Due to the deal I’d made over a year ago that put my ass on the eternal chopping block in place of my second-least-favorite person’s ass, there was a giant ticking clock counting down above my head. When the gods no longer thought I was useful to them, they’d find a way to end me. Then my eternity as a servant to Hades began. But the deal…yeah, it had been worth it. Not for him, but I’d owed it to her.
Apollo watched me closely, intently. “No.”
My eyes narrowed. “No to what?”
“I’m not sending you after them. Not yet,” he said, surprising me into silence—a rarity. “I have another task for you. You need to leave for southern Virginia immediately. I’d snap your sunshine-and-rainbows ass there, but now that you’ve annoyed me, you’ll drive the twenty or so hours to get there.”
Okay. That was irritating, but I kind of liked road trips, so whatever. “What’s in southern Virginia?”
“Radford University.”
I waited.
I waited some more, and then sighed. “Okay. You want me to enroll in college?” I asked, and Apollo tipped back his head and laughed so loudly, he actually whooped. I frowned. “What the hell is so funny about that idea?”
“You. College. Using your head. That’s what’s funny.”
I was seconds away from blasting him with akasha.
The smile slipped off Apollo’s face. “There is someone important there you must protect at all costs, Seth.”
My lips curled into a smirk. Sending me to be a guard—how cliché. “Well, that’s very little detail.”
Apollo’s grin turned cheeky. “You will know who it is when you see them.” A puff of smoke appeared as he waved his hand, and as it faded into the night, I saw that he had a slip of paper. Neat ability. “This is their schedule. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.”
Frowning, I took the paper and quickly scanned it. It was a class schedule—a boring class schedule full of psychology and sociology classes. “Okay. And what exactly am I supposed to do with this person?”
“Keep them alive.”
I exhaled noisily. “No shit, Apollo.”
“You will both need to go to the Covenant in South Dakota— to the University there.”
My spine straightened as if someone jacked me up. That was the last place I wanted to go. There were people there I didn’t want to see. “Why? Who is this person?”
Apollo’s smile returned, he winked, and then he was gone. Just like that. Poof. There one second and gone the next. Son of a bitch, I also hated that. More than just a little annoyed, my gaze dropped to the slip of paper. There were initials on the schedule.
J.B.
Sounded like a dickhead name.
Turning to the ocean, I let out a string of curses directed toward Apollo, and as the wind lifted the shorter hairs that had escaped the leather thong holding the hair back from my face, I swore I heard that bastard laugh.
I couldn’t say I was surprised that Apollo hadn’t given me a lot to work on. The jerk was known for delivering little to no information, or handing out what he did know in doses at the most inopportune moments, usually after the information would’ve been helpful.
One thing for sure; whoever I was supposed to keep safe really got the shittier end of the deal, considering the last person I’d been tasked with protecting had ended up with a titanium bullet in his forehead.