having a husband."
"If what I was able to learn is true, he died many, many years ago, long before she ever showed up here. She only did when it became clear that she was the only one carrying the Cloris name, even if only by marriage. From her, the place passed on to you."
"Sure, in name," I retorted. "But you're the one that was here first. The one that was here to keep everything running. Kept here by a blood oath that I'm guessing now binds me to this place with you, right?"
"Correct."
"Well, I think it's about fucking time that you tell me what this whole blood oath thing is about so I can go ahead and start finding a way to break it."
He smirked and took a mouthful of his bear, then swallowed it loudly. "You know that doesn't really give me any incentive to help you, yes? I do want to keep you here."
"I'm here to remind you that I don't give a shit what you want. Oh, and that I can make this whole... ahem, situation, a lot less comfortable for the both of us if you're not cooperative."
"You know I can make this situation a lot more uncomfortable for you as well, yes?"
I snorted. "You mean besides the fact that I'm bound to a town out of a fucking Tolkien wet dream, tricked into being bound by blood to a demon who is trying to convince me to stay married with him for some reason that he refuses to share with me, which is just my mother all over again? Or did you have anything else to add to this literal shit storm that my life has become?"
"The aristocrats."
"Oh, so that reference you get."
"It is what you might call a classic."
"I never understood that joke anyways. I mean, aside from the whole shock value combined with a random ending. People act like it's such a fucking masterpiece, but in the end, it's just... no wit, nothing really creative about it. It just stops short of something that is truly a classic. The worst part is that I think that nobody else ever gets it, and they just play along because other people that are also pretending to play along are telling it like it's actually funny too."
Rog smirked, placing his empty glass on a table. "You appear to have a great many strong feelings about the joke."
"Don't psychoanalyze me again, please."
"If you want it explained, the power of the joke is carried through the middle and depends heavily on the teller's ability to read his audience and improvise to the point of a shocker, building up to the punchline. It ends up being a wink from the teller to the listener, showing that all he really wanted to do was talk about the most disgusting, repulsive shit he could think about."
"But the joke isn't made in the middle. All the middle is supposed to do is build up to the punchline."
"Well then maybe you should be a little more open-minded about your humor."
I took a deep breath, placing my glass down next to his. "I still don't get it, so let's move on. What were you working on before you came out to check on me? And did you feed the goat? It headbutted me, not liking that I ate its cheese."
He chuckled, his gaze sweeping over to the cheese wheel with a wedge cut out of it.
"I’ working just on the boiler, for the most part. And the area around the boiler. Getting warm water around the house will be quite important come the winter, so it's best to keep everything in repair. I would have done it before, but... most of my time was spent caring for your aunt during her twilight years."
He started moving down into the cellar again, and I found myself following him into the depths of the house.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that she was dying, and I was there to care for her."
"She had a... coronary, yes. A heart attack. Doesn't that kill you pretty quickly? How fucking long did you have to care for her again? And don’t you have demon powers to get things fixed around the house fast?"
"That was the official word, yes. But I think you'll find that not everything in this place is as it seems."
"You mean along the lines of a caretaker for a vineyard ending up as a fucking demon?" I asked.
"Something like this. Like with your sense of humor, you'll have