Page 22 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
Higgins sighed and ran a hand over his face, rubbed at his temples, then ran a hand through his hair. “That’s what I thought.Fuck.” He dropped his head back, staring at the ceiling as he sighed.
“Yeah… everything he said about the feed company and having to return a bad batch of food, it was all lies. I’m sure you knew that already.”
“I assumed.”
“I could’ve told you that, Gerard,” Cunningham said, moving to stand close to Higgins and eyeing me like I was an unwanted bug.
Sigh.
Higgins stared at his partner for a moment, his mouth flat, before he looked at me. “How’d you know there were cages inside the boxes?”
I glanced at the stranger in the room with us, then sighed because there was no getting around this. I didn’t want Cunningham to know what I could do, but here we were. “I saw it.”
Higgins’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m a hundred percent certain they’re trafficking faeries.”
He let out a very long sigh, looking and sounding exhausted. “That’s what I figured. Just to be clear, was anything he said in there the truth?”
“Nope. Not a single thing.”
“Fucking hell.”
Before I could respond, Cunningham interjected. “Why did you bring him in, Higs? You and I already know Ferguson’s a lying bastard, and it’s not like his… his… hisempathtestimony will hold up in court.” The way he saidempathmade it clear it was a terrible curse word in his eyes.
Lovely. He was a bigot.
Sola chirped angrily at the man, and I had to hide my smile as I petted her to calm her down.
Higgins frowned at his partner, looking really displeased with him. I wasn’t very happy with the guy myself, but he was,unfortunately, telling the truth. Society as a whole might finally believe what empaths and other practitioners could do, but that didn’t mean they trusted us. And since my word alone was all they had as evidence, it didn’t count. At all.
The courts really needed to get with the times and start utilizing people like me, but they wouldn’t even take a victim’s own word as truth. I’d heard that when the agency used a necromancer to bring back a murder victim, and the victim themselves told police who murdered them, they couldn’t do a damn thing about it. At least not until they had other evidence to back up the claim.
Sure, necromancers said the souls they brought back couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean other people—the government especially—believed them. Only other necromancers would know whether they were lying or not, and people didn’t trust them.
Thinking about necromancers made me think of Chaos, the kid necromancer who’d helped Winter and me with the gnomes over the weekend, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he and his twin brother Aeson had eaten today.
I could only assume they were at least getting the free meals at school, although I knew those meals weren’t actually enough food for teenagers—they gave elementary schoolers the same exact portions.
Chaos and Aeson were both far too skinny, and it was clear they weren’t eating enough meals for the growing teenagers they were. I wondered if Winter and I could find out where they lived so we could drop off some food or have some delivered. They’d never even have to know it was from us.
“Miles?”
Shaking off the random thoughts, I refocused on Higgins. “What?”
He grimaced, but before he could say anything, Cunningham interrupted. Again. “Thanks for coming in, but we have it from here.”
I blinked at the guy, unimpressed with his territorial bullshit. It wasn’t like I wanted to be here. It wasn’t like I was trying to come back. It wasn’t like I wanted to be partnered with Higgins again.
In fact, it wasn’t like I needed to be here at all.
So I shrugged. “Fine.” Then I headed for the door.
“Wait!” Higgins called out before I could open it, and I paused. Probably out of habit after being his partner for so long. “Please just wait.”
I glanced at him, then at his partner, then focused on Higgins. “I’m clearly not wanted here, Gerard.” I could tell that using his first name for the first time in I didn’t even know how long affected him. “I don’t want to step on any toes, okay? I told you what I saw. I told you Ferguson was lying. The guy’s clearly trafficking faeries, and probably faerie parts too. You need to put a stop to it. Maybe follow that delivery truck and see where it goes. Follow the trail. Follow the money. You’ve got this.”
“Miles…”
