239 Grace: Dazed
“Dylan still hasn’t contacted you?” I push Rudolph. No, wait–Randy.
But now I’m seriously pondering it.
Giving up on the brain–twisting requirements of this mission, I check the messages Caeriel’s sent me, already dreading what he’s sent.
“Nuh!”
Sweet Ron grabs koala–Bun without changing his expression, completely calm as he says, “Come on, Bun–Bun. I’ll feed you all the pancakes you want, but you have to let Grace go.”
But they turn out to be surprisingly… helpful.
Each pancake has even been helpfully pre–cut into squares.
Super Nanny returns to the kitchen with a cheerful whistling tune, burn a little with his enthusiasm.
and my cheeks
“Bun, we should use a fork-”
I took one last night, after Caine left, for… reasons. 1
Huh.
Nonparticular reasons.
Which I don’t.
I’m starting to regret going with Lyre when I first met her. I bet if I didn’t, none of this would have happened and I wouldn’t have this stupid App giving me impossible missions and taking away an entire twelve hours despite me being the victim of whatever glitch they created in their own App.
Deciding to give up on being clean, I let Bun do whatever she wants as I return my focus to my phone, forcefully yanking my brain out of the gutter into functional I Have
Shit to Do mode.
The mission wouldn’t worry me so much if it wasn’t for the time limit, and the time
239 Grace: Dazed
limit wouldn’t worry me quite as much if it was really twenty–four hours.
It’s a list of locations with what he says are “elevated energy signatures“, finally giving me some direction to go with my mission. Which only makes it weirder still that they’re sending me to do something he can clearly do in a snap of his fingers, but I have to remind myself that this is training.
“Nuh.” A mouthful of eggs and cheese dribbles out of her mouth with her going to need another shower.
“…Grace?”
response.
Seriously, why is his name the only one I can’t remember? It isn’t that strange.
I’m
The App has only been up for a few minutes, but the mission was assigned a little less than twelve hours ago. Which means I’m basically being penalized for not having a working App up until then. How is this fair? 1
A child psychologist might help, but I’m not entirely certain a human psychologist is going to understand how very different life is here on the supernatural side…
I swear I never saw this before.
“Uh–I’m fine. I’m not really hungry.” There’s another pile of pancakes on the counter, this time smaller than what Dylan made yesterday. Turns out all the food Dylan made was for Super Nanny, who eats basically a house and a half’s worth of food at every meal. Something about metabolism or… something. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.
Right, his name is Randy.
My head aches again as I look through the notifications, my eyes finally landing on the times associated with them…. Ah.
Shit.
“Nuh!”
“Here you go, Bun. Your favorite pancakes!” Super Nanny says cheerfully, either not hearing or straight up ignoring my groan as her fingers squish into a particularly syrupy section.
“Do you want a fork?”
239 Grace: Dazed
My back stiffens as my eyes snap to Ron’s face. “Wha–how did you know?”
Bun immediately reaches out and grabs a handful, shoving it into her face with gusto. She’s wrapped around me like a koala and refuses to even let Super Nanny touch her.
Bun shrieks as soon as he reaches out, smacking at his hands with syrup and egg–covered hands of her own. “Nuh!” Then she wraps her arms around me and buries her sticky face into my neck, determined to stay glued to me.
[These messages are being monitored for the safety of all Guardians in the Trainee Program. Inappropriate Mentor activity can be reported via the help menu…]
But Super Nanny just pats an egg–covered Bun on the head before heading back into the kitchen to finish cooking, which makes it honestly impossible to tell.
But the countdown the app has provided says something very different. It lists my remaining time at 12:32:53 which is not twenty–four hours, no matter how you look at
- it.
Culminating in about a fifteen–minute temper tantrum over the thirty seconds it took me to go pee, and no, it wasn’t worth the fight.
Then my eyes narrow on the tiny, almost illegible text under all the messages.
“Did you want waffles or pancakes?” He frowns a little, inspecting me with a little more care than normal. “You look pale. Is everything okay?”
Another notification comes up as I’m death–glaring the countdown.
Didn’t Lyre say the App doesn’t give us missions we can’t handle?
Is this why Caeriel’s suddenly so helpful in the messages…?
Anyway, between Caine’s promise of a date later today, my missing supernatural pets–who–aren’t–pets, and a koala–like Bun who won’t even be bribed off me with her new favorite noodle–head music video, I’m a complete mess and utterly reliant on Super Nanny and Ron to keep the house, as it were, running semi–normally.
Lyre’s a liar.
