They got takeout from an expensive German place, but Adi had little to complain about. While Janice worked on her venison steak, he was dipping pieces of sausage in his beer cheese soup. Verlsa had put her food in the fridge so she could go to sleep, and Adi could occasionally hear Duke cursing as he concentrated on his own work.

Adi was still going over his uncle’s notes, finding out more about the man that he had spent his life admiring. There were all sorts of notes about how to spin lies, even how to fool modern technologies. No wonder his dad left his mom. Everything about this family was a mess.

Janice hadn’t bothered to change out of Adi’s shirt. She was completely involved in her show. Some reality television about mothers who were also psychics who solve crimes with essential oils or some bullshit like that. Either way, their jabbering was beginning to annoy Adi.

“Turn the volume down, please.” He was especially getting annoyed at Janice’s annoying laugh. As she ignored him, his annoyance only grew. Having had enough, he snatched the remote from out in front of her and turned off the television himself. “Why do you have to be such a bitch?!”

“And why do you have to be the way you are, huh?” She immediately shouted back.

Adi was flabbergasted by the accusation. “What the hell? How have I been acting up?!”

“You never told me about any of this!” Janice waved an arm at all the documents. “We were a couple, Adi! We were in love and we were going to get married! Yet I never heard about any of this.”

Once again, he was flabbergasted. “Whoa, I was not planning on asking you to marry me.”

“That doesn’t mean we weren’t a couple! If you had told me you were involved in this sort of mess, I could’ve told you how dangerous it was. It’s because you didn’t trust me at all or try to understand me better. That’s you ended up this mess in the first place. This is exactly why we broke up!”

Adi was forced to take a slow breath. He put his hands on his lips and spoke quite slowly, being careful to enunciate every syllable so she would understand him. “I treat you like a complete and utter bitch because… Because you are one, Janice! Have I ever called you a whore because of Desmond or shoved it in your face that I know you left last night because you needed to get your fuck on? No! I understand that you’re a monster who needs to do that in order to survive!

I call you a bitch because that’s exactly what you are! You made me pay for your rent and give you an allowance while we were together so you could live out your dream and become a painter, or a poet, or whatever artistic bullshit you were feeding me that week! You wanted to pick out my job for me, for me to work hard and build a life with you based on misery and selfishness, and one where you might EAT me if you ever felt your baby clock going off!

But what really does it, and you need to make sure you’re listening to me for this, is the fact that you are here. You’re here wasting my time because your new guy isn’t working out for you. You decided to take advantage of me again because now I know your little succubus secret.

“I’m here because I’m worried about you,” she whispered.

“No, you’re here looking for protection! And I’m the one stupid enough to give it to you because I’m a decent human being! But when there’s someone out to kill me, enough to the point where I’ve already been shot and left for dead, do I get a kind word out of you? Do you ask me if I’m okay? No! You’d rather watch overweight psychopaths bitch about this and that rather than READ A DAMN BOOK!!!”

He tossed the binder he was reading on the couch before going to the kitchen. Adi wasn’t one to drink often, but he really needed a drink right now. Janice sniffled. She slowly grasped onto the binder and pulled it on her lap, not bothering to open it due to her emotional distress.

“A-Adi…”

“Make yourself useful, or get the fuck out of my house,” he growled out as he opened a beer. “If you can’t do research, clean up once in a while. Cook a meal or go get groceries. Once that demon friend of yours shows up and fixes everything, I never want to see or hear from you again. You owe me that.” As he walked back to the couch, he saw Verlsa standing awkwardly in the hallway. “What?!” He spread out his arms and puffed out his chest like he was about to start a fight.

“Could you guys keep it down? I’m trying to, uh…” She didn’t want to admit she had been taking a nap. “It’s hard to concentrate on all this work, and Duck-young is being an ass and not letting me see what he’s working on.”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Because I am capable enough to figure it out on my own!” He called out from the office.

“Poor Ducky always did hate it whenever there was a brain teaser he couldn’t figure out on his own,” she purred.

“It is a dead end. This is nothing more than gibberish conjured up by a doomed man seeking to make a quick buck,” he replied harshly. “You can look at it yourself in the morning!”

Verlsa folded her arms as she stared into the office. She walked in, and Adi could hear the signs of a struggle. Coming out victorious, Verlsa returned to the living room with both the ledger and the binder that Duke was looking through.

