Vatnajökull, Iceland
Research Team Three
February 7th, 2023
WHEN ICELAND WAS formed, Hell should have been taking notes. Fire and brimstone couldn’t compete with a mid-winter storm on an endless plain of blue-grey ice that was just barely older than Alastair.
Shielding his data screen from the driving snow with a gloved hand, he peered through his goggles at the numbers. Still wrong. Nothing drastic, just enough discrepancy to be annoying. And with the weather getting worse, he didn’t have the luxury of retaking the measurements.
The bitter air was a maelstrom of whirling cloud, turning the rest of the team into grey shapes around him and the icy wind screaming down the glacier had sleet for teeth. It sought out the seams of their jackets and turned Alastair’s beard into a heavy lump of ice.
The cold hardly touched him. Demons ran hot. He could tolerate the storm to recalibrate the numbers, but the rest of the team certainly couldn’t last in this bitter winter chill, and there was the need to keep up appearances, so he let his discomfort metamorphose into a shiver.
“What’s the matter?” Mike bellowed over the roaring wind. “Getting cold feet, old man?”
Alastair’s annoyance over the skewed data boiled into anger. Every team had its asshole, and theirs was Mike. Alastair had established a hands-off policy concerning humans ever since the 1500s, but there was just something about the smirking blond that made him want to drop the guy down a crevasse.
“Speak for yourself,” he yelled back, putting the screen away and trudging onwards. “I love this.”
He did not, in fact, love it. He missed the research station in Hawaii, where he didn’t have to bundle up in a half-dozen layers to keep the heat of his hellfire heart from damaging the environment around him. He missed trekking up to the volcanoes, hiking over miles of sun-baked black rock with a team where everybody’s skin was hot to the touch by the end of the day. But mostly, he missed life without Mike.
Mike picked up speed, pulling ahead of Alastair as they followed the rest of the team.
Narrowing his eyes behind his goggles, Alastair lengthened his stride and closed the gap.
“Go at your own pace,” Mike hollered over to him. “We don’t want you having a heart attack out here.” The last part didn’t sound particularly convincing.
“This is my pace,” Alastair shouted back.
“Yeah? Then why weren’t you doing it before I . . .”
“Guys, guys,” Ari yelled from ahead of them, her boss-voice barely audible over the howling wind. She and Gita had both stopped ahead of them. Her cheeks were vibrant pink with cold and her braids were two long icicles, but she shook her head and pointed forward, her disapproval clear.
They made the trek back down together, falling into silence, and Alastair reminded himself what he was doing here. Above all else, he was a scholar. In this life, a scientist, and he would go where he was placed. He hadn’t enjoyed Brazil much either, but even in the worst places, he’d been able to scrounge up enough beauty to keep himself going.
There was a terrible purity being inside a winter storm, with no room left in your mind for anything but your next breath and where to place your boots on the booming sheet of ice beneath your feet. And beneath that, against all odds, rivers of magma coursed like veins under the glacier.
The storm ripped him open, hollowed him out, scrubbed his soul clean. And just for a moment, he felt strong and pure, the statue of an old man with a parka and a backpack, carved out of the same blue-grey ice as the glacier, with a molten heart.
THEY REVIEWED WHAT data they’d managed to collect over steaming spoonfuls of fish stew at base, hunched over the small table as the storm battered the walls of the main trailer around them. The wooden bench had one leg slightly shorter than the rest, and each time Mike leaned forward to point at something on Ari’s screen, the resulting clunk beneath him was another sliver of irritation digging into Alastair’s mind.
He’d had a palace once, all jet-black stone and torchlight and tall wrought-iron chairs that would never clunk. There’d been a job and he’d been damn good at it, and so they’d given him a palace and thirty-six beautifully competent legions to command. If you were a good environmental scientist, however, you got sent to the most desolate stretch of Iceland in the middle of winter.
Some days he was sorrier than others that Heaven and Hell had closed their gates.
Alastair glared at the back of Mike’s head as the bench clunked again. Mike was the kind of man people described as “aging well”. Just enough grey around the temples to signify his maturity, but with the body of an Olympic swimmer who probably spent twenty-six hours a day in the pool. Not that Alastair was upset with his own aging looks, he was described as “dapper” and “dashing” on a regular basis, but there was just a certain “Richard Gere in Pretty Woman” to Mike that made him want to puke.
