Lover Tamed

 

Chapter 9

Eve and Qhuinn followed Blay through the mansion. They came to a stop at her bedroom. He pushed open the door and waited for her to cross the threshold first.

Frowning, she walked into the room and made it about three steps until she froze. Boxes and garment bags were stacked so tightly together on the bed that it was no longer visible. And what couldn’t be added to the cardboard mountain was piled on the floor.

She turned to the vampire responsible. “What is all this?”

Blay suddenly seemed unsure and sheepish. “You can’t wear scrubs forever. You need suitable clothing. If it isn’t your style I can always send it back, get you something you’d prefer. I just figured I’d take care of it so you would have one less thing to worry about.”

There were all different kinds of garments: jeans, t-shirts, blouses, sweaters, skirts, dresses. You name it, it was probably there. There were even shoes, probably a healthy variety that would match with the apparel.

She looked over the clothing. She noticed that there were no price tags on any of the items. A suspicious feeling crawled inside her belly. Grabbing a pair of jeans, she fished through the fabric until she found the tag. Slack-mouthed, the only thing she could do was look up at Blaylock and Qhuinn. Both were regarding her curiously.

They weren’t some generic no-name brand. Hell, she would feel better if they were Levi’s.

Eve took another glance at the tag and then focused back on the males. She was a Goodwill kind of girl. What she held wasn’t secondhand anything. It was Gucci. She might have not been too fashion conscious, but both her stepsisters constantly harped about all their expensive high-end outfits. She had a rough idea of how much this pair of jeans cost. If the rest all fell in the same price range – which she was sure it did – she could probably live comfortably for quite awhile on the cost of this new wardrobe alone.

“I don’t know how I can accept something like this, something so extravagant. No one has ever given me anything that I didn’t have to pay for in some way, and never anything like this,” Eve confessed with a shake of her head.

“You don’t have to pay me back. In fact, this is me repaying part of a debt I owe to you,” Blay said.

“You don’t owe me anything, Blay.”

“A few clothes don’t nearly make up for what you have given me at your own expense. Just saying a thank you didn’t seem like enough.”

“Doing the right thing doesn’t make you indebted to me in any way. You don’t have to look out for me,” she told him.

“Actually the king told us we were responsible for your welfare. I’d like to be your friend. I want to make this transition into this life as easy as possible for you.”

“I appreciate you doing this for me. I really do. I never received anything like this ever. How much did all this cost anyway?” Eve’s curiosity was getting the better of her. She’d probably want it even less if she knew the sum.

“Who cares how much it costs?” Qhuinn cut in, moving deeper into the room to stand beside the towering boxes. He had been quietly taking it all in from the background until that moment. “The more important question right now is when are you going to buy me a new wardrobe? We’ve been best buds since we were tots and I haven’t even gotten a tie from you.”

Blay was visibly relieved when Qhuinn steered the focus to him. “Why would I buy you a tie? You’ve never worn a tie before in your life. And anything I would try to get you would be a waste of my time and money because you wouldn’t wear it anyway.”

“You’re right,” Qhuinn agreed narrowing his eyes. “I think its best I pick out my threads. You would probably buy me something stuffy. Like a suit. I hate suits.”

Eve opened her mouth to get them back on topic.

“Wow!” Qhuinn said before she could say anything. He reached over and grabbed Blay’s arm to scope out his watch. “Look at the time. We better get down to the gym.  John’s probably waiting for us. We’ll see you, Eve. Have fun trying on all your boss new outfits.”

“Wait a minute, you just can’t…”

But he was already ushering his friend out the door.

Eve huffed as they left her alone. What was she going to do with all this stuff?

When she thought on it, she realized she shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth. She had absolutely nothing here, not even the clothed she had arrived in. They had been no doubt covered in blood and ripped to shreds – not that it would have been any great loss. Blay was right; she couldn’t wear scrubs for however long she was going to be here.

She poked at a piece of tissue paper reaching out of a black bag, pushing it back to peek inside.  Black scraps of lace posing as underwear nestled in a papery magenta nest.  Shuddering, she set that bag aside. She wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to try those out right away.

Slowly Eve went through all the boxes and bags trying just about everything on. A lot of it was a little loose. The few days she had been here she hadn’t given much of a thought to eating, her appetite nil given the stress of everything that has happened recently. But when she got back to her normal weight everything would fit perfectly.

