Page 22 of Soul Food

I hated the human body—hated my own even… Until now. Untilhers.

It was such a habit for me to watch her over the years, and now I couldn’t seem to break myself from it. Even with Lars here, I still tended to observe her in person. What else did I have to do while I was stuck in the human world waiting to eat her soul?

I’m a fucking idiot.

Since when, for how long, I didn’t know, but when I saw her each day, the need to fill her, plunge into her ripe human body grew increasingly worse. I had the means to take her however I wanted, thanks to my human form—I’d never been thankful of that part of me before.

But that didn’t mean I liked those thoughts. I fucking hated them in fact. Most days, I pretended they weren’t there. Her soul was what I was after.

“Aren’t you going to go see what she texted you?” Lars looked up at me.

I was curious, but I’d burn in Hell before I’d admit that to Lars.

“You’re normally in the dog by now, what’s that about?” I asked him instead of answering his question.

“You always get angry when I go near her when you’re around. I figured I’d wait—” He saw me move and flinched. “I’m going, I’m going. Maybe you’ll go back to normal after eating her soul.”

Ignoring his comment, I watched Lars creep up toward Moose so that the dog wouldn’t see him. As soon as Lars was inside the dog, the animal jumped into her lap. Unbelievable that Lars had the nerve to wonder why I was pissed every time he possessed the dog. I did not allow myself to touch Ruth, so the fact that he always got to was beyond irritating.

I left without saying another word to Lars. He already knew to be on his best behavior and let me know if Ruth tried to do anything like getlaid.A soul flourished the longer it strayed from sinful acts. It wasn’t that what she did mattered to me. I cared about the soul I was tending. Only today had definitely put a damper on her soul’s health. And that was the entire reason I’d left her to live this long, because the day I had originally planned to devour it her soul wilted. I couldn’t waste a soul such as hers when it had fallen apart because of the human Liz. Add to the fact that she had met me right after was even worse on a soul. Humans had a hard time accepting that anything beyond their comprehension existed.

So, I took on the biggest nuance of my life.

It better be worth it.

I spotted my phone on the sofa back at my house where I left it. I switched forms, sliding into my human one, conjured up some clothes, and checked my messages from Ruth.

Fuck you.

Fuck youuuu.

Fuck.

You.

This is Ruth, BTW.

I gripped my phone and felt the veins in my neck pulsing.

Her soul better be worth it.

Somehow, I knew it was.

Chapter Seven

RUTH

“Rebecca Winston wants you as a guest on her show next week.”

You had to give Jayne props. The woman barely even flinched when we woke up this morning. I was sporting a mild headache that I knew would get worse as the day went. Jayne, on the other hand, just smoothed down yesterday’s clothes and whipped them back on, refusing to take something from my closet, not that we were the same size. Now she was hustling phone calls and handling my shit while I showered and tried to decide where to go from here.

Don’t think about it.

But I was thinking it. I had the spotlight on me everywhere I went. I had plenty of attention. Why did I have to send Amit those stupid texts? I didn’t do well with mistakes. I was going to beat myself up. In my head, I felt like my outbursts had been attention seeking.

I groaned, tossing my phone and accidentally hitting Jayne with it. I couldn’t stand to torture myself by looking at the text any longer. She bent down to retrieve it off the ground and saw the cause of my distress when she glanced at my phone’s screen.

“Will you stop,” Jayne said, pushing me out of my self-loathing. “It’s already done. You can’t take back the texts you sent him.”

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