Page 14 of The Coven’s Sacrifice

She sighed. “Calm down, human. I checked your labels in your discarded clothes. So dramatic.”

I felt the sudden urge to kick her.

“When will the clothes arrive?” I asked instead, allowing her to enter my room.

“They have already arrived.” She snapped her fingers and a box appeared in front of my couch. “I had to spend hours searching for the right thing. You would think finding masculine clothes would be easy for a man your size, but it was not.”

Now, I should’ve imagined what I would find in the box, yet I was still surprised when I took out the first t-shirt and it was with a racecar on the front. The car had eyes and a mouth and was grinning. It had the words “Too fast, Too furious” on it.

Dread filled my veins as I continued to browse the box of doom. There were shorts as well, all with roads or racecars on them. Either in dark blue or red. One set looked like child pajamas, only in my size. There were no jeans, no regular t-shirts, only cartoony things with trucks, racecars, and some with farm animals on them. She’d ordered my clothes as if I was a six-year-old boy.

“My personal favorite is the underwear,” she announced, grabbing a ten pack of boxers. It was horrifying.

“Is that… elephants?” I dared ask.

“Yes! Is it not genius?! The trunks are for your penis, and they even have ears!”

Sienna left me to get dressed in private. It was unnerving how excited she was to see me all dressed up in my “nice” new clothes. I had no idea if she was messing with me or not. I was too afraid of her to ask. I ended up wearing a tracksuit. It was light blue and had excavators on it. They were small, so I hoped no one would notice. I’d planned on hiding in the garden all day, and with the warmer weather, I’d picked out the least obnoxious t-shirt underneath. My plan was to avoid the vampires at all costs, which meant I would be in the garden until the sun went down.

I had my laptop with me as I settled into the pavilion. Nicco had made me some sort of rice dish for breakfast with lots of freshly cut fruit on the side. I ate everything and he must’ve known I needed the extra pick-me-up, because I had both a hot cup of coffee and an iced coffee this morning.

While I ate, I browsed the internet and finally bought myself the clothes I needed. I feared it would hurt Sienna’s feelings, but I couldn’t do this for the rest of my life. Hopefully, the not-able-to-kill-me rule applied to her as well.

With my food devoured and my clothes ordered—which had been easier than normal, likely because of the magic—I now went to search for Jetty. I hoped he wouldn’t mind me messing around in the garden, because I needed something to occupy myself with. I missed having animals to care for, and chickens seemed like a good choice for the mansion. If I was allowed.

Jetty was cooing over a yellow rose bush, talking about blooming joy or something close to it.

“Jetty?” I called out, not wanting to sneak up on the brownie. He was the only one I had yet to speak to directly.

“Human,” Jetty replied, nodding his head. “Please do not tell me you dislike roses.”

I frowned. “Why would I do that?”

“One of your ancestors demanded all roses be removed from the garden. It has taken me one hundred years to get it to this point. I will weep if I have to kill my family again.”

Okay. Jetty had some trauma going on.

“I will never ask you to get rid of any of the flowers,” I vowed. I also doubted I held enough power to ask such a thing, but he didn’t need to know that. He sagged in obvious relief, stroking one of the roses’ petals. “I was wondering if I could build a chicken coop out here? Maybe a tiny vegetable garden?”

He nodded. “Come this way.”

He led me to a space that had been neglected for years. Definitely not a place he took care of himself. “This entire area is for you to do whatever you wish. It has been eighty some years since it was last used, though. But I am not assigned to this spot, meaning it will be yours alone.”

The area was big and taken over by weeds. It would take me weeks just to get rid of everything. Then I had to order and build the garden beds and the coop. It was wonderful!

“Thank you, Jetty,” I said, already walking back to my laptop. It was time to order a lot of fun stuff. The best part, I got to spend multiple hours listening to a podcast from my laptop while I worked. I didn’t even think about the monsters while the sun was beating down on me.

Chapter Ten

Colin

The sun was setting and I was a sweaty mess. Around three hours ago, I’d ditched my t-shirt, leaving me only in the tracksuit pants with the excavators on them. All I’d managed to get done was to remove the weeds and clear out the area. There had been garden beds at one point, but the wood was so rotten and damaged from years outside, that they all had to be removed.

I’d already ordered everything I should need for the garden, just not the coop yet. I wanted to research that a bit more tonight, something I was looking forward to. It felt nice having a goal that I could work towards and even with some things being planted too late in the season, I was still excited. Jetty had been a big help, grabbing me the tools I needed for the weeds and a wheelbarrow for all the trips I had to make with them. We had a compost area that Jetty was overly thrilled about. It got a little weird when he showed me, something I tried hard to forget.

Wiping my forehead, I took in the area with a prideful look. I’d done that. Hard work truly was something I’d needed. Hearing the podcast had helped immensely as well, as I used to listen to it while I worked back home. For a few hours today, I’d forgotten about my situation, feeling like I was back home doing work. It felt freeing. I’d already ordered headphones, something I’d forgotten to pack when I left. Sighing, I knew it was time to head inside again, even if I dreaded it.

“You stink.”