She held up a soft yellow shirt, a shade she probably hadn’t dressed in since infancy. There had never been much color in any of her attire. Usually black or grey, something that she could go unnoticed in. Blending into the background was something she learned as a child, a defense mechanism to escape ridicule and later on unwanted attention from people in general. She never wanted to be eye-catching; she never wanted attention to be focused on her.

“I guess I’m going to have to get used to it,” she muttered with a sigh.

 

~*~

 

Vishous snuffed the hand-rolled cigarette on the heel of his shitkicker and slipped the butt in the back pocket of his leathers. The blue smoke swirled in a thin cloud and the rich scent of Turkish tobacco permeated the air. He was leaning against the railing at the top of the stairs, armed to the teeth and dressed to kill. He must have been waiting for Eve to come out of her room because the first thing she saw when she exited was this big, hulking motherfucker. At first she tried to ignore him but he wasn’t having any of that. With one quick move he latched onto her arm and started dragging her with him.

“Hey!” She tried to dig in her heels and pull away from his adamantine grip. “Get off me! I don’t like being touched.”

“Tough shit.” There was no regret or reluctance in his tone, just steely resolve. “You’re coming with me.”

She frowned as she was given no other option but to hurry along beside him down the stairs to the foyer. It was more like gliding with how fast he was going. “And why am I going with you?”

“We need to have a little talk, you and I.”

And what they had to talk about she could only guess. She only noticed him a few times in passing but he never sought her out for anything. Whatever he wanted, it wasn’t just to shoot the breeze about trivial nonsense.

“What about? I don’t think there is much in our lives that we have in common.” She was still trying to shake him loose when he steered her beneath the stairs.

 “You’d be surprised,” he muttered. The venom in those diamond eyes dissolved just a little while he looked down at her.

Eve shook her head thinking she had imagined the slight change in his demeanor. “Where are we going?”

“To the Pit.”

She tensed under his fingers. “The Pit? Sounds like some place I really don’t wanna go. What…do you bury your victims there or something?”

“It’s our place…mine and Butch’s.” She relaxed, but only slightly. He punched in a code to the door and it slid open with a swoosh revealing a darkened hall.

“Hidden rooms, too. Am I stashed away in the Clue Mansion?” she quipped.

Vishous was not amused. Apparently Clue wasn’t the vampire board game of choice.

She sobered as he took her by the shoulder and steered her through the dimly lit passageway. When they emerged on the other side it was like she stepped into a computer hacker’s wet dream. The set up was unbelievable. A collection of monitors stared at her, some black and others flashing everything from security camera footage to music playlists. There was a coffee table in the middle of the room, sports section on top spread open, a foosball table was off to one side. It was nicer than what she had imagined. Butch housekeeping skills had sucked when she had lived with him. There wasn’t leaning towers of pizza boxes and liquor bottles everywhere. It was still testosterone ruled but there were a few feminine touches here and there.

“Sit,” he ordered, pointing to the couch.

“A ‘please’ wouldn’t hurt. Or is it against protocol to have manners?” But she did as he demanded knowing she wouldn’t get one either.

Eve parked it on the sofa and watched as Vishous grabbed a chair and set it in front of her so that they were face to face when he sat down. He didn’t say anything to her, just continued to look her up and down, examining her with those strange eyes of his.

“Did you just bring me here to gawk at me or is there a point to all this? You’re starting to creep me out.” She folded her arms around herself, refusing to be intimidated by him.

Vishous narrowed his eyes at her and leaned in a little closer.

“I want to know about you and Butch,” he growled.

He was wasting her time for this. Granted she had pretty much all the time in the world. But Eve wasn’t about to give him her life story. “Couldn’t you just ask him? You two seem to be pretty chummy.” Anytime she had caught a glimpse of Butch or Vishous the other wasn’t too far behind.

“We talked about it. Now I want to know your side.”

“My side to what exactly? Butch was a friend from the past…nothing more, nothing less.” That wasn’t exactly true. Butch had been her everything for a little while. But she saw no reason to tell Vishous that. It was really none of his business anyway. “Butch could think you are an asshole like I do. Why should I tell you anything?”

“You’re so pushing your luck with me right now, little girl.”

“And I’m getting sick of people – vampires especially – pushing me around, treating me as if I’m some sort of sub-life form. How the hell do you expect me to act when you snatch me up and start demanding I tell you things?”

