Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 72519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72519 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 363(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
“Nice. I’ll have to look into it.”
They walked together to the front of the store. They used separate self-check registers since the store was so dead. A smile crossed Luke’s face as he placed the single orange in the bag.
As they walked out of the store, Luke racked his brain for something else to say. They’d fallen into a comfortable silence, but he wasn’t ready for this encounter to end.
“You know, we could make this a thing on Thursdays. We could meet here and come up with new dinner ideas,” Matteo suggested. “Because I’ll admit I never considered the scurvy problem.”
Luke soared into the clouds for one heartbeat and crashed to earth on the next. Matteo must have seen it written on his face, because the young man backpedaled.
“Or not. That was lame. I shouldn’t have said that. That was so dorky.”
“No! I just…I want to, but I work two jobs. It was sheer luck that I was off today and had time to run to the store. I don’t know when I’ll be free like this again.” He sighed. “But I wish I could.”
“Here.” Matteo shoved his cell phone under Luke’s nose. “Give me your number. You can text me next time you’re free to do a grocery run. And we can send each other pictures of our meals if we can’t go together.”
Luke snatched up the phone and plugged in his number, his heart returning to skipping. He handed the phone to Matteo, and his new friend used the number to send a text.
“Great. Well. I should get going. See you around.”
Matteo hurried off before Luke could point out that they were headed in the same direction. This was for the best. They’d said some very scary things in the store. This was allowing them to end on a positive, not-too-embarrassing high note.
Luke’s phone vibrated, and he pulled up the text.
Don’t forget to eat your orange. You’re not allowed to get scurvy.
They were both dorks. Swoon.
Chapter 10
Pass
OGOS
“Pass.”
“What do mean, pass?” Azroth snapped.
“I mean pass,” Ogos repeated, reveling in the fact that he made that vein in the middle of Azroth’s forehead stick out.
“You can’t pass!”
“Of course I can. I just did. And I am. So, pass.”
The demon loomed over him, his massive black bat wings sprouting from his back to scrape across the bookshelves on either side of the library. Ogos pretended to ignore him as he used a sticky tentacle to snag the corner of the page in the fashion magazine he was looking at and turn it.
People complained all the time that fashion models were too thin. In his opinion, they weren’t skinny enough. They needed to be more skeletal. People needed to see all the knobs and protrusions of their bones. And what about the organs? A person couldn’t even see the outline of each of their tasty organs.
Of course, he cared little for the organs. When eating a human, he liked to crunch the bones and suck out the tasty marrow. That was where the good stuff liked to hide.
“Quit ignoring me!” Azroth raged. He snatched up the magazine and incinerated it in his hand so that ash rained down on Ogos. “What do you mean, you pass? You can’t pass. We all agreed to take turns scaring Luke. It is now your turn.”
“And I say that I’m skipping my turn.”
Azroth zoomed in close to snarl into what should have been Ogos’s ear, but he was in his gelatinous blob form, so things like ears and appendages were hit or miss. “The game of scaring the college student was your idea. You can’t skip.”
Ogos sighed loudly and turned enough to give Azroth the pretense of his full attention. “Take a hard look at what has happened so far. Luke is damn near impossible to scare. He shrugs everything off. Even Tog’s snarling beast act. And while the other demons aren’t willing to say it out loud, they like Luke. They’re not all that excited about scaring him because they’re afraid of hurting him or running him off.”
Azroth narrowed his eyes at him and glared for three full seconds prior to straightening. The demon pulled his wings in, wrapping them around his shoulders like a regal cape.
“Okay, I’m listening,” he said, but the words were still grudging.
“The rules we established were that we take turns and not cause him physical harm. There was no rule stating that we couldn’t give up our turn. Plus, from my assessment, the only thing that can be done to scare him would require physical harm, which breaks the rules.” Ogos stared up at Azroth, feeling inwardly smug. He would be outwardly smug if he could, but facial expressions were impossible in his blob form.
Azroth simmered in silence for almost a minute. A tiny grunt finally left him, and even that sounded grudging. “Okay. Fine. We’ll skip your turn.”