Ari sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, rubbing at the indent her goggles had left there. “Bad news: I think we froze our asses off for nothing today, folks.”
Mike made a dumb, baffled face. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” she said, “Al, all your numbers are wonky. Check your equipment calibration tomorrow before you start.”
Mike raised an eyebrow at him, leaning back so that the bench lurched under them yet again.
“And Mike,” Ari continued, her voice turning sharp, “you didn’t even take half the readings I asked you to. If you spent half as much time on the job as you do trying to get a rise out of Al, you’d have the Nobel Prize by now.”
Mike’s blue eyes narrowed, his mouth slanting in offense. “I’m not . . .”
“And I’m on strike,” Gita piped up, breaking the sudden tension. When all eyes turned to her, the older woman smiled sweetly. “After the horrible, hurtful thing that Ari called me this morning.”
“Ari?” Alastair asked, startled. “What did she . . . ?”
“Grandmotherly,” Gita intoned. She mimed a dagger hitting her heart.
Ari groaned and looked at the ceiling. “I didn’t! I said you reminded me of my grandma. Who, by the way, is spry and awesome.”
“She’d probably go on strike if you called her that too,” Gita said.
“Nobody’s on strike!” Ari said. In the resulting silence, the sides of the trailer warped and boomed in the wind, sleet pinging against the waterproofed material like pebbles against a drum. “Except maybe Vatnajökull.”
“Old girl’s real angry tonight,” Gita agreed with a rueful smile. “We’ve still got a week before we meet up with the other teams. We’ll get the data, kid.”
Ari nodded, shutting down the datascreen and polishing off the rest of her stew. “Everybody clean up and get some rest. Tomorrow, we get our shit together.”
Outside, the wind screamed down the glacier onto the camp, although in agreement, protest, or signifying nothing at all, Alastair didn’t know.
ALASTAIR WAS HALFWAY through cleaning up when everything came to a halt. Pulling off his boots and removing the melted icepacks meant to keep his feet from destroying the glacier as he walked on it, he came up with a handful of torn strands of thermal lining. He stared at it in confusion, felt inside again—almost all of the lining had been torn out of both of his boots. No wonder his numbers had been off. With every step he’d taken today, he’d been sinking a few inches into the surface of the glacier.
Getting cold feet, old man?
With a snarl, he hurled one of the boots hard enough at the wall that a map fell down. Grabbing the other one as evidence, he stalked out of his room to find Mike. This was more than just another one of the guy’s stupid university frat-boy pranks. It was a full day’s efforts wasted, a pair of boots ruined, and the closest Alastair had come to potentially being exposed in a very long time.
He intended to use calm words and an austere tone, to summon up some of his old dignity and authority to show Mike how stupid and juvenile he was being.
When he found the bastard in the communal washroom, Mike was whistling tunelessly, messing with something at the sink.
Dignity went out the window: Alastair hurled the boot at Mike’s head. The other man ducked with a yelp and the boot struck the mirror behind him, cracking a corner off of it.
“Whoa, man!” Mike exclaimed, whirling around.
“What the hell’s your problem?” Alastair growled, closing the distance between them. “You sonofabitch, this needs to stop. I don’t know what you . . .”
There was something green and white in Mike’s hand. Something that looked an awful lot like Alastair’s toothbrush.
For the first time in over five hundred years, Alastair threw a punch at a human, with the full force of his strength behind it.
And when his hand cracked the side of Mike’s face, there wasn’t even a moment to celebrate. The mountain of a man barely moved under the hit, but struck back, smacking Alastair’s fist aside and sinking a punch into his belly. Hard. The toothbrush dropped and Alastair had thrown himself back at Mike before it clattered to the floor. He grabbed at him, trying to drive him back, to bring him down, and Mike struck for his face, grazing his jaw with a fist that burned cold. White heat flared in Mike’s eyes, frosting over the blue of them, and to his shock, Alastair felt the hellfire flare of his own in response. His vision shimmered into hues of red and grey as the revelation slammed into him.
The little shit was an angel.
The moment hung in the air like a fog of frost, both men’s eyes locked in mirrored shock, realization dawning upon them.
How the hell did I miss that?
Time jolted both men back into the bathroom-ring. The broad angel was quicker to recover, and squared off first, his blue eyes burning with murderous intent. Alastair couldn’t fault him for lack of guts. The air above him shimmered and warped in the ghostly impression of wings.
