Page 20 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
Winter was coming out of another room down the hall, and he smiled at me when he saw me. “How’s it going for you?”
I nodded. “Fine. There’re signs everywhere I’ve been. The homeowner was convinced they were only in the back of the house, but I think they’re everywhere.”
He grimaced. “Same. I don’t think there’s going to be a single room in this entire place that they haven’t been in.”
“Agreed.”
Winter let out a small sigh and said, “Which means we’re going to have to do the front of the house after we finish the back.”
“Yeah, I think so too.” I sighed and refrained from rubbing my face with my hands—my gloves were filthy from work, and there was no way in hell I wanted that bait gunk on my skin. “I think we only have three more rooms on this floor.”
He glanced around, clearly counting, then nodded. “Yep. Let’s each do one, then conquer the third together?”
I shot him a smile. “Sounds good.”
We headed in opposite directions, each opening a door.
Most of the rooms back here were bedrooms or bedrooms turned into offices, so I wasn’t surprised when I found a large oak wood desk in the middle of my room. I was surprised, however, to find at least twenty gnomes climbing all over said desk, playing with paper and… were those scissors?
The one holding the object in question turned to face me and snapped the scissors closed, and I shuddered at the implied threat. Maybe it hadn’t meant it like that—I was sure it hadn’t since gnomes were peaceful creatures—but I sure as hell took it that way.
I was invading its territory. To the gnomes, I was the bad human trying to hurt them. They didn’t know I wanted to save them from being killed by other humans.
For a brief moment, I contemplated skipping this room, doing the next one, and asking Winter to help me with this one, but I dismissed the option as soon as it came to me. The last thing I needed was for Winter, who didn’t actually work for me but for a rival business, to find out about my fear of gnomes.
I wouldn’t give him that ammunition.
No way, no how.
So I sucked it up and walked inside, pulling a new trap out of my bag. I baited it, set it, and placed it in the corner of the room, then moved on to the next corner. There was a hole in the wall here, so I stuffed steel wool in it, then went about setting another trap. This room was going to get at least three, possibly four traps. Each of these large traps could hold up to fifty gnomes, but if I could see over twenty in the middle of the day, out and about, that meant there was probably ten times as many in the walls.
That thought made me shudder again as I knelt down to set the trap.
Just as I placed it, I felt something touch my forearm where my shirt had ridden up, right above my glove. The second a tiny, cold hand touched my skin, I gasped, emotions flooding me.
Curiosity. Fear. Anger. Confusion.
Who was this stranger in our space? What was he doing? Why was he here?
I had enough of a handle on my empath abilities to know what was happening. One of the gnomes had touched me, and I was now flooded with her emotions and the meaning behind them. Gnomes didn’t speak the way we did, but I could feel the questions in her emotions, just like I could in a human or any other creature.
I’m feeling a fucking gnome’s emotions.
A gnome’s touching me.
It. Is. Touching. Me.
A gnome!
A whole-body shudder helped jerk me out of seeing with my sixth sense—my magical sense—and I looked down at the gnome. She stared up at me with large beady eyes, and even though I was horrified, I didn’t want to hurt her. So I gently pushed her off me.
The second her skin no longer touched mine, relief flooded my senses.
I was alone again in my head.
But then another hand touched my other arm, and I feltfear, confusion, curiosity, annoyance.
I gasped and tried to flick it off me, but before I could, yet another hand touched the bare skin of my forearm, and the emotions were so intense, I fell back on my ass.
