Page 35 of Blood Oath
They’ll have to.
“Enough boy talk. Halfton or no?”
Kenzie mulls it over for another second, throwing another hesitant look at the door.
I want to go to Halfton tonight not only to get rid of my matches but also to take my mind off the lingering ache in my chest from my most recent episode. Plus, if I’m candid with myself, I’ve grown accustomed to hanging out with Kenzie. I may have even…missed her over the last couple of days since the Seeking.
I’m not above bribery, so I add, “Dinner is on me.”
“You drive a hard bargain, May,” she grins, grabbing my velvet-gloved hand. She’s a true diamond for bringing me another pair. “Sure! Let’s go. I’ll let my matches know I’ll be back later. But forget about dinner—let’s stop at the Witch’s Brew while we’re there. I want to say hi to Jackie.”
Leaving Everbound University without running into any of my matches is relatively simple since the castle is a veritable maze complete with servants’ entrances and exits from hundreds of years ago. According to my History of Monsterkind professor, Everbound Castle was built as a stronghold not long after humans began colonizing New England. They’d fled Europe to escape the bloody warfare of the monsters overrunning that continent and tried to establish a humans-only society here in America…which didn’t go according to plan since the monsters followed.
But after the gods put the Legacy Curse in place and forced legacies to protect humans from the Nether, the castle was abandoned until the Immortal Quintet turned it into the mandatory finishing school for anything that goes bump in the night.
Leaving through one of the servants’ exits, we make our way down the path that leads to a small parking area, where Kenzie’s old baby blue Mustang is parked.
She once told me it was a gift from her first sugar daddy. Apparently, she’s had a few of those.
Halfton is a thirty-minute drive away. It’s a nosy small town, the kind that could either be the setting of a saccharine holiday movie about two awkward humans falling in love or a horrifying murder mystery novel. It has two or three ma and pa restaurants, a handful of bars, five stop lights, one mall Kenzie calls the Pit of Fashion Despair, and one adorable little coffee house called the Witch’s Brew whose owner, Jackie, is married to a legacy.
Jackie is one of the few humans in Halfton who enjoys their proximity to Everbound University. From what I’ve observed, the others are either lukewarm or downright annoyed about it, as if it hasn’t been here for a few centuries longer than they’ve been alive.
When we step into the coffee house, Jackie looks up and smiles from where she’s carefully aligning cake pops in a display case. “Come on in, you two! Kenzie, I just pulled a batch of those pumpkin spice cookies you love out of the oven.”
I don’t know how Jackie remembers specific names since plenty of legacies come to the Witch’s Brew so often. She rounds the counter, and I watch as she settles her hands on her very pregnant belly.
“Yikes. You haven’t popped yet?”
Kenzie shoots me a wide-eyed shut up look, but Jackie just laughs.
“Nope. This is what I get for marrying a sexy-ass wolf shifter. You know his kind is big on the whole breeding kink thing, right? Sometimes, we get a little carried away. Goodness. Last time, it was twins. This time, it’s triplets. But I couldn’t be more excited,” she sighs happily.
Twins and triplets?
I think my womb just flinched a little.
Meanwhile, Kenzie oohs and awes and asks what names they’re considering as we each get a cup of hot chocolate and a pumpkin spice cookie. Jackie gets a call and excuses herself, leaving us alone in our favorite corner booth.
Well, it’s Kenzie’s favorite booth. She’s been coming here far longer than I have since I’ve only been to Halfton a handful of times since arriving two weeks ago.
“It’s sad that so many people consider legacy-human relationships taboo,” Kenzie sighs. “I think they’re so freaking adorable. Anyway, spill. I want to hear all about your schemes.”
There’s not much to tell, but I give her a quick recap about failing to bore Silas and my gambit to make them all turn on each other by making them jealous of Everett. I leave out the bit about the three girls confronting me since she doesn’t need to know I’m officially on their radar.
When I finish, she nods thoughtfully, eyes straying to the storefront window behind me. “And you think that playing head games will make them start to hate you?”
“Yes.”
“Pfft. Somehow, I seriously doubt that. Just accept it, May—they’re obsessed with you.”
I set down my mug. “No. They’re obsessed with the idea of me. They want a keeper to break their curses. Who I actually am is of little interest to them.”
Not to mention, if they knew the truth about me, they might kill me.
She smiles evilly and finally pulls her gaze away from the window to wag her brows at me. “Little interest, huh? Well, I’m pretty sure they actually want you, or else they wouldn’t have stalked you all the way here.”
I stare at Kenzie in confusion for a moment before she flicks a look over my shoulder. Sure enough, behind me and through the glass of the bakery windows, I spot Silas striding through the town square, looking absolutely lethal—not to mention out of place in such a human environment, with his blood-red eyes and sinfully sharp good looks. Humans around here are accustomed to seeing legacies, but they all dart out of his path like he’s a shark among fish.
