AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My brow furrows as he tosses a smallish rectangular package wrapped in brown paper at me. One I carefully start to open before I let out a sigh. “Silas, you know I—”
“I know,” he says as he takes a hit off his cigarette. “Call me what you will, but it drives me nuts thinking about you living off that damn coconut milk.”
I turn the pouch of blood over in my hands with a small, genuine smile, the thing obviously packaged and frozen by Silas himself at home.
Call me what you will.
I’ve secretly called him my best friend, my brother, even though we don’t share genetics, and I’ve done so ever since we were kids. Silas knows it too. He just won’t acknowledge it because he’s not into that sappy shit.
And frankly, neither am I. I’m just more prone to letting it slip than he is.
But after one hundred and ninety-eight years of this guy coming to my defense and trying to take care of me in some way—by choice—it’s hard not to get a little up in my feels over things. Especially when I know how much Silas is risking to come up here every night so he can check on me. He could lose alotmore than just his job by leaving Purgatory so frequently, and doing that on top of the impromptu and unexplained visits to Hell? Yeah, Silas deserves those titles I give him in secret. Even if he is a huge dickhead most of the time.
“You gonna acknowledge what I said when I got here?”
I blink a few times as I look up at him. “What?”
“Fucking hell, Felix, where are you right now? You’re not normally this hard to talk to when I stop by.” He takes a long drag of his smoke as I stare blankly at his face.He needs to shave. “The person trying to break in?”
“Right, yeah, sorry. I guess I skimmed over that. You saw someone?”
Silas rolls his eyes. “Since I’ve brought it up twice now, yes. When I was walking up to the building, I saw someone at the back entrance trying to break in.”
I frown. “Why would anyone want to break in here?”
“How the hell should I know?”
Good point.“What’d they look like?”
He shrugs one shoulder as he says, “On the shorter side, dressed in all black, and they had a crowbar.”
“That is not helpful at all. You don’t have any more details?”
Silas shakes his head as he puts his cigarette out on the heel of his boot.
“You couldn’t tell anything else about them?”
“Not really. I was coming up through the woods, so I was getting nailed with a lot of other scents, and I’m pretty sure they heard me.”
I glance at the clock, noting it’s close to when my shift ends, which also means both of us have a very small window to get out back and see if the would-be intruder left anything behind before sunrise. “Don’t really give a shit anymore, do you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, go see if you can find anything. Mandy will be here in a few minutes and not only does shenotneed to find you here, I have to finish getting everything taken care of before I leave. And you’re a distraction.”
Carefully, since it’s starting to thaw, I slide the frozen pouch of blood into my messenger bag before shoving the rest of my shit in there. Then I pack up all of Roger’s stuff, close up the room I was using, and head down the hall toward the tiny break room.
I hit the button to start the coffee brewing, and then coax my sleeping cat into his carrier—he refused to walk tonight and I was already running late—thankful I have it right now.
Arguing with my cat over what to do or how to move while I go look at the potential vandalism to the back door is not high on my list of things I’d like to do tonight.
Roger finally gives in the moment Mandy drags ass into the break room, settling into his carrier with an annoyed huff.
I exchange pleasantries with Mandy, she thanks me for the coffee, and a few minutes later I’ve clocked out for the day and am joining Silas in the back lot.
“Crowbar was kind of a stupid choice,” he grunts as I stop next to him.
My eyes follow his and land on the crowbar, bent awkwardly at the flat side so both ends now have a bit of hook. There are scratches along the edge of the doorframe, a few smaller dents, and there’s a larger one on the bottom of the metal door itself. One that looks like someone very strong kicked it in frustration.
