Page 19 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
That made me smile. “I saw a catch and release company a few cities over, and when I had a pixie problem in my house, I realized there wasn’t one anywhere around here. I… wanted tosave the faeries. I know that sounds stupid and ridiculous, but I just—”
“Hey.” He put his hand on my gloved one. “It’s not stupid or ridiculous.”
I bit my lip, not pulling away from his touch. Luckily, my glove kept me from feeling his emotions, so I was able to enjoy the small comfort. Before I could stop myself, I muttered, “I didn’t want to deal with death any longer.”
His eyes went shocked, then curious, but before he could respond, one of the gnomes screamed bloody murder, making both of us jump. We turned as one to take in the scene, and I cringed, holding back a shudder. The last thing I wanted to do was let Winter know I was terrified of gnomes, so I did my best to school my expression and not retreat far, far away from the little terrors like I truly wanted to.
The screaming one was chasing another one with what looked like a toothpick. It was trying to stab the other one, and when the rest of the gnomes noticed, some started cheering, others screamed in terror, and a few tried to intercede.
It was absolute mayhem.
And I was supposed to walk in there and set up a trap for them.
A shudder came despite myself.
I so didnotwant to go in that room. That was my literal nightmare come to life.
Fuck. How the hell was I going to do this?
“Hey,” Winter said, grabbing my attention. “You okay?”
I sent him a smile, hiding my embarrassment at being caught. He shouldn’t have been so observant, seeing things I wanted to keep hidden. “I’m fine. You ready to check the rest of the house?”
He nodded. “We’re going to needa lotof traps. That room alone needs three or four.”
I nodded in agreement. “I have a ton in the truck.”
He patted his pocket. “I brought the steel wool with me so we can fill any holes as we walk through.”
That made me grin, and I patted one of my large pockets on my jumpsuit. “I have some too.”
“Great minds and all that.” He winked at me. “Now show me the rest of this monstrosity.”
With a snort, I took him on a tour.
Winter and I worked surprisingly well together, and I was happy to see him curious about my catch-and-release policy. I’d expected him to complain and tell me it’d be quicker and easier to set out some poison—it would be, and cheaper too, but there was no way I’d do it—but he hadn’t said anything like that at all. He did ask a lot of questions about my traps, though, since his company used kill traps, and he wasn’t used to mine.
Despite all that, he really knew his stuff and was smart about how to conquer this entire house. He helped make a plan, and I couldn’t help but smile at how easily we worked together on such a huge project.
We started off in the same room while I made sure he knew how to set the traps effectively with gnome bait. Luckily, I had little commercial-made bait wafers rather than having to smother a cracker in jelly and put it in the trap. That would’ve taken even longer, and this job was way too big for all of that.
After the one room together, we separated to cover more ground. We were going to meet in the middle of the second floor to check in and make sure everything was still going alright.Then we’d break for lunch and decide where to go from there in order to take care of the third floor.
Luckily, we’d already conquered the super-infested room together downstairs, and I was grateful I’d had Winter with me. I wasn’t sure I would’ve been able to go inside by myself. Not that Winter had needed to protect me or anything—gnomes weren’t violent creatures and were typically scared of humans—it was just nice not being alone for once.
If this was what it was like to work with someone else, I really did need to get on with hiring an employee. I… liked having Winter here. Even when he was in another room, it was nice knowing I could go talk to another human being if I wanted.
That wasn’t something I’d had since I’d quit my job five years ago and opened Carry A Faerie.
I was alone all day now and only had Odin to talk to at home. A cat wasn’t exactly a good conversationalist. I’d probably spoken to Winter more today than I’d talked to literally anyone else this entire year.
Even though separating like this made sense, I was contemplating asking if he wanted to simply do all the rooms together on that floor. It’d been so long since I worked with someone else, and Winter was so easy to talk to. I kind of… wanted to be around him as much as possible while I could.
Who knew when the next time I’d actually get to talk to him was?
Shaking off those thoughts, I sighed and baited the trap in my hands. I made sure it was set, then put it in the most gnome-infested corner of the room. Hopefully the scent of the bait would entice the little beasties out and into the trap.
With that done, I did another sweep of the room to make sure I hadn’t missed any more holes. I didn’t see any, so I called this room good and walked into the hallway.
