Ancient Magic (Dragon's Gift: The Huntress #1)(13)

She hadn’t mentioned that she had a date. He was pretty hot from the back—tall, broad shouldered, dark haired. Go Nix. When he turned to look at the wall, I caught sight of his profile.

Aidan.

Annoyance seethed through me. I’d told him to meet me at The Flying Wizard for this exact freaking reason. And I couldn’t even storm in there and yell at him, because that might make him suspicious.

Inside, Nix laughed at something Aidan said. Connor laughed too, a goofy smile on his face. My friends liked him. The five of us—Nix, Del, Connor, Claire, and I—were all pretty close. My friends weren’t dumb. If they were giving him the stamp of approval, I had to take that into account.

I sighed and pushed into P & P. The smell of buttery pastry and savory meat from the oven enveloped me, and my stomach grumbled. The kitchen at P & P was small—it was really more of a bar and coffee house than a restaurant. Claire and Connor were from Cornwall, home of the Cornish Pasty, a good thing to sell out of a small space. I was pretty much addicted to them.

“Hey,” I said when I reached their table, trying to stifle the sound of annoyance in my voice. “This isn’t The Flying Wizard.”

Aidan turned his too-handsome face toward me. I repressed a scowl at the desire that streaked through me.

“They didn’t have food,” he said. “I thought you’d be hungry after your raid.”

Nix shot me a how-the-heck-do-you-know-this-guy look.

Later, I tried to say without words.

“I ordered you two steak and stiltons,” he said.

At his words, Claire came out of the back with a plate carrying two golden brown pasties. My stomach grumbled as the divine scent wrapped around me. I tried to ignore how cool it was that he’d thought of feeding me. If there was one thing I was into, it was guys getting me food. Anyone getting me food, really.

“Thanks.” I dragged a chair over to their table and sat down between him and Nix. The table was small enough that our knees almost touched. I scooted away and looked at Claire instead of him.

Her brown hair fell in waves around her face, and she was dressed for the kitchen in an apron that covered her t-shirt and jeans, though I hadn’t seen her in here the last couple of days. “How’d your last job go?”

“Good. Caught the bloke as he was leaving the bank.”

“That’s convenient.” Claire was a Fire Mage with a dash of Hearth Witch, hence the coffee shop. By day, she was a mercenary. Magical organizations hired her to handle problems. She kicked ass but had an unquenchable desire to make excellent coffee and pastries. Connor hadn’t inherited any of his mother’s Fire Mage powers and was all Hearth Witch, so he ran their shop most of the time. He was wickedly good at potions, which lent itself to preparing the enchanted coffees they offered.

“Yeah, it was an easy job. You want the usual?” Claire asked, her dark eyes alight with the same who-is-this-dude look that the others had sent my way.

Everyone thought it was weird as hell that I was hanging out with one of the wealthiest, most powerful guys in the world. I agreed.

“Uh, no thanks. A latte?” PBR was my drink of choice in the evenings, even though everyone made fun of me for drinking the beer of hipsters and hillbillies. I didn’t drink a lot, but I was picky about it when I did. But if I was going to be chatting with Aidan about the scroll—or anything really—I needed to be on my game.

“Sure thing,” Claire said.

“How’d it go today?” Connor asked from behind the counter as he crafted my latte. He had the same dark hair as Claire and also favored her P & P uniform of jeans and a t-shirt topped with an apron.

“Ah, good,” I said, glancing awkwardly at Aidan. Connor liked to hear about the enchantments and demons in each tomb or temple that I raided, but now wasn’t the time for a play-by-play. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Cool.” He brought my coffee over.

“Thanks.” I dug into the pasties.

“I’m headed out,” Nix said. “Good to meet you, Aidan.”

“See you later,” I said, grateful she was getting away from Aidan. She and the others might have approved of him, but he was still too much of an unknown for me to be comfortable trusting him around the people I loved.

I turned to Aidan and really looked at him for the first time since entering P & P. I’d never seen a guy make a gray t-shirt look so good. It was a dark gray, the same color as his eyes. I’d thought they were brown.

“Have you eaten?” I asked, trying to distract myself from his eyes. He had a pint of some kind of dark beer in front of him.

“Yes. The pasties were excellent.”

“So, tell me more about this scroll,” I said between bites. “But quietly, I don’t want to drag Connor or Claire into this.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What else is written in it? I’ve never heard of it before, but it sounds pretty valuable.”

“It is. It contains information about all the most powerful species of supernaturals. Strengths and weaknesses. I don’t have many weaknesses, but I don’t want anyone knowing them.”

“Don’t blame you.” I popped the last bite of pasty into my mouth.

“And according to a reference I just found in an old text, it’s a prophetic scroll. It contains a list of the names and descriptions of individuals who belong to all the most powerful species. Past and present.”