“I only need to recharge it! I just have to plug it in.”
Torin stands up and beams at me. “Ah… so it’s like how you’re recharging for the next time we have sex. I understand now. But do you also need to be recharged by ‘plugging something in’? Because I’m willing.”
“Kneel down.”
“And open my mouth? Gladly,” he says as he lowers to his knees.
I climb onto his back, grab him in a choke hold, and spur him in the sides while he stands up. “Start walking. We have a long way to go.”
Kit climbs onto his head and I even get to see her dig a few claws in on the way up.
And off he goes. He’s far too happy about all of this, likely because he doesn’t know that the nearest sign of civilization is about ten miles down the road.
“Such a pleasant day,” he says cheerfully. “Nothing more pleasant than you on my back, the sun in my face, and your cute little familiar peeling my scalp open.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I promise as I pull her off and put her on my shoulder. She is displeased by this and aims for his head again. “Don’t maim him, we need him to walk ten miles for us first.”
“And then she can maim me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. You’re just refreshing and delightful, Riley. In my thousand years of life, I can confidently say I’ve never met anyone like you. Most people treated me with so much respect and timidness. Or they flattered me and did everything I asked, just to gain my attention. And then there’s you.”
“Then there’s me,” I repeat as I crack open the book and have to kind of put it in front of his face so Kit can stare at it. It’s reallyquite awkward, but it’s keeping me from having to walk, so I’m game. I begin to read, extremely interested in what’s inside it. All the while, my pack mule merrily walks down the road without a care in the world that I’m exploiting him.
After making it about six miles down the desolate road, he perks up.
“I hear one of those testicle monsters,” he says.
“Testicle monsters… oh, a car? I guess we could wave it down. There’s like a fifty-fifty chance they’re a serial killer, but I think a god, a familiar, and whatever magic I have at the moment can take them on, right?”
“I will ask them,” he says before damn near throwing himself—and me since I’m still on his back like a sophisticated adult—in front of the car. The driver slams on the brakes as I realize that maybe I should have told himhowto wave down a car instead of nearly killing everyone involved.
The extremely distraught driver rolls down the window and, with a lot of hand motions involved, demands, “What the hell were you doing? I nearly hit you!”
“I was testing whether you were a serial killer. If you accelerated your testicle monster, it would tell me that you are a serial killer, but if you wrangled it to a stop, I would know that you’re not. You have passed my test. Now, human, would you drive us to civilization?”
“You… I’m sorry, you thinkI’mthe serial killer in this group?” he asks while rolling his window back up.
“I’ll give you fifty bucks to drive us,” I shout.
“You guys look like you’re from some cult. I’m not going to be a sacrifice for fifty bucks. Won’t make that mistake a third time,” he says, and then he zooms off as I’m left looking down at our cult attire.
“What’s a cult?” Torin asks curiously. “And are we in one?”
“It’s like… when a group of people obsessively follow the words of one person.”
“Ah, so I’m in a cult. I’m in your cult. I will follow all of your words if you reward me with sex.”
“No! He just looked at our clothes, as well as the fact that you tried testing whether he wasa serial killer,and came to a very valid conclusion,” I say.
“I can take your clothes off, if you’d prefer. Then we’ll be in a naked cult.”
I ignore all of that. “When the next car comes by, we’ll simply ask if we can use their phone.”
“You still haven’t shown me what this ‘phone of magic’ does.”
“Because I’m afraid that you’re going to snap it in half like you did the TV!”
