Page 6 of Did It Have To Be Gnomes?!
Fuck, how did someone have eyes that pretty? They were ice blue, like his name implied, and filled with so much… depth. His shaggy blond hair flopped in his face, and he always did this head flip thing to move it out of his eyes, and for some reason, that just really did it for me.
He was gorgeous. He always had been, even as a teenager.
“Hey, Miles,” he said, eyeing me with an almost teasing smile.
“Winter.” I managed to get it out without choking, so I called it a win.
“You know you’re holding up traffic?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
I opened my mouth to remind him that he was the one holding traffic up by parking in the freaking street, but a car honked behind me, so I just said, “Stop murdering faeries.”
He frowned, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of guilt on his face, but it went away before I could fully contemplate it.
He said, “We’re exterminators. What else are we supposed to do?”
“Sanctuaries exist for a reason.”
Someone honked again, so I just sighed, rolled my window up, flicked Tommy off one more time, and ignored the look Winter was giving me. I didn’t have time to analyze it, nor did I want to.
We weren’t friends and never had been, but we were… acquaintances, I supposed. We went to the same high school together, but he’d been popular and a jock. I’d been the lonely emo kid who had no friends.
Our paths never crossed.
Well, except that one time…
I shook that off and concentrated on driving my little friend to her new home. I pushed the blanket to the side, revealing a small section of the cage so I could look at her and make sure she was okay.
To my surprise, she moved her cute little face to that side and stared at me with these pretty brownish-gold eyes.
We drove for about forty-five minutes peacefully, with me telling my sweet firebird friend all about Winter and the horrible place he worked. He’d always been kind to me in high school,despite his friends being asshats, so it surprised me when I found out he worked for Faerie Be Gone.
To be honest, I’d been kind of disappointed.
I supposed I’d always put Winter up on a pedestal, and seeing him work for that horrible company didn’t go with the image in my head.
Which wasn’t really fair to him, if I really thought about it.
I understood why people needed all the faerie pests out of their homes. Hell, I wouldn’t do what I did if I didn’t get it. They were annoying, they ruined belongings, put holes in the walls, and some of them risked spreading disease and illnesses. They needed to be removed.
But killing all of these… magical creatures didn’t sit right with me, and I wasn’t the only one. There were people speaking out about the cruelty against faeries these days, groups I could get behind. When the public found out that some extermination practices were inhumane and they realized there were plenty of people who did terrible things to the little creatures, some people stepped up. I appreciated those groups.
But it seemed like there were more people who just didn’t care at all.
It was gross.
The things people did to faeries made my stomach churn.
Like the things people did to creatures like my little firebird here who brought good luck. There were plenty of other faeries that faced the same—or worse—horrors she did.
“Sooo,” I said to the firebird. “He’s cute and all, but I just could never be with someone who hurts faeries, you know? Not that he wants me or anything.” I let out a small laugh. “I don’t even know if he’s gay or bi, although there were rumors he was bi in high school, so I guess that got my little gay heart a-fluttering. But how could I possibly like a guy who works for a company like that?”
I sighed, and my GPS told me to turn, so I followed the directions, pushing Winter out of my mind the best I could. The second I was on the street that led to the sanctuary, the firebird went wild.
She screeched and flapped her wings and made the cage wiggle around so much, it nearly fell off the seat, even though I had the belt around it.