Duke followed her, looking utterly defeated as he did so. He eyed where Adi’s food was. Taste was one of the senses he lost first, replaced by the ability to sense out auras that mimicked what taste would be. What he wouldn’t give for a beer battered anything at this moment. Any food he would consume would do nothing but rot in his stomach, and that was an issue he did not wish to deal with.

He looked over to Janice, who was sitting there silently. Tears were streaming out of her eyes again. She looked up as he offered her a box of tissues and nodded as a thank you. Pulling out a tissue, she began to pat at her reddened nose in a dainty manner.

“Yep. I got it.” Verlsa knelt next to the coffee table and laid out both books. “He was kidnapping mithryn, dismembering them, and selling the pieces on the black market.” She flipped back and forth between a page. “These are probably what the individual pieces are worth.”

A heavy silence hung in the room. It was finally interrupted by Janice, who could only mutter an “Eww…”

“Then ‘Assorted MM’ could either be a term used for his sales, or it could be a clue for who his contact is,” muttered Duke in thought.

Adi smacked his hand into his open palm. “What if it’s actually ‘WW?’ Uncle Wenzel was always a bit of a dyslexic. And he was killed by werewolves! It all makes sense!” Both Duke and Versla stared at him blankly. “What?”

“You never cease to amaze me,” muttered Duke. Adi beamed at the statement. “It was not a compliment.”

“It better than not coming up with anything!” Adi spat back.

“Sometimes silence is a great thing,” replied Verlsa. “Let’s look at what we do know. Seattle is run by the werewolves, and Seattle is where Wenzel was murdered. But what is there to be done about any of that?”

Janice began to whisper from the couch. “... Enid is a werewolf.”

Duke nodded firmly. “And Kenelm implied that the tribes were easily bribed to look the other way. Wenzel would not have been able to succeed at his newfound profession. He had connections. Ones that either betrayed him or are also being hunted down. It isn’t hard to imagine why that is, but the who is our problem.”

“So what you’re saying is that you’re leaving again?” Adi folded his arms. Verlsa turned out to not be so bad, but he might need Duke around. Then again, Duke might not be immune to the inugami, and he didn’t need a foe with jiangshi powers after him.

“And I will not be able to predict when I will return this time,” said Duke as he reached into his jacket’s pocket. He pulled out a thick envelope and passed it to Adi. “This will tide you over for a time.”

Adi opened it up and thumbed through the multitude of hundred dollar bills within. “... Okay, what the fuck is this?”

“Questioning it would be the same as looking a gift horse in the mouth.” Duke then turned to Janice. “You should gather what you need and quickly ready yourself to leave.”

Verlsa had wandered over to the kitchen to reheat her schnitzel in the oven. She and Duke then sat on the couch, going over documents together. They muttered back and forth as one would point at a detail, and the other would either nod or dismiss it.

Adi watched them talk. He looked down the hall, to where Janice was no doubt going to take an hour to get herself ready. With a sigh, he began to clean up their dinner. “How do you guys do it?” He asked as he entered the kitchen.

Duke looked from his work. “It is as simple as looking at the facts, seeing what possibilities there are, and working to eliminate them one by one until the truth emerges.” He blinked a few times. “Janice is likely not a prime target in this investigation. She was simply a means to get to you, and we should assume that she will remain safe as long as our malevolent force does not realize that the two of you are still involved.”

“That’s great and all,” he said sarcastically,” but I meant how do you two function as a couple?” Adi sighed again, much heavier this time. “You guys fight, but when you’re together, you’re perfectly in sync. How did you guys get to that point?”

“We’re not a couple,” replied Verlsa in a flat tone.

Adi rolled his eyes. “You know what I mean. You used to date, but now you’re really good friends or something.” The two stared at him. “Are you serious? You two have absolutely done it.”

“I’m dead,” replied Duke. “I assure you that you do not wish to know the state my penis is in now.”

“Shit, my dinner!” Verlsa rushed past Adi and yanked open the oven door. “I forgot to set a timer!” She sighed with relief as it seemed okay. Rather, it was hardly warmed. Though while she was in the kitchen, she lowered her voice to a deathly tone. “Bring it up again, and I will butterfly your chest cavity open and force you to stare at your still beating heart while it struggles to survive.”

“Uh…” The color drained out of Adi’s face. He took a step away from her as she fetched a plate and began to load her food on it. “... O-okay.”

Verlsa smiled at him as she walked past again. “Awesome. I’m going to watch some TV now. You should keep on doing what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, yeah I will,” muttered Adi, wondering if he was indeed safer with Verlsa over an inugami.