Chapter One
Riley
“What are you feeling for dinner? We can’t have chicken every single night,” I mutter. “We had it last night… and the night before… oh…and the night before. What about pizza? Don’t you ever get tired of eating chicken? And if you go nab the neighbor’s chicken again, I’m going to be pissed, you hear me?”
My familiar gives exactly zero shits as her eyes stay absolutely focused on the rows of meat at the grocery store.
She’s sitting on my shoulder, loudly licking her chops while her muscles bunch up, like she’s just going to dive into the cooler and wallow around on top of the chicken… again.
The first time she did it, the store clerk was so livid, I was afraid that if we didn’t leave, she was going to burst a blood vessel and keel over. Kit, my familiar, seemed eager to see this happen.
“One pack, that’s it,” I say, giving in for some reason. Probably because if I don’t, she’ll continue to stare at the chicken like she’s a starving creature until we leave the store. And then she’ll go steal the neighbor’s chicken in retaliation.
I toss the meat into the cart, and Kit dives off my shoulder to guard her chicken as though anyone in this store would eventhinkof rushing my cart to take it. The genet, a catlike animal with brown fur and black stripes, sniffs the chicken like she’s making sure I got a piece fit for a king. I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought shewasa king; she sure gets her way like she’s one.
I reach out and my hand bumps into the handle of the cart before I grab it.
“Kit,” I urge while I pat my shoulder, waiting for the small, five-pound creature to return. Half of the animal is made up of a long striped tail that she uses to balance herself as she climbs trees… or my body.
Kit is too busy deciding that she wants to eat her weight in chicken as she longingly gazes at it, prepared to sink her teeth right into the packaging.
“Don’t you dare,” I warn. “Have you forgotten how embarrassed you were the last time I had to pry Styrofoam out from between your fangs?”
Aside from grabbing Kit and restraining her, I have a feeling that nothing is going to stop her from staring at that chicken… other than the screams that explode around us.
Her head snaps up and she looks around as I remember that I forgot mozzarella for the French bread pizza I’m planning on stuffing myself with tonight.
Kit leaps onto my shoulder and then we’re off.
It’s oddly hard to reach the back of the store while people scream and runtowardus. Like… why’s our aisle suddenly Grand Central Station? I have some mozzarella to procure.
“RUN!” a woman shouts right before the overhead speakers crackle to life.
“Please exit the building in a safe and orderly—oh my god!” and then that cuts out.
“None of this screams ‘safe and orderly’ to me,” I comment, using my cart to separate the people streaming out of the building. A crash at the far end of the store really gets them going as someone slams into me and Kit falls off. Suddenly, she’s on the floor, attempting to avoid being trampled while I try to reach in her general direction. I snag her long tail and pull her to safety. She hisses out her complaints about nearly being stepped on.
“You alright?” I ask, scratching under her chin to calm her. Her eyes narrow, pleased, and I’malsopleased that the number of screaming people has diminished and the store is now practically clear. It makes scooting down the aisles a breeze as I head all the way back to the other end of the store for the cheese.
I snatch up the cheese and hurry toward self-checkout, finding that it’s rather nice having no lines. Maybe someone should cause chaos every time I go to the grocery store. I start scanning my items before picking up the chicken.
“Why are there tooth marks in the chicken?”
Kit looks away like that’ll make the marks disappear. I sigh and scan the chicken before grabbing the very last item in the cart. And just as I’m sliding my donuts across the scanner and into the overflowing bags, a wyvern lands right on them, crushing my groceries and busting the screen of the checkout machine while mozzarella oozes out from between its talons.
Kit hisses, pissed that her chicken now belongs to this asshole.
I watch as the wyvern lets out a battle cry before it rips open the box of donuts and helps itself to some.
“What about a mobile pickup?” I ask Kit. “We’ll do one of those… ooh, no… delivery. That sounds even better.”
The wyvern is less than happy that there are pieces of glass from the self-checkout littering its prize but still not as unhappy as I am after having wasted half an hour of my life acquiring those groceries, only to have them disappear before my eyes. My eye twitches a little while I watch the wyvern eat the donuts I’d very much looked forward to.
Like there’s a part of me that kind of wants to just punch it. Would it solve anything?
No.
Would I probably break my hand and get my arm torn off?
