96

“I swear, if I find out you're joking, I'm going to kill you. Like, really kill you,” Cecil said, swirling the reddish hangover liquid in the ceramic bowl, watching me with a suspicious eye.

She’d woken up about eighteen minutes ago, demanding to know what had happened and how she ended up drunk with a very non-human alcohol. I had brought the bottle with us to show her when she woke up. I wanted her to see how careless she’d been.

“I have to make lunch, Cecil. Stop keeping me here,” I groaned, uncrossing my legs and crossing them again.

“Well, the story doesn’t line up,” she said, placing the bowl on the counter. “I got really, seriously drunk, and somehow you found me in the car of this insanely hot redhead who said he is my mate, right?”

I nodded.

She continued, “And then you took me away from him with a promise that you were going to set up a date for both of us to meet since you didn’t trust him that much. And you collected his number. Then he helped you take me into the Parkhous