Page 8 of Wild Ivy
She nods, but I can see the weight of responsibility still heavy on her shoulders. Before I can say anything else, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pulling it out. Sure enough, it’s another call from my dad.
Ivy raises an eyebrow. “You should probably answer it.”
I grimace. “Yeah, I know.” Taking a deep breath, I hit accept, putting it onto speaker. “Yeah.”
“Torin. We need to talk. Now.”
“Yeah, I figured,” I reply dryly. “Where are you?”
“Behind you.”
Ivy’s gaze meets mine before it flicks over my shoulder. She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, that’s the vampire I killed.”
“Well, finished off,” his voice says over the speaker, and I cringe.
“Sorry,” she mutters.
He snorts and hangs up. I roll my eyes and straighten up, turning to face down my back-from-the-dead dad. Fun fucking times.
I steel myself to confront my dad. He appears exactly as he was. Although I’m not sure what I expected. Zombie vampire? Zompire?
“Torin,” he says coolly.
“Dad,” I reply, matching his tone. “I see reports of your death were greatly exaggerated.”
His eyes narrow. “Cut the crap, Torin. What the hell is going on?”
I clench my jaw, resisting the urge to tell him exactly where he can shove his questions. “What do you remember?”
“Dying by beheading. One assumes I crumbled to ash, but here I am. What do you know?”
“It’s complicated. The short version is we fucked with time to save Ivy and Tate. It looks like it had some side effects.”
Dad’s gaze shifts to Ivy, who’s standing beside me.
“You’re Death now,” he states flatly.
Ivy nods. “As of about an hour ago, yeah.”
He curses under his breath. “Perfect. Just fucking perfect. You idiots have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”
“Hey, watch it,” I growl. “We did what we had to do.”
“Watch it?” Dad snarls, his fangs dropping. “You arrogant little shit. You’ve thrown the entire supernatural world into chaos because you couldn’t handle losing your girlfriend.”
I’m ready to throw down, but Ivy speaks up. “Look,” she says calmly, “we know we messed up. But what’s done is done. Now we need to figure out how to fix it.”
Dad laughs bitterly. “Fix it? You can’t just ‘fix’ altering the fabric of reality. Do you have any idea how many ancient beings you’ve probably unleashed? How many cosmic balances you’ve upset?”
“Oh, I'm aware,” she growls. “Trust me. I’m fucking aware.”
I glance at her with narrowed eyes. Who has she come across already?
“We’re aware of the risks,” I grit out. “That’s why we’re trying to assess the damage.”
He shakes his head. “Unbelievable. I always knew you were reckless, Torin, but this? This is a whole new level of stupid.”
