Taste a Thousand Deaths (Marionettes of Myth #3)

Chapter Five

"Oh come on, that was a dirty call." Ave's arms shot out at her sides, each word a puff of white condensation in the cold evening. The chill in the air stung her throat and her lungs, her nose and cheeks bordering on numb. "You're on the payroll."

Toivo lifted the iron-stained hue of his steaming hands, angling his face away in a show of innocence. His profile was one that she had come to know very well, with the strong shape of his nose and the bold cut of his lips and cheekbones, eyes ever so slightly pinched like he was always smiling. "You should be more offended over how easy Kali's going on you."

Kali bounced from foot to foot, spinning the wooden sword like a vortex in her palm. Her honey-brown pigtails swung with every movement, gray eyes bright and alert. She wore only a regular tee with jeans that could have passed for fashionable in the seventies, the last drops of the dying light of day glinting off her bare bronze skin and the light mist she secreted as she worked up a sweat.

But Kali had weights strapped to her. Twenty-five pounds to each limb, and also strapped to her torso like a plate of armor. That was a hundred-twenty-five extra pounds, causing the swell of her muscles to work constantly, and she still bounced from toe to toe in the shriveled grass. "Don't worry, Ave. We've been doing this a long time and there's a learning curve."

A laugh echoed from Yuuhi, who perched himself on a ladder to staple a string of lanterns to the frame of the patio cover. Rosette, who watched from her seat on the ledge of the short wall of decorative brick around the long and spacious and still empty patio, kicked the ladder. Yuuhi scrambled for balance. Ave did not feel sorry for laughing back at him before she dismissed Toivo the referee and Rosie the cheerleader—the cheerleader for all sides, really.

She'd told Toivo and Kali over and over that she wanted to remember her mom's training, and she didn't want to be useless the next time shit went down. But hell, this was hard, and it was cold.

But a learning curve.

Fine.

She had plenty of curves for learning, after all.

She pointed her own practice sword at Toivo The Dirty Referee, glaring at him for a good second before she turned back on Kali, who smiled pleasantly.

Then Kali bolted for her.

Ave let loose a yell as she hurried to parry—except Kali stopped short of impact, and the wooden blades never clashed. Ave followed the line of Kali's sight back to Toivo.

His face had blanked, blue eyes wide as he stared out across the yard, past the darkening wall of trees, into the far corner of the cloudy constellations. His lips were parted, strong arms limp at his sides, and the long ponytail of his silver hair hung straighter than a stopped pendulum. When he snapped out of his stupor, his gaze swerved to Ave. "You should...call Elliot."

Elliot?

Ave had seen it happen often enough not to question Toivo and his super special demon sixth sense. She'd seen him tune his ears and eyes to the distress of those that he considered family, but the moment he uttered Elliot's name, an icy knot of terror grew in the pit of her stomach and steeped frost into her veins. Her fingers were numb and clumsy as she fumbled to pull her phone out of her pocket, dropping the practice sword to the ground. She brought up Elliot's number and tapped the screen before pressing the phone to her ear.