He claps his hands togeth
er once, then rubs them in glee as his smile grows and he keeps stride with me on the much easier trail.
“So, what’s with you and the scarred menace?” he asks randomly.
My spine stiffens, and I walk a little faster.
“I felt fireworks going off upstairs. I was sitting directly under your room when I heard him, and that sexual frustration…well, I feed on that sort of thing, so obviously I felt it.”
He’s practically giddy for gossip.
He’s a cunt pucker too.
You know what, never mind. He’s a total crusty cum nugget. There. Now I’m creative again. That one is my insult.
“What’s that frown for?” he asks me.
“Just realized how far I keep falling. Now I’m trying to figure out better insults than you.”
He snorts. “As if that could happen. I was the king of insults while the funniest parts of you were running down the crack of yo’ momma’s ass.”
My nose wrinkles as I come to a complete stop and just gawk at him.
He’s grinning. “Your birth certificate is an apology letter from the condom factory,” he goes on.
Rolling my eyes, I start following him as he takes over the lead.
“Feel free to laugh at any time and admit I’m still the king,” he proceeds to tell me, strutting a little now.
“Does your ass ever get jealous of the amount of shit that comes out of your mouth?” I volley, my lips twitching when he cuts his eyes back at me.
“I’ve come to consider your family tree to be a cactus. Full of a bunch of pricks.”
This time, I actually laugh, but it ends abruptly when I feel the chill on the back of my neck again. My eyes move quickly through the woods, finding nothing but eerie silence.
“So, tell the truth, are you taking the scarred eight ball in the center pocket or not?” Dice rambles. “Let’s face it; immortals need sex as much as we need to feed. And you’ve been drying out since that weasel. We’ve all had bad experiences—”
“I was tricked into bonding with him, and I went so crazy that I defended him from my family,” I remind him, bristling.
“Yes, but we still need sex. Maybe centering yourself sexually might help you get a grip on your magic. And you can’t ever be bonded like that again, because you’re not a mortal virgin anymore,” he goes on. “And I really want to know if one of those Geminis gets off if the other does too. And what happens when—”
“Dice?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut the hell up and see if you hear even a bird right now.”
I hear him go rigid, as the deafening silence continues to patter on around us. My eyes glance to the left, and I mutter a curse when I see moss all over the trees around us.
I spin in a circle, searching for even one tree without moss.
Nothing.
“Hate to say I told you so, but I really shouldn’t have been leading the way,” Dice deadpans, though he’s paled a little when I look back at him.
“No big deal. I’ll just use a spell to guide us back to the path,” I say, trying to solve this on my own without calling anyone.
“You can’t use a spell in a spelled forest. You could set off a trap,” he argues. “Just dematerialize us as far away as possible, and we’ll start all over. You can talk about your obsession with Slade after we’re out of here instead of distracting us this time.”