Page 15 of Claiming Chaos

He heard my words? Was he implying that I didn’t mean what I said? If so, he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did. I’d always been a say what I mean and mean what I say gal.

I joined the others in the kitchen. Shade cut his gaze from Chaos to me, but thankfully he kept his mouth shut. It was too early in the morning to deal with his bullshit. Patrice stood at the stove, frying bacon, and Miles took two slices of bread from the toaster, adding them to the stack, while Ember poured two more cups of coffee, offering them to Chaos and me.

I accepted the mug and sank into a chair at the table. “Where’d all the food come from?”

“Miles and I stepped out this morning and went to the corner market.” Patrice added four more slices to the pan. They sizzled and popped, filling the room with their delicious aroma and making my mouth water.

Patrice plated the food and presented us with a spread of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast with jam before joining Chaos, Ember, and me at the table. Miles and Shade sat at the counter, and we ate in glorious silence. When we finished, I collected the empty plates and carried them to the kitchen. Chaos picked up a dish towel and joined me at the sink.

“I’ve got it.” I snatched the towel from his hands.

He grabbed it back. “You wash; I’ll dry.”

I gritted my teeth. “I was planning to put them in the dishwasher.”

He stepped away and opened it, gesturing to the racks already full. Dammit, I’d forgotten to empty it.

Shade clutched his coffee in both hands. “Are we not going to talk about the fact that Ash is sleeping with a demon?”

Ember refilled her mug and leaned a hip against the counter. “It’s irrelevant to our problems, so no. We’re not going to talk about my sister’s sex life.”

Hallelujah.

I finished washing the dishes and poured the last of the coffee into my mug. “We have two options. We can wait it out, let Chrys find the sigils and summon Mayhem, and then hope Chaos can get to him before she uses him to destroy us. Or, we can go on the offensive.”

“Being offensive is our best bet.” Chaos dried his hands on a towel and dropped it on the counter.

I hung it in its proper place. “You don’t even know—”

“We find her, kill her, and take the skull.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if it were the only viable course of action.

“She nearly killed all of us,” Miles said. “That won’t be an easy feat.”

“And good luck finding her,” Ember added. “Scrying for Shade took so much vim we didn’t have enough left to fight.”

I blew out a long, slow breath and pressed my lips into a line.

“That’s not what you meant, is it? You prefer to wait it out?” Patrice carried the frying pan to the sink and washed it. At least someone wanted to hear my suggestion.

“No. If she gets control of Mayhem, who knows what she’ll do. We can’t let her summon him.” I sipped my coffee, waiting for them all to look at me. “We have to do it first.”

“How?” Ember asked. “We don’t have the sigils either. They burned up in Shade’s house. Do you remember what they look like?”

“Not exactly, and we can’t risk doing it wrong. Who knows what might happen if we did.” I drummed my fingers against my mug and flicked my gaze to Chaos. “Can you draw them?”

His brow furrowed. “I believe so.”

“That didn’t sound convincing.” Ember opened a drawer and pulled out a pad of paper and a pencil.

“I’ve never tried.” He took the paper and gripped the pencil in his left hand. “Mayhem’s mark is similar to mine, so it would start with a curve at the top.” He laid the pad on the counter and began to draw.

I sipped my coffee and watched the sigil take form. The treble clef shape looked like Chaos’s mark, but Mayhem’s had sharper edges and more straight lines. When he got to the bottom, he looped it around to the right and paused.

“I think it goes left.” I set my mug on the counter and pointed to his mistake.

“It most certainly goes right. What comes after this loop is why I paused. Mayhem and Discord have the same angles here, but they are reversed. I can’t remember which is which.”

“Well, that’s a problem.” I crossed my arms. “And I still think it goes left.”