My face falls from that second message. Okay, so we have more work to do. She didn’t call me ugly, or that she disliked me. Also, manipulative and scheming, I accept fully. Rude?
Maybe to others, but never Ember.
Well, besides breaking her door frame and making demands of her. I’ll work on it.
For now, I need to push Ember from my forethoughts as we hunt down this bastard.
Though…him not being found immediately would be of more benefit to me. Or at least, I could not tell Ember that he’s dead when I do kill him, so she’ll stay in my home without putting up a fight.
That would be the manipulation she’s talking about.
Hmm. Perhaps she can come to love my wit and realize it for what it is. I’m just smarter than everyone else and I like to get the things I want.
“Boss,” Conner says, taking me out of my thoughts.
“What?” I snap.
“We’ve lost his trail. He’s lost a lot of blood, but it still smells vibrant. He isn’t dead, but we can’t figure out where he’s hiding.”
“Any information on the human host?” I ask.
I’m not sure if it could be described as a possession. Most vampires don’t survive a slayer to tell the tale. Most of what we do know is hearsay. But when I think about his completely black eyes, there’s no doubt in my mind now about the demon aspect possibly being true.
“Not yet, sir,” Conner says, and I stare at him.
“Don’t bother me again until you have something useful.”
“Yes, sir,” he says quickly, running off into the woods.
I should have done more to subdue him, to make sure he didn’t walk away from our fight at all. A low growl hums in my throat as I turn in place and make my way back to my home, back to my witch.
Before I can even saunter up to her room, Samantha greets me in the foyer with an unamused expression on her face.
“She’s asleep. Have they found the Slayer?”
“No. We lost his trail.”
She hums looking me up and down. “Are you sure you lost the trail?”
“What are you insinuating?”
“Warin, please. You’ll do whatever it takes to keep your witch in her perfect little tower. She won’t like you if you keep trying to trick her.”
“I’m not?—”
“Please,” she says, holding her hand up. “I know part of you was hoping you wouldn’t find the Slayer, so you have a reason to keep her here. She’s not like us. She cares about things, she wants to be a good person. You know, her first concern, besides not being your captive, was if her coven was safe?”
“And?” I say, bored with the conversation.
“If you want a shot of her actually caring about you, you need to stop orchestrating everything. Maybe, just maybe, give her the pieces of you that no one else sees that I know are there. If you keep up all this scheming, you’ll lose her.”
“If I don’t engineer her needing to spend time with me, how do I get her to want to be around me?”
“You’re so stupid sometimes it hurts,” she says, lightly tapping my face twice before walking away.
Samantha is out of the room before I can even reply.
How to get this witch to like me without coercion?