“You don’t want this fight,” Alastair warned, the old accent of hellspeak sliding into his words.
Mike grinned, gleaming faintly with power. “Yeah, I do,” he said, “and now it makes sense why.”
He lunged at Alastair, tackling him hard around the middle and driving them both back against the far wall with a crash. The entire trailer shuddered and Alastair scrambled to stay on his feet, striking blindly for Mike’s head. It was just an angel, just one lone angel, not even one who he remembered . . . If he could just get a hit in . . .
Mike’s fist connected with the side of his head, and his vision exploded into fractured stars. He didn’t realize he’d fallen until his back smashed against the floor and Mike threw himself down on top of him, pinning one of his arms with a knee and driving punches into Alastair’s face. Alastair clawed at him with his free hands, raking his nails over Mike’s face. Thin lines of red blossomed up over white skin, steaming and blistering from Alastair’s unholy claws, but Mike didn’t stop, landing blow after clumsy blow, his face fixed in a rictus of anger.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Ari bellowed from the doorway. “Are you both out of your minds?!”
Mike froze and Alastair threw him off, putting distance between them. There was blood dripping onto his shirt in a sluggish trickle and he was panting, his chest aching fiercely with each breath.
Ari stalked into the washroom, Gita on her heels. “You two are grown-ass adults,” she barked, her voice shaking with anger. “I don’t care how late in the season it is or what the budget looks like. If you can’t act like the scientists they told me you were, I will send you both the fuck out of here! I need a research team, not this . . . this pissing match!”
Neither of them said a word and neither of them looked up. Ari made a wordless noise of frustration, slapping her hands against her sides.
“Just . . . just go to bed. Stay out of each other’s way. I have to phone HQ. This sort of shit gets reported,” she snapped, and left the trailer.
Gita studied them for a long moment, frowning. She pointed to Mike. “Out,” she said.
He slunk out past her, with Alastair’s blood still coating his knuckles. Alastair stared after him, furious and stunned. He couldn’t catch his breath and his hands were shaking. It should’ve been so easy . . .
“Now you,” Gita told him, pointing at the door. “Let it go, Al. He’s not worth losing your job over.”
Alastair pushed himself to his feet, meeting her eyes in disbelief. He felt like the heat of his anger was still blazing from him, but Gita didn’t back down, putting her hands on her hips.
“Not worth it, Al,” she repeated slowly. “One of you has to be the bigger man here.”
When Alastair slid out of the trailer past her, the frozen night wind didn’t even touch him.
NEITHER OF US are men, he hissed in his mind, his thoughts still holding the sizzle of hellspeak.
The lamp hit the wall with a satisfying crash, plunging the room into darkness and doing absolutely nothing to take the edge off his rage.
He’d been a Duke. He’d had legions. They’d called him “my lord”. An invitation to dine with him was bragging rights for a decade. Alastair stalked, pacing the tiny area, feeling the walls close in around him. His room was too small to hold the size of his anger and disgust.
Lazy, stupid, old fool . . .
He’d gotten slow and soft, and dangerously complacent. To not notice an angel under his nose, locked in close quarters with the creature for weeks now? It was unforgivable, humiliating. There’d been so many signs; the bone-deep repulsion he felt when Mike was around, the instinctive way he’d made note of the guy entering the same room as him.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the little hand mirror by the desk, saw the red gleam of his eyes highlighting the cuts and bruises on his face. The fat lip swelling above his beard. The blood at the side of his nose looked black in this light.
Snarling, he let his form slip, flashing glimpses of charred ebony demon skin in the cuts on his face, and tore the mirror down with a hiss, crushing it under his foot.
He’d been a Duke. Alastair sighed, feeling the past-tense of another life crash down on his shoulders. Sitting down, he put his face in his hands.
His therapist, Leonard, had told him dissatisfaction was normal for a man his age. The solution: buy a red sports car and drive down the highway at two hundred kilometres per hour with the top down and a bombshell in the passenger seat. Instead, Alastair had come to Iceland.
He hated it here, the cold and the close quarters and all the care he had to take on the glacier. But this place was his to lose, so was his job, and there was no way he was going to let some angelic little upstart take that away from him. He’d worked his way back up to some semblance of a reputation, starting from scratch on the plane of mortals. He’d suffered through humiliating internships, slogged through years of human academia from mentors under a century old . . .
