Page 42 of Asher

I keep my mouth firmly shut. Being married agrees with me—I get a friend to talk to, snuggles on a cold winter night, and sex pretty much on tap. There’s no way I’m doing anything to upset that if I don’t have to. My cousins can fight this battle—and lose.

“I’m not following,” Micah says slowly. He knows it’s a trap, but he can’t resist it. Curiosity has always been his weakness.

“Unlike most of my other suggestions, this can’t wait. It needs to be implemented immediately because Sid and Annie and I are living hereright nowand are trapped in our homesright now.”

That stirs me to protest. “Hey!”

Garrett shoots me a glance. “Yes, yes, you’ve been my personal teleporter, and you’ve been teleporting them as well, but that’s the entire point. We’re completely dependent on you to go anywhere. Work. The store. The pub. The post office. The end of the freaking garden path… not that we could even stand there, since it’s buried in four feet of snow right now.” The disgust in his tone makes me hide a grin. If he’s this unimpressed by the little storm we just had, the big ones that are coming later in the season will infuriate him.

But I do understand where he’s coming from.

“So you want Micah, Zac, and me to tell the council how difficult it’s been for you and your team?”

“No.” He heaves a giant sigh and plants himself on my lap. “We can do that. I need you to tell them how annoying it is to have to teleport us at our convenience. And then I need you to convince them to allocate the budget to get a snowplow up here within the next few days and hire and train someone to use it.”

“Done,” I assure him. “We can handle that.” I put my arms around him and ignore the glares I’m getting from my cousins. Wecanhandle that, even if it turns out I have to pay for it myself. “Is a snowplow the only option, though? Sid’s a sorcerer—can’t he use sorcery to move the snow?” It would be easier than getting a plow up here at this time of year. We’re probably going to need to teleport it in, and that’s going to take at least four demons working in tandem. Heavy machinery isheavy.

“Sid has a job, and it doesn’t involve snow removal,” Garrett reminds me. “Besides, his sorcery doesn’t work that way. Maybe when the village starts actively recruiting other species, they can look for a sorcerer who can do that.”

“Wait, you mean there are different types of sorcery?” Zac asks.

We all slowly turn to stare at him.

“What? How was I expected to know that?” His tone is defensive.

“We knew,” Micah points out, gesturing between himself, me, and Garrett. “You lived in Paris for fifty years. How did you not know that?”

“I didn’t go around asking every sorcerer I saw what their skills were!”

Micah opens his mouth to continue the argument, but Garrett squirms off my lap—dammit—and holds up his hands. “We have more important things to focus on right now. Though… Zac, later we’re going to talk. Maybe I should be running adult education too. But now, I need to know I can depend on you all.”

“To talk up the plow cause at the meeting? We said we would,” Micah assures him.

“No. Well, yes,” he corrects. “But I also need your support for Christmas.”

That gets him blank stares from all of us. “For what?” I ask.

“Christmas,” he repeats patiently. “It’s a human tradition.”

The pieces click together. “You mean that thing some of them do this time of year with the big trees?” There are several of them in Zurich, along with special markets. I usually ignore it all. I’m in the city to work, after all, and human traditions have never been important to me.

“Yes. I think it’s important for the children to be aware of other species’ customs. Since we’re in Switzerland, it’s most likely that when they leave Hortplatz, they’ll be going somewhere in Europe, and Christmas is widely celebrated in Europe. On top of that, most of what we teach them about humans is negative, because it’s so important that they know to always be wary of keeping our secret. They should know that humans aren’t all evil.”

“Aren’t they, though?” Zac asks. “If you get online and check the human news, it’s mostly wars, conflicts, people physically harming each other, people saying harmful things about other humans…”

Garrett winces. “They don’t always show their best side. But some…manyhumans are just like us. And the kids need to learn how to interact with them without causing suspicion, so learning some of their traditions is a good step.”

Slightly worried that he’s thinking of a village-wide festival that I’ll have to participate in, I say, “Just to be clear, you want to teach this Chriss-thingy in school? To the kids?”

He laughs and rolls his eyes. “Yes, Ash. I’m not going to make you celebrate a human holiday.” He knows me so well already. “But I’m about 90 percent sure the village council will object, so I need your support.”

“You’ve got mine,” I say immediately, and stare at Micah until he agrees.

“I don’t know,” Zac begins, and I wonder if I can teleport to him, pinch him, and get back to my seat without Garrett noticing. Fortunately, Micah handles it for me. “Ow! I mean… sure. Teach our children the customs of a genocidal species that tried to destroy us.”

Garrett smiles at him. “Trust me on this, Zac. It’s necessary and will make things easier for them when they leave here.”

Zac still doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t argue.

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