Page 17 of Pike

“Right.”

It was two o’clock in the morning, with a walking dead person at his front bent on consuming them, and a trembling half-dressed woman pressing against his back, begging him to be a hero. He lunged forward and took the ghoul’s head between his hands, ending her existence with a twist. The ghoul burst into a cloud of smoke.

And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun.

CHAPTER 5

She’d never know how her life might have been if peer pressure hadn’t sent her into the occult store all those years ago. Poor Ben. He’d done everything he could beforehand. Afterward, when she’d shut herself off from the rest of her class, when she hardly got out of bed, he was the only one who still called.

She should have listened to him when he told her not to be stupid. Definitely should have listened when he tried to warn her against opening the spell book. High school was hard enough without the added stress of supernatural burdens.

It didn’t help that, for the moment, she was stuck in a minimum-wage position trying to keep up pretenses.

Lavinia was lost in thought, carefully stacking boxes of index cards on the back shelf.

“Weren’t you supposed to be off at four today?” a voice asked.

Her whole body jerked at the sound and the box she was about to set down flew into the air. Her coworker Brenda stood a few feet away, close enough to touch. Lavinia hadn’t even heard the other woman walk up. Boy, was she out of it.

“I was supposed to be,” she answered. “Unfortunately, I had nowhere else to go so I decided to stay. Don’t even tell me how sad it is. I know.”

Crouching down, Brenda helped her retrieve the shower of index cards now spread across the floor in cheerful rainbow colors. Following a brief smile to acknowledge the help, Lavinia turned her gaze to the work.

“I’m not going to say it’s sad,” Brenda replied. “You already know. You keep telling me no when I offer to have a girl’s night. In a few choice words, I might add.”

Brenda was the closest thing Lavinia had to a friend. A human friend. A human friend whom she specifically kept at arms’ length for fear of discovery. Which meant that interactions were limited to work and little else.

“I’m sorry, okay? You know what I’m dealing with at home. It doesn’t exactly put me in a good position to relax.”

“So what do you do?”

“To relax? I come to work.”

Brenda shot her a skeptical look. “All you ever do is work. For once I’d like to hear that you’re out enjoying yourself.”

“You don’t find this enjoyable?” Lavinia gestured toward the cards.

“Not by a mile. I’d rather be eaten by a great white shark than continue to work here.”

“Aw, I thought you loved it.”

“I love eating. I love being able to afford to go to the laundromat and wash my clothes. You know. The kind of things that make life worth living.”

“Ramen noodles?”

She nodded. “You get me.”

“Ladies!”

Lavinia turned and glanced over her shoulder at the person who had called out. Her boss. He stood in front of a mountain of boxes labeled LEMON FRESH, holding his arms out wide and tapping his foot in rhythm to the music in his head. The man thought he owned his staff, and believed they should all be grateful for the opportunity to work for him.

“Back to work.”

It was the same thing every day, Lavinia thought as she walked the block and a half to her apartment. It had been the same thing since she’d managed to graduate high school and life inserted her into the repetitive cycle. Work, home, sleep. It would be her eternity.

It was safe at the Home and Gift Store. It was a menial job working for a crap boss, and it was the same kind of job Lavinia had had from the time she turned sixteen and her mother told her to earn her money the old-fashioned way. Or else. It was a way to maintain her ordinariness in a world where she felt like she couldn’t keep up.

Here she was, eight years deep into her new life, and she could feel the world conspiring against her. Hellacious beings out there lurking and ready to make a mess. She had to do something, because the way she saw it, there were two choices: (A) She would continue to be attacked by anything and everything. On the other hand, (B) she would die of boredom trying to pretend. Trying to recapture an eventuality that had been lost to her.

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