Page 28 of Justice

Liberty reached to the side of her, grabbing a few candy bars off the display and a bag of chips before tossing them into Justice's pile. “I’d like to buy these.”

The clerks head dipped slightly in acknowledgment, but he didn’t take his eyes off Justice. Even as a human, he could sense the looming threat within the man. The authority that radiated off Justice was nearly stifling at times, not that it worked on us. The clerk grabbed the nearest product and scanned it, the red laser catching Justice's attention as he watched intently with each scan.

“That will be thirty twenty-one,” the clerk announced.

“You can’t possibly know that. You didn’t type in any of the prices or even attempt to add them.”

Liberty’s credit card appeared. “Here you go.”

“What are you doing?” He hissed, and I suspected he genuinely didn’t know. The man had never seen a credit card in his life.

“I’m paying,” she whispered back.

“With that? Surely not. Even so, I will not let you pay for me. A man pays.” His sharp voice had us all blinking a few times. The quickest way to anger a female was by mumbling about something a man should do. As far as I was concerned, the only thing a man should do is provide his girl with many orgasms and kill the spiders. Everything else falls into theshe’s an independent womancategory, and I’d learned not to try to test that.

He raised an eyebrow as he patted at his pockets, searching for cash that every single one of us knew he didn’t have, every single one of us but him. “My money is gone.”

He made an announcement like we should be shocked that after spending sixty years trapped within a beast, he happened to lose his wallet. “It’s fine, I’ve got it.”

Liberty tried again, but his pride wouldn’t have it. He brushed her off as he searched some more. Finally, I stepped up, tossing my card onto the counter. Though the furrow of his brows told me he didn’t want me to pay, he didn’t object as the clerk reached for my card.

When the bag filled with our purchase was held out, Justice eyed it like it was poison. Liberty reached forward. “It’s just a bag, Justice.”

Just not a type of bag he had seen before. I got his weariness. If I hadn’t grown through the progression of the centuries and decades, I would doubt my own eyes too. I reached out and took the bag from Liberty, not because a gentleman always carried the bag, because god, if I voiced that she would shoot me dead, but because I knew she had her hands full with the confused man in front of us.

Justice let his confusion go for the moment, though I knew later he would have a lot of questions about how the world worked. “How long have you lived in the area?”

The clerk rubbed his hands on his thigh nervously. “My whole life.”

Justice nodded. “The people who lived on the land out back, what happened to them?”

The man looked confused for a moment before clarity came to him. “There has never been anyone there in my lifetime, sir. But I heard a rumor once that a few years before I was born, there was a giant community of outcasts.” Justice scoffed at that assessment. “They were there one day. The next, all the shacks were burned to the ground, and every one of them disappeared. Everyone thought they would find bodies but nothing. Just gone, I guess.”

“Burned how?”

“The ground was dug up and destroyed, the houses complete ash. It took years before anything grew on that land again.”

“What year about was that?”

“I was born in sixty-five, so my guess, maybe about fifty-eight?”

Justice nodded, his eyes glazed like he was in a trance. “Thank you.”

“Thank you; you’ve been a lot of help,” Liberty offered before taking Justice’s shirt sleeve and pulling him away. This time, he didn’t fight her touch, and if my eyes were correct, he almost, almost leaned into her touch.

She led him outside and around the building before stopping. He blinked a few times, “They weren’t shacks.”

“I know,” she responded.

“No, you don’t know. You know nothing about my people. The shacks were a front for the underground system we lived in. Our dens were all underground. We weren’t poor dwellers.”

“I never thought you were. And even so, I live paycheck to paycheck, so who am I to judge?” she offered.

He ignored her attempt. “If they dug up the homes below, they didn’t intend on coming back here.”

“So, we will find them,” she encouraged.

His creepy eyes focused on her, and Oak was instantly at her side, ready to protect her. “If they lived, I know where they are. I have no choice but to go.”