“We’d like to get out of here too.”
I paused. “I’m confident you’ll be able to leave behind me, but I obviously haven’t accounted for every potential situation. But, if you can’t leave, I’ll come back and find a way to get you out of here.”
He looked down from his perusal of the books. Bennett was different from usual, wary and with his shields constantly up. I wondered if his entire persona had been an act, or if this was the act. “Why would you care?”
There was no reasonable answer. I shrugged. “You’re… good people. You don’t deserve to be in here for the rest of your lives, no matter what your captors think.”
“If you think we’re good people, I’d hate to know how horrible the bad people in your life are.”
A flash of claws filled my mind’s eye for a second, and I couldn’t tell if they were a memory from my ghost attack, or from spending time with Bennett when he was feral. Either way, they weren’t like that. Zan wasn’t a vengeful spirit, and Bennett did everything in his power to avoid harming people when he was influenced by the full moon.
We worked in silence, because I couldn’t explain how I knew they were inherently good. I just knew it.
Settling into the grinding of herbs and mashing of leaves, Bennett was as patient and thorough as he’d always been. Luckily his abrupt personality change hadn’t affected his underlying traits. It helped me to believe this was the act, and I’d seen the real him before. When he’d helped me take two cocks at the same time on this very couch, that had to be the real him. My cheeks were pink at the thought, but he was too focused on the task at hand to notice.
Kirin came up soon after with the rest of the ingredients I’d tasked him to find. He took up most of the opposite couch as he watched, not bothering to offer to help. His huge hands wouldn’t be able to be gentle or precise enough for a lot of this. Waylon and Zan took longer, since their list had them wandering all over the house and gathering things, but eventually they joined us in the library.
Creating the poultice took much less time than it had when I’d been doing it alone, and we finished with time to spare. I breathed a sigh of relief when it was sitting and ready to be used in twelve hours. Then I glanced around the room, finding everyone staring at me. “What do we do now?” Zan asked, glancing at the mess of items on the table.
Some needed further prep before they could be used, but nothing that would take twelve hours. With a grin, I stood from where I was kneeling on the floor and clapped my hands together. “Now, we get ourselves some breakfast. I’m starved.”
“If it only took that long, why didn’t we get breakfast first?” Waylon complained.
“Because this poultice needs to sit for a minimum of twelve hours, and the artifact needs to be ready to go before two in the morning. Your help sped things up, but the timeline is still tight. This is going to be our only time to relax all day.”
He pouted at my reasonable explanation, and I ignored him, heading downstairs. The men trailed behind me, poking their heads in when I stopped by Felix’s secret stash of food. I gathered the ingredients to make an absolute feast of a meal, tossing a couple of tomatoes at Bennett and watching as he caught them with ease. Wolfman reflexes. I would have dropped them right onto the floor.
“This is Felix’s food,” he said, trying to toss them back to me.
“What does it matter? He’s dead.”
Even if he’d come back as a ghost, he’d have no need for the food. According to Zan, eating was more work than it was worth. “It’s a matter of respect.”
“Respecting the dead?”
I narrowly avoided scoffing. My opinion of Felix was low, but the men had nothing against him. I had to keep my judgments to myself. Bennett seemed to worship him, almost, if the conversations we’d had were to be believed. I couldn’t imagine what my uncle had said to manipulate him into enjoying his company, but I’d learned he was a master manipulator.
I was also convinced the underground lab belonged to him and not one of his colleagues. The thought was horrifying, especially if those were the ‘footsteps’ he wanted me to follow in. The ones he’d been referring to in his note. I would never in a million years perform experiments on live test subjects.
“Wouldn’t you want to be respected if you were dead?” Bennett countered.
Tossing some more vegetables to Kirin, I shrugged. I would be worthy of respect, unlike my uncle. “Bennett, I’d be dead. I wouldn’t know.”
He grumbled something under his breath, but took the tomatoes to the kitchen. Kirin carried the rest of the vegetables while I grabbed spices from the shelves. This was admittedly an odd time to be cooking a family meal. The men were wary toward me at best, antagonistic at worst. However, I was hopeful if we spent time together they’d remember why they’d liked me in past cycles.
Well, if they liked me at all.
Everything could have been an act. But like I said, ignorance was bliss.
“Out of the kitchen, Zan,” I said, shooing the ghost away once we’d made our way in.
He floated away, pouting. “Why can’t I help?”
“I need you to maintain your strength, which means you can’t spend time with your hands solid. Save it for later.”
His pout was still there, but he grudgingly agreed and settled into a chair at the dining table. Watching a ghost sit was odd, because he wasn’t truly sitting. There was nothing holding him up. Was it comfortable? Waylon sat beside him, too lazy to help. With Bennett, Kirin, and I in the kitchen, the cooking went fast and the smell of crisp bacon and savoury omelets drew Abraxas out of sleep and down to the main floor again.
“Have a good sleep?” I asked when I heard the gentle thump of his tail meeting the ground as he slipped through his hole.
