Page 71 of How to Entice a Fiend

“And the scary vampire even tried reading me a book. The book became a horror story!”

I choke back a laugh as I look over at Marcus. He’s raising an eyebrow at Rylee who is grinning, obviously pleased with herself.

“And then… and then the colorful one tried dressing me. I looked like a clown.”

Claude gasps. “You looked beautiful!”

“But he also dressed up Señor Fluffybottom and it was so funny and he was so cute and I loved it so much. You’re going to love it, En. Maybe he has clothes for you too and we can all match!”

“I can’t wait,” Ender says sarcastically. “It’s all I’ll think about until I get home.”

“You’re gonna love it or else.”

“Or else, huh?”

“Or else!”

“Do you mind if I speak to the others for a bit? We don’t have long before we’re going to be flying back, and we need to explain a few things to them.”

“Okay. Will you call me again before you fly out?”

“Of course. You better be good, you hear me? You better not be causing issues for them, do you understand?”

“Of course not… I’m being perfect.”

“You positive? You’re not whining or crying or causing issues?”

“I would never cry,” she says as I notice she’s refusing to look at any of us or the cat that has suffered the brunt of it.

We set up shop in the dining room where Rylee sits in the corner hanging off every word that might come from Ender.

“The man who took us is named Abel,” Ender says.

“Abel?” I ask as I look over at Marcus. “You know the name?”

“I don’t.”

Orin leans forward, adjusting his position. “I know the name but not very well. I knew of him when I was much younger but it was more of a… I was warned to be wary of him, and the few times we met in passing, I found myself disliking him greatly. To my understanding, he’s quite a bit older, isn’t he? Is he a true vampire?”

“Do you know, Ender?” I ask.

“He is. He and Watson were… close. He often supplied Watson with the people he would experiment on in exchange for… some things from Watson,” Ender says, and I can’t help but notice the way his tone shifts at the end.

I tense when I hear Watson’s name. It’s like even dead, this man won’t stop coming back to haunt me.

“What kind of things did Abel want from Watson?” Claude asks.

Ender is silent and I can’t tell whether he doesn’t want to talk or doesn’t know.

Mads speaks up. “We’re still figuring things out at this point. But he does have a large group of people under his control. From the looks of things, they’re all vampires he’s turned.”

“If he’s turned them, there should be data on them.”

“They would be the people who attacked us,” Ender says. “I killed several of them, so you should have information on them if you can ID them.”

“They were all turned by different people, at least according to our data,” Marcus says. “That doesn’t mean they were correctly registered. Most of them were older and were turned before the laws of restriction were put into place. The data we have could have easily been fabricated.”

“Would make sense,” Ender agrees. “Abel has never done anything legally.”

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