Page 27 of Monsters in the Museum (Defenders of the Light #1)

Nora took a sip of her black coffee and grimaced as it burnt her tongue. When she was nervous, she had no patience to wait for it to cool.

As she looked up from her steaming mug, the reason for her nervousness walked in the café door. Odelle spotted Nora sitting at the quiet corner table and signaled that she was going to order a drink before coming to join her.

Nora went over exactly what she was going to tell Odelle about what had happened over the last few months for the dozenth time since she had gotten her sister’s text message earlier in the afternoon. Nora had woken up in her own apartment, thoroughly confused and disoriented. For a moment, Nora had thought that the entirety of the fight with the Shadow had been some sort of vivid fever dream, but the pieces of armor piled at the foot of her bed told a different story.

There had been a series of messages from Odelle, telling her that she had brought her home to sleep off her magic-induced hangover in her own bed. However, Odelle hadn’t foreseen Nora sleeping for over twenty-four hours and had eventually had to leave to go to work. Odelle made it very clear in her messages that saving her life in such a spectacular fashion as to be unconscious for over a day in no way got her off the hook and that she still owed her an explanation.

There were also several messages from Drew and Adam, assuring Nora that Adam’s condition was improving, although he was still in the hospital for monitoring.

So, Nora had peeled herself out of her bed, her mouth as dry as sandpaper, feeling as though she had drunk more than she ever had in college. She called Odelle to set up this coffee date and then made a quick stop by the hospital to see Adam on the way over. When Nora had expressed her nerves about telling her sister the whole truth to Adam, his answer had been simple, “I guarantee you I was just as nervous when I had to tell you the whole truth. I had been imagining all the ways that moment could go for seven hundred years, and I felt like my heart was going to explode. But in the end, the truth is always the right answer. Look how wonderfully it turned out for us.”

The wisdom of Adam’s words was somewhat diminished by the fact that he was gesticulating with a spoonful of Jello in an oversized hospital gown.

Now, as Odelle slipped into the seat across from Nora, she hoped that her good luck when it came to the truth would continue to hold. Nora opened her mouth to start with an apology, but it snapped shut when Odelle started speaking first.

“I have to come clean. Drew filled me in on most of what’s been happening.” Odelle took a sip of her cappuccino and licked the line of foam off her upper lip. “I was too impatient to wait for you to wake up, and you know me—it wasn’t hard to pry the important parts of the story from Drew.”

“And you believe it?”

Odelle snorted into her foam. “After everything I saw, I think I have to. Otherwise, that would mean I need you to take me to the mental hospital, like, yesterday.”

“I guess that makes my job a little easier then.” Nora sighed in relief.

Odelle shook her head.

“Don’t think this gets you off the hook. I want to hear your side of the story. I need to know why you didn’t tell me about all this sooner, and I need to know what’s going on with you and Adam.”

Nora knew she owed the whole truth to her sister, as long a story as it was to tell. She took one more sip of her coffee and then launched into the tale from her first meeting with Adam. Odelle was a perfect listener, as always, nodding along and asking incisive questions in that way that made her an excellent reporter.

When Nora got to the point in her story where she could have told Odelle the truth, she paused, trying to get her thoughts straight.

“I wish I had a better reason for not telling you, but I guess I was just scared,” Nora admitted. “It was all so new to me, and the thought of there being something so terrible coming after me… it felt like if I told you, then it would be after you too.”

Odelle looked at her quizzically. “Well, it looks like not telling me made me more of a target.”

Nora winced. “I know, but you’re my little sister. You’re so aggressively capable that I have to keep you safe from yourself. You hear about something dangerous, and you run toward it instead of away, looking for the next great story. It makes you a great journalist, but it’s bad for my blood pressure.”

“Okay,” Odelle snorted. “First, hello pot, it’s kettle. You are one of the most reckless people I know, so don’t give me that ‘you run into danger’ nonsense. And second, you shouldn’t worry about my journalistic instincts. Trying to make a story out of a secret society of immortal sorcerers on the news sounds like a great way to ruin my credibility forever.”

