But most of all, I didn’t want him raising those same questions back at me. Had I finally gone too far?
“Oh,” Max muttered. “I definitely think we’ve gone too far.”
A pang twisted in my chest. I clenched my hand into a fist, blinked hard at the blur of city and street whizzing by the windows.
“Sorry?” I asked, feigning innocence as I turned to check his face. “What was that?”
He gripped the steering wheel as he cut a hard left. I gripped the bottom of my seat as the car lunged and obeyed.
Max’s eyes flashed toward me for the briefest second, then went back to focus on the road. “Sorry about that. We were supposed to turn at that intersection and I missed it completely. Did you get everything you needed back at the apartment?”
I nodded, my gaze falling on my hurting hand. This would be a great opportunity to tell him about Bahamut, and yet. “I’ll last more than a few overnights with my fresh overnight bag. What about those, um, errands that you said you were running?”
His hand came off the wheel just quick enough to scratch at the back of his neck, the base of his hairline where the little locks were softest, where they grew out cute and funny if he went too long between haircuts. Cute. And funny. Not ha-ha funny, just his behavior. Something was off.
“Actually, I didn’t get to pick up that ice cream you like.”
I shrugged. “It’s sweet that you thought about that at all, but that’s okay. I can go without for a few hours.”
Max laughed. “Stop it. We’ll pick some up later. Listen, I have to be honest with you. I didn’t actually do a grocery run. I — um, I went and got a head start on our finding job.”
All thoughts of Bahamut went whizzing out the window, which happened to be closed, but never mind that. I smacked him on the shoulder with the back of my hand, a reflex, so light it barely registered to Max and his ridiculous muscles.
“You lied to me? Come on, man. We’re supposed to be a team. The Booty Patrol. Thievin’ Beavers. Swindle Unlimited.”
“None of those names are acceptable in the least. But sorry, Leon. I knew you’d be annoyed, but it was to protect you. This statuette we’re looking for? Best place to start is the city’smagical pawnshops and antiquity stores. Guess who controls, oh, ninety percent of them?”
I gasped. “Gustavo Brillante.” And then I relaxed, latching on to that one thing he’d said before everything else. “You were trying to protect me? Aww, Maximo. That’s so cute. Are you falling head over heels? Are you smitten with me? That’s it. We can be the Smitten Kittens. You know, like cat burglars, but young and cute.”
“Under no circumstances are we — and no! I am not smitten. Just worried. The last Brillante you met tried to drown you. In all fairness, Tío Gustavo is a much more reasonable person than Divina could ever hope to be, but he’s still a Brillante. He’s still an insane criminal.”
“I’ll charm the pants right off of him. Don’t you worry about me.”
Max groaned. “Put the image of a pantsless Tío Gustavo in my head again and I swear I will crash this car.”
His phone, mounted on the dashboard, said something about our destination approaching in a mile or so. Max patted it gratefully, one of those weird and weirdly sweet things he did out of nowhere. Loved those little quirks about him.
“Oh, good. We’re almost there. Vera said we could do the communion whenever, but I’d rather get it over with sooner than later.”
I glanced out the window again, studying our surroundings. “A communion can happen anywhere, right? I mean, cast the circle, say the words? Kind of weird that we need to head to a specific location.”
He shrugged. “Sometimes it helps when you approach an entity at their tether, you know? Someone powerful like Arachne, it’s like she has gateways to her home all over the place. Sometimes it helps to knock on their doors instead of just yelling out into the ether.”
And yet, sometimes, the most powerful of entities just walk right into your apartment to offer you terrifying and annoyingly painful pacts. I still hadn’t figured out why the dragons loved slapping their wet feet all over my apartment in particular.
I took a deep breath, clenched my fist hard enough that a couple of my knuckles popped. How could I hide this Bahamut business from Max after he’d been so earnest with the Gustavo stuff? We needed to be honest with each other about the men in our lives, whether they were evil uncles or dragons from creation myths.
“So since we’re being totally honest with each other,” I started, clearing my throat.
