Page 58 of The Pushy Pixies Are Going Down
This time, her chirp sounded sad.
“I know. I wish it was real too. I want to hold one.”
She let out a quiet whistle.
My eyes narrowed as I gazed from her to the pygmy dragon model and back again. “Although… we probably wish it was real for different reasons, huh? Do you want to eat it?”
She chirped an affirmative.
“Oh my god, you can’t eat tiny dragons, you silly girl. Go eat some pixies or something.”
Her eyes seemed to light up—maybe they really did with her fire—and my own eyes widened when I realized what I’d said. Did I really just tell my familiar to go eat some pixies when there were pixies only feet from us?
Oh my god, I was such an idiot.
Quickly, I grabbed onto her and hissed out, “Don’t you dare go after those pixies.”
She tilted her head at me questioningly, making me sigh.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you should go hunting right now. The mean manager dude would kill me if you started flying around. There are way too many valuable things in here that could get knocked over or catch fire. You have to stay on my shoulder, okay?”
If a firebird could sigh, I swore Sola just sighed at me.
I gave her lots of pets as I kissed the top of her head and walked back over to Winter and Lyric.
Win didn’t look up but said, “As far as I can tell, this isn’t normal behavior for pixies of any kind, whether they’re garden, forest, desert, rainforest, or any other type. I can’t find any mention of pixies guarding a dragon egg or any other egg for that matter, not counting their own.”
Lyric hummed. “Hm. So we’ve got some weirdos on our hands. Seems fitting for you two.”
Win snorted and finally put his phone away, then reached up and petted Sola. “You better listen, girlie. You can’t go around eating pixies and flying around a museum.” Guess he’d overheard me.
Whoops.
Her sad trill was so pathetic that Winter, Lyric, and I all laughed.
Win caught my eye, his gaze filled with warmth and affection, and I really wanted to lean over and kiss him. But we both had our masks on so that wouldn’t go very well. Instead, I reached over and gave his hand a squeeze. He caught my hand before I could take it away and laced our fingers together, surprising me that he didn’t take my glove off first.
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “I know there’s a lot of people here, so I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Plus, your gloves protect your hands from dust.”
All he was doing was making me want to kiss him again. “I should’ve grabbed some extra gloves from the car for you guys.”
Lyric waved me off. “I’m fine right now.”
Win shrugged me off, turning us back to the pixie nest. “Soooo… how the hell are we going to get them out of here? I doubt the manager will let us leave traps out overnight.”
I thought about it for a few seconds, then nodded to myself. “I think we need to take the egg out of the museum so the pixies will follow it.”
He turned sharply to me. “You can’t possibly think you can just grab it and run, do you? You’ll be covered in pixie dust before you even reach the stairs. I’ll have to take you to the hospital and—”
I cut him off with a squeeze to his hand. “I didn’t mean right this second. We can do it tonight, but only because we have gear in the car. We’ll have to get suited up first.”
He grimaced. “The manager’s not gonna like that, either.”
“Probably not, but it’s gotta be better than risking someone else getting hurt and having customers dodge pixies all day, every day.”
“True. But… how will we convince him?”
I shrugged. “I’m hoping you, Lyric, and Aeson can. People love all three of you.”
