Page 88 of As The Shifter World Turns

“Turns out it’s only included if your landlord isn’t too busy banging a stranger to pay the fucking bill.” Archer was livid. I didn’t blame him. I was too.

“I’ll drop this stuff at our place and go talk to him.” Yell at him. Same difference.

When I got home, I jogged up the stairs to put the food in our place, grateful there was only one pint of ice cream. The last thing we should be doing was opening the fridge.

“Grab a spoon. I have something that needs eating first.” I teased as I set the bag on the counter and fished out the ice cream. “Your favorite, right?”

“Coconut, chocolate, and almonds!” I was taking that as confirmation of my awesome picking things out at the grocery store skills. “‘I’ll be right back.”

“I’m coming with you.” He already had the pint open and the spoon inside.

“Stay and eat the ice cream.” I needed to try and fix the mess.

“It’s dark.” Crap. He was scared or at a minimum nervous and I didn’t even see it, letting my anger at Daire take all of my focus. Maybe it was being in an old house that made him nervous.

“Let’s go yell at him then.”

We didn’t need to. We were one of the last to the yell at Daire party. And they all had a right to be pissed off. He had our rent and therefore he should have had the money to pay the power company.

“If you weren’t too busy with that magical fucking cock in your ass, you’d have remembered.” Neil was livid and I doubted it was only about the power. He didn’t trust Daire’s new guy at all and this gave him something else to hate him for.

Had it been someone else, I’d have thought he was jealous, but Neil saw layers of slime on people others often missed. I had a feeling it had to do with when he was in professional sports. There was a whole lot of fake ass BS and user-ish people there from what I understood.

“It’s being paid as soon as they open in the morning. I promise. It was an automatic payment and it failed.” And instantly I understood what happened. When all the identity shit went down he forgot about his autopays. That didn’t excuse his actions, but it gave me some relief that he hadn’t dug this place further into the hole I helped bail him out of.

“Guys.” I spoke louder than I needed to and their heads all snapped in my direction. “This sucks, but autopay paired with identity theft…” I could see the dots start to connect.

“Why don’t we all go out and grab pizza or something instead of sitting in the dark?” It was pitch black now. “And maybe we can make popcorn on the grill.”

Ivor chuckled at that like I was completely clueless as to how popcorn worked.

“I could eat.” Archer leaned in next to me, shoveling another spoon of ice cream into his mouth. This was so much better than when everything made him sick.

I still kicked myself for my part in that. Had we been mated from the beginning, he’d never have gotten so sick.

“I want crab puffs if I'm going to be bribed by food.” Neil sounded much calmer and I was glad. Daire considered him one of his best friends and when tensions rose between the two of them, it really affected him.

“I’m here for the pizza,” Ivor said. He looked like crap. He’d been working from home after whatever tiff he had with Ryder and I hadn’t gotten a decent view of him until now, under the emergency light. His eyes were sunken in and filled with such sadness.

“I want fresh rolls.” Archer dug in for some more ice cream. The container was already half gone.

Provide.My unicorn was proud as a peacock at that.

Yes, we did.

“If everyone’s giving orders, I want tacos.” Daire pointed to the stairs. “Everyone on the roof. I’ll order all the things and we can wait up there so we at least have the streetlights to see by.”

“I’ll chip in.” I told him, worried about how much was in his bank account.

Lightning lit up the hallway followed by a crack two Mississippis away.

“Or you can all come in.” We chose the latter and ordered enough food for a week. If you wanted it, we had it coming.

“I have candles.” Neil popped up. “I’ll be back.”

I tried not to think too hard on why he had a huge array of candles when he returned with them, but I was fairly confident we were breaking all kinds of fire codes.

The rain slapped against the window sills, the wind picking up. Even if Daire had followed through with the payment, we’d probably have still ended up in the dark. The storm was bad.

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