Page 122 of How to Entice a Fiend

“He loves it. When are you coming back? You keep leaving and I don’t like it.”

“Soon. Very soon. And then we can watch whatever movie you want. Or do you want to play a board game? We can play a board game. Or even a video game.”

“You told me video games aren’t fun.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s because I’ve never played one. So why don’t you show me how to play one? You think about it and tell me what game you want to play.”

“But I don’t have anything to play it on.”

“I’ll buy you something,” I assure her. “You tell me what you want, and when I’m done, we’ll go buy you all of that stuff.”

“But if we’re moving around, you said it’s hard to take a bunch of stuff with us…”

“Maybe we don’t have to.”

Rylee sounds excited. “Yeah? We could live here? Can we have a pool?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I’ll have a room? And stuff that’s my own?”

“Of course.”

“We can share a room. I don’t care. As long as you’re not leaving. I really don’t need anything as long as you don’t leave.”

I’d love it if she didn’t have to worry about that. When I took her from her abusive mother, she didn’t care about anything.And now she seems to care about me and clearly this cat… but I want her to care about stupid little things too. I want her to be a child, to not have to worry every time I step out that door that her life will go back to how it was before me. It’s like she doesn’t even realize that the life we have isn’t that good. Rylee deserves normalcy. She deserves a chance to go to school and make friends. She deserves so much.

“Okay. Sounds good,” I say, knowing we both have a long way to go, but hell… at least we’re headed in the right direction. “I have to go, but I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I love you so much.”

“I love you more.”

“Hmm… I don’t know about that,” I say.

“Well I do!”

“Nah, I do,” I tell her, and I end the call before she can say it again, which I know will get her riled up. I hand the phone back to DeGray. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he says.

We pull up to the council hall, and I look at the others before they can get out of the vehicle. “I really can do this alone. All of you don’t have to risk your lives and your happiness.”

“You’re not going to make us feel sorry for you and forgive you by dying a hero and all of that shit,” Alexei says. “We’re in this together.”

“Let’s go,” Marcus orders.

I don’t know what else to say, so I just trail after them.

We meet Brooks and Orin at the door while Finn joins Chief Burns, who will be staying outside with him.

Callum, seeing us, hurries over. “What the hell is this that I heard about the VRC being attacked? What happened?”

Leona simply walks on by as I watch her, feeling confident that there’s a reason she doesn’t care to hear about it.

“We’re hoping to discuss that with the council,” Claude says as I see Harris hovering nearby, trying to listen in without getting too close and having to face my wrath.

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