65 500 Dollars?!

I was without a phone since my cellphone was in my bag at my workplace.

I'm sure it didn't make it through the fire like most of the people that worked there.

But then again, who would I call for help when my enemy was the law and authority?

That's right.

No one.

Well, except for Eros but I, unfortunately, don't know if he even has a phone.

This is one important course of action that I completely overlooked.

If you are dating someone, it's obvious you would need some form of contact.

Although, I am kind of confused at our relationship status.

What does being mated to someone mean in human terms?

Like a committed marriage that is inseparable even in death?

I don't know.

But anyways, everyone in his pack was, obviously, into the whole mind-linking thing.

Why pay for crappy phone service when you have the gift of magically contacting everyone with a single thought?

I wonder if Breeders also have this magical benefit.

If so, sign me up!

I'm all in for that because the phone bill was a portion of my paycheck already.

My grandmother used to have phone service but I turned it off due to the bills and the strange calls from all sorts of people, male and female, who had hooked up with my grandma in the past.

She had a pretty wide variety of relationships after my grandfather passed away, possibly because she wanted to piss him off for dying before she did.

She had also gotten married to almost 6 other men and women, and divorced them thereafter from relationship complications and screaming another man's name in bed, mainly my grandfather's.

Don't ask me how I know this.

She was bitter and distraught about his sudden death for years and never really got over it.

And I bet my grandfather probably wanted to raise up from his grave and choke her at the absurdity of her grudge.

I would have done the same if I was him.

Finally, in annoyance of my abused doorbell, I opened the front door and peeked my head out to keep from exposing myself to the person in the van parked out front.

"Is Emira home?" Lou, my next door neighbor, asked with this rather calm and composed voice.

She scanned me from head to toe as if she wasn't the one banging on my front door while shouting like a banshee.

Then I was suddenly reminded that I looked nothing like 'Emira' to her.

Her sudden change in attitude was probably because of my current features.

"Emira's not here." I cleared my throat before continuing with a slightly softer high pitched voice, "She's been out of the country for a while."

She scrutinized my words and my facial expressions for almost 2 minutes before finally saying, "Yea, well, she had me mail her passport off to some crazy country and I need my money back."

"How much is it? I can go ahead and pay for her," I slowly said, noticing her slight smirk at my words.

I have a feeling she's going to try and pull a fast one on me.

"That's going to be $500, honey," she said after this slightly prolonged pause until she could calculate how much she was going to charge me.

What the hell?!

Five hundred dollars to mail an envelope?

What kind of blasphemy is this?

My lip twitched and I was tempted to just slam the door in her face.

But instead, I kept my mouth shut and gave her this incredulous look with my arms crossed over my chest, and brows furrowed together in disbelief.

Is she trying to rob me under the pretense of 'charitable help'?

"The shipping was expensive, sweetie," she continued to explain after one look at my rather irritated expression. Don't call me 'sweetie' and ask for five hundred dollars you senile old woman!

"Just one minute. Let me go call the post office and see how much it really costs to mail an envelope to Kyrgyzstan," I said nonchalantly.

"Wait! Silly me, I meant $150," she smiled stiffly.

I knew that wasn't right either but that was better than $500.