Page 32 of The Succubi's Choice

6

The next morning, she awakes to a furious whisper fight in the kitchen. She’s still ensconced in the blankets on the couch, crust covers her eyes, and her stomach feels...hollow.

Her hands shake as she pushes the blankets down, and the angry whispers immediately cease, leaving suspicious silence in their wake.

Rubbing her eyes, she sits up to see Gabriel scowling and Jacqueline sitting cross-legged on the counter, a carefully neutral look on her face.

“According to the paperwork, shouldn’t you be feeding two or three times a week?” Jacqueline chimes, which is a shitty way to start the morning. “You look horrible.”

Given that her skin feels like it’s been sanded off and her eyes are just about as scratchy as they’ve ever been, Miri doesn’t doubt it. She pushes herself up and stumbles to the fridge, to the bottle of appetite suppressant in there.

Jacqueline watches her like she watches students take a test, but Miri ignores her, downing the entire bottle, then sitting on the cold kitchen tile.

“What do you want to know?” She asks, before wincing, cause even her voice sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel.

“Why Gabriel feels like we need to tell Mr. Lundy that I know,” she answers, awfully prim for someone sitting on a kitchen counter at eight AM.

Miri toasts the bottle to Gabriel, who has the grace to look relatively shame-faced.

“Because if they find out we break rules we probably won’t be allowed to be roommates?” Miri says. “I don’t like to fuck around with that.”

Jacqueline blinks, but soldiers on. “You’re not allowed to handle firearms,” she says it like a statement, but Miri can hear the question behind it.

“And we’re not going to let him know about that,” Gabriel says, his voice hard. “A onetime instance is a lot easier to hide than an entire other person knowing of the existence of magical creatures.”

Miri almost misses how Jacqueline wrinkles her nose at Gabriel for using that phrase.

“I don’t want any restrictions placed on me, just because I know someone —" Jacqueline’s face twists, but she doesn’t continue the sentence. “God, this makes so much sense why you’re so weird.”

And while Miri’s been called many things in her life, “making much sense” is not one of them.

Judging by Gabriel’s blank look, he echoes the sentiment.

“A few months ago, a lot of....people like me....were being killed, so Gabe showed me how to shoot. It’s very illegal and please don’t tell anyone where we went last night.”

Jacqueline nods, as if something much more reasonable just came from Miri’s mouth. “Of course,” she says, neutral. “Anyone who doesn’t know who you are would think I’m crazy and anyone who does would get you in trouble. I’m not dim.”

Dim is never something that Miri would dream of calling Jacqueline, but rule abiding is, so she shrugs. “I have to be careful.”

Gabriel and Jacqueline exchange narrow eyed almost glares, as if that is what they were fighting about, and thank god Miri’s phone beeps.

KATYA WORK (8:41 AM): I got notification you can come back to work, will you be in today?

Gabriel and Jacqueline do their best to not obviously watch her.

MIRI (8:42 AM): That’s news to me.

KATYA WORK (8:42 AM): Lundy called me this morning to let me know.

And Miri hadn’t missed any calls from him, so she flips over to her messages with him.

MIRI (8:43 AM): I can work now?

The three dots of typing show up, then disappear, then show up again, and she looks back at the two humans not really doing their best to hide their interest.

“I might have to go into work today, unsure,” she says, flippant, because flippant is better than scared. “I can bring back research for you if you want.”

Jacqueline is taking this way better than Miri had anticipated, but she knows, she just knows, that if left alone without new information that Jacqueline would spiral and spiral hard into confusion.

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