Page 23 of How to Seduce a Slender

“Please,” he croaked, begging Sebastian with eyes the Lich couldn’t see. “Just leave it be.”

Sebastian dealt with the dead, but he never took from the living. Not if they didn’t deserve it. Sebastian, despite being a Lich, was just. He’d had a moral compass for a long time. Only using parts that were discarded or abandoned. He never killed to fuel his power.

His Lord Rosemont never fed on innocent people.

He’d never accidentally fed on the person he loved and watched the trust in their eyes die as they realized what he’d done.

“Friend, you know how to hold back. You are capable of doing it, I’ve seen it.”

Smith shook his head again. “I can’t do that again. It doesn’t feel right. Not without their consent, even if I don’t feed all the way to bone, Sebastian, it feels too much like killing them. She would need to know. She would need to agree to it for me to feel comfortable. And no one would agree to that. Not if they knew the truth.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Sebastian croaked, his long, gloved fingers tapping against the outside of his mug.

“Please, Sebastian, just let it be.” Smith couldn’t, in good conscience, do that to Melody.

“Alright,” Sebastian sighed, nodding to Smith’s cocoa. “Go on, drink up. We should discuss the thing you’ve got clogged in the mail pipes.”

“I’ve got what in the pipes?” Smith downed the boiling lava down his throat in a single shot. Sebastian rose first, the lawyer stumbling after as the empty mugs floated away to the sink.

“A clog, I heard it rattling along slowly and I wasn’t sure what it was until it passed through the barrier finally and realized something was coming your way.” Sebastian motioned toward the office.

“How big is her apron?” Smith hummed, rubbing his chin with his fingers.

“Does it hold secrets?” Havershum whispered as he swooped down into the hall.

“It’s an apron, Havershum. Ofcourse, it holds secrets.” Sebastian jutted a finger upward, one hand tucked into the small of his back. He strutted forward with his back straight and chin up. “All the unknown is a secret until you discover it for yourself.”

Smith and Havershum shared a look before they rolled their eyes.

“I saw that!” Sebastian growled.

Havershum immediately shoved Smith to the left with a hard push. Smith didn’t budge. He snapped his neck to the side as viciously and sharply as he could to glare at Havershum. The wraith chuckled nervously, “Wanted to test how hard you are to wallop.”

Smith immediately rolled up his sleeves, cuffing them above his elbow. Havershum’s eyes glowed ruby red as he pulled out his blades.

“Gentlemen!” Sebastian bellowed from Smith’s doorway. “The pipes!”

“Right!” They scrambled after Sebastian, jabbing at each other as they respectfully put their dukes away. Rounding the corner of his office, the three entered the room seconds after Moonpie. The feline went on high alert, scurrying inside the office. Thorns popped out of their flesh and their flower petals, a once pretty plum and rose array, turned ruby red. Moonpie hissed at the pipes as they did, in fact, rattle. Havershum hovered near the open maw of the chute, knife ready to drive down. Smith, for his part, had an open mail bag at the ready.

Then like a clump of hair at the base of a drain, a flurry of things popped out into the room. Papers, envelopes, shreds of parchment fluttered around the room. It snowed in Smith’s office and the clog in the pipes was forcibly cleared.

Smith took a punch in the gut as a bundle of blue fabric shot at him from across the room. He’d been shot with friendlier cannon balls. Smith grunted, having only moved a centimeter.Still curious.A wad of subpar cotton fabric writhed in his hand. The room went quiet except for Moonpie’s yowling. She whirled to face Smith, glowing yellow eyes pointed right at the fabric in hand.

“Smith, what is that?” Sebastian pointed, raising a hand. His palms engulfed in black flame.

“Havershum?” Smith croaked, peeling one layer at a time. It was folded like an unloved pastry. “Knives at the ready?”

The wraith hovered over him, blades out for the kill. “Always.”

And all three jerked away as a…thing…exploded from the apron. Long and fat and squishy, it wriggled as it hit the floor.

“Get it!” Sebastian roared.

Now, Smith wasn’t proud. He wasn’t particularly upset, but he wasn’t proud that a Lich, a wraith, and a Slender yelled inside his office for what felt like an hour as they chased down and attempted to capture without being bitten…a wriggling slug the size of a python. It was massive, growing bigger by the second as it chewed through Smith’s couch and spat out the other side. Havershum stabbed over and over, but the slug bound around the blades like a dog on an agility course. Sebastian shot bolt after bolt of magic, but it only made it worse.

Until the three were stopped when Moonpie lept off the desk, pounced on the slug, and stabbed it through and through. Moonpie peeked up from the wriggling prize under her paws and meowed cutely at Sebastian.

He knelt down, hands out to the feline, “Ok, Moonpie, good kitty. Now, give the brain slug to daddy.”

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