Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Miles
Spending the weekend with Winter had been exactly what I’d needed to recharge for another work week. Since he started working with me, we’d been getting things finished so much quicker, which meant we could do more jobs in one day, and I was able to take off on the weekends.
Where I used to work Mondays through Saturdays—and even some Sundays—I now had a strict no weekends rule, unless it was a true emergency. I loved it because Win spent every weekend with me.
Meeting his sister with him had been a lot, but Win seemed to feel lighter since then. Like he’d been carrying a heavy boulder on his shoulders for the last thirteen years, and Magnolia had swooped in and pulled it off of him.
I was grateful she’d reached out. And even though I knew other emotions were going to come out of this whole thing once Win really processed it, I was sure it would be a good thing in the long run.
Win had his sister back, and that was something to celebrate.
I’d never had much of a social life, but with Winter in my life, I’d been doing all kinds of new things… while surrounded by people.
I never, ever would’ve gone to a fair or the farmer’s market before him. The noise—the emotional empath noise—was way, way, way too much to block out completely, and if anyone bumped into me, I’d be in a world of trouble.
But Winter’s null magic took all of that away and made the experience something to enjoy rather than something to avoid altogether.
We were doing things I’d avoided all my life, and it was… fun.
Winter was fun.
He made me laugh all the time, even when we were having sex, which was also something new for me. I’d never realized how fun sex could be until him.
But not only that, he made me feel safe. Cared for. Cherished.
And I loved and appreciated every minute of it.
Even if my stupid brain couldn’t help but wonder when he was going to realize what a pain in the ass dating me was and he inevitably left me.
I was dreading that moment with every fiber of my being, but I knew it’d come eventually. It always did.
We’d had a good two months, so I knew the end was near.
Maybe that was why I was clinging to him even more than usual.
I didn’t want it to end, and I wanted to enjoy him as much as possible while I still could.
With a sigh, I headed into my house, let Sola fly off my shoulder to the living room perch, picked up Odin, and walked upstairs.
It had been another long Monday, and I was ready for sweats, TV, and food.
And Winter.
“Your favorite doggie’s coming over soon,” I told Odin before kissing his head and setting him on the bed so I could change.
He meowed at me—loudly—and reached for me with his little paw. I adored when he did stuff like that, so of course, I bent down and kissed his head again.
“Give me one minute, and I’ll pick you up again, okay?”
He meowed, still reaching for me.
Gah.
As quickly as I could, I changed clothes, then scooped him back up. Sola was still in the living room, nibbling on some seed in her feeder, so I let her be and carried my kitty into the kitchen with me.
When I walked in, I sighed in relief. I’d put ingredients for chili in the crock pot this morning before work, and I was so glad I did. I didn’t feel like cooking today.
With Odin in one hand, I got out the toppings Winter and I could add, plus some tortilla chips in case he wanted to dip them in the chili, then carried him into the living room to wait for my… boyfriend.
Oh boy. I was still getting used to that. It definitely wasn’t a bad thing.
In fact, I loved that he’d started calling me his boyfriend.
I’d had supposed boyfriends who weren’t even half as attentive as Winter was in the past, and they’d still used the B word. But hearing Winter say it had made my heart fill so much I was afraid it would burst. It’d felt like he was claiming me. Like he wanted me. Me. An empath.
I still couldn’t believe it.
It didn’t take long for Winter to knock on my door, and not for the first time, I wondered if it’d be weird if I gave him a key?
I’d actually had an extra one made last month, but I’d chickened out on giving it to him, so it was sitting in the tiny drawer of the front table.
I sighed internally at myself. I was being ridiculous, and making this big a deal out of a simple key wasn’t attractive.
Winter probably wouldn’t even think twice about it if I handed it to him.
I mean, he was over here nearly every night for dinner, and he spent the night more than he didn’t, so it only made sense he had a key.
What if I was in the kitchen cooking or something and couldn’t hear him knocking on the door? Surely, he needed a key for situations like that.
I pulled the door open, and before either of us could say a thing, Goliath strolled right on past me, giving my hand a drive-by lick before he headed for Odin.
