Page 18 of A Very Armitage Christmas
The sudden roar of machinery from outside — the snowblower — made us both jump, right as Bing Crosby sang about children listening to hear sleigh bells in the snow.
“Do you think there are kids somewhere listening to sleigh bells and not a snowblower blowing body parts into a heap?” he asked after a second.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Dude, I have no idea what a sleigh bell sounds like, so don’t ask me. Look, Janet wasn’t fazed by the whole zombie — sorry,revenantsituation. Maybe this won’t be so bad. Maybe we should go downstairs and see if she’s made pie.”
Arik sucked in a deep breath. “Yeah. Unless you want to run away to South America after all.”
“You know they’d come and find us.” And wasn’t that a strange thought. Having people who’d care enough to follow me all the way to another continent just to bring me home, and not because they wanted to drain my magic, either. Having a home, period.
“Weird, right?” Arik said, laughing a little. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go.”
We went down side by side, the noise and chaos growing exponentially as we turned the corner of the stairs. Little kids ran riot in the big den of the pack house, jumping on couches and shrieking, nearly drowning out the Christmas carols screeching out of the ancient record player in the corner. It was like trying to get through the inside of a pinball machine to make our way to the kitchen.
Janet had decided to hold court in there, apparently. We peeked through the doorway and found half the pack’s female cohort, drinking coffee and talking and shuffling pots and pans around and chopping things. Clouds of fragrant steam rose from the stove; flour dusted nearly every surface.
And a giant ham sat in a roasting pan, ready to go in the oven. Thank all the gods. I didn’t need to deal with anything else with a head that needed to be removed today.
“There you are!” Janet said. “Grab an apron.” She pointed at the pantry, where a few aprons hung from a hook. Where the fuck had those come from? The house had aprons? “Peeling potatoes or pitting cherries? Those are the two jobs left. Decide amongst yourselves.”
Tara and Elise, two of the moms of the hellions in the next room, shoved peelers and bowls and strainers and cutting boards at us and then pushed us toward the table.
My eyes met Arik’s over a pile of potatoes. He had a funny little half-smile on his face, something between resignation and — happiness? Was that what happiness looked like on Arik’s face?
“You can do the cherries. At least a peeler has a plastic guard thing and I probably can’t slice my finger off,” I said.
Arik nodded, his smile widened, and he picked up a knife.
“I trust you too,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him over the din. “Only to a point, though. Try not to fuck up the potatoes.”
I kicked him under the table and grabbed my peeler. I’d show him.
It felt good to be doing something so normal, especially with the most abnormal person I’d ever met.
And knowing Ian and Matthew were dealing with the body-part snowblowing while we sat warm and cozy in the kitchen dealing with nice clean edible food added a little deliciousje ne sais quoito the whole affair.
Maybe I was kind of a petty bitch. But they all loved me anyway.
I peeled my potatoes with a smile on my face, even when Arik told me I was doing it wrong.
Chapter 6
Matthew & Ian
It took a couple of hours to get all the last zombie parts blown into a heap, gathered up, and burned, and by then the sun had started to sink behind the horizon, lighting up the remaining snow all pink and making the dead lawn underneath look even deader.
Dad spent the whole fucking time leaning against the hood of his ridiculous, too-expensive car that would’ve paid off all of our utility bills for six months, and then some —It’s an investment, Matt, and why can’t you enjoy life a little?— smoking and critiquing our snowblowing form.
Ian’s teeth-grinding was almost louder than the snowblower.
But we finished at last, and dad sloped off to put his stupid car in the garage and probably hide from mom, who might give him something else to do.
“What the fuck are they even doing here?” Ian demanded as soon as dad was out of earshot. “Did they call you?”
“Nope. No call.” I stretched my arms over my head, trying to get the ache out of my back. Even alphas had physical limits, and I’d started to run head-first into mine with the day we’d had. “I wonder how Arik and Nate are doing with mom.”
“Fine, unless they ran away together and assumed new identities in Venezuela, or something.” The words kind of sounded like he’d meant them as a joke, but the delivery fell flat. I could feel Arik close by through the mate bond, but if I hadn’t…yeah, that had been my first thought too, when we got back from the cemetery and found dad. That Arik had barely adjusted to being with me, let alone doing Christmas with my parents. And that he and Nate had enough magic between them to get away clean if they needed or wanted to.
“They’re here. You can feel Nate too, right?”
