Expired With Me

Chapter Twenty-One

Iris

I take a seat on the chair placed next to the tablet, and pick at the hem of my dress, waiting for it to ring. It's now been five days since the civilians arrived, and somehow their arrival hasn't even been the biggest change. It's hardly been a change at all. The Order still partakes in meetings all day, every day, but now instead of budget cuts they're talking about personal matters, and the foreign policy has gotten even more foreign. It's been nice having the girls around, but the constant trips down memory lane have made me long for my former friend, who is millions of miles away. At last, the tablet begins to ring.

"Iris?" Erik says, expecting Jonas to be the one in this chair.

"Hi, Erik. I hope you don't mind. I needed my friend today." His eyes widen at the word 'friend,' before his face contorts back to normal.

"What's wrong?" He asks, pulling a chair up from his side of the screen and taking a seat. What's wrong? There's a bunch of civilians from an alternate universe that we have no idea how to get back, Colton learned Jonas' Date and got married, the consequences of which are yet to be revealed to me, mostly because I just don't want to think about it, and the only person I really want to talk to right now is on another planet.

"I could use a road trip," I say, finally, which sums up the above pretty well.

"Iris Levine, are you asking what I think you are? I'd offer to drive, but you're a little out of my way."

"Blackwood," I mumble. "And I could drive." Erik laughs. "What? I'm a good driver."

"Who are you and what did you do with my Iris?"

"I drove some of the civilians yesterday and everyone came back alive. If we're going off of that, the worst driver here is you." Before I realize what I said, Erik's eyes close and then reopen, an unspoken moment of silence has just been met. Then, surprisingly, his smile clears the past away.

"I guess you're right. What do you mean by civilians? Don't tell me you've turned the Estate into a bed and breakfast."

"No," I laugh. "We're still working on the permits. You won't believe me."

"I'm on Amoria, willfully. And I love it. Try me."

"They're a bunch of teenagers from the United States."

"Two hundred years ago?"

"No. Now. And they don't have Dates." Erik doesn't even seem fazed.

"So, what, you're their babysitter until Colton figures something out?"

"No," I say. "Yes. Colton is a little preoccupied at the moment. The civilians are the last thing on our minds." Erik laughs.

"Let me guess, he went behind his beloved Preeminece's back and eloped to a certain redhead?"

"No, he... wait, how did you guess that?" He bends down, before taking a sip of some sort of blue liquid. Knowing Erik, it's probably making him drunk, or some Amorian equivalent.

"I was in France, remember? I'm surprised when he didn't do it then."

"We were dealing with the Amoris, Erik." He puts the liquid back down, out of frame.

"No, you were." A voice yells something in Amorian, something I should only hear coming from Jonas, if even that. Erik smiles, then turns his gaze to the voice.

"I'm coming, my sweet. Just another minute," Erik says in Amorian. He looks back at me, switching back to English. "My apologies, Iris. I have to go. It was good to see you."

"Goodbye, Erik," I manage to say through the shock.

"Goodbye, my dear."