Page 108 of Ready Or Not

Riley grins at me. “That was hot.”

My face flushes, and I pull back. “Was it…okay?”

“Yeah,” Riley’s voice is soft, and she brushes a piece of hair out of my face. “Because it was you.”

Warmth runs through me, and I blush again.

We stay there for a while longer, just looking at the woods, soaking in the peace and each other, and then Riley takes me home. Well, to Riley’s barn. We spend most of our time there,with Riley working on hides and butchering and me organizing and making a space for myself. Riley is chaotic at best, and things get scattered everywhere. Plus, the barn is old and full of junk. So, I’ve had my hands full sorting and organizing to my heart’s content. It’s peaceful in the best way.

I am muddy from the stream, so I head to my room and start changing my clothes. I’ve made a room for us out of an old stall. I’ve turned it into a giant bed of sorts. There are mattresses and pillows all over the floor, fairy lights strung up in crisscrosses across the top of the stall, and fake ivy and leaves all over the walls. Every available wall space is hung with shelves for my skulls, but it’s still not enough, so I just keep my favorites in here. Pup is here too, right by the head of our bed. I’m pretty proud of how white I got the bones. Oh, and there’s also spell ingredients everywhere. Riley collects the most random things and leaves them all over the place. The chaos bothers me, but it seems to make her happy. So I leave them.

I get into my dry clothes and sigh. I haven’t decided if I want to go back to work yet. Manson insists he can get me my job back if I want it, but part of me loves the silence and peace of hanging out here. And I’m not ready to face the emptiness of my old place. Not that I think they’d let me go alone. Neither likes to let me out of their sight. They breathed down my fucking neck when I got my skulls so much that I nearly dropped my snakes and raccoons, bumping into them.

I glare at the wall, just thinking about it. I’d have skinned them alive if they made me break anything.

Riley’s been hunting a lot more recently. Manson decided to move all the bodies of the people he dumped here for Riley to dispose of. Said there’s too much heat on us right now. He’s having Riley bury the carcasses of the deer she gets over the spots the people used to be, just in case the cadaver dogs are let loose on our property. In addition to hunting, Riley has beendisappearing at odd hours and coming back with random deer mounts. There are beginning to be so many of them that I’ve had to devote an entire stall to their housing. She never wants me to display them, and when I ask, all she’ll say is: at least it’s not murder.

I hear a commotion at the door, then Manson’s voice says, “Goddamn it! Riley, come get your dogs.”

Riley’s coyote pups yip. I grin and step out of the room. The two pups howl and jump up on Manson, who brushes them off with a look. They love him and immediately follow him whenever he’s around. He hates it.

“Printer, Toothbrush, down.” Riley halfheartedly waves at the pups, then gets back to packing her bag. Riley brought them home after one of our hunting missions. She found them without a mother and brought them back to the barn. She insisted they were dogs.

They are not. But Manson humors her, so I do too. She also insisted on naming them the most random things, and secretly, I’m here for it.

“Rachel, I have something for you,” Manson says. He drops the bag he’s been holding and pulls out a bone. It looks like some kind of…deer femur.

He hands it to me with a proud smirk on his face. Manson has been bringing me back random bones he finds while he’s out…digging up Riley’s bodies and whatnot.

“It’s not human.” Manson shoves it at me.

Well, I know that. I smirk and take it. I only collect the cool bones, like skulls and sometimes the spines. That is until Manson started gifting me with them. Now, they all seem kinda cool to me.

“Thanks,” I smile.

Manson turns back to his pack. “Oh, and something else.” He pulls something small out. It’s a…vial of some liquid. With a needle attached.

I frown.

“Birth control,” Manson explains.

Riley turns to look at it, then at me. “Manson.” Riley lifts an eyebrow. “She doesn’t need birth control; you’re fixed.”

Manson just motions at me. “Come here.”

I most definitely do not want to go near that needle. I look between them. Riley mouths something at me, and Manson shoots her a glare.

I couldn’t tell what she said. Riley shakes her head, then stage whispers, “Tracker.”

Manson sighs loudly. “Fine, it’s a tracker. Come here.”

“What? I don’t want a tracker.” I take a step back.

He just raises an eyebrow. “You're mine now, and I need to know where you are at all times.”

Riley looks at the vial, then back at me. She grins, and before I know it, she’s snatched me up and put me on her workbench. “It’s all you,” she gloats. “Loser.”

Manson comes around to my other side, and both of them trap me in. “Oh, I already got you, Riley.”

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