Page 47 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
“A group of them broke off from the main mischief, and they came inside.”
“Garden pixies came inside the building?”
“Weird, right? So anyway, no one was worried at first because they’re just pixies, and they’re usually pretty peaceful as long as you stay away from their nests. And these guys were fine at first. But lately, they’ve been… acting out of order.”
Winter asked, “Is that your nice way of saying they’re pulling pranks?”
He snorted.“I mean, yeah, I guess you could call what they’re doing pranks. But they’re really malicious too. Like… trippingpeople on the stairs, making arrows out of toothpicks they stole from the cafeteria and shooting them at people. Dive-bombing people and using their legs as little weapons—it hurts more than you’d think, especially when there’s multiple pixies coming at you like that.
“Anyway, they even tied this one poor woman up when she broke away from her group to go to the bathroom. I’m not sure what they were planning to do to her, but they were flying around, poking her with sticks and toothpicks to the point that she had bruises and even a few pinpricks that were bleeding. And one of the many people who fell down the stairs broke their ankle. At this point, I’m afraid they’re going to severely injure or even kill someone. What they’re doing isn’t okay.”
Winter and I stared at each other for a couple of beats before I asked, “Do you think this is another curse situation? I’ve never heard of pixies doing that much damage.”
“So far, Morty and I haven’t found anything like that seal at the gnome house, but we’re not ready to completely rule it out. But we still really need to get them out of the museum. The ones in the garden are acting kinda strange too, but they’re not nearly as aggressive as the indoor ones. I kind of think they’re just missing the pixies that left them or something, but I don’t know if they really care that much or not.”I didn’t know either. There wasn’t enough information about pixies available anywhere.
“Is the museum hiring us to come in and catch the pixies?”
There was a long pause I didn’t like the sound of before he huffed.“Not exactly…”
My eyebrows rose. “What does that mean?”
“The museum is still acting like this is harmless fun. They don’t want to admit there’s a problem because they don’t want the liability or the bad press or something, who knows? But they won’t hire anyone. Not sure why they think they won’tget bad press if they don’t admit there’s a problem, but the manager isn’t exactly… intelligent.”
“Well, that’s really freaking stupid of them.” Winter said the exact thing I was thinking.
“I agree, which is why I’m calling you. I… I can’t pay you in, like, dollars, but I can come work it off if you come to check it out and take care of the pixies. I… I’m really sorry. I wish I could pay you, but I—”
I cut the kid off before he had a nervous breakdown. “Aeson, you don’t have to pay us anything.” I didn’t even have to look at Winter to know he was in complete agreement, but when I glanced at him, he was smiling encouragingly at me. “We’ll come take care of it, okay?”
He was quiet for a few seconds.“But… you can’t just work for free. I can work it off, or Morty and I both can, and we can—”
“Ace,” Winter said. “You’re our friend, and we want to help you. That’s all we care about, okay? Don’t worry about paying us.”
“But—”
“But nothing.” I cleared my throat. “Like Win said, you’re our friend, and we want to help. Maybe one day there’ll be something we need help with, and you can return the favor. Okay?”
He let out a long sigh.“You two are really frustrating, just so you know.”
That made us both chuckle. “Uh-huh. So…?”
“Fine,”he said on another sigh.“Please come help me.”
“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We said our goodbyes and hung up, and then Win and I went about getting ready to leave the house again. The chili would be fine to sit in the crock pot for a while longer, so I wasn’t going toworry about it right now. Maybe we could order some food—and feed the kids dinner—while we were there.
“Somehow, I already know you’re planning on feeding those kids,” Winter said as he followed me to my room—he had some clothes in the bottom drawer in case we decided to go out or something since we were pretty much always in sweatpants and t-shirts when we were hanging out.
“Of course I’m planning on feeding them. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of food to order. I’d take the chili so they get a homecooked meal, but I think it’d be weird to show up to a museum with a crock pot in hand.”
He snorted. “That would definitely be weird, although I’m disappointed I won’t get to eat any tonight. Your chili is delicious.”
For that, I gave him a quick kiss. “We can eat it tomorrow night.”
