“Don’t call me that.” As they passed the basement door, she tried to keep her voice down and instead reached an annoyingly high pitch with her harsh whisper. “My name’s Piper.”
“Fine, how about Pipsqueak instead?”
She came to a stop and snorted—god, he really was an elfhole.
His hand fell on her shoulder and shoved her to the side, and Piper was too stunned to hold her ground, pushed out into the living room and catching herself against the record player.
Elfhole’s form went still when he stepped out into the room, but even from the back, he was suddenly far less intimidating. Squared shoulders went slack, and his head tipped as he stared at The Tree. It was still beautiful, all soft green needles and full boughs, and a single, warm light from overhead illuminated it against the glass of the picture window like a holy idol. But when Piper crept around to Elfhole’s side, she saw his face was drawn down despite all its sharp edges, the disdain wiped off his brow and replaced with a distressed bend.
“You really did cut it down,” he said, voice faint. “Seventhousandyears, and you just cut it down.”
Piper worried the hem of her sweater. She knew trees were sustainable, she always made sure to get a permit from the state before harvesting, and that was an impossible age for anything living anyway, let alone a spruce that looked to bemaybeeight years old, but guilt still welled up in her chest. It could be considered a little morbid, she supposed, to watch a plant slowly wilt for the holidays, yet when she looked at the one she and Presley had found, she could see that cardinal again, hear her mother’s voice, and she justknewit belonged right where it was. “It can’treallybe seven thousand years old, can it?”
“Give or take a couple centuries,” he said hollowly. “It’s an alcyon spruce. There are only sixteen groves of them on this plane, and they’re home to creatures that can’t exist anywhere else. I have no idea how you found it, they’re supposed to naturally keep humans away, but you did. And now it’s here.”
She cleared her throat, rattling off the guilt. “Well, if it’s so old and important, shouldn’t it have taken a little more than my brother and an axe to chop it down?”
Kol’s eyes turned to her, frosty lividness leaping into them. “I can’t believe you’re victim-blaming atree.”
The sound of muffled voices came from beyond the door to the basement. Deb was likely utilizing the most dramatic way possible to “break the news”—whatever the hellthatmeant—to Piper’s father which would certainly set the holidays off to an even better start than allthis.
“You still can’t have it!” Piper wasn’t entirely sure why she was digging in, the overwhelming ridiculousness of the situation not helping, but by god, she dug.
“Like the nether I can’t.” He turned swiftly from her and stalked across the living room.
Piper watched his broad shoulders as he knelt before the tree, and then spied the poker beside the fireplace. Her fingers curled, and she bit her lip.Maybeshe could bash him in the head, but then what? Drag his ass outside and wait for him to come to and return with a whole orchard full of pines for revenge? And what if…what if he didn’t come to? It was Christmas for goodness’s sake, and murder would most definitely get her put on the naughty list.
A glow rose from over her potential victim’s shoulder, and all thoughts of ho-ho-homicide melted right out of Piper’s brain like snow sloughing off a metal roof. He was fiddling with something unseen, but that light was just like the weirdness she’d seen him produce from nowhere in the forest. She would have cursed with shock if her voice worked, but it was her feet instead that answered the call, and then she was there, hovering over his shoulder without a weapon, just watching.
He had pulled a thin, slate black card from his pocket, the source of the light. Folding it open surprised her as it seemed already impossibly thin, but then it flipped open twice more before a screen hummed to life and a blue light blinded her.
Space elf, she thought, gaze flicking to where his ears were covered by his beanie. She reached out impulsively, but before she could pull the fabric up, he swatted her hand away. “You don’t just touch a man’s ears,” he barked.
A man’s ears? Okay, maybe he’s not an alien. Piper held up her empty hands in surrender.
The not-space elf gave her a scowl before turning back to the tree and carefully plucking a single needle from the nearest branch. With the screen held flat in one hand, he dropped the needle, and it hovered above the blue glow, slowly spinning as a glittery spiral traveled up to meet it.
“Fuck…me…” Piper couldn’t move, in awe of the swirling colors and lights, and then gasped when the needle was sucked down into the device, disappearing.
“So it takes the thaumatix to make you freak out. Got it.” He sighed, then swiped a finger over the screen as if it was positively mundane that a machine had just gobbled up plant matter on its own. Words and symbols scrolled by too quickly for Piper to parse even if she weren’t sinking into shock at the magically-advanced technology. He muttered about coniferiousness and heartwoodity until he sucked in a sharp breath and glared directly at the tree. “Really? You’ve got Stalkhome Syndrome?”
Piper stood straight, snapped out of her paralysis at his words. Her gaze pinged up the length of the spruce then back down at the elf. “How does a tree get Stockholm Syndrome?”
“It doesn’t, it getsStalkhomeSyndrome. Happens sometimes to enchanted flora when they’re forcibly removed from their habitat, but they almost never bond to new surroundings so quickly.” He gestured with his tablet to the nearest branch. “Congratulations, you’ve got the weakest-limbed Pinaceae I’ve ever met.”
Piper brightened—she knew it. “So, it’s happy here.”
“Only because you abducted it. But I don’t see how…” He stood, squinting up at the ceiling, gaze traveling over the room until it fell threateningly back on her. “What did you do?”
Piper pointed at herself, feeling like Doc when a shoe turned up covered in bite marks.
“How did you enchant this tree?”
Well, she certainly hadn’t chewed that slipper. “I didn’t!”
A sharp pain at her temple made her recoil and slap a hand over the spot. He’d moved so quickly that she didn’t notice until she saw a single strand of her hair dangling from his fingers over the tablet. The glittery swirls didn’t mystify her this time, but they did piss her off as the stolen strand was sucked down into his thauma-whatever. “What the hell? That hurt!”
His fingers danced over the screen as it lit up the ferocity on his face, ignoring her pain. “It’s bondedto you, so you didsomething. Gods, the thing’s practically obsessed with you,” he growled and then went on about severing connections and which departments would be available this time of year, but all Piper could pick out from his ranting was that she and the tree were linked.
