Assistant to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain, #1)

by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

She’d been called many disparaging things in her life. Alarmingly all beginning with the letter F. Flighty, foolish, forgetful, and, by a strange turn of events, she was finally able to add the final F. Fucked.

There had to be a rule somewhere that evil overlords needed to be at least fifty, maybe sixty if they were pushing it.

“Um, yes— The blood’s not great…but I was referring to the fact that you look like you were carved out of marble, and I just think that as a rule of thumb, inherently evil people should be grotesque-looking.”

“You just can’t kill people and be pretty. It’s confusing.” Evie began unwrapping the wool scarf her little sister, Lyssa, had given her on her last birthday, stepping closer to The Villain and holding it up like a signal of peace. “For the blood, Your Evilness.”

Shaking his head, a small dose of wonder in his eyes, he said, “You are chaos.”

There was a confusing dryness to everything he said. Like he either had a secret sense of humor or he truly believed everyone else in the world was incompetent.

“Normal” was for those who didn’t have the ability to stretch their minds past the unreachable end.

Despite his other obviously nefarious doings, the boss had a strange and confusing set of moral checkpoints that he followed rather diligently—first of which was to never harm innocents, to her relief. His evil was very much the vengeful kind. She also liked that his moral list included treating the women of the world with the same level of respect and esteem as the men. Which, in hindsight, wasn’t much to begin with, but at least the office rules were

more consistent than the outside world’s view.

But she feared wearing something as scandalous as trousers would draw too much attention to herself. Women? Have legs? Alert the town crier!

My stupidity is profound enough to be acknowledged, dammit.

Anyone with common sense knew that the loveliest blades were always the sharpest, but for Evie there was no such thing. Her sense came and went with the wind, nothing common about it.

“My first what, you little tornado?” “Your first joke.” He grunted and opened his mouth to speak, looking quite outraged, if she were being honest. “Of all the—” He paused to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Sage, do you honestly think me incapable of humor?” “Of course I don’t think that,” she said earnestly. “You hired me.”

“I’ll remind you that, at your bequest, I haven’t actually killed an intern in several months.” Evie shook her head hopelessly. “Sir, I hate to belittle your successes, but there are people who go their entire lives without killing anyone.” His face remained serious. “How dull.”

He was a puddle on the floor, and every speck of dust in that room was his enemy.

The tiles were haphazardly placed in a design that altogether formed the shape of a vibrant sun shining its light down on an old book. An accurate depiction in Evie’s eyes, since a good book often felt like the same comfort as the heat of sunlight brushing your cheeks.

“No. I have a condition where my tear ducts produce an excess of warm, salty water when I’m tired or in distress.”

If she weighed it overall, she’d been quite lucky to escape that altercation with only a magical scratch to show for it. That thought alone, that she should feel lucky for only a minor injury, not to mention that any woman should feel that way, was so horrifically ridiculous and unfair, it was like watching someone steal something precious from you and thanking them for it.

It was a hard lesson to learn that sometimes it was better to remain lonely than to waste companionship and energy on someone undeserving.

“Sage… Might I ask why you’re clinging to me like a barnacle?”

“You’re chronically underestimated by people.”

“I would never make the mistake of underestimating a woman like you. It would be a fatal one.”

This is what you get for reading books with no naughty words in them.

“You use too many words to say simple things, Evie.”

But he was so happy to see her. What an obscene, unnecessary emotion, but there it was. He was happy… How positively vile.

“I want to know you, that’s all.”

“She’s beautiful,” Sage said in awe. “She’s horrifying,” he corrected. Sage shrugged, eyes taking in every gruesome part of the guvre’s body. “Oftentimes, it’s the same thing.”

Adulthood should be illegal.

I feel like my life keeps happening to me, rather than me living it.”

“So destruction is his solution?” Evie rolled her eyes, pushing her loosened hair out of her face. “Men,” she scoffed. “Yes, we can discuss the obvious weaknesses of my sex later.”

But he was wrong. She wasn’t light; she was color. Every single one, dancing otherworldly and bright over his unworthy eyes. She was the explosion of the vivid gleams and glows of the world around him, like a constant rainbow, shining not after the rain but during.

“We’re all monsters in the end. At least mine lives in the light.”