Page 38 of January Bell

CHAPTER

FOURTEEN

LILY

I am so grumpy. So grumpy, in fact, that I don’t think the word “grumpy” even begins to cover it.

I read a book once where the heroine’s vision was described as turning red whenever she saw her enemy. I thought that was the most ridiculous phrase I’d ever heard in my life—until this very moment.

I don’t know if it’s because, despite my orgasm last night, I’m completely sexually unsatisfied. I’m hungry. And I’m pretty sure if I were still on my regular hormonal cycle I would be PMS-ing, and considering I have PMDD, that’s really fucking saying something.

So am I seeing red after Ken pops up out of nowhere and starts his good morning spiel that I can barely process because I’m so fucking pissed off?

Not literally, no.

But am I imagining blood dripping from his hologram corpse after I’ve decapitated him in a fit of righteous rage?

Yes.

If that’s what seeing red means, then yes, I am seeing red.

I’m practically snarling by the time he finishes giving us whatever directions he’s just popped in to deliver like a little evil artificial intelligence sprite from the hell realm—whatever data-cooling processing hellroom he was spawned from.

Somewhere in the forest, there’s the undeniable cluck of a chicken, and a moment later, the hen from last night is peeking around a huge tree trunk to stare at the two of us. Well, three of us, technically, though Ken is not actually corporeal, nor is he a real person.

“Did you at least fucking feed the chicken?” I ask him.

Ken stops mid-speech and stares at me.

“It’s very rude to interrupt the host while they’re monologuing.”

“You can shut the fuck up. You’re only a host in your own goddamn mind. Did you feed the chicken?” I ask again.

He gives Zan a long, measured look. “I take it that her anger today means that you did not, in fact, seal your mate bond last night?”

“Well, at least we know you weren’t filming us like some goddamn pervert,” I yell at him.

Ken has the audacity to appear shocked at my language and tone.

“Does that mean that you would prefer if I did film your intimate evening scenes? Our early feedback from test audiences suggests that they would like that, especially in your market. Meaning Earth,” he says, as if I’m too freaking stupid to know what my market means.

A comms tablet appears out of nowhere, and Ken begins marking on it, which is just downright confusing, because how the fuck is a hologram marking anything when he doesn’t need to actually physically remember it because he’s not physically real?

I almost scream again but manage to tamp down my rage into an icy cold stare.

“I absolutely do not want you filming my intimate times with my mate,” I say. If I could spit acid, I fucking would. I am beyond angry.

The chicken clucks again, sadly.

When I look back at her, I pat my thigh, because I’ve now completely lost my mind and am effectively calling the monster dinosaur chicken over to us.

“You didn’t even get fed, did you, girly?” I say in a sweet, high-pitched voice. “He didn’t even think to feed you, did he? You poor, poor girl. First, he killed your friend, then we ate him and he gave us truth serum.”

Ken is staring at me with an astonished face above his tablet—which isn’t even a real tablet. None of this is real and I feel like I’m losing my mind.

“And he didn’t feed us either, and now he expects us to do something death-defying for the cameras. It’s really sick and twisted, isn’t it, sweetheart?”

The chicken coos her agreement and allows me to scratch under her chin, which is really strange. I’m not even sure if it feels good because she has feathers and not fur, and frankly… “I’m not used to dealing with feathered, oversized dinosaur chickens like you, likely spawned from the same processing center as fucking Ken No Privates, the AI from shitspace shitface⁠—"