Page 36 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness

She eyed me a moment before heading for the door. “You’re being weird.”

I bit my lip, debating on confessing what I’d done—broken the coffee pot. She’d lecture me about my anger issues—again. I’d been in a hurry, overstuffed it with grounds and when it wouldn’t close, I’d hit on the side until it surrendered, which was also known as died a horrible death.

A second later a huge rottweiler came rushing into the bathroom nearly knocking me over as he jumped up on me. He licked my cheek and I wrinkled my nose and laughed. “Buy me dinner first, Torid!”

The dog belonged to Astria and had serious boundary issues as well as flatulence problems. I wasn’t sure what she was feeding him, but sometimes, his farts smelled like he’d been eating roadkill. I’d gotten into a scuffle with a group of zombieson the north side of the campus last semester and they’d smelled better than some of the farts Torid ripped.

Poor dog.

“Torid!” yelled Astria as she rushed into the bathroom and tried to pull him off me. She grunted, her gaze meeting mine. “Sorry.”

I snorted. ‘He’s fine.”

She backed up slightly. With her bright purple pixie style haircut and delicate features she kind of reminded me of a woodland Fae or something ethereal like that. Not that I’d ever met a Fae in person—that I was aware of. I’d seen drawings and paintings of them in the library that had been in my family’s home.

The library had contained information on just about every type of supernatural creature you could think of. Or, at least, it had. The years leading up to Helen’s betrayal left the pickings in the library becoming slimmer and slimmer. My guess, she’d been selling off the rare tomes of information to fund whatever hairbrained idea she had going at the time.

“Hey, there is a poetry reading at Demon Grounds next weekend,” she said. “Want to go with me?”

I eased Torid’s front paws from my chest. He got down. “This is said from a place of love, but I’d rather chew off my own arm than sit through one more second of anything to do with Poe. That high-school music you forced us all to attend with you was more than enough for me.”

“Fine, but you’ll be missing out,” she said, grabbing Torid by his collar and walking him out of the bathroom. A second later, she poked her head back in. “Oh, Snow mentioned something about a costume party happening tonight. She asked if you knew. Then she said something about Professor Jekyll agreeing to be there. Is there a reason she’d want that passed on to you?”

My cheeks heated. “No!”

She pointed at me and laughed. “I’ll let you be for now but know I don’t believe you.”

Chapter Twelve

Mina

Willa stoodnext to me in the cave, taking everything better than I thought she might. She’d only had one freak out about bugs so far. That was a win. As predicted, she’d wanted to know how I’d found out about the cave. I’d lied my ass off. No point in upsetting her more than need be.

When I’d first led her up the narrow ledge that curved behind the waterfall, careful to keep my footing on the slick stone to the opening of the cave, I’d thought she’d bolt. It wasn’t like we had a great history with caves or anything. The last time we’d been in together, I’d gotten stabbed in the chest by our aunt and Willa had gotten attacked by a rat-faced demon and his minions.

I stepped deeper into the damp cave, my boots crunching against loose gravel. The only way to access the cave was by walking under a waterfall. That meant we’d already come in wet.

The air was damp, thick with the scent of mildew, and somewhere in the darkness, water dripped in a steady, echoing rhythm. It wasn’t cozy, but it was remote. And remote was exactly what we needed.

The sound of rushing from the waterfall echoed through the cave, filling the silence that stretched between my sister and myself. The cave’s acoustics left any small noise within it echoing and bouncing off the walls so the silence was more than noticeable. The echo had been something I’d gotten a bit of a kick out of when I’d been here with the professor. Having a sex echo chamber had been kind of neat. I wondered how many other women he’d brought here.

He’d told me more than once that I was the first student he’d ever crossed the line with, but I had to wonder if he was only saying what he thought I wanted to hear. I wasn’t looking forever. I was just looking to curve my hunger for sex. I didn’t need pretty lies and promises of tomorrow.

Nothing could come of what was happening between us. What we were doing was against the rules, at least while I was still a student at the college he taught at. And even if there was a workaround, there was the fact I wasn’t human. I was something else—something wrong and against nature. Something that had to deal with bloodlust, sex lust, and someone who felt compelled to go searching in the night for supernaturals to slay.

Hardly girlfriend material.

I never really pictured my future, not even before Romania. I guess I always assumed I’d die young. That the slayer lifestyle would send me to an early grave. Dreaming about settling down and starting a family had never once come into play for me, and since Romania, that would never be a reality.

And there was no way I could ever start a family and leave Willa behind. Who would help her with her monthly issue? Who would bring her to isolated caves in the middle of nowhere to lock her away all because they’d been the reason she was cursed to start with?

Guilt ate my very core only making the darkness in me grow. I’m who pushed her to traipse around a haunted forestin Romania and suggested we hide from the storm in a cave inhabited by a demonic douchebag. Willa had tried to get me to see reason. I’d pushed and pushed until I’d gotten my way. She shared her body with a wolf now and it was all my fault.

Sorry, never seemed like enough to cover it and Hallmark didn’t make cards for when you nearly got your twin sister murdered by a ghoul-leading dickwad with bad dental work and a god complex.

I ran my fingers over the rocky cavern wall only to jerk it back a moment later. The texture wasn’t what I expected. It was slick and gooey. I nearly gagged at the sticky coating left on my fingers from the cavern walls. “Slimy.”

“Way to sell it. I was doing a good job ignoring the slimy walls, along with the rest of the spiders and other creepy-crawlies that are in here,” said Willa with a long sigh. She’d already been on edge. My response to where she’d be spending the next few nights wasn’t helping any. “We should really drug me or something to knock me out during it all.”

---