Shutting his eyes and steadying his breath, he mustered his strength and thrust his arm out, plunging it between realms and reaching into Hell.
It was still there, and the comfort of the heat on the other side sang a siren-song to his blood, drawing him in, inviting him to stay. Foolish old creature, what are you doing living in the ice?
His fingertips touched the handle of his scourge, locking around it, drawing it back. It was a balancing act, dragging the weapon between realms without toppling over that line himself. He found himself reaching for the ancient pulse of the volcanoes that boiled beneath the glaciers, the molten core of the island, the one part of this place that wasn’t alien to him. The fire in a land of ice.
Steadily, with effort, he drew the full length of the scourge into the room with him, and the window to Hell snapped shut once more.
The lashes of the scourge hung like dead snakes, black and limp, absent the hellfire that should have been crackling through them. His age-old weapon looked like something from a discount pirate costume, the onyx handle dull and grimy in his hand. It felt . . . too light.
He raised his arm, wincing at the ache in his bruised shoulder, and cracked the scourge in an arc above him.
Nothing. Not even a spark.
Dismay rose like bile in his throat. He tried pressing his will into the coils, trying to dredge up some of the old power in him, and his knees immediately went so weak that he had to sit down. And yet . . . still nothing.
Exhausted, and bruised in more ways than the physical, Alastair crammed the useless scourge into a spare backpack, and collapsed into bed.
ARI KEPT THEM on tight leashes for the next few days, pairing Alastair with Gita and keeping her eye on Mike. They were never alone together anymore.
It didn’t keep them from sizing each other up, circling around each other like prowling lions. Ari had more than a few muttered comments about testosterone and male egos, but all Alastair could think about was the dead weapon tucked away in his room.
He was losing sleep, spending long nights obsessively working with the scourge, trying to coax fire back into the lashes. Kicking himself for letting himself get old and . . . human. Cursing himself for every leisurely cup of tea he’d drank, for every night spent reading novels, for every day wasted watching the sky change colour.
Mike didn’t seem to be a prime angelic specimen either; he’d never seen such a sloppy attack from one of the warriors of Heaven. But it had still taken him down. It didn’t matter that they were both rusty. Alastair was rustier, and Mike was going to win.
To Ari’s dismay, he started turning in work half completed, jotting down sloppy readings with exhaustion-clumsy hands. When he begged off fieldwork for a day (hoping to bring the scourge outside and test it in the open air while the humans were gone), she shook her head, looking sad.
“Strike two, Al,” she sighed. “Be here or don’t. You don’t survive Vatnajökull with a half-assed effort.”
Her disappointed words rang in his ears, echoing in his mind. A small part of him thought that he shouldn’t care about losing a human job in a place that he didn’t like anyway. The much larger part of him was devastated.
He was staring in the broken bathroom mirror that night, dabbing ointment on the cuts that wouldn’t quite heal, when his anger finally broke and dissolved into a deep, dark pool of despair, and finally, tears. Subtle streaks of flame streaked down his cheeks, leaving a black trail of coal.
“You’re too old for this,” he murmured. There were lines on his face that hadn’t been there before, and more white in his beard. His bones ached.
“Bullshit,” came a voice from the shower stall.
He jumped, wiping his cheeks and charring the cuffs of his nightshirt. But it was only Gita, stepping out with a towel wrapped around her, her feet bare on the icy plastic floor. She frowned at him, grey-streaked curls dripping, and he stared at her despite himself. There was so much fire in her that he often forgot the woman’s age. Her skin was a tapestry of wrinkles and stretchmarks, dotted with age spots and old scars; it hung soft and loose on her arms, above her knees, along her throat.
Grandmotherly, he thought. And steel underneath.
“Bullshit,” she repeated. “You’ve got as much right to be here as anyone, Al. You’ve got more degrees than Mike has fingers and, last I heard, you come with one hell of a recommendation from the Dean at Manoa. One of the best she’s met, I believe was the wording.”
She stepped forward and tapped his forehead with a wet finger. “You’re here because you give a shit about the world. And because you’re good at your job. Maybe try remembering that for a change, huh?”