“Fair enough.”

Nora continued with her story, through the part where Adam told her the truth about her past lives. Odelle grew quiet, and Nora was unable to gauge her reaction. She soldiered on, recounting how she had found Odelle’s message and set off to save her, explaining how she had left Adam a message so that he would know to come after her, but she wouldn’t know what his plan was so she wouldn’t give their presence away to the Shadow.

Reaching the part where she found Odelle under the train tracks, she finished lamely, “And, well, you know the rest.”

There was a long silence before Odelle responded. “Well, maybe it’s a blessing in disguise that you didn’t tell me all of this until now, because I definitely wouldn’t have believed it unless I’d seen it with my own eyes.”

Nora was taken aback at Odelle’s forgiveness in the face of her protracted lying.

“You’re taking this awfully well,” she ventured carefully, “Especially since the last time I saw you, the Shadow had you convinced everything was my fault.”

It was Odelle’s turn to look like she was grasping for the proper words to explain herself.

“I will admit, I was furious,” Odelle began. “But it was Adam who changed my mind in the end. I was convinced that you had chosen this crazy band of sorcerers over your own sister, but when he threw himself in front of me to save my life, I was forced to see things differently. If he loves you enough to give his life for me, even though he’d barely met me… well, that really says something, I guess. It’s hard to feel betrayed when a stranger is willing to die for you.”

There wasn’t much Nora could say to that, so she reached across the table and took Odelle’s hand in her own.

“So, you really love him?” Odelle asked.

“I really do.”

Odelle’s smile turned wicked.

“Well then, I gotta know, does two thousand years of wisdom pay off between the sheets?”

Nora wished she could say she contained the urge to stick her tongue out at her sister as if she were a child, but she had no such luck.

Nora batted Adam’s hand away from where he was fiddling with his sling, and he took the opportunity to put his free arm around her shoulders and pull her close.

He had been discharged from the hospital a week earlier, the arm on his injured side still immobilized. He made no secret of how glad he was to be free of the place. Being immune to most diseases kept Adam from consuming much modern healthcare, and it turned out he wasn’t a fan of the institution. Nora could still hear him complaining about how there were too many tubes involved in his treatment. He had tried to convince Thad to take him back to the Sanctuary for treatment. Thad, however, was fascinated by the chest tube that had been inserted to treat Adam’s collapsed lung and insisted that he stay under Drew’s care. It was Thad’s reasoning that Drew would be able to offer superior care, considering that his quick thinking had been what saved Adam in the first place.

Now, Adam and Nora walked together through the crowded streets of the West Loop. It seemed odd to be heading to a bar to meet a band of immortal warriors, but Thad had insisted that it would be good for the group to get out into the world more. Odelle jumped to suggest a place while Thad led a shopping expedition for appropriate clothes.

Nora and Adam were the last to arrive, and Thad made sure that drinks were pressed into their hands as quickly as possible. Once everybody had an adequate libation in hand, Odelle clambered onto a chair, commanding the group’s attention.

“This just in: my sources have alerted me that Nora has, at long last, received her promotion to department head at the museum.”

Nora’s cheeks heated even as she grinned so hard her face hurt. She hadn’t wanted to brag about her own promotion, feeling like it was a small victory after the battle that had just been won, but she couldn’t help laughing as everybody raised their glasses to her, and Odelle let out a whoop.

“To Nora, who can carbon date a spear as well as gut you with it!”

The group laughed as they drank, eventually dispersing into smaller conversations throughout the room.

As Nora settled herself onto a stool, she looked out at the group and marveled at how well the different facets of her life mixed. As Nora watched, Thad slid into a booth next to Drew and stole a sip of his craft beer. Across from Drew sat Ezra, who was trying to understand Drew’s explanation of American football. He was all about the tackling each other part, but he did not understand why grown men would chase after a ball instead of simply fighting each other with real weapons.

