Elmwood

8| You're My Only Swiss Roll Plug

I coughed, relieved to be breathing in the fresh air.

"Answer my question," Drex seethed. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Give her a moment," Sebastian said as he crouched beside me. "She nearly suffocated to death."

"Well, she wouldn't have if she didn't break into my house!"

That was actually a good point. Damn him and his logic.

"Did you put a safety clause when you wiped her mind?" Sebastian asked.

"Was I supposed to?"

Thanks to all my reading, I actually knew what they were talking about. A safety clause was when someone placed a side note or an extra layer in the spell to offer some protection or a fail-safe, especially when the spell was placed on a non-witch.

A safety clause in this scenario would've meant that Drex made sure I went looking for them as soon as I sensed magic-related danger, even if I couldn't figure out why that would be my first reaction. He would've just told me to do so as part of the mind-controlling and I would've sought him out if I was ever attacked. It's like rewriting my natural instincts.

Of course, Drex didn't do that because he didn't care enough. Dip shit.

"So she's not here because someone attacked her first," Sebastian surmised. "Unless you're not nearly as good at Manipulation as you think you are and she still remembered enough to come to us anyway?"

"Ha ha," Drex intoned. "Very funny."

"Thank you."

I would've laughed if I wasn't half-dying.

"Now," Drex said, turning his gaze back to me, "I'm going to ask you one more time, little human. What are you doing here?"

I pushed myself off the ground, dusting away pieces of grass that stuck to my shirt. I listed to the side as I tried to stand up, my head spinning. Sebastian moved to help me, but I held up a hand, making him stop in his tracks, and placed my arm against the tree instead, keeping myself steady.

"I was trying to--" I coughed again.

Drex leaned forward in impatience. "You were trying to what?"

I wheezed, "I was trying to get more Swiss Rolls."

Drex stared at me for a solid ten seconds before shouting, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?"

Jesus Wesus that hurt.

I winced at his loud outburst. I thought he would only be pissed off if I told him about the Twix. I didn't think he would be that upset about the Swiss Rolls.

"You came here just for Swiss Rolls?" Sebastian asked slowly. He probably didn't believe me, but he was going along with it.

"My parents don't let me buy Swiss Rolls," I explained, my breath slowly starting to clear up. "Too much sugar. And Sage doesn't like Swiss Rolls so I can't steal them from her house. You're my only Swiss Roll plug."

"You mean to tell me," Drex began again, his voice dangerously quiet, "that you broke into my house, nearly died, and caused massive amounts of smoke damage in my fifteen million dollar house just for Swiss Rolls?"

Okay, when he put it like that it sounded rather ridiculous. But now that I already blurted out the stupid story, I had to commit.

"Yes?"

"You're a whoring, lying bitch," Drex declared.

"Okay, maybe let's not say things we don't mean," Sebastian said.