My Date From Hell (The Blooming Goddess Trilogy, #2)

Hipster decoder ring and other godly toys (Part 1)

The next step brought me out through a spindly pine in front of a nondescript industrial warehouse in a run-down area of Seattle. From what I could tell. Weather, architecture, all looked grey. I was on unprotected ground now, and the Photokia and Pyrosim would probably be locking and loading onto me at any second.

I bolted across the empty street to the building matching the address Theo had given me. Going around the side as he'd directed, I stepped up to a metal garage door that had been tagged in a variety of bright colors and buzzed the single white button inset on a brown plaque on the wall.

A hologram of a red demon's face appeared in front of me.

"Who dares disturb me?" it boomed in a thunderous voice.

"Holy crap!" I yelped.

The hologram disappeared.

Photokia and Pyrosim arrived. The Pyrosim floated down in a rush of hot, flaming air, their fiery tentacle arms outstretched my way.

Guess the Photokia felt lazy because they were content to just hang back and let the Pyrosim tenderize me up.

The fact that they'd put aside their deep-seated hatred of each other to work on "Operation Obliterate The Bloom Chick" both continued to worry me and remind me of how serious the stakes were.

I took out the ones closest to me with a couple of blasts of green light and stabbed at the button again.

More minions arrived, dotting the sky.

The hologram appeared again. "Who dares—"

"Man behind the curtain!" I yelled, glad to have the password.

Wrong. At those words, the demon's face blew up by a thousand degrees.

Its presence helpfully knocked away the Photokia and Pyrosim, but this didn't bode well for me.

The holograph turned a massive frown on me. "Impostor!" it roared, and whirled around me, sucking me up and spitting me out in a large interior room.

The space was mostly bare, in a grey palette. The walls and floors were concrete. The only natural light came from a row of windows along the far end, which looked out into a charming desolate alley. Home to crackheads and miscellaneous shifty characters.

On the left lay a small galley kitchen, with white hi-gloss cabinets and stainless steel counters. There was no table, but instead a lounge area with a few ultra-sleek red leather couches and a coffee table piled high with various tech gadgets and books. A couple of closed doors were to the right of the front door.

The focus of the room was, well, I'll get to that.

A lone figure stood awaiting my arrival.

Take the natural snobbiness of your everyday hipster, compound it by the regular arrogance of guys in their mid-twenties, and magnify it by infinity thanks to that whole god factor. You'd start to come close to the waves of disdain that just naturally rolled off this dude. The Eau de Smarm he exuded ensured that I wasn't going to be cozying up to him any time soon.

It may have seemed like his denim shirt, worn unbuttoned over a white wife beater and skinny jeans had been picked up directly off of the floor that morning, but no. From the top of his rakish fedora sitting on his bright red-dyed hair to his pink socks and white vintage Keds, Hephaestus was calculated cool.

And weirdly cute, but I wasn't going to give him that.

Not even the cane he sported, due to his left foot being twisted inwards could detract from his projecting an overall "don't even bother reaching for my greatness" status. If anything, the cane was a sleek, black, way cool accessory. "Hephaestus, I presume."

He crossed his arms. "It's Festos. And you better have a damn good reason for showing up here with that password, honeybunch."

"Theo sent me. Prometheus," I amended, since I wasn't sure if he knew Theo's human name.

Given the double take I received, I guess he did.

"I don't believe you," he said flatly.

"I swear. He thought you could help break a memory spell."

"Too bad. I'm busy."

I took a step forward, my hand up to keep him from ordering me out. "Please. I don't think he would have sent me unless he believed you were truly the one person who could help."

Festos considered me for a second, then rolled his eyes. "Lovely. You're her. Did Prometheus mention any type of payment for my services?"

"His undying thanks?"

Festos looked a bit too hopeful at that. You know, if you looked past the "couldn't care less" vibe.

"Not really," I amended. "But you're the only god he's ever mentioned in a remotely respectful way."

"Wow. Such flattery." He sighed and waved me toward the machine in the middle of the room. "Get on."

I hesitated.

He limped over to the contraption. "You want it undone or not? Lose the pillow you're wearing and move."

I tossed my puffy coat onto one of the sofas. Then glanced outside. I couldn't help it. I was worried the minions had come back.

"We're warded up," Festos said and flicked a switch.

The machine came to life in a roar of sound.

I bet you a bajillion dollars that if you made a list of all the ways you might remove a memory suppression spell, no matter how weird you got, none of the items would include being hooked up to one of those kinda grungy, video arcade dance machines and trying desperately to keep up with the patterns whipping past.

I win, right?