“Find the unicorn shifter so you can shift into a unicorn again.”
I scowl at him for bringing up such a horrible memory.
“Isn’t it hard to walk around here?” he asks. “With all of these people constantly bumping into you, isn’t your magic switching just as quickly?”
“Honestly… it’s something I’ve kind of gotten used to over the years. I just… expect that I’m going to get bumped into and tossed random magic along the way,” I say. My magic mimics the magic of the last person I touched. But now that I’ve learned that I’m not quite human… I’m not sure I understand it as much as I once thought I did, especially since Conquest told me that it was caused by me touching each person’s soul. It means that as I walk through a crowded place like this, I can go from having the magic of a shifter to having the magic of a mage within seconds.The magic currently rippling through my body is some kind of earth elemental magic.
“As a kid, I loved this,” I tell him. “I thought it was thrilling to immediately try out different types of magic, but now that I don’t know if the magic will hurt me, it feels more like a curse.”
“We’ll fix it,” Torin assures me.
“I’m not ready for tomorrow,” I say. “I’m not ready to talk to anyone else from the Magical Interference Unit. Why did I ever agree to talk to them?”
“We could just torture them instead of talk to them, if you’d like?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Yes, torture is where I was planning on going with it,” I say with ample sarcasm. “Instead of just like… telling them not to come, I could trick them into arriving so we could torture them.”
“Tell them they are only allowed to enter my palace if they bring desserts. Use your tappy device to tell them.”
“My phone doesn’t work that way.”
“It’s weird that your tappy device works perfectly for things you want to do but never works for things I want to do.”
“I know, it’s sad, really,” I say as I return to the bench where Mickey was. He’s no longer there, but his undead have held the spot for us. “Where’s Mickey?”
Joy points at the children’s ride where Mickey looks like he’s dead while the ladybug he’s sitting inside bobs up and down.
“He said the soothing ride helps him sleep,” she tells us.
“I… never imagined he had trouble sleeping,” I say as the ride ends and I see Tommy dragging Mickey off. Mickey does perk up when he sees everything we’ve gotten and eagerly heads our way. He reaches us just in time to see Torin take a huge bite of his shaved ice.
“This is so good. I would like this for every meal,” Torin enthuses before an odd look crosses his face. “It has beenpoisoned! Do not eat it!” He tries to knock mine out of my hand in a move to “protect me” as I realize that the god of war and love… is suffering from a brain freeze.
Chapter Two
Riley
“You know it is impossible for you to hide with these things following you around,” Torin says while he plucks one of the souls. The white orb bobs away, displeased since it seems to only like me for some reason. I really wish I could help them because while their souls are bobbing around me, their bodies are in the hospital in a coma-like state.
“Torin, I will allow you to ravish my body right here and now if you keep quiet about my hiding spot,” I whisper, even though it’s rather stuffy in here. Shaarune, Torin’s world, seems to be hitting summer right about now, and it makes me question if we should go suffer in my one-room apartment until it’s over since it has air conditioning.
His interest is piqued, and he shuffles over to where I’ve tucked myself behind a shelf in the giant library in Torin’s palace. The palace can only be accessed from my world by going through a Door (currently placed in Mickey’s house) that leads to Torin’s realm. We’d decided that instead of living in my cramped one-room apartment, we would live over here in Torin’s realm where his grand palace sat empty.
“I would love to ravish your body, but Lieutenant Lindsey is here and she’s very intimidating,” he says.
“You are agod. How can you be intimidated?”
“I just am! She walked through the Door and took one disgruntled look at my beautiful palace. While everyone else was going, ‘Ooh, it’s so beautiful’ and ‘Ah, I’m so jealous,’ she was all… hold on, let me set the scene.” And I watch in horror while he grabs two souls and stuffs them into his shirt so it looks like he has breasts. I am around a hundred percent certain that torturing the souls that bound after me in this way is wrong, but there’s Torin, running his fingers through his hair and pursing his lips as he tries to imitate Lt. Lindsey. “‘What an absolute waste of space. How avaricious.’ I don’t even know what avaricious is… is it like asparagus?”
“Yes, exactly like asparagus,” I confirm.
“I thought so. Now come on… you can do it. It turns me on when you don’t let her bully you.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. Here, I will carry you,” he says as he reaches for me, but because I try to crawl away at the same time, he only ends up with my legs, which he lifts up. It pulls my pants down my ass slightly, leaving me in the strange position people use for a wheelbarrow race when Lt. Lindsey, Vinny, and Imani all walk through the door, led by Mickey.
“They do this stuff all the time,” Mickey states, as though this is a common occurrence.
