Page 19 of Soul Food

I turned slowly. “Or you might have, if you hadn’t been sleeping.”

He bent down quickly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

I grabbed my head and sighed. “Now because of you, she’s pissed. You know what that does to her soul.”

“How is it my fault, Sire? I don’t understand why you care that she sees you in human form. It won’t make a difference.”

Did he question me just now?

I gave him a scathing look. He wouldn’t understand—for neither did I—why I tried so hard to prevent her from seeing me. She’d never know I was the one who stole her soul. She wouldn’t think a demon who owned her with a book would walk the halls hidden amongst the very humans she spent time with. She was so clueless to how much I had to stick around just to tend to her soul. The only thing she knew was her time was almost up, and a demon was coming for her.

And, yet she had found me.

It shouldn’t have been a problem, but I knew it was. I had a feeling I should have never encountered such a soul.

“I’m already so embedded into this world because of her.” I took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t like to play with my food, Lars. I need her back at one hundred percent or these last ten years will have been for nothing.”

“What will you do?” he asked me.

I walked to the window and peered down just in time to see her climbing in the back seat of her car. Once again, I was overcome with a sense of doom at the mere sight of her. I knew she was a bad idea then, and I knew she was now, yet I continued down this strange path in which I’d never taken before.

“I will appease her with my presence until she’s satisfied. That’s the way this works, Lars. I give and give and give to feed her soul so when I finally take, it will satisfy my hunger for years to come.”

Chapter Six

RUTH

“I don’t want to see you,” Ma clipped out at the sight of me entering the rehabilitation center’s cafeteria. She sat with a few other regulars that frequented this place as much as she did. I was on a first name basis with most of them.

“I miss you too,” I said as I parked my ass in the seat across from her. She purposely scooted her chair to the left so that it was no longer directly across the table from mine.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Ruth,” Brian, one Ma’s oldest friends said to me with a smile. He was heavyset and balding with a bad habit of drinking and becoming violent afterward. In this place though I’d never known him to be anything other than nice.

“If I had a daughter with all that money, I sure wouldn’t be telling her to shoo,” Darlene muttered as she stood and made her way to the only TV in the cafeteria which tended to start fights between everyone here. “Who has the remote?” Darlene asked as she limped on her good leg. “You better not be hiding it again, Dylan, or I’ll karate chop your skinny ass.”

Dylan was a twentysomething-year-old whose family kept putting him in here every time he overdosed. He always enjoyed stirring up trouble with the way Darlene talked about him every time I came to see Ma. He took one look at me and averted his gaze. It was amazing how unimportant I was in the face of someone who loved drugs more than anything or anyone else. Any other person would have dropped the remote and become speechless or tried asking me for an autograph. In here, people were different. They looked exhausted. I was just another face, and I didn’t mind.

“How are you, Barb?” Jayne asked Ma as she crossed her arms and scowled. I had inherited that same scowl from her.

“Why you keep sendin’ her here?” Ma asked.

“To check on you, and to see if you want to come home.” I leaned back in my chair and returned her glare.

“I don’t want that house,” she hissed, and I sighed. She wouldn’t take anything I offered her. I bought her a house the moment I got money, and what did she do? She stayed in our ratty-ass apartment until her pill popping became so bad I had to check her into this place. Ma would leave, and I’d bring her back, until lately, she liked staying more than leaving. There was no apartment to go back to. She was stuck coming home with me or going to the house I got her. She didn’t like me getting her anything, but even I was surprised that she refused my money time and time again.

“You look good,” I told her honestly. Her hair was clean and brushed. Her skin had a healthy sheen to it as did her eyes. She glanced over at Brian and gave him that look I recognized. He got up and waved to me goodbye. I braced myself for whatever it was she wanted to say.

“Have you spoken to your father?” she asked sourly.

“You mean that sperm donor?” I scoffed, then paused. “No, why?” My father had never been a figure in my life unless you counted the times he’d come home for a few days, take what he wanted from Ma, then leave her in a deeper pit than she already was with her vices.

“He stopped by…”

“Ma,” I hissed.

“Don’t start, Ruth, I told him to get gone.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and told myself to calm down.

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