Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 98961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Grabbing my phone, I go into the living room to check on Juliet. I call Lucas, heart hammering as his phone rings and rings and rings.
“You’ve reached Lucas King, leave a message.”
Tears roll down my cheeks and I call again, wanting to hear his voice once more. I need to stop doing this to myself. Lucas isn’t gone forever. I will find a way to get him back.
The doorbell rings and Scarlet barks, scaring Juliet awake. I give my hellhound a glare which she returns with puppy dog eyes.
“It’s okay,” I tell her and pick up my screaming infant. It’s a chaotic jumble of answering the door with a crying baby, Scarlet acting annoyingly dog-like, and me not wanting to speak Enochian in front of this guy so I can command her.
“This way,” I say over the noise and wave for him to follow me. It didn’t take long after vampires came out of the coffin for humans to start capitalizing on it. There’s still much debate today about people willingly selling their blood, either directly like this or to be bottled up and sold for a ridiculously high price. Technically, it’s illegal to bite someone against their will, but vampires have been doing it since they’ve been around.
“B-beautiful house,” the human snack says, and the confusion is obvious on his face. There are no curtains drawn, and he’s following a human with red puffy eyes who’s carrying an infant.
“Thanks,” I say, deciding to act like this is perfectly normal. To me it is. I lead him upstairs and to Eliza’s room. The door is closed and the curtains are drawn, giving the illusion that she can’t walk around during the day. We’ve decided to keep my accidental sun-safe spell a secret. It can definitely work to our advantage when someone isn’t expecting a vampire to be out and about in the house on a bright sunny day.
It’s been a while since I’ve actually been in the room Eliza has claimed as her own. Large double-decker cages line one wall, and several of her guinea pigs start wheeking as soon as they hear the door open. I kinda forget we have them, to be honest. Eliza takes incredibly good care of them so their cages never stink, and unless you’re walking in like this, you don’t hear them at all.
“Thanks, love,” she tells me, and I shut the door as I leave the room and go back to the living room. I pick up Lucas’s phone and go to his photos, swiping through. He doesn’t have many, and most are of Juliet, us, or the house, and everything is organized into albums. Lucas is the most organized and methodical person I’ve met, and I can only hope if I make only a fraction as long as he has, I’ll learn to somehow get my shit together too.
The last photo he took was from his last night. Lucas and I had cuddled up on the couch together while I nursed Juliet. She fell asleep while eating, and I fell asleep not long after. Lucas had one arm around me, supporting our daughter while I slept. He took a selfie of us, with his lips against the side of my head. I bite the inside of my cheek, able to feel the love emulating off Lucas just from this one photo.
An email notification comes through, and I check to see if it’s anything more from the Egyptologist. It’s not, but the writer of the email asked if they got the time wrong because Lucas didn’t show up to some Zoom meeting. The rest of the world is going on like normal. The rest of the world doesn’t know the sacrifices both Lucas and Julian made to keep it going as such.
I want to reply to the passive aggressive email with something equally snarky but decide not to. Maybe I should set up an autoreply about being out of touch for a while? I’ll have to run it by Eliza.
My own phone rings, and I tear my eyes off the photo to trade Lucas’s phone for mine. It’s Easton and I answer right away.
“Hey, thanks for calling me back.”
“Sure. What’s…what’s going on?”
“Do you think you can sneak me into the Order of the Mystic Realm’s storeroom?” I ask, wincing as the words leave my mouth.
“If I were talking to anyone else, I’d ask if you were joking. But it’s Callie fucking Martin so of course you’d want me to walk into the lions’ den holding a slab of meat.”
“It’s King now,” I remind him.
“Whatever,” he huffs. “Why do you need to get into the storeroom?”
“They have something I need.”
“Well, duh.”
Easton and I have had our share of issues, but he’s not usually like this. “Are you drunk?”
“Maybe I am,” he says with a bit of a slur.