“We’re used to it. Besides, I have other things I can snack on.”
I perked up, glancing over at him. “Do you? Tell me all about these snacks.”
Waylon laughed from the dining room table, listening in on the conversation. “You won’t like what Bennett snacks on,” he said. “Even I can’t stomach it, and I’m not a human.”
I pushed away the urge to remind him I’m a witch, damn it. A weak one, but a witch nonetheless. Waylon always pointed out how weak my magic was, and I wasn’t in the mood to hear about it today. “Why won’t I like it?” I asked Bennett, pointedly ignoring the pixie.
“There are a lot of mice in the walls. Easy prey.”
I gagged. “Mice?”
“I’m a wolfman. It’s not like I didn’t hunt small prey when I was free from this place. To be fair, I always preferred a good deer, but squirrels and field mice were alright.”
“Aren’t they riddled with disease in a place like this? And inbred after being trapped for all this time?”
He looked at me with a cocked eyebrow, a half-grin making him look rakishly handsome. “The critters can come and go. They’re not trapped here like us.”
“How does that work? You’re a wolf and Abraxas is half snake — if they allow critters to come and go, you would think you’d be included in that exception.”
I said it with a grin, obviously joking. Snorting, Bennett shook his head. A quick glance at Abraxas showed he was still half asleep, but definitely looked a little miffed at being called a snake, his eyes slitted open. “They must have taken that into account when crafting the seal,” he said dryly. “You’d think you would be more hesitant to offend a group of men you’ve just met.”
Except I’d met them a long time ago, in my mind, and they’d all take my teasing in stride.
“Are you offended? My apologies,” I said, just enough sarcasm to make Bennett give me a stern look.
It was the same one he gave Waylon when the man misbehaved and had earned himself a spanking. My cheeks went pink, the embarrassment unavoidable when the image flashed through my mind. Again. I’d pictured the men together often, and part of me wished I’d been more proactive in inserting myself into their dynamic.
However, I didn’t think I was ready for Bennett. I could handle Kirin and Zan, who were naturally submissive to me. Panic might overtake the arousal if I allowed this dominant man to control my every movement, but I was getting closer. Hopefully, before I got out of here, I’d take him for a ride.
Then again, maybe the clue I’d found on the upstairs window was the last one I needed, and I’d be gone before this cycle was up? I should be more focused on getting up there and getting to work, but all my earlier urgency had evaporated. Now I was having too much fun cooking and trading banter back and forth.
“Does anyone else have an unusual diet addition?” I asked, looking at Abraxas.
His slitted eyes stayed lazily half closed, but he answered. “I enjoy the bugs. There are some juicy spiders on the top floor. Occasionally a beetle will wander in and I can enjoy the crispy bite of the shell. Moths are fun to catch, but don’t have much substance.”
He didn’t sound interested in the conversation, but it was a longer explanation than I’d expected from him. I wrinkled my nose, trying not to imagine what a bug would taste like. Some cultures of humans ate them, but I didn’t think insects were for me. “That sounds disgusting.”
“The spiders hate him,” Waylon said. “I try to make him stop eating them, but he doesn’t listen.”
“How would you know the spiders hate him?”
“Part of my abilities,” he said.
I wanted him to elaborate, but he didn’t, and I wasn’t curious enough to ask. Maybe it was better if I didn’t know how Waylon used spiders in his abilities.
“I wish I could eat food like you all do, but eating doesn’t work out well for me,” Zan said, making his first contribution to the food conversation.
No wonder he’d been so quiet. I’d known he didn’t need food, but hadn’t thought about it.
“You say it doesn’t work out well. Does that mean you can?”
He cringed. “It’s messy.”
Kirin took over elaborating, laughing at the ghost. “He can put the food in his mouth and taste it, but it doesn’t continue down his digestive track. The chewed food covered in spit falls onto the ground when it hits the part of him he didn’t make solid. It’s hilarious.”
Zan grumbled, and I tried to picture what that would look like. Messy for sure, quite gross, but I was curious to see what colour his hair was. And how cute his features were without being made of fog. Ghost mechanics made no sense to me, and sometimes I wondered if the gods had created ghosts to confuse us.
He could come, but he couldn’t eat.
