Page 116 of Mayhem and Minnie

The tension from before melts away as I throw back my head and laugh.

“You’re amusing, Minnie. For that alone, I’ll keep you around.”

“And here I thought it was because I’m so irresistible that you simply couldn’t bear to not look at me ever again,” she adds jokingly.

I clear my throat. She’s not too far off the mark, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“You’re not bad to look at,” I mumble.

She smiles and shakes her head.

“There’s a present waiting for you in your room,” I add after an awkward pause. “You’ll wear that tomorrow for dinner with my mother.”

Her lips form a small O and her cheeks flush a pretty pink.

I turn to go back to my room, ready to renew my search into Minnie’s identity. Perhaps the name Minerva might yield more information.

I only take a couple of steps before she calls my name.

“Marlowe?”

“Yes?”

“Did you mean it? That you’d kill me if you saw me with another man?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” she admits honestly. “A part of me hopes you wouldn’t.” She takes a deep breath. “But the other part of me loves that you would.”

16

Strange creature.

I cannot get her words out of my head for the rest of the day.

And the following night.

I twist and turn, unable to sleep despite following my nightly routine to a T.

In the morning, instead of feeling refreshed and ready to battle the dinner with my mother, I’m about to snap someone’s neck. Preferably Minnie’s since the image of her hugging that man hasn’t left my mind. It progressed into a nightmare last night as I saw her doing more than hugging and with a great deal fewer clothes than before.

Blasphemy.

It was pure blasphemy.

I have to do something about this, and fast.

Yes, she belongs to me—technically. But I need to find a way to tie her to me permanently. Perhaps I can find some magic spell to serve that purpose since everything in the mortal realm is too ephemeral for my liking.

I chuckle at my own thoughts.

Magic and hallucinations.

What’s next?

Ghosts?

Was the man she was seeing a ghost?

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