HE COULDN’T GET Gita’s words out of his head. And when he sat down that night, twisting the lashes of his scourge over his fingers meditatively, he realized that now he was a scientist first, and a demon second. Because he was here as Dr. Alastair Duke, senior environmental researcher, not as Allocer, Great Duke of Hell. And as a scientist, he didn’t have to worry about defending himself from the wrath of angels, because he was doing nothing wrong.
He was here because he’d been stationed here, and nothing more.
Mike had no more right to this place than he did; neither of them were from this world. And if a demon’s only crime was existing, an avenging angel was nothing more than an asshole.
He was a demon and a scientist, and he could be both, he decided. He allowed himself to feel the prickle of fire in his chest and feel calm in his bones. And he breathed.
The scourge flared to life under his hands, casting the room into a riot of crimson, deep shadows writhing in the dancing light.
“Welcome back,” he murmured, smiling.
He’d lost one home, his kingdom forged of brimstone and passion. He wasn’t prepared to lose another for simply existing.
THE WHOLE ACT of leaving notes felt juvenile, but he wasn’t prepared to have his final showdown anywhere near the women. Not because they were women, but because they wouldn’t understand, and it wasn’t up to them to clean up his body. He didn’t want to give Ari anything to report to HQ that was going to put her credibility or reputation at stake, and if she described a middle-aged man combusting into dust and gone without a trace, she’d have more than botched research to worry about.
The note for Gita and Ari was simple. It absolved them from liability, explained his disappearance as a voluntary one, and promised he’d write from Hawaii.
The one for Mike made him giddy the second he’d began to write. It felt so childish, but he’d smirked while scribing the whole thing in sharpie. It was the adult equivalent of “meet me at the bike racks after lunch.” Except it was a cave in Iceland, and he’d have to trudge through the storm to get there.
Alastair waited, perched on a rock in a suit. His parka was in his backpack, along with his boots, but that was only to negate any suspicion about his disappearance. He’d actually enjoyed rushing through the storm, gliding over the ice, feeling the prickle of snow on his skin. Brushing back his hair, he smiled, his scourge clutched in his hand.
If he had to make a last stand, he was satisfied with the location at least. The jagged black rocks stuck out like fangs in the mouth of the cave, and the ice that coated the walls and ceiling was the same colours as the waters of Hawaii, frozen turquoise and silver.
It didn’t take long for Mike to arrive, similarly snubbing the weather in a t-shirt and jeans. There was a snap of cold that shot through the cave when he skidded in. He’d also brought his parka and boots, but tossed them into a corner of the cave. His features were icy, and his sword drawn.
Alastair grinned, looking at Heaven’s weapon, remembering the pristine blue metal of their blades and the gold inlay at the hilt. Works of art: he’d always admired their artisans for their craftsmanship.
“Now you look like the fiend I knew you were,” Mike chuckled, his deep baritone echoing off the ice. He took a step forward, moving from the mouth of the cave into the shadowy darkness.
Alastair scoffed. Maybe it was his posture, or his scourge. Maybe his smile had been more malevolent than he’d intended, or maybe Mike just didn’t like Armani. He stood, rolling his neck. He was cool, as though the winter had burrowed into his veins, settling a glacier next to his fiery heart. It was like he finally belonged in this land of fire and ice.
Mike jittered, taking another big step towards him. “Let’s do this, hellspawn.”
Spreading his hands, Alastair gave the angel a slight bow of his head. “It’s what you’re good at, after all.”
The wind blasted across the mouth of the cave, creating a mournful wail, some ice dropping from the wall into the shadows.
Alastair let his heart burst to life, the complacency of mortal existence giving way to the passion and fervour of the Hells. Cracking his scourge over his head in an arc, the old weapon exploded into roaring flame, suddenly heavy in his hand, like he remembered.
Mike jumped back, his shimmering blue eyes transfixed on the weapon. His sword was drawn but remained lowered, glistening in the reflection of the blazing scourge.
Alastair bowed again. “At your leave, saint.”
Shaking his head, Mike tensed his arm, raising his sword high over his head and lunged towards him, bellowing an angelic war cry.
The scourge cracked, throwing white sparks back in his face, and Alastair dodged out of reach of the blade.
“You sonofabitch,” Alastair hissed, losing his earlier composure. He stabbed a finger at Mike, insult boiling in his stomach. “You treat me like a feeble old man now? You didn’t hesitate in punching my face in before.”
