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The big Orc’s home was built in the same style as my Grandma’s, but on a larger scale. It was set beside and back from her property, almost hidden by a couple of huge old Maple trees decked out in gorgeous red and gold leaves.
I marched up the front porch steps and carefully used my elbow to ring the doorbell. I had my hands full of the pie—which was a big one due to the oversized pie plate.
At first I thought he wasn’t going to answer. I rang the doorbell again and then kicked the door—(it was dark green, in case you’re wondering.)
“Rath!” I shouted, wincing just a little. My throat was still slightly sore from being choked, but at least the bruises Milas James had put on me were fading. “Rath, I know you’re in there and I’m not leaving until you talk to me!” I yelled. “I brought you a pie!” I added, hoping that he would come to the door for that, even if he wasn’t inclined to see me otherwise.
At last the huge front door creaked open. Rath was standing there, dressed only in a pair of gray sweatpants and a frown.
“What are you doing here?” he said gruffly. “Why would you want to come over here?”
“To see you, of course,” I said as lightly as I could. “Look, this pie is really heavy—can I come in and set it down?”
He looked at the pie and then lower, at my wrist—the one Milas James had made him grab and twist. The bruises there weren’t fading quite so fast—you could still see five finger-shaped marks clearly on my pale skin.
“Yeah, come in,” he muttered at last, stepping back from the door. “If you really want to.”
“Of course I do.”
I walked past him into his house. It was bachelor neat and sparsely decorated—you could tell a guy on his own lived there.
I had been in the big Orc’s home before, of course—though we tended to hang out in my Grandma’s house—my house—more. Partially because my place was just more cozy, I thought. Rath’s house was huge and everything in it was almost twice the size of a normal human residence. It always made me feel like a little kid when I walked through his home.
I passed through the living room with its huge brown leather sofa. There was a fire crackling in the enormous fireplace, which was nice. The dining room had a vast round wooden table and three heavy chairs—the fourth was the one at my Grandma’s place. Rath had told me he’d brought it over so the two of them could eat meals together.
“She loved to feed people and of course, being an Orc and a guy, I love to eat. Plus, I really enjoyed her company,” he had told me when I asked about the chair.
I felt a little twinge of sadness now when I thought of how he hadn’t come to sit in that chair and eat a meal with me in what felt like forever. But I told myself to be patient—maybe he needed a little more time before he felt ready to come to my place again.
I finally made it to his kitchen, which was a vast space with gray granite countertops that came up to my chest. I struggled to lift the heavy glass pie plate up to put it on the counter and Rath was suddenly there.
“Here, let me.”
He took the pie from my hands and put it on the counter.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I swear I used half a tree’s worth of apples in there!”
Instead of answering, he grabbed my right hand—gently, though—and turned it over, looking at the finger-shaped bruises that encircled my wrist.
“God!” I heard him mutter and his face was twisted with something like loathing.
“Rath?” I looked up at him uncertainly. “Are you okay?”
“Am I okay? Of course not!” He released my hand abruptly and walked away to look out his kitchen window.
“Are you mad at me?” I asked bluntly. There was no use putting it off—this was a discussion we needed to have. “Because if you are, I completely understand,” I went on quickly. “After all, it was my family curse so it’s my fault you got, er, possessed.”
“You think I’m mad at you?” He whirled around to face me, his golden eyes incredulous.
“Well, yes,” I said hesitantly. “I mean, I should have warned you about the black door and about Milas James. Although to be fair, I had just figured out what the family curse was myself earlier that day,” I went on. “I just?—”
“Baby, you’re the one who ought to be mad at me!” He came back across the kitchen. Cupping my cheek, he tilted my face to one side and studied my bruised neck. “Look what I did to you—I fucking hate myself.”
“You didn’t do it—Milas James did!” I exclaimed. “That’s the evil Witch Hunter who possessed you—the one who had been tormenting my family for centuries,” I added, since I had never gotten a chance to talk to him about the details of the curse up until now.
“Oh, I know who he is—I know all about him. I learned everything when he put down roots inside me and took over my body,” he said grimly.
“And I’m so, so sorry for that!” I said earnestly. “Look, I was on my way back from The Red Lion with some candles to try and do a banishing spell to get rid of him. I thought you were going to be gone long enough for me to take care of it before you got back. I never dreamed you’d show up and get possessed like that!” I bit my lip. “I guess it was pretty bad, huh?”
