Page 64 of Death Dance

I questioned why he didn’t transform, which might buy him a few more minutes of life.

My father preened my feathers, taking care with the tip of his beak, which could skewer me from skull to tail feathers with little difficulty. After a few moments, he transformed into his human shape, sitting on the edge of the shipping container while staring down at my husband and Ben. “I wonder how long the necromancy imbuing him will last before it breaks and he perishes.”

I wondered, too. As hands and the ability to speak English would come in useful, I concentrated, finding the process of shifting out of my avian form even trickier than leaving the warm comforts of my feline shape. Much like my father, I sat on the edge of the container, peering down. “What are we wagering?”

“Two weeks,” my father replied. “Should I win, I shall spirit you away on a family trip so you can see places of significance for the family. You can even bring that man of yours should he be incapable of lasting that long without you.”

I snickered at that. “He’s incapable. He struggles when I leave to have myself an early evening snack of miscreant.”

With a smile, my father leaned forward for a better view of Ben toying with the rat who’d caused us so many problems. “It is as it should be. I believe he’ll last perhaps ten minutes before they figure out how to break the shield protecting his life.”

Those ten minutes would be an eternity for Breckenan, well deserved as far as I was concerned. I considered Ben, who’d finished treating the rat as a toy to whip around and had dropped him to the ground with a paw pinning him down. The tips of his claws dug into the rat without piercing his flesh.

“Forty-five minutes,” I guessed. “And not only do we go on a family vacation, we send Ben on a vacation, preferably with his new lady.”

“I can pay for his honeymoon should he be blessed with a bride should you win. And where will we be going on our family vacation?”

“Somewhere rustic, simple, and disconnected from the rest of the world,” I requested. “I could use the peace.”

“I know just the place. Now, which one of us shall be the victor?”

I checked my phone, chuckling at the absurd number of texts I’d received in the past thirty minutes. I opened the stopwatch feature of the clock app and pressed the button. “We’ll find out soon enough.”