Like they understood they’d been introduced, three more tiny heads pop out of the fur, all of them chittering and whistling. Little white fangs flash, showing off the weapons that catch the insects Dr. Luten talked about.
Astonished, I say, “You walk around with them?”
“Not all of them,” she admits, stroking Puck’s bald head with the tip of her finger. The pixie’s compound eyes close in bliss.“Just the ones that volunteer. Puck’s always game for a field trip, but the others don’t always want to leave the nest.”
Setting aside her drink, she digs in her pocket for a moment before she holds out a handful of tiny brown pellets. “Here,” she urges, dumping them into my hand before I can object, “give them a treat. Who knows? Maybe they’ll give you a fortune.”
It’s a little too late to object, and the gods know I’ve done crazier things, so I nervously hold out my handful of treats, palm up and fingers straight.
I expect the pixies to swarm, but they don’t. Instead, they watch me closely, as if determining whether I’m worth accepting food from. I flounder for a moment, confused, before I default to the call every pet owner knows: kissy noises.
It’s actually a relief when the swarm arrives. There’s nothing worse than being rejected by an animal — except perhaps being rejected by an animal you thought was a pest half an hour ago.
A tiny cloud of blue explodes from Dr. Luten’s coat. Wings buzz and teeth chatter as pixies hover around my hand, little fingers patting and grabbing. Before I know it, they’re not just munching the pellets. They’re climbing my arm, nibbling my fingers, and diving into my windbreaker. One even takes a shine to my ponytail and begins to swing from the end, a joyful whistle filling the air.
I’m laughing not just because of the absurdity — it’s maybe the silliest interview I’ve ever conducted — but because it’s also the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. I thought I knew pixies, but I’d never been so close to one before.
I certainly never had one nibble my cheek, its little blue hands patting and tickling as Dr. Luten explained, “They’re grooming you. Well, Puck is. It means he likes you. And that you’re maybe a little dirty. They’re very fastidious little animals, you know. Super clean.”
Closing one eye, I try to get control over my laughter enough to say, “Okay, rude, but I probably earned a little criticism. I had no idea you guys were so cute!”
“They are,” Dr. Luten agrees, smiling as one of the smaller pixies zooms over to throw itself back into the warmth of her coat. Reaching inside to give it a stroke, she adds, “They’re our friends. We just forgot.”
Daring to give Puck a little tickle behind a large, batlike ear, I say, “Friends who can predict the future. You really are handy to have around, huh?”
Puck trills, one tiny hand sneaking behindmyear for a careful scratch. I smile, smitten, and think of the flour in my kitchen. I don’t have a pixie problem at the moment, but I kind of wish I did.
Dr. Luten is the head of pixie research at San Francisco Protectorate University. She also runs a nonprofit pixie rescue called Forgotten Friends Rescue, which accepts donations. If you’d like to donate, know of a pixie in need of rescue, or learn more about how you can support your local pixie flights, she welcomes all inquiries.
Werewolves Have a Howling Good Time
Rasmus didn’t like holidays,and contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t much of a drinker. But he owned a bar, which meant all the sad fucks who had nowhere else to go on Moonrise came to him now.
Theoretically, he could’ve stayed home and crashed the pack’s celebration, but he, like many of the bachelors in the new Merced Pack, couldn’t stomach the lovey-dovey family shit. Being at The Broken Tooth was the best of two bad options.
Well,he thought, popping a chip into his mouth,I suppose things could be worse.
It wasn’t like he was reallyworking.He didn’t do shit behind the bar. He’d inherited a damn good staff from the previous owner, which meant they were smart enough to keep him around only to sign the checks.
It was a pretty sweet gig. The gods knew he’d had worse jobs over the years. He’d grown up on the wolf pack’s farm and he’d spent most of his formative years in one army or another, digging trenches and killing men. After that, it was all crime, scams, and scraping by.
Compared to all that, owning a bar in a city like San Francisco was living the high life. Of course, it helped that it gave him a clean transition into more legitimate business. Everyone needed a place to wash their money, and a bar was just below a strip club on that very particular scale.
What a bar had that strip clubs didn’t, however, was social capital. Only a certain kind of person could be compelled to go into a titty zoo, but just about everyone could make up an excuse to dip into a dive bar. That made it a good meeting spot, and Rasmus was the man to make introductions.
That was a damn powerful position to be in. Favors and exchanges and secrets were a steady drip into his invisible coffers — not to mention his very real bank accounts.
But there wasn’t much business to be had on Moonrise. The bar was lined with sad bodies stooped over half-finished drinks, and something about the attempt to liven up the place with cheap decorations actually made it more depressing.
Rasmus swept a judgmental gaze over the pathetic lot. At least his people didn’t weep into their vodka. All the weres seemed to be having a damn good time as they bickered over a game of pool and tried to hustle each other. But weres had a lot of experience pushing aside piddling things like depression, loneliness, and dumb shit like missing family.
The first Moonrise after infection was always the hardest, but it got easier after that. Especially if one was lucky enough to find a pack.
None of the sad-sacks slumped against the bar had a pack. That much was obvious. A couple stray vampires sipped synth beside an arrant, and a smattering of other beings dotted the main floor of the bar. Most of them weren’t talking. Their focus, weak as it was, tended to stay on the televisions mounted in corners playing an array of sports events. Only a lone screenbehind the bar showed the annual bonfire lighting in the Orclind.
Rasmus looked away from the screen with a curl of his scarred lip. He’d spent too much time conscripted in the Orclind’s army to ever be able to look at the territory the same. When he looked at those fields of bonfires and cheering crowds, all he saw were trenches and bodies.
He saw the green grass and the round stone homes and he thought of being dragged into a sterile cell. He felt the cold metal of his shackles. He remembered Josephine shivering, her delicate frame wracked by the chill, and how she tried to be kind to him.
