Page 60 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
Perhaps as alone as I’d been before this weekend.
He must’ve been feeling his emotions rather strongly for them to hit me out of nowhere like that. Perhaps it had something to do with his magic or something.
I heard Lyric whisper, “Holy shit, he’s powerful,” behind me, so I supposed that answered my question on whether or not the kid could do the job.
“You think we can hire him? Like… is he old enough?” I murmured to Winter.
Winter studied the teenager as hard as I had, and after a moment, he gave a nod. “I don’t think he’d be here if we couldn’t.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but Lyric must’ve heard us because they called over, “Hey, kid? How old are you? You old enough to work?”
I wanted to face palm, but the kid gestured at his crappy car. “I drove here, didn’t I? Want to see my license?” The kid pulled his wallet from his back pocket, yanked out a card, and held it out.
Lyric grinned. “Nope, just checking.”
Well, I suppose that made sense about the driving thing. He had to be at least sixteen, and kids could get a job at fourteen, so I suppose this would be okay. Plus, I could make sure the skinny teen ate today.
Taking a breath, I steeled myself to ignore the strong emotions coming from the kid and said, “Hey, thanks for making the trip. I’m Miles.”
As he replaced his wallet back in his pocket, he sent me a smile I could only describe as a smirk. The kid looked like trouble, but all he said was, “Nice to meet you. I’m Chaos.”
Who in their right mind would want to be called Chaos?
Ignoring my own feelings about it, I gave him a nod. “Good to meet you, Chaos.”
For some reason, my response seemed to amuse him, but he only continued smirking at me.
I pointed to my companions, saying, “This is Winter and Lyric.” I could tell Lyric was about to say something snarky, and since I wanted this kid to help us, I shot them a glance. They stuck their bottom lip out at me in a fake pout, and I had to hold in a snort as I refocused on Chaos. “I’ve never worked with a necromancer before, so I’m not sure what you need from us.”
“No worries.” He looked past me toward the mansion. “Wow. That’s a huge house—more like a hotel or something. You said the cursed item is in the basement?”
“Yep. There’s a door around back.”
“I’d like to check it out first before I decide what supplies I need so I can give you an accurate quote.”
“Sounds good.”
Winter waved the kid forward. “Follow me.”
As the two of them walked off, I went to follow, but Lyric stepped up beside me and started whisper-yelling at me. “Holy shit, My-my! Did you see his car?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, it’s a piece of shit. So what?”
They waved that off. “No, no, no. Not the car itself.Insidethe car. He has a fucking chicken just sitting there on his back seat.”
That made me pause mid-step. “A chicken?”
“Yes!”
“On his back seat?”
“Yes!”
“Why the hell does he have a chicken on his back seat?” Now I sounded almost as panicky as Lyric.
Chaos abruptly turned around to face us, started walking backward, and called over, “It’s in case I need to make a sacrifice to break your curse.” He mimed slicing the chicken’s throat and, like, shaking out its blood or something, and I thought I might be sick. “Luckily, I don’t think we’ll need any virgin sacrifices or anything. Those are a lot harder to find on the black market.”
Lyric gasped and grabbed my hand, and I was very grateful I had my gloves on. And even though I was also freaking the fuck out—this kid was going to sacrifice a poor little chicken? Did he really make virgin sacrifices too?—I couldn’t help but take in the kid’s body language. Something inside of me, maybe the magical part that housed my empathic ability, told me to reach out and get a read on him.
