Page 82 of The Howl
There was a beat of silence before she answered.
“You might be right. Be careful, Eliana. You have no idea what you’re doing to yourself with these false feedings. I’ll see you at dinner.”
I hung up the phone with a shaky exhale. Adira’s words from the last dinner she attended at the Quills’ were starting to haunt me. She’d said I would regret my choice, and she was doing everything in her power to make that happen. A gut feeling told me that she was far from done.
“I really hate Adira,” I said to Ashlyn.
“Yeah, it was a real dick move for her to call your mom. You okay?”
My phone buzzed with a text. Instead of answering it, I started cracking eggs into my lava cake batter and answered Ashlyn.
“Not really. Adira just made a huge mess for me, and I’m not sure what’ll happen next.”
“Nothing good, most likely.”
“You’re probably right.”
I finished mixing my lava cake and got it into a pan. When I was wiping my hands, my phone buzzed again. Giving in, I checked the messages. Instead of being from Mom or Adira, they were from Megan.
Freedom is one phone call away. Get ready to say goodbye to mommy-dearest!
She’d sent a second one three minutes after that.
Everything okay?
Everything was most definitely not okay. Adira was using Mom to try to control me. And just then, I realized what that meant for me. Freedom was far from one phone call away. Even if the Council officially pardoned Mom, they wouldn’t make her leave.
I needed to come up with a plan of my own before I lost myself in the aftermath.
Everything is fine,I sent back. See you soon, hopefully.
Putting aside my concerns for the future, I focused on the now.
Ashlyn and I made a mess of her kitchen and decimated her baking supplies, but managed to make three different dessert options.
“Oh, these are so good,” Ashlyn said around a mouthful of warm brownie.
I shuddered.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat a brownie again. Piepen’s scarred me for life.” Probably literally the way my luck was going.
“I’ll take one for the team and eat all these myself. How’s the lava cake?”
“Good.” And it was good. It just wasn’t as good as my dream lava cake, which was a huge letdown.
“You’re still thinking about your mom and Adira, aren’t you?”
I set my fork down and sighed.
“Yeah. Dealing with Adira is bad enough. Now she’s trying to turn my mom against me.”
“You know you’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like. The threat of Megan’s retribution will be enough to keep Adira from doing anything too awful.”
As tempting as that would be, I knew I couldn’t stay forever. Eventually my hunger would raise its head and put Ashlyn in danger.
“Thank you,” I said. “But avoiding everything won’t make my problems go away.”
* * *
