Page 101 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
He laughed at that. “You’re not wrong.”
I shook my head, walking away from him and his ridiculousness. “Adorable, my ass.”
“Your ass is definitely adorable, sugar butt.”
“I thought you thought it was sexy?”
He chuckled, following behind me into the backyard. “It’s that too. In fact, I kinda want to bite it.”
I couldn’t help the snort that came out, and I swatted at him with my net, making him laugh and jump out of the way. “You are such a weirdo.”
“Yeah, but you like me.”
“Probably because I’m a weirdo too.”
He laughed again and shoulder-bumped me as he stepped up beside me. “I like you too. A lot.”
With a chuckle, I waved him off. “Ready? They’re going to come at us even harder now since there’s less of them and we’re getting closer and closer to their nest.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I’m ready. We’re gonna have to use a ton of bruise cream when we get home.”
He had somehow come across this cream made by a practitioner that helped soothe and heal bruises at least tentimes faster than on their own. It was a lifesaver with all these damn pixie jobs. They really liked to use themselves as tiny bullets, or they flew at us with sticks.
I nodded in agreement. “I’ll put it on you, if you put it on me.”
He shot me a wink. “As long as you’re naked.”
I laughed at that and shook my head, walking back into the garden.
It took us four more net-fulls to get nearly all of the pixies in this mischief. I knew there were a few stragglers, so I’d leave behind a handful of traps and come back in a few days to get the rest—mostly because I didn’t want them to be separated from their mischief. Leaving a couple behind wouldn’t be a big deal otherwise, since they’d hide from the humans in such small numbers. They really only attacked people when they were in big groups.
Although, even that was very unusual. It was strange that we’d now had two mischiefs attacking people—here and at the museum. Before this year, I was pretty sure I’d only ever had one in the five previous years.
I shrugged to myself because it wasn’t like I’d be the one to figure this out. Maybe it was due to climate change, or maybe it was just from humans taking over so much of their natural habitat.
At the moment, Win and I had to remove the actual nest from this yard. Some people might’ve left it—or sprayed it with poison so the babies wouldn’t even be born—but I didn’t want to take the nest away from the others. I wanted to keep them all together.
They were a family, and even if they were being mean to other people, they still deserved to stay together.
I carried the large bin over to the nest, set it down, and stood there, trying to figure out where to start.
Winter joined me, holding a smaller box that had a towel inside. “I thought we could put the eggs in here, then put the nest pieces into the large bin?”
“That’s a great idea. I was trying to figure out how to pick it up without it breaking or harming any eggs, but this is better.”
We knelt down and began picking up the eggs that kinda looked like very tiny pebbles. There were a lot of eggs inside this nest. A pixie mischief made one nest to share and guard as a group, so all the eggs ended up here, and the babies were raised by the entire mischief. It was kind of cool, if I was being honest.
After we both checked three times and didn’t see any more eggs, we picked up the nest as best we could and placed it in the bin. Some of the pieces—rocks, leaves, flower debris—fell off, but we got a good chunk in one go. Then I added all those other pieces into the bin, closed the lid, and we headed for the truck with Win carrying the eggs.
When we pushed the big bin inside and secured it in place, Win set the egg box on the tailgate, and we both finally took off the pixie gear.
I pulled off the face mask, sighed, then pulled my arms out of the sleeves and sighed again. “Holy shit, it’s hot in these suits. I really hope we don’t have another pixie job this week.”
“Ugh. Me too. I’m a sweaty mess.”
“Same.”
“Definitely need a shower after work today. Blech.”
