Page 45 of A Subtle Scar
“Hi, Sabine. I have a reservation under Chandler.”
She gave Charon a good long look before turning to her computer and hitting the keys in that calming patter.
“There you are. Mister Victor Chandler?”
I could feel the color drain from my face, but that was because I’d had that stupid episode before. The names were similar, and people confused them. They’d confused us all the time. We’d been able to fool everyone if we wanted, even our parents. This didn’t mean anything.
Before I could correct her, Hermes cleared his throat. “It’s Vincent Chandler.”
“Oh.” Sabine made the relevant correction and handed me my key card.
“Thanks,” I said, grabbed the card, and headed back to the elevators before she could tell me about the restaurant and whatnot.
I had aspirin in my bag. I didn’t need that, but it would knock me out for the night, and that sounded like exactly what I wanted right about now.
“You still look very pale,” Charon said on the elevator.
“I’m fine.”
“Humans get sick a lot, don’t they?” Hermes asked. “Or was it all those photos? Gore isn’t for everyone.”
I found the energy to stare at Hermes. “Are you saying you enjoy gore?”
“Uhm, is this about that village?” he asked and managed to look like a wrongly accused cookie thief.
“Hermes isn’t fond of gore, of course,” Charon said. He reached for my hand, and it said a lot about how shitty I was feeling that he got the key card out from between my fingers without me really noticing until he had. “He’s just very protective.”
The elevator arrived on cue, and Charon, who had now stolen both my bag and hotel key, led the way.
Hermes shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. “Ronny can be a bit bossy. But the good kind of bossy.” He leaned in. “He made me ride the bus. For the first time ever.”
“Stop keeping our boyfriend away from his bed,” Charon said, looking back over his shoulder.
And okay, there was something about him. Not a plain Goth or emo look. Something mystical. Something…he reminded me of Nyx when they had played with the small helldogs back at Lionel’s party. Nyx’s outlines had blurred, had become one with the night when they moved fast enough. I’d never seen anything like it before, and while Charon remained solid and didn’t dissolve, his hair flowed around him as if an unseen breeze were stirring it, and his eyes reflected light that didn’t exist.
Or no, his eyes shimmered. Was that magic, or all him? Was there even a difference?
Hermes held out his arm for me, but I walked past him without acknowledging him. I got all the way to the door where I watched Charon unlock it with the key card before I remembered what needed saying.
“I’m not your boyfriend.”
“That’s okay, it’s not like we need a label. Right, Ronny? We don’t need a label, do we? We’ll find something that fits in the morning. You really look very pale, baby. Still beautiful, but pale.”
“It was a long day,” I said, a good catch-all blanket statement to shut down further comments. It had always worked. That and the polite smile had always worked.
“We’ll make sure you can relax,” Charon said, and somehow, he did that flowy thing again, blurred slightly, and glided into the room like a dancer.
Hermes gave me a small push with a hand on my back, and before I knew it, I was in the room, and so were the two immortals.
It smelled clean here and very faintly of lavender and citrus. Generic hotel cologne. The suite was nice and spacious with a bathroom to the right of the door, a work desk on the left, seating corner by the window, and a king-size bed with a black and silver headboard and a matching silver comforter. I didn’t sleep well in beds, but I could usually handle hotel room beds, especially on the first night there, and I was exhausted.
That was probably why it took me a while to react to what had been said.
“We don’t need to find any sort of label. I just want to go to sleep. I don’t need you here.” The words echoed in my skull, conspiring to give me that headache I didn’t have after all.
“Oh, we don’t mind,” Hermes said. His hand was still on my back.
“You don’t have to worry about wards—or anything really—with us here,” Charon said. He sighed. “Hermes is a capable fighter.”
