16GRIM
She insisted on going in. Inside the restaurant.
The eye-searingly bright and blasphemously well-litMcDonald’srestaurant.
And “insisted” as in the moment I parked, she said, “Thank God, I’m starving,” got out of The Judge, shut the door behind her, and, without a backward glance, walked toward the garish, french fry–scented electric bonfire of glowing yellow and red.
I gritted my teeth, mentally berating myself for letting her talk me into bringing her here when I really should have taken her home. Except she’d made a point.
If Cedric could find her at the library, he could find her in her apartment. I had no doubt he already knew where she lived. Maybe he was even there now, waiting for her.
Unless he’d followed us…
Muttering a curse under my breath, I got out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me.
“Wait,” I called to her from across the parking lot as she grabbed the door handle.
Helena turned to me, arching a questioning brow as, still garbed in my sweeping black robes, I cut across the asphalt to the sidewalk.
Taking my human form contained my soul, so its smoky essence no longer tailed me or wafted around my frame. Assuming my human form brought complications, too.
Maybe, if I was lucky, this pit stop would be a quick one.
Though I admittedly didn’t know where to go from here. Where to take her…
“A-are you hungry?” she asked when I stopped beside her. She tried to open the door, but I shoved—and held—it shut, peering in through the window, searching for any evidence of Cedric or his wizard’s work.
Most of the booths and tables sat empty. The place had just a couple of diners—a beefy guy in a ball cap chowing down on a burger and an elderly couple eating soft serve. Quiet pop music played muffled through the glass.
No sign of Cedric. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t lurking about.
Maybe I shouldn’t have hacked his soul off like that when he’d come snooping around the library. Just something about his wanting to get into that elevator, confirm Helena’s death, had… triggered me.
Apparently into a murderous rage.
Maybe I was cracking up. Finally cracking up.
I’d been at this game long enough…
I couldn’t deny, though, how that event—scything Cedric—and my knee-jerk need to retaliate had led to tonight’s debacle. Which I still couldn’t be sure was over.
“I can get you something,” Helena said as I opened the door for her, surveying the parking lot next. “Goodness knows it’s the least I can do.”
I peered back down to her. What was she saying to me now? Half of what came out of her mouth struck me as absurd. Not so much the things she said, but more so that she said them… to me.
“You know,” she elaborated, “for saving me? That’s three times now. I’d say you deserve a treat for that.”
She slipped into the restaurant while I gave the parking lot one final sweep before backing in after her.
Blinking against the glaring fluorescents that seared my retinas,burned my brain, and scorched my nocturnal, light-averse, subterranean-dwelling soul, I followed on her heels as she made a beeline for the counter, behind which stood a kid, his curly hair cinched under the band of his visor.
“Cool costumes,” said the teen as he assessed us. “Bryce,” his name tag read.
“Oh, I’m not—” Helena caught herself. She gave my black-clad form a once-over and then cleared her throat. “I mean, thanks.” She issued the tiniest of curtsies before aiming a thumb at me. “He’s the Grim Reaper, and I’m a children’s librarian.”
Helena gave a nervous, high-pitched titter, sharing the inside joke with herself alone.
Bryce nodded appreciatively. “Talk about the ultimate power couple.”