Mike blinked, already on his feet with his sword again raised in front of him. He shook his head, charred sections of his blond hair flashing. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Light it!” Alastair bellowed, pointing at the sword. “Light your damn blade and fight me like a man!” His eyes were burning now, filled with fury.
Clenching his jaw, Mike lunged again, this time getting hit with the full wall of hellfire and crashing into the dirt.
“We’re not men!” Mike spat.
Alastair stared at his opponent’s back; Mike was vulnerable as he got to his feet, but there was no glory in fighting a handicapped adversary. He would fight the angel at full strength and die valiantly, or not at all. “Light. The. Sword,” he hissed.
The blade was high again, and Mike glared at him, his eyes icy.
“Fight me!” Mike demanded. “Like a demon. Come on!”
“Light the fucking sword! I’m not coming at you without your blade burning, so just light the damned thing!”
“I can’t!” Mike snarled, his face twisting in a grimace, and he lunged again.
Alastair easily dodged the attack, but did not crack the scourge again. “You what?”
“I can’t light it,” Mike repeated, not meeting Alastair’s eyes, his jaw flexing. “But we can still do this. I have the sword and I’m here to vanquish you! So fight me, fiend.”
And for the first time, Alastair truly saw him. Someone, not so unlike himself, spending countless hours shaking his weapon, trying to light it to no avail. Desperation and hopelessness settling in, then determination to see the act through to the end when challenged.
If he hadn’t challenged Mike, would the battle have happened at all? Or would the angel have turned tail and left, unable to light his holy weapon, and too ashamed to admit it. Alastair had considered it himself.
The scourge dimmed, turning dark and lax at Alastair’s side.
“Come on!” Mike goaded.
“There’s not much difference between you and I,” Alastair said at last.
The angel scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“We’re both making our way in a world that isn’t our home. Doing the best we can. I’ll say you’re doing marginally better than myself, but that could be due to the broadness of your shoulders.”
Mike’s sword came to rest at his side, the tip zinging over the stone, and he gave Alastair a curious look.
The demon raised an eyebrow. “Do we want to do this?”
Mike nodded, too quickly. “Yeah, of course we do.” The cave was silent a few moments, before he continued. “I . . . think so, anyway.”
“We’re biologically predisposed to be adversaries,” Alastair countered. “There’s a difference. It makes sense why we were at each other’s throats. It felt right.” He lifted his free hand in a shrug. “But do we have to?”
A series of expressions flashed over Mike’s face, though the underlying confusion remained. As did the conflict. He was silent for a long moment before he spoke. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. Not anymore, anyway.”
Alastair nodded, tucking his scourge into his belt. He found himself smiling. “Agreed.” He walked over to his backpack, pulling out his winter clothes. “I like tea.”
“What?”
Alastair shrugged into his parka, dressing for the cold. “We didn’t have tea in Hell. Could never get the hang of it. So now, I like tea.”
Mike laughed. “Football. And butter chicken.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m─”
Putting up his hands, Alastair shook his head. “As far as we need to be concerned I’m Doctor Alastair Duke, and you’re Doctor Michael Archer. And that’s all that matters so long as the armistice exists.” He zipped up his parka thoughtfully. “Or unless the antichrist is born.”
Mike tucked his sword into his sheath and glancing over as he reclaimed his discarded parka and boots. “Is that really a thing? The antichrist, I mean.”
Alastair shrugged, walking towards the mouth of the cave. “We’ve got a betting pool. But that’s about it.”
The winter wind whipped at them but neither found the cold uncomfortable company as they began the trek back to the research station together.
HIGH ABOVE THE cave, braced against the gusting snow, the two women stood in silence and shadow, hidden by the blizzard.
The silhouettes of Alastair and Mike were growing smaller in the distance.
Gita released her grip on Ari’s shoulder. “See? I told you we could wait.”
Shaking her head, Ari compressed the long scimitar blade into its hilt and tucked the weapon into her belt. “You intervened.”
“Prove it,” she replied with a sly grin. “You just need a little faith.”
Ari chuckled, tightened the hood of her parka. “I suppose not having to dispose of two bodies makes today a win?”
“It does indeed,” Gita agreed, capering down the hill. “Now, let’s go crunch some numbers and play scientist. I like it better when you’re the boss.”