Page 64 of A Subtle Scar

A female voice spoke in the background. “It has to do with dating and is a rating of your outward desirability. Ten is the highest and the hottest.”

“Ronny, tell me you didn’t just ditch our boyfriend to talk to some human.”

Ronny tsked. “Don’t be so dramatic, Hermes. I’m just chatting with Florence, but I have eyes on Chandler. He’s observing the spare necromancer doing his best with a piece of jaw and not much else.”

“It took Dr. Kurtz a long time to get that head into the condition it is in now,” the female voice in the background, Florence, said. “Does either of you have any straight hot brothers who happen to be single, by the way?”

“Sadly no,” I heard Ronny say.

“I have a taciturn police person here,” I said. It was hard telling which humans I needed to befriend in order to gain Chandler’s approval, but better err on the side of caution.

“Oh, Florence, Hermes said he found a nice police officer for you. Would that suit?”

“Hmm,” Florence said. “Is he hot?”

“Pre-Chandler, I’d have done him,” I said.

“Yes,” Ronny said.

“Text me a photo. I want to see for myself,” she said.

I sighed. “Fine.” I took a photo of the police person from a distance. The two of them were still turned toward me while talking. The wise policewoman talked, and her partner nodded. I hit send. “There. Show her.”

“Show her? What would I show her?” Ronny said.

“Ronny, if you do not learn to get on board with technology, I won’t let you peg me again.”

Ronny had the audacity to chuckle. “Hermes, you are endearing. Florence, he says he sent me something.”

“Oh, give me that. Here, see? You go there, and then you tap on that.”

“That’s interesting. Is Hermes still there?”

“Yes, you idiot. I’m still here, you’re still wearing frilly stuff, and our very desirable boyfriend is unguarded and in need of fawning over. Because that’s what tens need. You need to impress them and give them attention and gifts and—”

“Did you find the murdering humans?” Ronny asked.

“Huh?”

“You went out to find them. Did you? Is that why you called the police and incidentally found a potential man for Florence?”

“What? No. I found something else. There’s a spell. I mean—” I concentrated. The magic from the forced wheat made it so I really had to focus on the wafer-thin magic, but I found the connection, faint like at the other scenes. “Yes, it’s here too.”

“Here where?” Ronny asked.

I shifted my doughnut box. “Here in the field where they found the last dead girl.”

“So you haven’t found the murderers.”

That was about as much of this as I could stand. I teleported right to where I felt Ronny’s bright death god magic, so similar to my own and yet so different.

We were in an office with no direct sunlight, a door opposite me, and lots of papers on a desk on which the woman, Florence, was sitting. I remembered this human because Ronny had talked to her at the birthday party. She’d been wearing skull earrings then. Today, she was wearing ones shaped like a spinal cord. She muffled a scream but still jumped a little, one hand landing on the keyboard of her computer.

I narrowed my eyes at Ronny. “Chandler can’t think that you’d want her,” I said.

“You can’t do that to people, scare them by just appearing like that,” Florence said. “And I’d like this police officer, please. You can keep Charon and Agent Chandler.”

Ronny still had his phone at his ear. “How do we do that? Get Florence her man?”