“Of course.” I sat down across from her. “Where’s Drake?”

“Captain Somerset summoned him away on a raid of some vampire hideout outside the city. You didn’t hear her because you were singing in the shower at the time.” Her brows lifted, inviting me to elucidate my bright spirits.

“I’m just happy I can have an actual breakfast this morning rather than the usual five-minute variety.”

“Oh, is that all? I thought it had something to do with your visit to the Colonel’s apartment last night.” Her lips spread into a knowing smile, and she winked at me, her long eyelashes kissing her cheekbones.

“That was about work,” I said, trying not to think about all the non-work things that had happened in his apartment.

“It must have been a lot of work. You were there for hours.”

“How can you possibly… Never mind, I’m not surprised. You always know everything that’s going on at the Legion.”

Ivy slid her knife through her melon, cutting off a piece. “So are you going to make me ask you what happened in his apartment?”

“I gave him the lab report on the residue sample from the Brick Palace.”

Ivy nodded. Of course she knew about the poisoning and bombing of the building I’d visited with Nero yesterday. It’s all anyone around here was talking about right now. They were calling it the New York Massacre.

“And then?” Ivy prompted when I didn’t continue.

I skewered a piece of pancake on my fork. “And then we ate a little.”

“Dinner?” Her eyes lit up. “You had dinner with Nero Windstriker?”

“It’s not like that. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and the canteen was closed. He’d ordered up some food, and he let me have some. Probably so I wouldn’t try to eat him. I was so starving.”

“And did you?” Her lip twitched. “Eat him?”

“What?” My confusion melted away to embarrassment. “No! Of course not. There was no angel eating. Steak, potatoes, baby carrots.”

“Dessert?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m talking about food, Ivy. Not sex.”

She sighed. “Too bad.”

I didn’t share everything that had happened after dinner. That would just make things worse. Instead, I said, “I was talking to Nerissa Harding yesterday in the lab.”

“Oh, I love her. She’s so much fun. Though some people find her a bit…”

“Unfiltered?” I suggested.

“Yeah. She doesn’t hold back.”

“She wasn’t holding back last night either. She told me that…that everyone thinks Nero…well, that he’d broadcast his intentions to make me his lover.”

Milk shot out of Ivy’s nose. She grabbed a napkin, drying the mess. “Sorry, I was just picturing what your face must have looked like when she said that.”

“Is it true? Are people really saying that?”

“Yeah, they are. Sorry.” Ivy gave me a pitying look. She knew how much I hated being the center of attention. But I wasn’t a fan of pity either.

“Well, it doesn’t matter what they say because it’s not happening,” I told her, standing. “Come on. We’re going to be late for training.”

Ivy didn’t say anything more about it, and by the time we made it to Hall Four, we were deep in a conversation about Lieutenant Diaz, her latest admirer. Our cheerful chatter died down the moment we opened the door to find the obstacle course from hell waiting for us. Since Captain Somerset was away on a mission, her friend Sergeant Claudia Vance was in charge of training us today. Sergeant Vance had a tall, strong figure, but she’d somehow managed to keep her voluptuous curves beneath all that battle-hardened muscle. A long blonde braid hung over her shoulder like a whip, contrasting with her black workout suit. She looked like an ancient battle maiden in modern clothing.

By the end of the day, I’d decided that while she shared Captain Somerset’s tough style, neither of them had perfected their training torture techniques as well as Nero. I hoped that wasn’t a prerequisite skill to becoming an angel because I didn’t think I had it in me to be that cruel.

Drake joined me and Ivy in Demeter right as we were sitting down to dinner. As always, he was in a great mood. Nothing seemed to dampen his spirits, not even a day-long mission chasing vampires.

“So, how was your mission?” I asked him as he sat down with a tray piled high with meat—and little else.

“Famishing.” He grinned. “We were walking the whole day. The building was empty, but there was a secret door in the back that led into a tunnel system. Dark, stinky tunnels. Dead animals everywhere. Animal excrement everywhere. Animal hair everywhere.”

“Sounds appetizing,” Ivy said, pushing her tray away.

“Oh, it was disgusting all right. Water had flooded larger parts of the tunnels, and it wasn’t clean water either. I think it must have leaked off the sewage system.”

“Well, thank you for showering before you came to dinner,” Ivy said, then resumed eating her dinner.

I didn’t smell anything coming off of Drake except for the fresh scent of soap and a hint of spice from his cologne.

“Did you fight any vampires?” I asked him.

“No, but we did get to fight some giant sewer rats.”

“Exciting,” I said.

He grinned. “It really was. And in one of the tunnels, we found pieces of glass. They seemed to be from broken potion vials. There was an old campsite site next to the glass. Blood was splattered across the walls and ground, and in the center of it all, we found five dead vampires.”