Vishous was quiet for a while. While he was saying a whole lotta nothin’, he lit up another hand-rolled. By the look on his face it was probably to keep from strangling her. He leaned back in the chair, one long leather-encased leg stretch out in front of him and the other bent lazily. He was relaxed but she knew he was ready to end her if she so much as breathed funny.

“He is unreasonably loyal to you,” Vishous said with disapproval.

Eve snorted. “And what…you’re jealous?” She was joking when she said it but when he didn’t deny it right away she knew. “Oh my god! That’s it, isn’t it? He’s never cruised the straight and narrow path but I always thought he was straight in that department.”

Vishous stroked his goatee with one hand while shaking his head. “There is nothing like that between Butch and me. He’s happily mated to a female.”

“Then what is all this really about?”

“I saw the articles. I know what happened to you. And I know what happened to his sister. When he looks at you he can’t help but see her, see some girl that he needs to save,” Vishous said.

“I never asked him to save me.” Eve had even resisted Butch’s assistance at first. Eventually her stubbornness forced his hand and he had to take extreme measures to get her to cooperate.

“You didn’t have to. That’s just the kind of guy Butch is.”

“You don’t have to lecture me on what kind of guy Butch is. I already know.”

She remembered what had happened after her brother was murdered. The humiliation she had felt being stuck in the hospital while the world outside had latched on to the juicy story of her tragedy like parasites. The media had tried to sneak into her room on several occasions to try to speak with her. Butch had even come a few times, trying to get her to talk to him about what had happened. Eve had ignored them all.

One night she snuck out of the hospital unnoticed, wanting to escape all the constant harassment and the never ending questions that she refused to answer. It was another two weeks before Butch had finally caught up with her. She thought on that moment in her life with mixed emotions. She had been submersed in bereavement, mourning the loss of her brother, the loss of what little innocence she had left. Butch had been her ameliorator in those times, her only source of security and comfort even if it didn’t start out that way.

 

“Christ, kid. What are you doing out here?” It couldn’t have been more than a few damp degrees above freezing and Eve was lounging on a park bench like it was midsummer night in Miami in nothing but a hooded sweatshirt and ripped jeans.

Eve gave Butch a sideways glanced then shrugged. “Stargazing. What do you want?” He must have spotted her on his way downtown.

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re just out here to get an eyeful of the Big-fuckin’-Dipper. You ducked out of the hospital before you were cleared. Then you went missing for weeks and didn’t tell anyone where you went.”

“Yeah…I didn’t want to be found. But congrats to you, Sherlock. You sniffed me out,” Eve said in a bored tone.

“You were supposed to come down to the station and answer some questions when you were released,” he reminded her.

“No thank you. I don’t know nothing anyway,” she lied. She was the only key witness they had against the bastard and she wasn’t cooperating. She couldn’t. There was no way she could force herself to relive watching her brother die, there was no way could do that without the last pieces of her heart fracturing even more.

“Evelyn, you’re the only one that knows what really went down. I know you’re going through a rough time right now, but you gotta help us out,” he said, his gravelly voice rough even in his gentlest of tones.

“What’s that going to do?” she asked, chagrined.

“We’re going to get the bastard that did this to you, to your family.”

“Yeah…right. You and I both know he’s long gone. I’m not wasting my time.”

“You’re going to need help, Evelyn. At some point you are going to have to deal with this. Talk to someone, go to a support group…something that will help you. They have them at St. Patrick’s every Monday night for victims of sexual abuse,” he offered.

“Spare me. The last thing I need to do is rehash what happened to me in some bullshit honesty circle and praying to some guy who never gave a damn about me before.”

“You gotta do something about it. You keep pushing it away, it’s going to come at you one day and you’re going to drown in all this self-loathing and anger.”

“Speaking from experience, are we Butchy?”

Butch took a deep breath, his fists clenching in agitation. “You planning on staying on that bench all night?”

“Yeah, I plan on it. It’s a beautiful spot…comfy, too.”

“I hate to do this but you really left me with no choice.” He hauled her to her feet and spun her around. “Evelyn Chambers, you are under arrest for the obstruction of justice. You have the right to remain silent –”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” But he wasn’t. He had her hands behind her back and in handcuffs before she could even blink.

“Anything you say and do can be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”

“Fuck you, O’Neal! Fuck you!” Eve snarled.

