Page 39 of Even Vampires Bleed (Even Ever After #2)

Léandre

I want you to remember something. I hate you for forcing me to go with him.

Cassiopé’s words resonate in my mind.

I wasn’t supposed to hear them. Obviously.

But I forgot to ask Angélique if she could find a way to update me about how my father is doing while I’ll be there and decided to go ask right away instead of at the last minute.

I should have picked at the last minute.

Because now I know it for sure.

Cassiopé hates me, and I’m about to be stuck with her for however long it’s going to take for them to find a way around my microchip.

I don’t think she hates me to the point she would kill me and bury my body while we’re going to be in the forest, but still, it doesn’t feel so good for the days to come.

Maybe even weeks or months.

I don’t hate her, but since I now know she does, I’m not sure we’ll survive months in a secluded place with nothing to do with our days.

If I didn’t already dread the time there, seeing her barge out from Elhyor’s office looking very pissed off right after saying that is surely not helping.

As it is, in her mad state, she doesn’t even seem to see me on my way back to the office.

I’m not going to address it though, especially since she didn’t see me and is in no way in a state I want to brush with.

“You heard that?” Angélique asks me when I enter the office.

It looks empty now that the electronic girl left and my brain isn’t on full display for all to see anymore.

“What should I have heard?” I ask as if I had indeed heard nothing.

“In this life and the past one, you never knew how to lie, Léandre,” she tells me with a nostalgic, yet amused, smile.

I often forget that before I lost my memories, I used to be her best friend, and she knows all of my “tells” because of that.

Because weirdly, it seems those didn’t disappear with my memories.

“Don’t be too hard on her about it,” Angélique continues. “She’s had a few rough weeks lately, and she didn’t mean it like that.”

I’m pretty sure she did mean it like that, but I don’t feel like arguing. According to what we discussed earlier, I only have thirty minutes left before the jet will arrive to pick Cassiopé and I for our little trip to the forest.

And, yes, we’re supposed to throw our suitcases and jump after them directly from the jet when we arrive.

It’s going to be awesome.

Do you hear my sarcasm?

At least we both have a shifted form that can fly, which will make us avoid breaking any body parts.

Angélique takes my silence for disagreement and explains some more .

“She’s usually very sweet. Be nice and you’ll see everything is going to be alright.”

I doubt that, and I guess she can see it on my face because she adds again.

“Really, you used to like her, so don’t be an ass.”

And now I’m the ass in the story?

I can see why I might have liked her in my past life, she’s cute and she seems to care about people—we have a butterfly and a lizard shifter upstairs to prove that—but past-me must have done something very shitty to her because now it’s like she can’t even look at me and she obviously just told Elhyor and Angélique all about it from the little I heard earlier.

“Promise me, Léandre,” Angélique pleads.

“Okay, I’ll be on my best behavior,” I finally say, “but there are other things we need to discuss.”

It takes me all of two minutes to explain to Angélique and Elhyor—who surprisingly stayed very quiet during the part about Cassiopé—what I’d like for them to do.

In the end, they promised me to send letters—I don’t think I’ve ever written one—and that they will send someone to bring us supplies and check on us every week.

Honestly? I didn’t even think about the food, but now that they mention it, I’m starting to think this won’t be easy at all. How the hell can you store food when you don’t even have electricity?

There will be no fridge where we’re going, and suddenly, I’m way more scared of going there than to lose my memory again.

If I can’t do shit and need to learn everything all over again, at least I won’t remember that I used to be able to do any of this.

But no fridge? No air conditioning? No holo? No movie night?

Yeah, it’s scary as fuck.

And all of that with a girl that hates me?

It’s a recipe for disaster.