CHAPTER 7 — Pistachio and the Grinch
STEPHANIE
Obviously, forever I will not stay. Sure, I’m in a game without my guide to tell me what I need to do in order to complete the quests or levels or whatever, but I have to assume that since coins are arriving when I complete tasks and try new things, that I’m being rewarded.
This means that eventually I will stumble through enough challenges that my all-too-real game will consider my mission completed, and I’ll be whisked back home as instantaneously as I appeared here.
The thought sobers me. Because I’ve been thinking of Roarg all day.
I’ve been thinking about him in that infatuated ‘I want to know all about him’ and pathetic ‘does he like me as much as I like him?’ way, even though I’ve been harshly reminding myself that he’s not really mine to be thinking about.
Yes, he blew my mind with his evening (and midnight, and twilight, and early-morning) skills, but this is all just a game.
Even if everything he did with me didn’t feel like a game.
It didn’t feel that way at all. Every time I get a twinge from a slightly sore place on my body, I’m reminded of just how he made me sore.
Each time a memory replays, I get a pleasant shiver—and a tiny jolt of new lover-induced obsession digs in.
Opkug’s little hands pinch me where she’s gripping my arm, and I wince as I pry up her fingers.
I’m in the great room with her, because being in the kitchen with Ulda was going to result in more ear cuffing or head clonking, and I have had enough of that, let me tell you.
“Easy there, cutie. You’re freakishly strong for a baby, did you know that? ” I hand her a toy I found in her crib.
She promptly drops it to the floor with a loud clatter. She looks up at my face, her dark green lower lip shoved up hard against her puckered top lip, her evergreen-dark brows squished together, her big, bright eyes watery. And she starts to cry.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I tell her, bending to scoop her toy up. I try to hand it back to her.
But she doesn’t want it. She’s looking around the room, face scrunched and upset.
“What’s wrong, Pistachio?”
She bursts into a noisy wail and looks around more wildly, like she needs help and I’m so not the person she trusts to give it to her.
Ulda storms in from the kitchen, hands either washed because she’s done dressing all the birds, or because she’s frightfully good at keeping clean even when she’s butchering something.
Frantic, I hold the furious baby out for her. “I didn’t drop her or anything—that was a toy. I think Pistachio just really wants her mom!”
Ulda falters but recovers just as quickly, and bares her tusks. “Well, she can’t have everything she wants, can she?” she snaps. But underneath the bite, she’s growled the words with a discouraged tone that leaves me frowning in confusion.
“Please take your angry baby,” I beg.
With something a lot like an exasperated roll of her eyes, Ulda claims her daughter, and Pistachio calms down at once, angry cries turning to fussy purrs.
“You are showing signs of becoming a master manipulator,” Ulda chides the girl, face stern but eyes soft. “Stephanie is your honor mother, and you need to get used to her because she’s going to be with us for the rest of her life.”
WRONG. Stephanie is going home ASAP.
I think that nice and loud, but I don’t say a word. Ulda shoots me a glance, proving she may have expected a reaction.
I ignore this and I suck in a grateful breath because a baby tears crisis was averted. “I realize I’ve failed ‘brat’ wrangling, but thank you. Momma Ulda was exactly who she wanted.”
Unexpectedly, Ulda’s whole being softens. She hugs her girl in a way that looks impulsive, a soft smile even sneaking over her face before she can quash it.
I’m starting to smile too, thinking a tiny bonding moment between us won’t hurt, but Ulda puts the kibosh on that hope, straightening once more and giving me a stern look. “You will learn to tend to her. To both her and Crushosh,” she orders.
I sigh and flop back into a log rocking chair in defeat. “Your word is my command.”
Ulda’s face turns into a storm cloud and she opens her mouth no doubt to bite my head off for how flippantly I uttered that statement—but a coin shines to life right on my lap, making me startle.
My eyes fly to Ulda’s.
Her smile curls up slowly, green and pure Grinch. “Let it be as you say, following my commands. It seems the supernatural force that brought you to us approves.”