“Good. Now get in the car before I tack on resisting arrest.” She spit at his feet before he shoved her into the backseat of his unmarked car.

“Why are you doing this to me? I just want to be left alone,” she said when he got into the driver’s seat.

He turned to face her, his blazing hazel eyes boring into hers. “So you don’t care that your brother died, that the sick fuck that did this to him is roaming the streets free to do this to another person, some other little kid?”

She kicked his seat then slumped down in defeat.

He made good on his promise and took her to the precinct. It was late at night, the place deserted except for the few working the graveyard shift.

Butch steered her into an office for privacy. He removed the cuffs and let her sit in a hard plastic chair that was none too comfortable.

 “Look, Evelyn –”

“Eve,” she interjected.

“Eve, you have to tell me what happened the night Jory died.”

“I…” She paused unable to say more. All her focus was on twisting her fingers in her lap.

Butch kneeled before her. He took her shaking hands in his but she jerked away from him. “Come on, sweetheart. Did he threaten you so you don’t want to speak? He can’t hurt you anymore. I promise you.”

She shook her head. “The first time he did but –”

“The first time?”

“He…he did it before. About a month ago,” Eve admitted, facing the inevitable.

Butch cursed under his breath. “What did he threaten you with?”

“Honestly I don’t remember the exact threat. Something vague about hurting the ones I love. But that’s not why I didn’t come forward. I was so humiliated that I let that happen to me. I thought that if I pretended that it didn’t happen hard enough that it would go away, that I wouldn’t have to suffer that mortifying indignity. I made the worst mistake in my life…all to salvage my shredded pride,” she whispered, brokenly.

“You couldn’t have known that this was going to happen.”

“Jory’s dead. He’s…dead. I’m never going to be able to hold him again…cuddle with him…kiss and hug him and tell him how much I love him. I’m never going to see him smile or hear him laugh. Or even have to deal with him being grumpy right after I get him out of bed in the morning for school. My last memory of him is bleeding to death on the kitchen flood beside me, choking on his own blood. How do I go on from that? Jory was just a baby, Butch. It should have been me that died. How could that son of a bitch do that to him?”

“Because scum like him get off on hurting those weaker than him. I’m going to have to take a formal statement. I’m going to need you to tell me everything no matter how small of a detail it is. We’ll do it all right now, get it out of the way and you don’t have to do this again, okay?”

Eve agreed with a single dip of her head. He asked her question after question that she tried her best to answer. Some of them were harder than others. She was weary and ill and trembling by the end of the session.

“You did well,” as he scribbled across another form in his report. “I might need to speak with you again, just a few questions if new evidence presents itself but we’re done for now. The other detectives working on this –”

“I’ll only talk to you and that is something I will not relent on. What about the whole obstruction charge?”

“I wasn’t really going to arrest you. But I needed you to come in so I could ask you questions. It was the only thing I could come up with at the moment. You certainly weren’t going to come by your own free will.”

Eve glared at him. “You’re a real dick, Butch.”

“Yeah, I know. But I got some answers out of you, didn’t I?”

“Can I go now?”

“I’ll give you a ride home. Your mom is worried about you.”

“My mom is a selfish cow that thinks of no one but herself. I’m not going back there,” she told him.

“You gotta go home, kid. You’re underage. I can’t let you wander the streets alone,” Butch said.

“I can’t be in that house with her, Butch,” she said. “I can’t even look at her. I just can’t. I don’t care where you take me…juvie, call child services, jail, or whatever you got to do. I hate her so much and I’m afraid that if I see her I’ll kill her,” Eve hissed.

“It’s not her fault, Eve.”

“No, it’s mine. But she brought that monster into our lives. He beat her. He beat her all the time and she could have stopped it. She could have left him or called the police. But she loved him. She’s to blame for all of this.”

“Your mother didn’t ask for this any more than you did. And it’s not your fault this happened, either.”

Eve laughed harshly. “Dina knew he was an abusive son of a bitch and what he was capable of because Michael was just one of the many scumbags she scraped up off the street and brought hom. I know I should have said something the first time it happened. I was a coward. And I enabled him with that fear. That’s never going to happen again. I’d rather die than let this ever happen to me again. But my mother should have been protecting her children instead of worrying about her next hot fuck.”

“Jesus, Eve. You can’t do that. You can’t go on hating your mother forever. It’s unfair.”

