15 Don't Look Up

Ruby spent such a long time waiting out in the front room reading herbal tea labels that she thought she would lose her mind. When Ash finally came out, she put her hands on her hips and began chewing him out.

"What on earth took you so long?! Do you have any idea how long I waited for you to come out? I'm starving and still need to go you know where!"

"My apologies. I got the information we needed about a fae-run furniture store," he said casually.

She blinked at him. Furniture? They spent that entire time talking about furniture? No way. Ash wouldn't have prevented Blair from talking and literally dragged her away if that was all it was.

But Ruby wasn't about to pry. She had her own secrets. As long as whatever it was didn't affect her, she didn't care.

"Then let's go," she said simply.

They left the store without another word and Ruby put her vampire-as-human glamour back on in case they ran into anyone she knew while shopping. Since everyone knows you aren't supposed to go grocery shopping while hungry, she ended up swinging by a drive-thru for a full burger meal.

She was tired, hungry, and had another long day ahead of her tomorrow. She needed the junk food to get by.

Ruby put the ice water and strawberry shake in the cup holders and shoved the bag at Ash. "Hold this, please."

He accepted it silently as she handed over the cash to the teenage boy at the window. When she pulled away and stopped at the edge of the road to turn back onto a main street, she noticed that he was sniffing the bag curiously.

"What is this?" Ash asked with a wrinkled nose. "There are a lot of conflicting smells."

"A mushroom and Swiss cheese burger and black peppercorn fries," Ruby said as she reached out and dug through the bag to stuff a few fries in her mouth.

They were delicious. She had made the right choice coming here before going to the store and torturing herself by staring at food she couldn't eat yet. Unfortunately, the store closest to the freeway exit they would need to take to make it back to the castle was a solid ten minutes away. Her food would definitely be cold by then.

She could always stuff herself at stoplights but that wouldn't help on the freeway. She needed two hands to drive; she wasn't reckless like those humans "don't drive distracted" ads were always aimed at.

With a sigh, Ruby turned right and resigned herself to cold food after getting onto the freeway. Until Ash held some fries out in front of her face.

"Eat," he insisted. "I can hear your stomach growling from here."

"I need to drive," she said stupidly.

"I know. You can keep your eyes on the road and eat at the same time if I hold it."

Ruby was too hungry to argue with that logic so she let him get away with it. He didn't seem all that great at social interactions after being cooped up with other vampires for so long; he probably didn't realize that feeding other people was a weird thing to do.

He held up fries, the burger, and the shake at different points throughout the drive. Maneuvering was a little awkward at first but she managed not to crash the car or even swerve. His dumb plan to feed her before they arrived was working.

"How did you know I was worried about it getting cold?" she asked between bites.

"I didn't. You seemed hungry and I felt bad about forgetting to feed you yesterday or this morning," Ash said simply. "This is my way of making it up to you."

Ruby hadn't really held that against him. Someone who didn't eat couldn't be expected to remember to feed somebody else on their first meeting. And he had been a gracious host letting her sleep in his bed. She decided to thank him and leave it at that.

At the store, Ash looked around curiously as she shopped. "Do you really eat all of this?"

"Not all of it. Everyone has their own preferences, like we talked about earlier. But you might not want to act like you've never been inside of a grocery store. You're kind of standing out," she said under her breath.

He realized people were staring at him as he went around pointing at things and immediately stopped. "Sorry. I lack practice blending in."

"Yeah. Kind of obvious you don't get out much."

Ash quieted down and stuck close to her for the rest of the shopping trip. It was relatively uneventful until she saw Lily and Flora in a nearby self-checkout lane and was immediately seized with panic.

What were they doing here?! This store wasn't close to their house! Ah, she was so stupid. It wasn't far from the nursery; she had completely forgotten.

This was fine. As long as she acted naturally, they would never know she was here.

Guilt squeezed her heart like a fist. Flora looked so sad. Ruby would have brought her along in a heartbeat if not for the fact that she was the human equivalent of three years old. That would have been considered kidnapping.

Being on the run would be hard enough without the authorities looking for her. She was technically considered an adult in human society so it wasn't illegal for her to run away from home. She had no legal guardians anymore.

"Don't look up; I see my family," she hissed in Ash's ear, pulling him down to her level because he was much taller than her. "You have to act completely natural until we leave the store."

Ash nodded seriously and she let go of the collar of his shirt to quickly scan the rest of her items and stick them back in the cart. Winging it without a grocery list would get her by for now. She got a lot of frozen meals and snacks since there was no food or cooking utensils in the castle.

The store they went to wasn't only a grocery store either. They had everything from clothes to toys to electronics. Ruby was able to get a cheap microwave and toaster too. She was all set.

They made it out unnoticed but her heart was racing all the way back to the castle. That had been way, way too close.