Seth #2
Seth needed to be at home, under a pile of blankets, with a hot tea and something terrible on the TV. He needed a moment of normalcy where no one’s neck had been recently snapped and no precious childhoods had been stolen by roaming monsters.
Poor Riley. Poor fucking Riley. All that trauma, and the fates had given him Seth? It didn’t make any sense. Seth wasn’t special. He was normal, maybe even on the verge of boring as he got older.
How was he supposed to be the consolation prize?
Seth hurried down the hallway, a palpably forlorn Riley following behind him. Down the stairs they went. Somehow, despite how slowly Riley was moving, he was always only a step behind. Those were some horror-movie-level stalking skills he had.
Seth held his breath as he walked through the front door, half-afraid the house might somehow decide to keep him in its clutches. But it didn’t. He made it.
He exhaled sharply when he was safely in the fresh air. Riley finally stopped in the doorway.
“Come by the bakery when you’re feeling better,” Seth found himself saying, as if Riley was recovering from a cold and not having been temporarily murdered. “I’ll save you an orange scone.”
He was down the porch steps before he could get a chance to see how devastated Riley looked. Or maybe Riley wasn’t devastated at all. Maybe Seth was pulling off a very chill and very casual retreat after all, and it only felt like he was practically sprinting in the other direction.
Too much, too much, too much.
Seth threw himself into his unlocked car, shoved the key into the ignition, and turned it.
Nothing. Not even a sad engine whine.
Seth tried again. Had he forgotten how car keys worked in his abject panic?
But no. Nothing.
He tried again. And again. When he was still met with nothing, he slapped his palms against the steering wheel, too flustered to even wince with the sting. “Are you fucking serious right now?”
He sat there, panting heaving breaths, as two figures approached his dead-as-a-doornail car. One tall, one short. Both beautiful. Neither of them Riley.
The moms.
Seth climbed back out of his car with every scrap of dignity he could muster. Which was, frankly, not very many scraps.
Daphne’s face was the perfect picture of sincere sympathy, Sybil’s more of a blank mask behind her. Riley was nowhere to be seen.
“Engine troubles, darling Seth?” Daphne asked.
They had to know. About him. About Riley. About…them. Riley and his moms were a close trio, and if Seth had felt capable of reflecting back on things, he was sure he’d find that Riley hadn’t been subtle.
Still. The engine not responding could be coincidence. Batteries died all the time. “Could I—” Seth cleared his dry throat. “Could I ask for a jump?”
Now Daphne’s face transformed into the perfect picture of regret, her pretty brow furrowing. “I’m afraid we don’t have the proper cables.”
Seth narrowed his eyes. “I do.”
“Do you?” Sybil asked mildly.
He did. He was sure he did. Seth took jerky steps over to the trunk of his car. He shifted the various bric-a-brac, lifting the floor to where the cables lay beneath.
Except they weren’t there. Of course they weren’t. Seth wilted, his shoulders sagging.
“No luck?” Sybil called.
Seth took a breath, let it out. He shut his trunk with a grimace. He reminded himself that accidents happened, and that things got lost, and that he needed to be polite to the bloodthirsty beauties. “Could I ask for a ride home?”
“Oh, we never drive at night,” Daphne told him.
The statement was so absurd it took several long seconds to penetrate Seth’s brain. “I’m sorry?”
She waved a hand toward the trees. “The elk are so unpredictable, you know. We’d hate to hit one by accident.”
“You’re vampires.” The words escaped Seth’s mouth through clenched teeth.
“But the elk needn’t suffer for it.”
Seth now had clenched fists to add to his clenched teeth. “Am I— Am I being kidnapped?”
Daphne’s eyes widened in a very neat approximation of shock. “Why, darling, of course not. But we can’t very well let you walk all by your lonesome.”
Walking hadn’t even occurred to Seth. He looked around at the vast forest surrounding him.
It had to be—what—eight miles, at least, if he followed the road?
It would be a long walk home, and possibly a wet one, if the clouds did what they seemed to be threatening to do.
And it was freezing, and Seth was dressed for car-to-house travel, not a forest hike.
He could call someone to get him—he had Violet’s number now—but what kind of friend would he be if he lured a teenage girl out to a vampire den just to save himself some inconvenience?
He mostly trusted these people, but Riley’s moms were clearly protective of their son, and Seth didn’t know how far they’d go with a stranger.
“We’ll of course compensate you for any days of business you might lose,” Sybil said coolly.
“Days?” Seth yelped, any approximation of chill fleeing his body. “Plural?”
“We’ll try to get a mechanic out here as soon as possible, but—” Sybil shrugged, a gleam in her eyes Seth didn’t care for at all. “We’re so very isolated.”
Of course, of course. They were isolated. Isolated and diabolical. And Seth was stuck here, at the mercy of his supposed mate and his supposed mate’s meddling mothers.
Seth tried his best to get his voice back to a normal human register.
He knew he’d been bordering on shrill. “Whether my car is working or not,” he said slowly, “I would like a ride home first thing in the morning.” He’d figure out how to get his car home later, when he wasn’t in the midst of an existential crisis.
“You know. Once the elk are no longer of such…concern.”
He didn’t sound like himself, but he didn’t feel like himself either. He felt like a character in a play, only he didn’t know any of his lines and the director was raging on ketamine.
Daphne clapped her hands in delight. “We have a lovely guest room.”
She wrapped her arm around his, and Seth let himself be escorted back up to the beautiful house with a vampire mother on each side of him.