AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I copied and pasted the same reply I’d given him last time, telling him I wasn’t interested in having a kid with him, no matter how much money he offered me. Then, to make sure he got it through to his thick skull, I told him never to contact me again.
It took only a few minutes before he replied, telling me I was “going to regret this”.
Great.
He was done asking nicely and had moved on to threatening.
Luckily, Nigel didn’t know where I lived; a search for Auntie Syl’s Wards & Witchery brought up only a P.O. box. He’d be able to narrow it down to Darlington, but that wouldn’t help him much. Darlington had exploded since the fall of The Wall, which had hidden the supernatural and esoteric from sight. Now, everyone knew about magic and monsters.
Maybe now would be a good time to bite the bullet and go to Great Granny’s old place to start cleaning it up. Not only would it get me away from the noisy naga next door, it’d get me out of Darlington too, in case Nigel found out where I lived.
it would take weeks to go through everything picking out the truly valuable items to keep before donating the rest. I’d been putting it off since she passed, not wanting to be in the cottage alone. Even though I’d known she was going to go and had plenty of time to prepare for it, I still missed her a lot.
Sweet Jesus. The thumping was starting up in Zayn’s apartment again. It sounded like he was waving giant ropes around this time, the type the gym bros used to train.
Clothes dryer. Yeah, right.
I grabbed my headphones from the counter and put on something with a loud, thumping bass. That was it. I’d decided. No more stalling. I was going to go to Great Granny’s cottage next weekend and finally start cleaning it up.
Chapter 4
Zayn
Ipickedupthelast of the self-help and productivity books and slowly put them back on the shelf. Everything hurt, and I was so hungry I could eat a horse. No, I hadn’t just come back from the gym. I was recovering from yet another uncontrolled shift.
My snake had gotten me good today. It was pissed off at me for locking it up in an apartment and not letting it roam.
In naga form, I was human on top which meant I still had my human brain, and I was still in control. I’d tried to appeal to my snake to let me share the body with him. We could drive out to the wilderness and sunbathe on the rocks after taking a dip in the river, I said. It would be fun, I said.
Nope. My snake wanted the body all to himself. His reasoning was that I got to be fully human most of the time.
I hated arguing with my serpent. We were supposed to be on the same team.
But it always ended the same way, with me as a giant serpent trashing my apartment, and no number of self-help books could fix the problem. I hadn’t managed to get all my clothes off before he burst free, either, which meant yet another ripped shirt.
My pants usually survived the shift: they just slipped off. But my tops, not so much; I always ripped them at the neck. I’d gone through so many T-shirts that I bought them in bulk now. To be honest, I didn’t know why I bothered wearing clothes anymore.
Technically, my serpent could bash right through the window and drop down three floors if it wanted—something I worried it would do one day—but it hadn’t done so yet. Instead, it’d simply beat me up by flinging me against the walls and furniture, which is why everything was so sore.
Stomach growling, I put the water on and grabbed a pack of ramen from my cupboards.
After eating well all through my late twenties and building my body to what it was today, I’d started eating whatever I could make in fifteen minutes or less since the curse showed up. I didn’t trust my snake not to break free while I was cooking and set the building on fire. So I subsisted on a steady diet of ramen, fried eggs, microwave dinners, and protein powder. All quick and easy.
I did get the occasional food delivery now that it was beginning to look like I’d saved all that money for nothing. If I couldn’t get that place out in the country, I might has well spend it on takeout. I could also take a chance and go out to grab something, since I’d just shifted and my snake would be quiet for a while, but I didn’t feel like seeing people right now. I rarely did after a rampage. But I’d make an exception for the witch next door.
I cracked two eggs into my hot noodles and covered them to let them cook.
My phone buzzed from the pocket of my jeans, which were tossed over the couch. It was Mom.
I took the call as I put my jeans back on.
“You picked up. That’s good,” Mom’s voice came over the speaker phone. “How’s Darlington? How’s work?”
Poor Mom. She always worried that one day I would fuck out of her life, like Dad did.
“Darlington’s great.” Such a lie. I hadn’t been outside since I arrived in town—except to the grocery store and coffee shop across the street, and even then, only if I knew it would be a short trip. “And work is work.”
“They’re okay with you working remotely?”