“If life was fair I wouldn’t be talking to you and you’d be out of a job.”

I think I’ll just walk home.”

“Can’t allow you to do that. Let me reiterate my previous statement: you’re a minor. Let me finish up here and I’ll take you home, okay?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

But she didn’t wait for him. She slipped out while he wasn’t looking. Her escape was short lived though. Butch caught up with her only a few minutes later about two blocks from the station.

“Eve!” He yelled as he pulled over to the curb in the unmarked.

“What now? You wanna beat me down some more, Butchy?” she muttered.

“Get in.”

“What?”

“Get in the car,” he insisted. “I won’t take you back to your mom’s.”

“Are you going to take me back to the station?”

“No. Front seat ride this time. Promise.” He reached over and popped the passenger side door open.

Eve slid in the car beside him. “Where are we going?”

“My place.”

“What?”

“Relax. You don’t want to go home, and I can’t let you wander the city by yourself. It might be a little messy, but it’s better than a park bench.”

“Isn’t that against cop rules or something?”

“Yeah. My ass would be up shit creek which is why you’d better not mention this to anyone. I’m doing this against my better judgment.”

“Thank you, Butch. Really. And...I’m sorry about earlier. If I had to talk to anyone, I’m glad it was you.”

“You’re a good kid, Eve. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

She didn’t respond. Instead, she rubbed at the itchy healing scars on her wrists. It was hard to agree with him. There was a part of her that thought she was getting exactly what she deserved.

“You hungry or something?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you ate something decent?”

“I don’t remember.” And stomach was less than thrilled with the thought of eating.

“I’ll stop on the way and pick you up something. And don’t argue with me. You’re going to eat.”

“Why are you doing this for me?”

“Because I know exactly where your head is at. Believe me. I’ve been there too.”

 

She was ripped out of the memory by Vishous’s fingers snapping in front of her nose.

“I don’t want you bringing that shit back to him, you feel me? Your human problems from when you knew him are over. Butch has a good life here. Don’t try to suck him back in, don’t try to get him to help you escape, don’t even ask him to solve a goddamned math problem, true?”

“Spare me this overprotective father crap you got going on. I don’t need it. I know where that would put him. He’s one of the very few people in this damned world that means anything to me. I would never be selfish enough to even think of doing that to Butch,” Eve said.

“And what about the drugs?”

“What drugs?”

“The shit you used to do. Together…from what he has told me.”

 “I don’t do any of that anymore. Nothing hardcore.”

“I found bud in your bag. You’re still using something.”

So he’d been the one to ransack her bag. She kind of wanted to stab him. “I have a killer brownie recipe and that’s the secret ingredient.”

“That caustic attitude of yours is going to land you in a whole lot of trouble, little girl. I’ve never been patient and what little I have you are wearing thin.”

She really wanted to stab him. “I’ve been clean for a while now. And the marijuana is for anxiety. I tend to have a lot of it when weirdoes are chasing me down trying to kill me, vampires are sneaking up on me, kidnapping me, threatening me, et cetera.”

“You don’t seem to be suffering from anxiety.”

“See. It works. If you would be so kind as to return it…”

“I don’t think so.”

“Look, for the time that I knew Butch, he didn’t have anyone. Sure there were the people he worked with, but no one ever had his back. I’m happy he has that now. We’re not the same people we were five years ago. A lot has changed since then. We knew each other in a time when our lives were distorted and corrosive. We were just looking for an easy out; some way to escape even if was a couple hours at a time. Thinking on it now we both belonged to a world we had no part in and sure as hell didn’t want us. I think we recognized that in each other and were bound by it. Butch has now found what it was he sought in life, found the only place to him that would give him some sort of tranquility with who and what he is. Even if I did offer, Butch wouldn’t take it. He doesn’t need to run from himself anymore. Butch is whole.”

As if saying his name summoned him, Butch strolled through the front door and glared at Vishous. “What’s going on, V?”

 “Nothing,” Vishous muttered. “Just properly introducing myself to your little friend here.”

“Eve?” Butch was looking for some sort of confirmation.

She smiled sweetly up at Vishous. The fire in her eyes betrayed that falsehood though. “He’s my new fanged BFF.”

“V, can you give me a minute with her?”

Eve could tell he didn’t want to. But Vishous relented. “Remember what I said,” he warned, giving her a gimlet glare before walking off.

