Page 152 of The Monster and the Masochist

Vox’s brow furrowed as I spoke, and he nodded as he flicked through several dark windows on his monitors.

“When can you get back to me with something?” I asked, and he glanced up at me as he typed the reverend’s name into some nondescript search engine that definitely wasn’t Google.

Cocking his head to the side, he shrugged, as if to say, ‘I’ll have to see.’

“Do you think next Monday is doable? This is urgent. I need something to work with by then.”

He let out a silent huff that I knew was his version of a chuckle, his lips quirking at the corner as he continued to type away on his keyboard.

He shrugged again, that cocky smirk still playing on his face.

“You’ll text me when you have something?”

He glanced at me and nodded, holding out his hand in a silent request for me to give him my phone.

I handed it over. “The code is–”

He typed my code in without waiting for me to tell him, and I scowled.

“Fucking creep. How do you know my passcode?”

He glanced up at me, his grey eyes shining, as if to say, ‘I know everyone’s passcode, dumbass.’

He tapped away on my phone and handed it back. There was a new messaging app I didn’t recognize with a single number programmed into it.

“I’m assuming this is a secure line, then?” I asked, and he nodded, already dismissing me and digging into the assignment I’d given him.

“Alright…”

‘Ask him to look into our fighter’s past as well,’ my monster reminded me impatiently.

I hesitated for a beat.

As much as I wanted to hunt down whoever had hurt Theo, she’d asked me not to look into it, and bringing a third person into something so private felt like a massive overstep.

Again, I wasn’t used to taking other people’s feelings into consideration when I wanted something.

I usually just shamelessly stepped on people to get whatever I was after, but… Theo was different.

‘Let’s deal with the reverend first; once he’s out of the way, I’ll have more time to do some digging myself. I don’t want to bring Vox into Theo’s personal shit if we can avoid it.’

My monster’s tail flicked against the bars of the mental cage I kept it in, and it growled in agitation.

‘Even if we track them down on our own, we will need help with the body. Your brother is retired. We might as well engage the vampire now.’

‘No,’ I snapped, causing my monster to roll its eyes.

‘Why must you always do things the hard way?’

‘Because if I did things your way, we would be in prison by now.’

My monster chuckled, curling deeper into my mind as it purred.

‘We would do well in prison. So much prey with nowhere to run.’

‘Jesus. Shut the fuck up for once.’

My monster just let out another low, rumbling laugh, as Vox glanced back at me with an annoyed look on his face.