I check the mission first, and the horrible feeling is justified almost immediately. Her chubby little toddler hands go right for it before I can stop her.
239 Grace: Dazed
[ASSIGNED MISSION: Investigate the identity of the demi–god in region 20–L within 24 hours, or penalties will be assigned.]
Caine doesn’t seem to eat nearly as much, but now it makes sense how he had piled so much food on my plate the first time we ate together….
I groan, and sweet Ron comes out of the living room, holding out his hands. “Here. I’ll finish feeding her.”
Bun shifts in my lap, grasping another fistful of eggs and smashing them against her face in what I assume is her attempt at eating independently. Or maybe she’s just trying to get attention. It could be either, honestly.
There are multiple messages from Caeriel.
My lips twitch a little. “Right. Thanks…”
“…ma’am? Grace?”
Sure, it might seem like a silly question, but unless you’re the one with a koala baby clinging to you with a bunch of syrup and eggs covering her and the threat of another major tantrum–you won’t get it.
“Not since last night, ma’am. He might be out of reach of the pack link. I’ve sent him a text, so he should call when he gets it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
Dylan… hasn’t returned, and Super Nanny isn’t explaining much. It leaves me a little off–kilter. I’d expected Sadie and the cat to return last night, and the kids–mainly Sara and Jer–are deeply upset, convinced they’ve come to some sort of irreparable harm. My head jerks up before my brain’s fully rewound to realize Super Nanny’s been calling my name for a while. “Sorry, what?”
I live in it and I’m still struggling to understand it.
“Ah.” He smiles in a way that’s a little too understanding. “I understand. I’ll leave you to your thoughts, then, ma’am. Please think of our High Alpha as much as you wish.”
Shit, my mind’s wandering again. I blink at Super Nanny. “Sorry. I was just thinking about Caine–er, the Lycan King.”
239 Grace: Dazed
I wasn’t thinking about Caine like that, okay?
I’m not entirely sure how I get to sleep, or how I even function the next morning, but after a few days of Bun being a traitor and clinging to Super Nanny she’s now glomped onto my leg and refusing to step more than two inches away from me, even forcing me to hold her when I use the bathroom.
Nope, pancake to the face, fist–style.
“Come on, Bun. Grace has something to do today.”
“Pa cay!” Bun suddenly shrieks, and I glance up to see a dreaded plate of pancakes- with syrup–slid in front of us.
Ron thinks it’s because he’s been gone the past two days, plus the animals now missing. Owen’s not around either, so it might just be Bun being a little insecure about people leaving her. Because of this, Ron is in the living room playing some sort of memory card game with Jer and Sara, trying to keep Sara from coming up with doomsday scenarios over what’s happened to the bodies of the cat and the dog.
It’s enough to make a girl wonder what exactly these penalties the App threatens might entail. Is it worth taking one to avoid a screaming baby?
Super Nanny–I’m just going to call him that because my brain keeps slipping with his real name–slides a plate of scrambled eggs with freshly grated cheddar cheese in front
of me.
Is this revenge? It’s revenge, isn’t it?
The girl is obsessed with worst–case scenarios involving death, which I’m pretty sure is some way of coping with how horrible Fiddleback was in all aspects. I have no idea how to deal with it or treat it.
“Bun…”
Which is why, when my phone buzzes non–stop in my pocket, I have a horrible sinking feeling in my gut as I check my notifications.
But it does make me wonder how much the Lycan Pack spends in a single day on food. It must be astronomical. Dylan ate a lot, too.
But then my mind wanders to last night and his thighs and his hands and the tingling and how I was left unsatisfied, aching, and waiting with the promise of tonight…
239 Grace: Dazed
And my mission’s finally updated.
I wonder how many are like me, drafted into the situation against our will. Or are they born into it, like Lyre seems to have been…?
[CAERIEL: I know you’re online. You don’t have much time left. Are you really going to waste it?]
It’s nice to have water hook–up again. I’ve been taking a lot of showers.
What seems hard to me is probably child’s play for any of the so–called Guardians this App has made.
But I wasn’t until stupid Randall brought it up, thank you very much.
The App is back, as expected.
If I didn’t know the child couldn’t read, I’d seriously suspect her of knowing I’m about to ditch her for the day to get this damnable mission done.
I know I wouldn’t have before I met these children.
Seriously. How. Is. This. Fair?
The countdown on my phone continues to tick down, and I frown at the mission they’ve given me. Seriously, I have twelve hours to find the identity of a demi–god without any hint whatsoever. I guess I can go back to the laundromat, but…
Okay, maybe a little like that.
