Carahya huffed at Royal as they sat in the main room of Celia’s shop. The prankster terrow had been getting on her nerves since their arrival, his corny puns and general disposition becoming a nuisance all too quickly. She tried to keep a sharp wit about her as she sat, the best defense against Royal’s attempts at humor.
She couldn’t believe that Tibias and Keera had left her in here alone with Royal as they went to see Kole. Even Celia and Liddy had enough authority to go see him! She just could not believe that Royal was so immature for a Reaper’s underling that he had to stay out here. Carahya would have been far happier to be waiting out here alone; though she had been craving socialization after being so cut off from the outside world, his was not the company that she would have chosen to keep. Now they were stuck playing babysitter for one another, each of them equally annoyed at the other.
Carahya sat and brooded in silence for a while before speaking. “That crazy assassin may have had the common sense of a lab rat, but really…demon fighting, assassination attempts, how the hell am I supposed to, you know, live through all of this? I’ve got a gun, a plain, mundane one, one that I can’t shoot for my life. I’m not gonna live ‘til my next birthday at this rate!”
Royal spoke a rebuttal. “Oh, good, I won’t have to do it myself then!” He chuckled when Carahya glared at him. “I can just sit back and relax, and wait it out instead of taking time out of my busy schedule to plot your demise.” Carahya grumbled and shot him a foul hand gesture, in true teen-angst fashion.
“Seriously. Not kidding. Shut. The fuck. Up. I am going to die a teen at this rate, and all because I just wanted to return Richard McBride’s fucking demon book.” She sat in silence for a minute and sprang up suddenly. “Shit. What happened to Mr. McBride?” She scanned her memory, trying to recall what had happened. She remembered going to the office to retrieve the book with McBride, and she recalled that the last time she had seen him was when he was convulsing on the floor of the office as she was taken away by Kole to be questioned. “Shit, shit, shit! What the hell did you guys do to him?!?”
“Relax, foul-mouth. Liddy made sure he got to the hospital okay, remember? He’s probably out by now and back to his regular old business. Probably doesn’t even remember any of this.” Royal brushed off his final sentence as he reclined.
“What do you mean, asshat?” Carahya whirled toward him angrily and bent down so her full glare could be seen. “I swear to god, if anything happened to him, you’re gonna be the next one in the hospital…”
“Now, Carahya, you really don’t want to get into any more trouble with the council than you already are, do you?” Royal smirked knowingly and chuckled. He crossed his arms and said simply, “A man who runs a supernatural shop, who has supernatural ancestry, says that while he was protecting a young supernatural he was wounded by a Reaper – the Reaper – badly enough that he was put in the hospital. That sounds like bad PR to me, don’t you think? Especially since Richard McBride was never the biggest fan of the Council of Draelin anyhow…”
Carahya slapped Royal across the face with as much force as she could muster and shouted at him. “Why are you so awful to me all the time?!? Huh? What have I ever done to you? You’re all nice and comfy in your council job where you know what you’re doing and you know what’s expected of you and you know how to behave. My whole entire life has just gone completely down the tubes! The family I loved the most in this world, who took me in when I was on my own, was killed by a demon, and when I tried to figure out why, I get whisked away for this shit-show job and all of my everything gets taken away from me! I have no home, no money, no clothes, none of my possessions, nothing. Just my backpack and what was in it, and the clothes on my back. And here you are, bitching and whining, tormenting me for no damn reason, not even letting me know what happened to the one friend I managed to make who’s still fucking breathing!”
Carahya walked away, arms crossed, and sat in the corner of the room. Royal was still sitting down, but his mood had changed drastically. In the course of Carahya’s shouting, he had gone from smug and taunting to silent and contemplative. The smirk on his face had fallen and he looked to Carahya with apology in his eyes. “I didn’t –”
“Bull shit you didn’t know,” Carahya retorted, starting to sniffle and not looking at him. “You were there. You knew all of that. Everyone knew all that, and you still treat me like I’m lower than the stereotypical shit-upon intern.”
“Carahya –”
“No. Just leave me alone.”
Royal scratched the back of his head and sighed as he walked from the room, leaving a sobbing Carahya in silence.
