Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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Before the TV stations receded into grainy fuzz and then to total deadness, there had been about two weeks where I'd watched delegates of different witch covens around the world suddenly step into the light. Amidst boos and shrieks of terror, they inserted themselves into our world, the same message spread across the oceans: We were always here. We are not all like Her.
There had been speculation the government would employ their help to put a stop to Patty's reign of chaos, but since nothing had happened yet and there were no whispers of a magical firefight, I assumed that talk had been pure air. I'm sure the witch clans who had made themselves known were busy fighting for their rights to exist. I was terrified at the prospect of them being deemed "unworthy."
Outside, right on the front lawns and driveways that curved at the edge of the road, Kirishima had a whole spread of training dummies and obstacles the two of them had put together. Well, three. Talia often trained with them.
Sweat poured off the poor kid's face and flicked off his arms as he muscled a stack of humongous tires across the street. He wasn't even using his quirk, and he was capable of stuff that took regular bodybuilders years and years of training to achieve.
And where was Kakashi?
I shaded my eyes with my hand. Winter had come and gone, though it had been mild. Global warming and all that. The worst month had been January, but now it was March, and the browned grass had already started peeking new sprouts. A speckling of green, entrenched on all sides by mud.
So, too, the dark days had come to pass. Literally. Now, it was light again in the mornings, starting at around seven thirty. Each day would get a little brighter.
I couldn't believe it had been nearly seven months since Kakashi had come to this world.
Time flew. In fact, it felt like the longest stretch had been that one month where he'd been gone. Puppetized.
If I had been holding onto any remaining obliviousness, that fact alone would be enough to make it clear. Now, if only I could get him to see that.
"Are you ready to go?" I called down, where the Anbu black ops ninja lay on a long beach chair, some romance novel from Bella's shelf opened in one hand.
I couldn't help the smile. Sure, Kakashi was more than the man on the screen. But some things never change, do they? Instead of Makeout Paradise, though, he had to make do with whatever he could find.
Far as I could tell, the only two types of steamy romance novels that existed were the ones with a ripped man on the cover and the ones with artful shots of a woman's body: her legs, her hair, even her socks.
This was one of the latter, which made me smile. It was too hilarious that he was a sucker for these romances. Too hilarious, though maybe I found too much laughter in it and needed to reevaluate my priorities in life.