In the corner by the window, Nora spotted Odelle talking to Antony. She was radiant and sporting a new pair of legs the Smith had built for her. Odelle had been dismayed to find that her one prosthetic had been hopelessly damaged by her use of it as a club to keep the Agent at bay. Antony had immediately risen to the occasion and offered to Smith her a new set of legs that would be far more durable, even if she did choose to use them as projectiles from time to time.

What Antony didn’t mention in advance was that he’d managed to fulfill Odelle’s dream of having sparkling prosthetics. At first glance, they looked to be flesh-colored, but as she moved, iridescent threads running through them caught the light and sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow.

When Antony had presented Odelle with the legs, she had squealed with glee and promptly thrown her arms around his neck, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. At her reaction, Antony’s eyes had taken on an even dreamier cast than usual.

Nora was drawn from her reverie by Adam, sliding next to her and echoing her earlier thoughts. “Everybody blends together better than they have any right to.”

Nora agreed, pressing an absent kiss to Adam’s cheek.

“You know,” Adam continued, obviously trying to sound offhand and not quite succeeding. “I think our lives would blend together pretty well, too, if we lived together.”

Nora paused with her glass halfway to her lips.

“Are you saying… you want to move in?”

“Only if you want to.”

“Where would we live?” Nora asked. “The Sanctuary? My apartment, or yours?”

“Either. Both.” Adam shrugged. “We don’t have to, though, only if you’re ready. I’m determined to do all of this right. Not skip anything.”

“Hmm,” Nora teased. “Well, I think I’ll have to make you a set of keys then and take you home to meet Irina this Christmas. Make you wear an ugly holiday sweater for good measure while she stuffs you full of pirozhki.”

“Meeting the parents huh? Make sure she breaks out the vodka,” Adam teased.

Nora chuckled in response before fishing her phone, which had begun to buzz, out of her pocket.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned. “It’s Mandy, and she’s saying that the humidity alarms in the new display case are going off. Somebody has to go check on them.”

Adam looked at her quizzically. “Nora, a few weeks ago, you dragged that spear unprotected through a blizzard. I doubt a few percentage changes in humidity is going to hurt it.”

Nora was already starting to locate her purse and her coat. “Yeah, but they don’t know that. I should at least put on a good show of going and checking on it. I can’t start off on the wrong foot in my new position of power.”

It was only a few minutes before Nora and Adam were out on the street, waiting for a cab. A few flurries of snow were just beginning to flutter down through the air as they waited, and Nora sighed heavily.

“Somehow, I thought things were going to be less crazy now that we had defeated the Agent. But I guess I didn’t consider that all the demands of my job weren’t going to go away that easily, and here I am, running out on parties again to go check on ancient weapons.”

Adam huffed a small chuckle, his breath clouding the air in front of him. “Nora, I think you’re always going to pick ancient weapons over parties. Now you just know how to fight with them as well as restore them.”

She shrugged. “I like to be thorough in my expertise. And at least this time, you won’t be there trying to steal the museum’s artifacts.”

Adam held up his hands defensively. “Hey, I told you before that I was there trying to protect the weapons. And if I hadn’t broken in, we might not have ended up meeting so soon.”

It was Nora’s turn to chuckle. “I know. I would just rather have you come in the front door with me than be chasing you through the loading docks.”

They fell silent for a few moments as they searched the passing cabs for one that was unoccupied.

“It’s not really over, is it?”

Adam shook his head, continuing to look at the street ahead of them.

“No, it’s not. We won a battle, but the war isn’t over.”

Nora shoved her mitten-clad hands in her pockets.

“Well, at least we’ve got plenty to be fighting for.”

At that moment, a taxi spied them on the curb and pulled over. Adam opened the door for Nora and let her slide inside before slipping in and directing the driver to the museum. Nora held Adam’s hand as she watched the glittering buildings go by, his grip firm as they sped towards the challenges ahead.