Page 93 of How to Entice a Fiend

She hugs his face while declaring everything she loves about him, which is how we head out of the university.

“Mads, you have everything you need?” Finn asks.

“I sure do! I made as much antidote as I could with limited resources. Each vampire will have one. Once we get the needles, we’ll be all set. Please remember that the antidote has to be injected immediately. Do not hesitate. You’d rather stab yourself and find out it was a regular bullet than die… I assume.”

“You assumed right,” Claude says.

“I’m just good like that.”

We head out to the SUV and file into it. Ender has to peel Rylee off to fasten her seat belt because she’s so reluctant to let go of him.

“What if, when we’re all done with this nonsense, we take you to a trampoline park?” I ask Rylee. “Wouldn’t that be fun to get to hop around with Ender?”

While Rylee’s face blossoms into a smile, Ender’s face gets cloudy.

“Do I look like I hop?” he asks.

“You’re going to hop so much!” she declares. “I can’t wait! I really can’t wait!”

Ender looks over at me as I smile at him. “We can all go!”

“I would love that,” Finn says. “Marcus is really good at rollerblading. I bet he’d take you to do that too.”

Rylee is looking more thrilled by the minute. “Ooh! That’d be so much fun!”

“It’ll be a belated birthday party!” Claude suggests.

“That I will be sick for,” Alexei says.

Marcus coughs. “Me too.”

“Vampires don’t get sick!” Rylee exclaims. “I can’t wait! It’s going to be so much fun. Ender, Marcus can show you how to rollerblade! He can like hold your hand so you don’t fall.” She finds the image of this ridiculously delightful, judging by the way she giggles manically.

“Oh joy,” Ender says quite dryly. “I’m so glad Mads thought of such a fun activity that he will be taking you to alone.”

Rylee’s happiness plummets. “You won’t go?”

“Of course I’ll go,” he says through gritted teeth, clearly unable to turn this girl down. I’m pretty sure she could ask for anything and Ender would give it to her… and that face tells me she knows it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ENDER

“I don’t love the transport vehicle sitting right there,” Finn says as he eyes it when we walk up to the prison. After dropping Orin and Rylee off, we ended up at the prison they identified that Grady was at. During the drive, Mads carefully transferred the antidote to syringes that he then passed out to the vampires in the vehicle. I can tell Marcus is still a bit hung up on the idea of whether or not Finn should need one, but at the moment, Mads doesn’t seem to have an answer to that. Because we knew it’d be hard to explain what the syringes were, we decided that Mads would just use his status as a council member to get us into the building without a thorough check. Their familiarity with the VRC helped as well.

Now at the prison, we’ve finally made it inside the facility where the transport vehicle sits right inside the indoor loading area.

“I’ll go talk to them,” Mads says, turning to head straight over to it.

“Pretty sure they’re going to ignore you,” Finn warns. “Although… I guess you are part of the council, and the council gets to do whatever the fuck they want.”

“Fun, right?” Mads asks as he hurries off. I debate going with him, but an officer is in the process of getting us in to see Grady and I don’t want to miss what he has to say.

I see the man walking our way, looking slightly irritated.

“Grady is in the process of being transferred and we cannot stall his transfer,” he tells us.

“Five minutes,” Finn says. “Please just give us five minutes. We can even talk to him as you’re preparing him for his transfer. We just need to discuss a few things with him that are very critical. Please. It is extremely important that we speak to him before he leaves this building.”

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