“I’m sorry about V. I heard what you said to him. Thank you. This thing with you and me and our past has kind of set him off. He said he trusted me but sometimes, you know, it just doesn’t feel that way since he found out about you. Us.”

“Our past transgressions always seem to find a way of biting us in our asses, huh?”

Butch sat on the couch next to Eve and she cuddled up next to him like it was old times and there was never a rift between them. “I really missed you after I left.”

He put his arm around her. “Yeah, it was lonely coming home to that empty apartment. I got used to having you there.”

“I had to leave. We both know it was for the best.”

“I know. What happened after you left? Where did you go?” he asked. “It was like you dropped off the face of the Earth.”

“I went to NYC for a while then all over Pennsylvania,” she explained. “I never stayed in one place very long. I think constant movement is in my blood. I was so used to doing it as a child that I never really thought of it.”

“Did you ever find peace, Eve?”

She smiled. “Yeah, I did. For a little bit anyway. I found small bit of happiness as well. In my work and some of the people I have met. Even here it isn’t so bad I guess. I’m happy that you are safe. I did try and keep tabs on you, you know. You went missing a few years ago and I thought something bad had happened or that you had finally went off the deep end. I have to say, you really know how to pick ‘em Butch O’ Neal. I would have never expected to find you here, a vampire nonetheless.”

He chuckled. “I never liked doing things the easy way, you know that. And speaking of knowing how to pick ‘em… ZeroSum, really? Of all the places there are in Caldie that’s where you go? That’s the last place I’d ever expect you to be.”

Eve groaned. “It was my mother’s doing. Don’t ask. I don’t even know how I let her talk me into going. I’d have rather eaten a bowl of glass shards to be honest.”

“You made up with her?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“How is she doing?”

“She’s still Dina. But she’s married now. He’s a decent guy, rich and running for mayor. He’s good to me whenever I was around. She says he is her true love.” Eve rolled her eyes. “Like she hasn’t said that a million times before. But I think this could last.”

“And how are you with all of this…living here, finding out what you are?” he asked.

“I’d be lying if I said I was okay with it,” She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll adapt. I always do.”

“I’m sorry. If there was another way –”

“I know. You remember the last thing I said to you?”

Butch shook his head. “I was pretty pissed off at you at the time.”

“I told you to find contentment, something or someone to bring you joy. You’re happy. I can see it in your eyes. You more than anyone deserve to be happy. Even through the shit we have been through, you really are a good guy. An anti-hero of sorts, but a good guy none the less. There hasn’t been many good people in my life, but you were one of them, Butchy. And I love you for that. If anything, you’ll make all this bearable for me.”

Butch kissed her temple and squeezed her to him. “There is something I have to ask you.”

“Hmm?”

“You gotta stop calling me Butchy. You’re killing me with the guys.”

Eve rumbled with laughter. “I didn’t stop all those years ago. I ain’t stopping now.”

“You’re nothing but trouble, Eve.”

Amusement sparkled in her eyes. “And I’m always gonna be trouble.”

The front door clicked open and a tall blonde female – beautiful in every sense of the word – stepped into the dwelling. Eve untangled herself from Butch as he stood up.

He went to the blonde that walked through the door and put his arms around her before dropping a kiss on her lips. “Hey, baby. I want you to meet someone.” Butch clasped the newcomer’s hand in his and brought her over to Eve. “This is Eve. Eve this is Marissa, my wife.”

Eve looked from the Marissa to Butch back to the female. “Hi.”

Marissa smiled at her, genuine and warm even with the tips of her fangs showing. “Hello. Butch has told me much about you.”

“I can’t claim the same. But it’s really nice to meet you.”

They made small talk for a few minutes before Eve excused herself. Butch gave her the key code to get back to the main house.

“You need anything you know where I’m at. And if V is still harassing you – or anyone for that matter – tell me and I’ll take care of it,” Butch told her as the door opened.

“I can fight my own battles, Butch.”

“I know, sweetie. But you’re in a whole different world now. There are different rules. Ones that could get you killed if they are broken,” he warned ominously.

Eve shook her head. “The rules aren’t different. The players are. And besides, it’s not the dying part that scares me. It never was. It’s living with every choice that I’ve ever made that’s the hardest. I’ll see you around, Butch.” She stepped into the hallway and let the door whisk closed behind her.

She was about halfway down the dark corridor before she remembered that she never got her stash back from Vishous.