Page 20 of Satan's Son

Chapter 7

You would think Ethan’s room would be really cool, right? A big flat screen, every gaming console ever made, along with every game. You would expect a fully smart bedroom, seeing as he doesn’t sleep. Well, when I walked in, you could not imagine my surprise.

There was a big old bed in the middle of the room, and an old fancy-looking armchair behind a big old wooden desk. The only other things in the room were his books. Yep, mountains of big fat books.

I investigated for a while, walking around aimlessly. Ethan hadn’t moved from his desk since we walked in. I wondered what he was reading, but every time I got close to him he would snap at me.

I stopped in front of one of the mounds of books, trying to read the titles, but it was as if they were in a different language.

“Get away from them!” Ethan didn’t look up from what he was reading. “Now!”

“What? You scared I’m going to damage your old books?” I gave him a hurt look. “I’ll have you know, Ethan, I am not clumsy.”

“You are. Now get away from them.”

“I am not!” I stomped my foot, huffing.

“Just get away from them before—”

As if on cue, I knocked the bottom book with my ankle. The stack of books, which was larger than me, began to wobble. Stepping back, I put my hands out, cringing as I watched them tumble to the side and then into the next stack and the next. There was a loud bang, followed by a cloud of dust.

Turning around, I looked guiltily at Ethan. His jaw dropped, and he was looking at the mess I had made. To be fair, he had stacked them very poorly, but I didn’t think now was the time to remind him of that.

“Umm, oops?” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “Bed, now!” He pointed to the bed.

Quickly, I skittered over to the bed, jumping through the air and landing in the middle. The bed made a very unhealthy cracking noise. But lucky for me, Ethan was too upset about his books to hear it.

He was now standing over the damage, muttering curse words under his breath about how stupid I was. I just rolled my eyes. Really, it was just a stack of books. Clearly, Ethan didn’t have much to worry about.

“It has taken me centuries to organize these, and it took you a minute to destroy them.” He gave me a dirty look and began to restack them.

“Come on, Ethan. It’s just a stack of books. But I am sorry.”

“No talking,” Ethan snapped.

Please, we weren’t back to that, were we?

“But I was silent for ages,” I whined, dropping my bottom lip. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“You don’t mean it.”

“You know, it is unhealthy to be this in love with books! Didn’t take you as a bookworm.” I dropped the puppy dog eyes and the pity face.

“I’m ignoring you.” Ethan got up from the floor, giving up on restacking the books already, and walked back to his desk. Oh no, not again. Like hell was he just going to go back to reading. I was bored senseless!

“Ethan?”

He ignored me.

“Ethan….?” I dragged out his name.

He flicked the page of his book, not looking up at me. He would regret that. Didn’t he know I could be very annoying? I thought he had learned that by now. Sniggering to myself, an evil grin spread on my face.

“I’ll start singing.”

No reply. Clearing my throat, I was about to let the first note roar, when he broke his silence.