Page 49 of How to Entice a Fiend

“Fun fact. If youdon’tkill me, you can keep snacking on me later. But if you murder me, that’s just it. All gone.” He plucks me in the face, and I jerk back.

I lick some blood off my lips. “I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“Good to know.”

“Why’d you do that?” I ask as he nabs the spare pants and pulls them on.

“Because as I was wallowing around in the leaves with a vampire I’d purposely let goandturned my back on—the very man who was going for my eyes while yelling ‘You don’t need your eyes to talk!’—I realized that maybe I fucking suck at fighting. If I’m getting out of this alive, it’s only going to be with my feisty guard dog. That is you,” he says as he pats me on my head. “You will get me out of here very much alive.”

The words put a sour taste in my mouth. Of course I’m meant to fight and kill and do as I’m told. That’s what I was created for. “I see.”

“I’m going to just sit back and cheer your half-dead ass on. I can incentivizeyou in different ways. Like… you can have my blood, my body, or my heart.”

His teasing words still me. Was it a joke? I don’t quite know how to tell. Everyone who wants something from me never gives me anything in return. Not that I want most of what he’s offering. “I only want one of those things.”

“My heart? Oh my.”

“Sure, I want your heart to pump more blood into my mouth,” I grumble. “We need to get moving while I can stand.”

“I can try to dice you up again to see if I can find more shards in your shoulder, but at this point, I’m not quite sure thatbleeding you out by cutting you open and fingering around in there would be ideal when I didn’t see anything more last time. I’m just afraid of you losing more blood. The best thing would be if we could get you a scan at the hospital, but funniest thing ever, we’re in some giant forest in Canada. Hilarious, right?”

“Whenthe fuckdid we end up in Canada?”

“That’s why it’s a funny story and I don’t know.”

“Let’s go,” I say as he finishes dressing himself. “I’ll get you through this and then you can go your own way.”

“I kind of thought after our near-death experience that maybe you’d take me out on a date… you know, in exchange for the attempted homicide. It’d be the cutest story to tell our kids. ‘Papa, how’d you meet Other Papa?’ ‘Well, my darling, he was so attracted to me he decided to eat me so no other person could ever look at me again.’ See? Romantic.”

“You just said you wanted me to be your ‘guard dog.’ I will get you out to make up for what I’ve done. If you’re wanting more, tell me. Now let’s go.” My voice comes out sharper than I meant it to, but does it really matter?

Mads hesitates. “Ender… I feel like I said something wrong. Suddenly, I feel like the bad guy here?—”

I ignore him and slip around the water to try to stay dry as I go out and begin walking.

“Wait. We’re heading this way,” he says as he points south.

“You know this for a fact?”

“No, but I have to assume the asshole lied to me. He told me that when he comes in, he’s driving east, but I have my doubts he was really helping me… you know, after the brawl. The map on his phone wasn’t fully loaded,butit was loaded farther to the south, telling me that he came in from the south before he lost reception.”

“Makes sense,” I agree. “Let’s head that way, then.”

I’m not in much of a condition to run, so I start off walking in the hope I’ll feel more lively the more we move.

“I’m sorry,” Mads says.

I look over at him. “For?”

“I was making a joke earlier and I feel like something I said bothered you. If you talk to me, you could explain what it was that bothered you so I don’t make the mistake again.”

“It didn’t bother me,” I say, unsure why he thinks I care about something he said enough to be bothered by it. I only care about Rylee and that’s how it’s going to stay. He can say whatever he wants, and it doesn’t bother me at all.

“You know you don’t have to lie about everything, right? Sometimes you can tell the truth. And it’s okay to feel upset over something. It would just help if you told me why so I knew.”

“What about you? How much are you lying about? Are you really just some innocent vampire who joined the council however many months ago? You know what? I don’t care. I just want to get home and keep Rylee safe from that monster. That’s it. That’s all.”

“It seems like he wants you, not Rylee.”

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