Page 81 of Ghost Ribbon

From a few feet away, Ilya was already crouched beside a cluster of vibrant blue hydrangeas, gently poking one of the petals with a single finger like it was a bomb.

Dimitri’s head snapped toward him instantly. “Hey!!! Don’t touch the flowers!!”

Ilya looked up. “So you want us to dig but not touch them? That’s some bullshit logic, Dima.”

“Yes! Only I’ll touch them,” Dimitri insisted, gesturing grandly. “You two are here for the manual labor. I’m the visionary.”

I studied him, leaning lazily on the handle of the shovel. I nearly squinted at him. A few weeks ago this idiot had publicly declared Rei Kurosaki as “his” in front of half the school. That little stunt had directly led to me choking the life out of him. I didn’t particularly care who Dimitri chased or ruined on most days, but my uncle Ivan kept me around as the spare heir for a reason. If Dimitri started making too many waves by openly pursuing a boy, there was a very real chance he’d be disowned. And I had zero interest in inheriting that particular headache.

I kept my expression bored. “I’m not digging.”

“Well I’m gonna be your boss one day, so you’re digging,” Dimitri shot back.

I arched an eyebrow. “You’re not my boss yet.”

Dimitri opened his mouth to argue, but Ilya beat him to it, still crouched by the flowers. “He’s right, you kn—”

“Don’t touch the petals!” Dimitri barked again as Ilya reached for another flower.

Ilya threw his hands up dramatically. “You drag us out here at the ass-crack of dawn, give us shovels, and then won’t let us touch anything?”

Dimitri rubbed his temples, already looking exhausted. “You’re both impossible. I’m trying to do something nice here.”

“Nice?” Ilya repeated, snorting. “You set a guy on fire last Tuesday because he looked at you funny. Now you’re out here planting daisies because you want to do something nice.”

I drove the shovel into the ground half-heartedly, mostly just to watch dirt fly.

“Shut up,” Dimitri grumbled. “Just dig the damn holes.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw something small move on a leaf. Ilya noticed it at the same time.

“IT’S A MONSTER!”

He shrieked and sprinted behind me, clutching at the back of my jacket with both hands, using me as a human shield.

The “monster” was a completely ordinary garden spider, no bigger than a coin, calmly crawling across a leaf.

“Kill it. Burn the whole garden. This place is cursed.”

Dimitri looked up from his precious flowers, exasperated. “It’s a harmless garden spider. Leave it alone.”

“Harmless?” Ilya peeked around my side, still using me as a human shield. “It’s looking at me. It wants my soul. I can feel it.”

I sighed. “It’s not going to eat your soul.”

“It might! You don’t know! Spiders are demons.”

I glanced down at the tiny creature. “It’s smaller than your pinky finger. You’ve skinned men alive but a spider makes you cry?”

“Different skill sets!” Ilya hissed, still hiding. “People are predictable. Spiders are unpredictable little freaks.”

I sighed and finally started digging a proper hole just to shut them up.

The spider moved an inch closer to Ilya’s foot.

He shrieked again and practically climbed up my back.

This was going to be a very long, very stupid morning.