Page 4 of Monsters of Midlife

“How could he match with me? I haven’t even swiped right on anybody.”

Laney started laughing. “Oh yes you have, darling. You swiped right on like 300 people.”

“No!” I screamed, trying to grab my phone out of her hand, but she was laughing and jumping up in the air, holding the phone higher above me. Since she was five foot eleven, she had a height advantage I couldn’t match, being only five foot three. She typed away with both hands in the air while I jumped around her like a yipping little dog.

“Hey, nice to meet you. Do you want to have a drink tomorrow?” she said as she typed into my phone.

“You’re incorrigible,” I exclaimed. “You could at least show me this guy you’re setting me up with.”

“Yes, and you can thank me for it later,” she said, putting the phone down and showing me a picture of a tall, strapping blond man with a bulging chest and tattoos on both shoulders.

“I told you I didn’t like tattoos,” I complained.

“And I told you you’re not looking for a husband,” Laney giggled. “Our goal is to get you over your fucktard of an ex-husband and get the cobwebs out of your vag.”

“Maybe I like my cobwebs,” I muttered. “Maybe they make me feel safe.”

“As your best friend, I find it highly important to tell you that I cannot stand by and watch your hot sexy ass go to waste in the laboratory, even if you are curing cancer.”

“I hardly think it’s going to waste,” I said.

“He messaged back!” she said, typing into the phone.

“Oh my god, what have you gotten me into?”

“Nothing a brainiac like you can’t handle,” she said. “You’ve got a date tomorrow at two in the afternoon. Don’t be late.” She giggled and handed me back my phone. “And don’t cancel it either, or I will haunt you forever.”

It might’ve been my drunken wine haze, but I glanced at the photo and shrugged.

Fine.

I’d go and meet some guy for coffee tomorrow at two. It was Saturday and I didn’t have anything else to do except go into work, of course.

Chapter 3

RYDER

The crisis at Jackson Hole was solved. Thanks to Ratchet’s ingenuity and my knowledge of where the rifts were, we had managed to get the entire horde back into the rift and I used my powers to seal it.

It was just as the rift sealed that I got the notifications we were needed in Cougar Creek, but what we found there was the last thing I had expected. A demon had my ring.

My wedding ring.

He was lucky I didn’t annihilate him. It was only through Ratchet’s intervention that nothing had happened to the demon. Ratchet had insisted we got some information from him. But the demon didn’t seem to know much. He’d seen some cambions, human/demon hybrids, were fighting over it and he’d gotten it off them. Focusing on currying favor with me, a demigod, he’d delivered the ring.

Now, Ratchet and I were at the Crown Hotel, the only hotel in this two-bit witch-run town. I stood staring at it knowing this wasn’t a good thing. If they knew I had a wedding ring, they knew there was another person on the other side of it. If they were smart enough, they would have known how to connect the two pieces and find the other ring.

Nobody was ever supposed to find out about my wife. She was my ex-wife, now, but still, she was supposed to be a secret. I had always kept her sheltered from the supernatural world and when it had gotten too close, I’d given her up. Divorced from my true love.

That was the price.

I couldn’t do my job and have a human wife. It was way too dangerous.

“Being the god of monsters sucks,” I groaned, flipping the ring around in my hand.

“You’re not the god of monsters,” Ratchet said blandly, leaning back in his chair. “You’re the demigod of monsters.”

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