Winter and I shared a laugh, and I reached over to unhook Goliath’s leash so he could go on a sniffing-and-licking-Odin spree.
My boyfriend—ahhh, I loved calling him that—came in, grabbed my hip, and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Mm. It smells delicious in here.”
“Must be my natural scent since I didn’t put anything on.”
He looked amused. “Oh? You naturally smell like chili? I’m surprised Goliath hasn’t tried to eat you yet.”
I laughed at that and lightly smacked his shoulder. “Get in here.”
With another laugh, he pushed me backward, grabbing both my hips now, then kicked the door shut behind him as he thoroughly kissed the hell out of me.
I was just about to ask him if he wanted to take this upstairs and we could forget about dinner until later when my phone rang.
I thought about ignoring it, but Winter mumbled against my lips, “You better get that, sugar butt.” He was probably right. No one called me unless it was some kind of faerie emergency. Ugh.
With a sigh, I pulled the damn thing out of my pocket and checked the caller ID, my eyebrows shooting up when I read the name. “It’s Aeson.”
Winter knew exactly who I was talking about. “Answer it. What if they’re in trouble?”
I felt terrible, but we hadn’t been able to make it to that museum yet because Aeson was only working on weekdays, which was difficult with our job, although we hadn’t checked in for a few weeks, so his schedule could’ve changed.
And unfortunately, Chaos hadn’t really responded to our texts.
Winter and I had texted him a few times to check on him too.
I couldn’t blame them for not responding since we didn’t really know them and we were just some old guys they helped out before.
But I wished our schedules had meshed up so we could’ve gone to the museum before now.
It also sucked that we hadn’t been able to bring those kids more food. It was really frustrating. I wanted to ask them for their address so I could send food, but I didn’t think they trusted us enough for that yet, and it felt weird since they were kids.
We’d texted before, but Aeson had never called.
“Fuck,” I breathed out, worry making my gut churn. Something had to be wrong for him to be calling me. “Hello?”
“Hey, it’s Aeson.”
“Hey, Ace. How are you? Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Is Chaos okay?”
He let out a small laugh. “No one’s hurt. We’re both fine.”
I let out a long breath of relief and put the phone on speaker, saying to Winter, “They’re both okay.”
“Good.”
“Is Winter there too?”
I smiled at my phone. “He is. Is it okay that I put you on speaker?”
“Yeah. Actually, it’s good that you’re both there. I was going to call him next anyway.”
Win and I exchanged another worried look. “What’s going on?”
Aeson sighed. “So you know how I work at The Museum of Supernatural History?”
“Yeah,” Win and I said together.
“Well, the job’s been good. I like it, and Morty even took a job at the ticket booth—he hates it so much it’s funny.
” He sounded like he was laughing at his twin brother’s misery—he probably was.
“So this place has a massive garden in the back with all kinds of cool flowers, so naturally, there’re a lot of pixies. ”
I saw where this was going.
“A group of them broke off from the main mischief, and they came inside.”
“Garden pixies came inside the building?”
“Weird, right? So anyway, no one was worried at first because they’re just pixies, and they’re usually pretty peaceful as long as you stay away from their nests. And these guys were fine at first. But lately, they’ve been… acting out of order.”
Winter asked, “Is that your nice way of saying they’re pulling pranks?”
He snorted. “I mean, yeah, I guess you could call what they’re doing pranks.
But they’re really malicious too. Like… tripping people on the stairs, making arrows out of toothpicks they stole from the cafeteria and shooting them at people.
Dive-bombing people and using their legs as little weapons—it hurts more than you’d think, especially when there’s multiple pixies coming at you like that.
“Anyway, they even tied this one poor woman up when she broke away from her group to go to the bathroom. I’m not sure what they were planning to do to her, but they were flying around, poking her with sticks and toothpicks to the point that she had bruises and even a few pinpricks that were bleeding.
And one of the many people who fell down the stairs broke their ankle.
At this point, I’m afraid they’re going to severely injure or even kill someone. What they’re doing isn’t okay.”
