I woke up to a slap in the face. Just my luck. My head was throbbing and there was a loud ringing in my ears. The ringing started to subside just in time to someone shouting at me. “Dammit you worthless pile of crap, wake up.” Recognizing the voice I opened my eyes a fraction and croaked out “potty mouth”. Judging from the second slap Artemis didn’t find that funny. Slowly I sat up and looked around. I had fallen backwards and had been lying spread-eagled on my back for who knows how long. “what the hell happened?” Artemis still looked worried. “I’m fine, I’m fine” I said waving her off. “Fine? Cal you were knocked out. I’ve seen you take a golem to the face and not even blink, you’re not ok.” Golems were creatures that created their own bodies from whatever they could find. Rocks, trees, cement, anything they could find, and they hurt A LOT.
“This girl knocked me out. I don’t know what happened.” I decided not to mention it was with the purse, no reason to lose all my dignity. “Ok let’s figure it out later, right now we gotta go before it gets dark.” I stood up and dusted myself off and saw Artemis was already out the door. She’s upset. Looking down at Sirius I rubbed his head “I know I’ll talk to her later.”
After waving goodbye to Rosa I caught up to Artemis. “So what’s the rush?” I ask trying to match her brisk walk. “Yoostus said he made some new gear he wants mom to check out.” Well this was going to be an interesting trip.
About a 10 minute walk later, we ended up pretty far away from town by a medium sized stream that trickled under an old stone bridge. I jumped onto the side of the bridge and swung my legs over suspending them over the water. Artemis climbed up and wrapped her arms around her legs and stared absently with a drawn out sigh. Which meant she was upset, which meant I was going to have get all emotional. Wonderful. “Sooooooo” I say, getting an awkward start to the unavoidable awkwardness.
“You’re scaring me cal.” She said skipping the formalities. I looked over to see her pull a small gecko out of her jacket pocket and absently watch it crawl over one hand while she twirled a throwing knife with the other. “You should have seen what happened with that creepy ceremony thing that demon freak did.it was like when you disappeared, you just kept screaming and thrashing around the entire night, even when your arm..” she trailed off as her hands became still. The gecko shot up her arm and elongated into my least favorite reptile. Scruffles came to rest on Artemis shoulders after blowing a couple puffs of smoke.
I scooted over on the bridge, moving slowly so I wouldn’t get stabbed which was a complete possibility with my sister. I moved until our shoulders were just touching and spread one wing until it covered her like a blanket. “What if you didn’t come back ..?” I could hear her voice start to crack.
“I’ll always come back” I said nudging her with my shoulder. I could understand why she was so upset, you don’t tend to get close to a lot of people when you are in the kind of business we are. For us family was all we’ve ever had. We moved around too much to ever make friends and there were plenty of risks with what we did. “Besides” I added “who else would remind you to shower?” snorting she whipped out her knife and jabbed me in the side. My body went limp and a slowly slid off the bridge to land painfully on the ground below. Jumping down, careful to avoid the water she leaned over me. “Don’t worry it’ll only last a minute or two.” she stood up laughing and checked the setting sun. “Hurry up” she called “the doors going to open soon.”
