Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
He stood and held out his hand, so I took it without hesitating, even though I didn’t have my gloves on. He pulled me to my feet, kissed my temple, and dragged me back over to the couch, saying, “Why don’t you guys sit on the other couch, and we can finish the movie?”
The twins exchanged a look, then stood and sat on the couch, so I grabbed the remote off the coffee table and played our movie, doing my best to ignore the gross gnome statue on the floor.
Even though I could feel my connection to it. Ugh.
Winter decided to carry the gnome for me when we arrived at the museum the next morning. The twins had left after dinner with plans to say hi today, so I wasn’t surprised when Chaos waved at us from the ticket booth. He walked out, then led us inside so we didn’t have to pay for tickets again.
Chaos texted Aeson, and he met us at the manager’s office door.
Winter knocked, and after getting the okay, we all went inside.
Chaos explained our plan, and even though Sharp didn’t seem to believe it’d work, he gave us the go-ahead to place the statue in the garden.
But first, he gave us a key to the gate so we could gear up and enter from the outside without scaring guests away.
That was easy enough, and I was even grateful for it because I didn’t exactly like having a billion people stare at me because I was in a HAZMAT-looking suit.
Once we were ready, Winter looked at me, still carrying that stupid statue.
I gave him a nod and unlocked the gate.
We slowly weaved our way through the garden, taking the sidewalks to get closer to the dragon egg fossil.
At first, everything seemed fine, but when we were about twenty feet from the pixie nest, a big swarm of them came right for us.
Winter stepped in front of me and held up the newly-made artifact.
I didn’t think that would work.
Yes, I was hoping it would calm them enough that we’d be able to open the gardens back up, but when they were already so angry and charging us, I didn’t think there was anything we could do.
I figured we’d place the statue close to the nest, make a run for it, and see if they calmed down in a few hours.
But I watched in fascination as the pixies in the front of the swarm came to a stop, making a few of the others fly straight into them. But then those pixies stopped too.
They sort of looked dazed, and I watched a few of them shake their heads, like they were trying to figure out what was going on.
Every single pixie in that swarm stopped coming after us, and I couldn’t help but let my excitement out a little. I smacked Winter’s shoulder a few times in my happiness.
“It’s working!”
He turned, and I could tell he was smiling. “Hell yeah, it is. I knew you could do it.”
“Not just me. Chaos too. Since Sharp agreed to pay us for our time, I’m going to split things with Chaos.”
That made Win’s eyes crinkle further. “I think that’s a great idea.”
I wanted to kiss him right then. So damn badly.
But we were surrounded by pixies, and we had these stupid suits on with masks. There was no way to kiss him at the moment.
But I was going to as soon as we got out of this gear.
“Where do you want to put this thing?” His voice pulled me out of my thoughts, which was a good thing since we weren’t finished with this job yet.
I glanced around. “Hm. I guess we should get as close to the nest as we can, but not close enough to disturb anything.”
He nodded, and we walked farther down the sidewalk. When we reached the edge of the gazebo where the dragon egg fossil—and the pixie nest—was, we stopped and looked around.
I found the perfect spot for our statue right at the edge of one of the gazebo’s posts and beside a big bush.
It wouldn’t be too obvious there—so hopefully there was less chance of it being broken, stepped on, kicked, or even stolen.
But if someone was paying close attention, it would still look like it belonged there.
Winter put the ugly thing down, and we stepped back to look at it.
After a second, I gave a nod because it looked good to me—a gnome statue was never going to be my favorite thing.
As if reading my mind, Winter laughed and patted my back. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to look at it ever again after this.”
I chuckled and nudged him. “Yeah, yeah. You think it’s good there?”
“Yep. I think we’re all good.”
“Awesome. Let’s get this gear off, then go let Sharp know it’s already working. Maybe he should test it out with his employees first before he opens the gardens back up to the patrons.”
“Good plan.”
I sent him a smile, and as we walked back to our truck, I began taking the pixie gear off.
The pixies were leaving us alone now, so there was no need for all this crap.
As soon as we locked up the gate and made it to the truck, we both stripped the rest off, and Win said, “Please tell me we don’t have any pixie cases this week? ”
I groaned. “Honestly, I have no idea. I didn’t even look at the schedule yet. That’s a tomorrow problem—Mondays suck. But I’m keeping my fingers and toes crossed that we don’t have any.”
“Do we need to take these suits somewhere special to clean them off?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Just to my backyard. I hose them off to get any dust off, then throw them in my washing machine.”
“That works?”
“Yepppers.”
He nodded, then sighed. “Let’s go tell the manager and make our goodbyes to the twins. Maybe we can do a little party type thing again in a couple of weeks with the kids and my sister.”
I nodded because I also wanted to see the kids again—mostly to make sure they were doing okay—and his sister.
Despite what she’d done—and she was a kid when she’d chosen their parents over Win, so I wasn’t sure how much I could hold it against her—I kind of…
liked her. And her fiancé. I was really glad she was forming a relationship with her brother.
I was grateful he had some family back in his life.
“Sounds like a plan, White Knight.”
That made him grin and wink at me.