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Chapter 6

6

L averna spent the rest of the night trying to catch up on all the things that needed her attention. Spending the day with Romulus had left her behind, and with so many mouths to feed and mischief to cause, she was left scrambling to get it all done.

"Nice shirt," Roberto commented when she finally made it to dinner. There was a soup kitchen that they left open in one of the old chapel areas in the catacombs, and Laverna liked to eat there at least once a day.

Roberto was handsome but had a lean, shifty look about him, which made people underestimate him in every way. He was a demon with daggers but wasn't quick to use them. He was as close to a second in command as Laverna had.

"My other one got wrecked, so I took what was available," Laverna said. She had been too busy to take off Romulus's black shirt, the red wolf logo reminding her of the way he nuzzled her in the field.

Laverna got herself a tray of food, and they sat down at one of the long tables. Roberto joined her, producing a bottle of wine from his shoulder bag and setting it between them.

"Tell me, boss. How bad is it?" he asked.

"Bad," Laverna said around a mouthful of fresh bread. "Witches bad. They haven't been back to Rome in a really long time, and if they are the same ones, we are in double the amount of shit."

Roberto nodded, taking the information on board. It took a lot to shock him, which was why Laverna liked him so much. Roberto didn't know how to panic.

"Okay, witches. What do you need me to do?" he asked.

"I need you to look and see if we have any reports of missing children under the age of ten. I also need any information on women in the city selling love potions. Any of that twin flame, capture your true love nonsense," Laverna replied and had a mouthful of the wine.

"That could be a long list. What else?" Roberto pressed.

"Grave desecration and robbing. They were always big on that shit," Laverna ran a hand over her face in frustration. "I know we might get a million reports, but we might not. The witches used to offer their services to rich and poor alike. They would help you poison your husband or help you steal one from someone else. They could raise the dead, promising to give your loved one back, and then the thing they brought back would kill the family. The witches would move into the house and take the family's stuff. They cause problems and heartache, and they do it all for profit."

Roberto nodded and finished off his minestrone in silence. He was absorbing and processing, and Laverna let him. She liked that he could be silent. Her brain was on fire and had been all day.

Romulus admitted things weren't right with him, and she had seen a fresh vulnerability in him that she didn't know what to do with. One of the things that had always pissed her off about him was that he was always so powerful, confident, and in control.

She had always wanted to run her hands through his perfectly groomed hair and mess him up so he didn't look so untouchable. Watching him crawl about on his hands and knees was a fucking revelation. His wolf liked the way she smelled. Whatever that meant.

Fates, she needed to go home and sit in silence for a few hours.

"Go home and rest. I'll send out word for what we are looking for and report in if we find anything," Roberto said, reading her far too easily.

Laverna reached across the table and squeezed his forearm. "Thank you, amico . Can you please set up a curfew? I want all of our people inside one of the shelters by midnight going forward. Especially anyone under twenty. It won't be forever, just until I kill these fucking witches for what they did to us," Laverna replied and got up to clean off her tray.

Laverna walked through the catacombs, greeting a few people with nods and smiles but not stopping. If she stopped to listen to a petition, she would never have gotten to bed.

Very few people had ever learned where Laverna rested her head at night. Roberto and Bellona were currently the only people who knew, and that was for safety reasons if anything happened to her. Both respected her privacy.

Laverna's stomach clenched as she thought about how angry Bellona had been at her. She had few people she actually trusted, and she hated that Bellona was mad at her. It was something that only time could fix.

Laverna had lost contact with all the gods for a long, long time until she had heard Isis calling her out to her island on the Nile twenty years ago. She had reconnected with Bellona, Eris, and a few other goddesses from different pantheons. Now she had also reconnected with the Greeks, and eternity didn't seem so fucking unbearable. The loneliness had been eating away at her, and Isis knew it. Humans lived and died in the blink of an eye. Gods needed other immortals to make the centuries not seem so endless.

It didn't matter that Romulus was in the same city. He had never seemed to want any kind of friendship from her, or anything else for that matter. They had been content to stay in their lanes.

His wolf likes the way you smell , a voice reminded her. What the fuck was going on with him? Laverna couldn't dwell on it because, knowing Romulus, once the witches were taken care of, he would go back to pretending she didn't exist again.

Laverna walked the catacombs in the dark, moving deeper and deeper until she came to a door of bronze and wood. She unlocked it with a brush of her power and stepped into the cool darkness of her den. She turned on the soft lighting and took a few moments to breathe the silence inside of her.

Laverna knew that Roberto would have piles of reports and profiles on people for her to look at by the following sundown. He didn't know what to look for when it came to magic. The wolves would have a better chance of sniffing it out because of the foul stench they left in the reserve.

Laverna pulled out her phone. Only through technology and divine power did she actually get reception, and she had no missed calls or updates. She found Eris's number and shot her a message.

Are you in Rome at the moment?

Egypt, visiting with Isis. Why? came the response almost instantly.

Witches have come back to the city and already killed people. I wanted to see if you had heard or felt anything.

I'll be there tomorrow. Our usual spot. 1.p.m.

Laverna smiled. Despite Eris's purview to cause chaos, there were some problems that even she knew were bad for everyone. The witches had terrorized Rome before, and no one wanted to go back to those times.

Feeling better, Laverna kicked off her jeans and boots and crawled into bed. She tried not to think too hard about why she still hadn't taken off Romulus's shirt. It was soft and smelled like him, and it comforted her.

Last time, the witches had done their best to capture her because the organs and ichor of a goddess would be powerful. It was only with Romulus's help that they never succeeded. Laverna would never admit to being afraid, but smelling Romulus reminded her she wouldn't be facing the hags alone, even if they had come back in force. She breathed in, told herself she wasn't in the fight alone, and finally went to sleep.

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