Theo shrugged.“I didn’t ask him to or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mike snorted.“Peter does what Peter wants.And he makes everyone else do what he wants too.Don’t get me wrong, I’d do anything for Peter.He saved my fiancé from drowning, you know.Saved me too, but honestly, I feel like I owe him so much more for keeping Corvin safe.”
Theo heard the words, but he couldn’t immediately reconcile the Peter he knew with the person who’d save people from a watery death.It was even stranger learning that about Peter considering how suspicious Theo had been just a little over a week ago when he’d first laid eyes on the vampire.
I thought he was just like Bernard, in it for blood and violence and power.Maybe not all vampires are like that though.
Theo cleared his throat.“He never said a word.”
Mike clicked a pen on and off.“Yeah… I think he probably enjoyed that whole…adventuremore than Corvin and I did.Not to mention telling me he told me so when it came to my own ex.”The siren grinned at Theo.“I mean, you may have a vampire ex, but I can raise you a necromancer douchebag.”
“That sounds… I’m not even sure.I’m still wrapping my brain around male sirens.No offense.”
“It’s fine.”Mike let the pen roll across the table.“Ridiculous myths really are just that.You need a Wi-Fi password or something?”Mike pointed at Theo’s bag.
Theo wasn’t sure whether he would be able to get any work done on his paper, but he might as well try…or find some mindless online game that made sense when everything else didn’t.
“Desperately,” he said.
Theo, rather than blissing out over some brainless browser adventure, went down a rabbit hole about creepypastas, which finally steered him toward reading up on black-eyed children, which was just disturbing.They were almost as disturbing as the bathroom break during which Mike had insisted on checking the bathroom first, only to then wait outside for Theo to finish.
A little while after that, Mike’s whistle caught Theo’s attention.
“I said, I’m ordering lunch.What do you want?”
“Oh, sorry.”Theo rubbed his eyes.“It’s lunchtime?”
“Yeah.You’ve been staring at that screen for hours now.But I bet you’re not that pale because of too much screen time, but because you’re dating a vampire who drinks your blood every now and then.You should eat, if for no other reason than because I’m hungry and don’t want to have lunch alone.”
“Sure.Whatever is fi—”
A loud bang followed by shouting echoed through the office.
Mike spun toward his own office’s glass door.“What the fuck?”
Mike stood and made for the door.Before he reached it, a child ran past outside.
Is that…a black-eyed child?Theo shivered.
The kid hurled a paint bomb at the glass wall of Mike’s office.It exploded in a riot of red, rivulets running down and puddling on the hallway carpet.
Mike turned to Theo.“Get up, take my hand.”
Theo got to his feet and reached for Mike’s hand without thinking.It was as if a command similar to Peter’s compulsion had taken hold of him.
Mike opened the door, and two more kids—middle graders, it looked like—ran at them, more paint bombs in their hands and ready to hurl.They had a mad sort of glee on their faces, driving home the creepy factor.
The siren whistled, and the children stopped moving, lowered their arms, then sagged to the ground and went to sleep right there on the floor of the law office.
“Whoa.You did that?”Theo asked.
“Yup.”Mike ran a hand down the front of his suit as if to check he was still looking good while handling a crisis.“You could say crowd control is my thing.Come on, I can hear more of them.”
Theo found himself holding Mike’s hand and just walking along with the siren as he whistled and hummed and sang children to sleep all over the office.Several splotches of red paint now adorned the walls, making it look less like a law firm and more like an art exhibit turned paintball battleground.
Mike made his way to the break room.There, another lawyer stood frozen over by the coffee maker, coffee in hand and clothes stained red by the bomb a pigtailed teenage delinquent had thrown at her.
“What the hell?”Theo didn’t know how to read the scene.The girl’s eyes were glassy, and she was shaking all over.Mike sang her to sleep with a few soft notes.