Winter and I stared at each other for a couple of beats before I asked, “Do you think this is another curse situation? I’ve never heard of pixies doing that much damage.”
“So far, Morty and I haven’t found anything like that seal at the gnome house, but we’re not ready to completely rule it out.
But we still really need to get them out of the museum.
The ones in the garden are acting kinda strange too, but they’re not nearly as aggressive as the indoor ones.
I kind of think they’re just missing the pixies that left them or something, but I don’t know if they really care that much or not.
” I didn’t know either. There wasn’t enough information about pixies available anywhere.
“Is the museum hiring us to come in and catch the pixies?”
There was a long pause I didn’t like the sound of before he huffed. “Not exactly…”
My eyebrows rose. “What does that mean?”
“The museum is still acting like this is harmless fun. They don’t want to admit there’s a problem because they don’t want the liability or the bad press or something, who knows?
But they won’t hire anyone. Not sure why they think they won’t get bad press if they don’t admit there’s a problem, but the manager isn’t exactly… intelligent.”
“Well, that’s really freaking stupid of them.” Winter said the exact thing I was thinking.
“I agree, which is why I’m calling you. I… I can’t pay you in, like, dollars, but I can come work it off if you come to check it out and take care of the pixies. I… I’m really sorry. I wish I could pay you, but I—”
I cut the kid off before he had a nervous breakdown. “Aeson, you don’t have to pay us anything.” I didn’t even have to look at Winter to know he was in complete agreement, but when I glanced at him, he was smiling encouragingly at me. “We’ll come take care of it, okay?”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “But… you can’t just work for free. I can work it off, or Morty and I both can, and we can—”
“Ace,” Winter said. “You’re our friend, and we want to help you. That’s all we care about, okay? Don’t worry about paying us.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” I cleared my throat. “Like Win said, you’re our friend, and we want to help. Maybe one day there’ll be something we need help with, and you can return the favor. Okay?”
He let out a long sigh. “You two are really frustrating, just so you know.”
That made us both chuckle. “Uh-huh. So…?”
“Fine,” he said on another sigh. “Please come help me.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up, and then Win and I went about getting ready to leave the house again. The chili would be fine to sit in the crock pot for a while longer, so I wasn’t going to worry about it right now. Maybe we could order some food—and feed the kids dinner—while we were there.
“Somehow, I already know you’re planning on feeding those kids,” Winter said as he followed me to my room—he had some clothes in the bottom drawer in case we decided to go out or something since we were pretty much always in sweatpants and t-shirts when we were hanging out.
“Of course I’m planning on feeding them. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of food to order. I’d take the chili so they get a homecooked meal, but I think it’d be weird to show up to a museum with a crock pot in hand.”
He snorted. “That would definitely be weird, although I’m disappointed I won’t get to eat any tonight. Your chili is delicious.”
For that, I gave him a quick kiss. “We can eat it tomorrow night.”
He grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”
We hurried up to change into appropriate clothes, then grabbed Sola and paused at the door.
Winter said, “I think Goliath will be okay here with Odin, but if you want to drop him off at my house, we can.”
I gave the dog a pet since he came to the door to see what we were doing. “I think he’ll be fine. And I bet both of them will like having the company. I always feel bad when I leave Odin alone all day.”
“Me too. I actually thought about asking you if they could stay home together, but I wasn’t sure if you’d think I was weird for asking.”
I laughed. “I thought about it too, actually, and had the same thought.”
“So I guess we’re both weird, then.”
“Sounds like it.”
He laughed, kissed my lips, petted Goliath, and pulled me out the door to the truck.
I was oddly excited to see those kids again. They were good kids, and I really wanted to help them out, if they needed it. I was happy to hear they were both working at the museum, so hopefully Chaos wasn’t taking on any more dangerous necromancer jobs.
I rolled my eyes at myself. Of fucking course that kid was.
He seemed like he loved using his magic—and I didn’t blame him—so why wouldn’t he?
Ugh. Hopefully, they were both being safe.