Page 89 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
Winter leapt in front of the kid and familiar, using his body as a human shield, and the ghost flew right into him.
“Win!” I shouted, trying to grab him and missing entirely.
“Squaaaaawwwwkk,” Sola screamed in alarm.
Winter let out anoomphas he staggered back a few steps and bumped into the baby gates. Lyric and I managed to stop the gates from toppling over. As soon as I released the gate, I grabbed Winter.
“Holy shit, Win, are you okay?”
Please let him be okay, please let him be okay.
He turned to me, grimacing and rubbing his chest. “Yeah. Yeah, that, uh… that hurt.”
“What do you need? Let me see. I can maybe—”
Win grabbed my wrists, stopping me from pulling his shirt up. “Hey, Miles. Look at me.”
I met his gaze.
“I’m okay. It might bruise, but I’m fine.”
I sucked in a breath and gave him a nod.
After kissing my knuckles, he dropped my hands, and I glanced around the space. Aeson was keeping the other three ghosts back with salt, throwing it over and over at them.
“What do you need me to do?” I asked Win.
He shook his head and furrowed his brow. “I’m fine, but where’d the ghost go? I didn’t see where it went when it hit me.”
I glanced around the space, now a little frantic because I hadn’t seen where it went either. I’d been too worried about Winter.
As if sensing my growing panic, Sola trilled and rubbed against my cheek, trying to calm me, but I didn’t think anything could calm me after that damn spirit just attacked my… person I was dating or whatever.
Chaos said, “Your nullness made it dissipate. It’ll be a minute before it can reform.”
Win and I exchanged a look because that was kind of awesome he could do that, but also a little scary. From the look on his face, he agreed with me on both accounts—it was still weird to me that I couldn’t feel out his emotions.
Lyric added, “It looked like it exploded as soon as it touched you. Kinda badass, Win.”
Winter shot them a small smile, but Aeson was still battling the other ghosts, and gnomes were running at our feet, tripping us up, so Lyric and I refocused on knocking gnomes back. Sola flew off my shoulder, grabbed a gnome that was attempting to climb my leg, flew up in the air, and chucked the little pest into the crowd, then she aimed for another critter. And Aeson and Winter surrounded the group with a line of salt, so hopefully the evil things would stay back.
The second the ghosts realized they couldn’t cross the barrier, they started sending the gnomes after us in an even greater wave than before.
But the gnomes didn’t attack us. They attacked the salt, messing up the line, and I was sure this was the seal’s doing as well. It wanted the ghosts to stop us, so the gnomes were trying to help.Shit. This was bad.
“Morty, the gnomes are messing with the salt,” Aeson yelled.
“Fuck!” Chaos yelled.
“What do we do?” Lyric asked, looking as panicked as I felt.
“Miles!” Chaos shouted over the noisy as hell ghosts.
“What?” I ducked when a can of corn came sailing straight for my head, and I turned horrified eyes toward the ghosts. They’d discovered that the basement was absolutely filled to the brim with potential projectiles.
“Holy shit, they’re throwing crap now!” Lyric yelled. “Everyone, watch out.” They ducked another canned food bullet, then used their stick to knock a few gnomes off the salt line.
Sola had to dodge out of the way of a few cans as she flew to me and landed on my shoulder again.
