Chapter 3 #2
We're mid-strategy session, crouched behind my overturned wheelbarrow like two soldiers in a foxhole, when the sound cuts through the morning air.
Not a flamingo sound. Engine sound. The low, predatory purr of something European and expensive, the kind of car that costs more than my entire shop's inventory and gets washed by someone named Pierre.
Tires screech.
A silver Audi sedan jumps the curb. Not partially.
Not a gentle nudge. The front wheels launch over the concrete lip and the undercarriage scrapes the sidewalk with a shriek that sets my teeth on edge, and the car plows across the strip of grass between the street and my property line.
The strip I planted with wildflowers last Saturday.
Cornflowers. Black-eyed Susans. A patch of red clover I'd been coaxing from seed.
Gone. Tire tracks cut through them like surgical incisions.
The car stops three inches from my marigold border.
"My wildflowers."
Flynn stands. Full height. His shadow stretches across the hood of the Audi like a sundial.
The driver's door opens.
Out steps the tallest elf I've ever seen.
And I've seen elves. Portland is lousy with them.
But this one is different. He's got the cheekbones, sure, the silver-white hair pulled into a knot so tight it's probably giving him a migraine, the ears that come to points sharp enough to open mail.
But he's wearing a three-piece suit. Dove grey.
In June. At seven in the morning. On a suburban lawn covered in animated flamingos.
He steps over my crushed cornflowers without looking down. Italian shoes. No socks. The ankles are hairless and pale as bone china.
"Flynn Danger."
Flynn's posture changes. Not a flinch. Something worse. His spine goes rigid, and his shoulders square, and his chin drops a quarter inch. Submission? No. Recognition. The kind of body language that says: I know this person, and I wish I didn't.
"Valerius."
The name lands in my stomach like a stone.
I've heard it. On the neighborhood forum.
In the fine print of the seventeen-page homeowner's agreement I skimmed and signed because the house was cheap and had south-facing windows.
Valerius Thandril. HOA president. Elected unopposed for six consecutive terms, which tracks, because who runs against an elf with a vendetta and a homeowner's handbook?
Valerius surveys the yard. My yard. His gaze moves like a laser level across the destroyed herb garden, the scattered terracotta, the flamingos still pecking at everything green. One corner of his mouth twitches. Not amusement. Disgust refined into an art form.
"Miss Erikkson." He knows my name. He hasn't looked at me yet. "I see you've been busy."
"Those aren't mine."
"The flamingos, the demolished garden, or the orc standing in your rosemary patch?"
I glance at Flynn. He's shifted two steps to the left, but his boot is still planted in what remains of the rosemary bed. Crushed needles cling to his ankle.
"The flamingos."
Valerius pulls a phone from his breast pocket.
Taps the screen. Turns it to face us both.
Photos. Dozens of them. Time-stamped. My yard from yesterday, the moving chaos, the fertilizer cloud, the vine I shoved over Flynn's fence.
Flynn's yard this morning, pink birds everywhere.
My yard now, the shared disaster zone of herb corpses and animated lawn ornaments.
"I have received," Valerius says, scrolling, "fourteen complaints. In 24 hours."
"From who?"
"Several residents filed multiple times. As is their right under Section 4, Subsection B, Paragraph 12 of the community charter." Valerius pockets the phone. "Which you helped draft, Flynn. I shouldn't need to remind you."
Flynn's jaw does the cable thing again. Harder this time.
Valerius clasps his hands behind his back and walks the property border. My property line. His Italian shoes step precisely along the invisible boundary, and I swear he can see it. Some elf nonsense. Boundary magic. Ley lines. Whatever it is that makes elves obsessed with borders and zoning laws.
"This neighborhood maintains standards." He pauses at the fence gap between our yards. Examines it. "Standards that are, at present, being violated by both properties."
"Now wait a minute." Flynn steps forward. "My lawn was immaculate before these birds—"
"Your lawn has fourteen unauthorized ornamental installations and—" Valerius crouches, touches a divot, rubs the soil between his fingers like a forensic analyst. "—significant turf damage. You are in violation."
"I didn't PUT them there."
"Accountability is not contingent on intent. Section 7."
Flynn's hands ball into fists at his sides. The knuckles go pale green.
Valerius straightens. Brushes invisible dirt from his knee. Now he looks at me. The eyes are pale blue, almost white, and absolutely empty of warmth. Like staring into a glacier that's filed a lawsuit.
"You have seventy-two hours. Both of you. Restore full compliance with the community aesthetic code, or I will initiate eviction proceedings."
"You can't evict someone for flamingos!"
"I can evict someone for this many concurrent violations, property damage to communal green space, and—" He glances at the tire tracks in my wildflowers. His tire tracks. "—failure to maintain the street-facing planting strip."
"YOU ran over the planting strip!"
He ignores this. Turns toward his car. Pauses.
Snaps his fingers.
The sound is crisp. A single clean crack, like a branch breaking in winter. And from the trunk of his Audi, which should not be large enough to contain what comes out of it, two shapes unfold.
Stone. Grey. Winged.
Gargoyles. Each one carved from granite, with clawed feet and flat, empty faces. They hit the sidewalk and the concrete cracks under their weight. Their heads swivel. One locks onto my yard. The other onto Flynn's.
"They'll be monitoring the property divider." Valerius opens his car door. "Seventy-two hours."
The gargoyles settle onto my crushed wildflower strip like grotesque bookends. Their stone eyes don't blink. A flamingo approaches one, pecks its foot, and the gargoyle's head rotates forty-five degrees with the grinding sound of a millstone.
The flamingo retreats.
Flynn and I stand shoulder to shoulder in the ruins of my herb garden, watching a silver Audi reverse off the curb and glide down the street like nothing happened.
"So," I say. "That's Valerius."
Flynn exhales through his nose. A long, slow breath that carries the weight of years.
"That's Valerius."
The gargoyles stare at us. Unblinking. Unmoving. Carved smiles fixed in permanent, bureaucratic malice.