Page 44 of Monsters of Midlife

“Can’t you help me?” I pleaded.

“There’s nothing we can do for you, my dear.” Grimelda was kind but adamant. “We can help you get out of here before Ryder finds out you’ve left your safe house.”

She stood up and instead of going to the door we had come in; she took me to her wall. Waving your hand over one section of it, the wall disappeared in the doorway opening a hidden passage.

“Go straight down through here.” Grimelda pointed into the dark interior. “If you follow the path and always go to the left, it’ll take you down to the Embarcadero train station.”

“We need to get back to where Ryder’s expecting you to be,” Sophie insisted.

“Ryder is a demigod,” Grimelda said. “They get a bad rap, but they do try to protect humans to the best of their ability.”

“I don’t trust him,” I insisted.

The priestess looked at me with the wise eyes of someone much older. “You must learn to trust him. That’s the biggest problem here, not the fact you’re a banshee. The biggest problem is that you don’t trust the one person who is truly trying to protect you.”

My eyes widened as I gazed at the beautiful priestess. Could she see Ryder’s heart? I wanted to ask so many more questions, but there wasn’t time.

“Come on,” Sophie grabbed my wrist and tugged me into the dark passageway.

Chapter 27

RYDER

I tried to not storm into places. It wasn’t the easiest thing for me, but I had to remember I was half human, and I couldn’t let my monster side get the better of me. Ever. Not if I was to remain on the Earth plane.

I’d been to Temple Cyrene numerous times. It was one of my brother’s favorite temples. Even though he never let my mother know he sometimes went there to pray. He was so devout in trying to be human, he would make great offerings to the priestesses in order to, as he put it ‘stay focused on his good side,’ the human side. Not the monster side, which was apparently evil.

Considering all the things humans did to each other, I wasn’t so sure about that. Humans, well, let’s be honest they could be more monstrous than those of us who are monsters. The only difference was we didn’t really have a conscience about it. The humans did have a conscience about it, so they had to justify their actions. Monsters didn’t have that dilemma.

Tymer met me at the door. He was the wise and old eunuch who looked after Temple Cyrene. A good friend of mine years ago, we had grown apart when I had gotten married and moved to Boston.

Undoubtedly, he knew about her now. It seemed the whole supernatural world was aware I had been married.

“Long time no see, brother,” Tymer said, opening the door wide.

We gripped each other in a back slapping hug before I fixed him with my gaze. “I need to see Grimelda.”

“A busy day for the priestess,” Tymer muttered. His eyes floated to the corner of the room, not looking for anything, more like looking internally. I knew the priestesses could communicate telepathically, but it was always unsettling.

His gaze turned back to me, eyes clear and pale blue. Slightly watery as it was with all the eunuchs in the temples. I never quite understood why, but I assumed it was because they were constantly living in dark cells and when they came out to the light it was a little bit bright or maybe it was the incense that was constantly burning in the temples.

“She’s going to see you, but it’s going to take a few minutes. Shall I take you to the antechamber?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “And in the meantime, you can catch me up on a couple of things.”

He glanced at me sideways and laughed. “Don’t you think it’s you who are to be catching me up on a few things?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I’m not the one who got married in secret,” Tymer said.

I felt the blood drain out of my face as he said it. “Everybody knows.”

“Probably,” he said. “It’s not like it’s any secret anymore. Even though I’m sure you were trying to keep it a secret for a very long time.”

“You know what danger it puts her in now everybody knows,” I said. “I’m trying to find who’s after me and who has been attacking her.”

“She’s a human, right?” Tymer asked.

---