“Shit. Sorry, no.” His tail whips around before wrapping around his waist. “I was joking. I won’t make you do the front end more than necessary.”
His look of concern sours my mood, and I turn back to the worktable. “I need to get back to the rolls,” my voice comes out like a croak.
Wick nods and squeezes my shoulder before leaving me to my rolls.
“Sorry,” I whisper to the empty room.
3
WREN
I wasmadefor wallowing. Ice cream sundaes on the couch with Lark and sneaking licks to Frankie is the best way to heal my heart from being severed from the Fae lands. But three weeks of wallowing might be a bit much.
“I might go on a run this afternoon,” I say with a mouthful of vanilla ice cream drenched in chocolate syrup.
“In this heat?” Lark fans himself, and it blows a bit of my short hair in my face.
Frankiehurruffsand flops on the floor in front of us. Her back legs reach to touch my feet and I move them so she can feel me. We’ve gotten to be the best of friends these last three weeks, but that could be because I give her extra belly rubs and treats behind Pike’s back.
“It’s been awhile and I’m starting to feel like I’m fusing to the couch.” I eat another spoonful of my treat and hum. “I should probably start to get my life together, too.” But I’m not entirely sure I’m really ready yet.
“You don’t have to do anything. You can just stay here with us.”
Frankie lifts her head and looks at me. It’s as if she’s begging me to do just that. I offer her my spoon of plain vanilla ice cream. She licks it up, making a mess on the hardwood floor.
“I’ll clean that up when we’re done.”
Lark chuckles as Frankie does the clean up herself, licking the mess clean.
“I love having you here. It’s like when we were kids and we’d sneak into each other’s rooms. You’d try to scare me by telling ghost stories, but it never worked.”
“I love being here, and I love just eating my feelings.” I lift my sundae. “But I’m starting to feel like a slug, and I need to work out that energy. And I need to work out who I am now that I’m here.” I lean my head on his shoulder and keep the sundae out of Frankie’s reach when she pushes back to her feet.
“Do you have to be anyone?”
“No, but I’d like to get to know me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been allowed to do anything I want. It’s freeing. But also unchecked, I will eat Hex out of ice cream.” I sit up again and stuff my face with the last few bites of ice cream. “I think it’ll do me good to take Frankie for a nice long walk.”
Pike steps in, his tail wrapped around his waist. He licks at the ice cream in his sugar cone. “I’m starting to get jealous of how close you and Frankie are getting.”
Frankie tips her head and bounds over to Pike. She rubs her head against him as if to say, ‘no one can replace you, demon daddy.’ I added that last bit of course. Frankie can read emotions for sure and I think she understands language.
“We should get her some of those talking buttons!”
Lark groans. “We did for like two days, but she kept pressing them day and night and we had to get rid of them.”
“What did she keep saying?” I ask.
“Music. Music. Music,” Pike says in a dead voice just like those talking buttons sound like.
Frankie’s tail wags and she looks up to him expectantly before running to the TV and barking. “She just wanted this one song, and it drove us up the wall.”
Lark turns the TV on and navigates to a station I hadn’t heard before. “It’s a kid’s song from the demon realm.” He laughs and presses play.
Frankie spins and seems to dance. It’s adorable.
“Ah, I like this one, too,” I say.
“But not 24/7,” Pike says.
