Hector and Myrtle’s youngest alicorn daughter, Opal, was curled up by his side, absolutely zonked out after a morning of galumphing about and generally being more adorable than seemed possible.
Euan’s mate, Delilah, had brought her niece, Rosie, and the two of them were outside with Rhys’s teammate Callan and Hector’s mate Myrtle, exploring the native garden in search of interesting twigs and fallen leaves that they could turn into an art project. In the brief breaks between the outraged yelling coming from the Monopoly board, Maisie could faintly hear Myrtle teaching Rosie about some sort of bug she’d found under a leaf – which she supposed made sense, given that Myrtle was apparently a scientist who studied moths for a living.
Meanwhile, Callan’s mate Ella was firing up the outdoor barbecue, and Trent’s mate Zina was ruling the Monopoly bankwith an iron fist. Rhys’s dad had left the house as soon as the game started, ostensibly to go check on the cattle – but it had been obvious that he’d been able to foresee the carnage that was about to descend, and had removed himself from the scene accordingly. Rhys’s mum was apparently off elsewhere watching a rugby match, which was probably the less violent spectacle.
Is that everyone?Maisie thought, feeling slightly dazed.I think that’s everyone.
Really, she was happy to just zone out and decompress. All things considered, she thought she was dealing with having had her entire world upended remarkably well, but there were still moments where the whole thing felt like a very odd and yet highly realistic dream.
It didn’t help, she supposed, that her manager had called her up and told her in no uncertain terms that she had built upwaytoo much annual leave over the past few years, and she had to take four weeks off right now in order to comply with OH&S requirements. Maisie had never taken that long off in all her life – she wasn’t quite sure she was going to recognize herself at the end of it. What could she possibly evendowith all that time?!
She glanced over at Rhys, who currently had a still-grinning Trent in a headlock, while yelling something at him that sounded suspiciously likeWho’s a birdbrain now, you absolute potato. Shaking her head fondly, she smiled. She was sure she would findsomethingto do for four weeks… even if that particularsomethingwas not currently at his most sexy.
It helped, she supposed, that they’d been offered full use of a private island in the Whitsundays for basically as long as they wanted. Maisie was pretty sure that Robb had had something to do with that… and that Michael had had something to do with her work’s HR system alerting her manager to her overabundance of annual leave.
She hadn’t seen Michael or Shaz since their mad dash through the streets of Sydney, but Rhys had reassured her that they were both safe and sound now that James and his cronies were being dealt with, and were back residing in Michael’s grotty little den of filth.
Or they were relatively safe and sound, anyway – Rhys and Maisie had had a truly gargantuan delivery of Cheezels sent to them as a ‘thanks for clearing our names with the secret agents who wanted to keep us captive indefinitely’ gift, and they hadn’t heard from them since. It was entirely possible that Michael had turned the entire place into a giant Cheezel ballpit, and was now too busy living his best life to return Rhys’s messages.
The idea of a house filled with Cheezels was both heavenly and horrifying to Maisie. Would it be possible to ever get the smell of cheese dust out of your hair after such an
experience? Would your body weight crush the Cheezels beneath you, leaving you to sink into a glorious salty sea of MSG, never to be seen or heard from again? Could you eat your way out?
She decided not to think on it too hard. She also decided that she should probably put her beer aside for a while.
In any case, she knew that Shaz and Michael were no longer being pursued and they weren’t having to camp out at the zoo anymore, which was the main thing. Hopefully she’d get to catch up with them at some point to thank them properly in person… though preferably at a venue of Shaz’s choosing.
The buzzing of her mobile phone tugged her attention away from her meandering thoughts, and she pulled it out of her pocket to see a new message from an unknown number. Curious, she opened it up.
Hi, Maisie!the weirdly chirpy message read.It’s Daniel! You may remember me from the incident in Townsville. Sorry about that.
Daniel?she thought in bewilderment.The lantern-jawed secret agent with the bull neck and terrible hair? The one who’s mates with Brent?!
Maisie frowned.
Huh?!
Of course she remembered him – the kind of run-in they’d had was kind of hard to forget – but how had he gotten her phone number?!
My apologies – I pestered Brent for your number,the message continued, and Maisie supposed that that explained that.I thought I would just let you know that we are both doing well, and would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing about the opportunity for us to meet! Here is a photo of Brent at a picnic.
Maybe she reallydidneed to lay off the beer. Rubbing at her eyes in bewilderment, Maisie scrolled down, to see a picture of a checkered blanket spread out over lush green grass, a picnic basket, a bottle of wine, and…an ibis?
Abin chicken?Maisie rubbed harder at her eyes, but all it did was make the image double, so that instead of one weirdly happy-looking white ibis in the photo, there were two. “Brent turns into a freakingbin chicken?!”
That, apparently, was enough to stop the Monopoly game in its tracks. Every head in the room turned to look at her. Even the baby shifters stopped their rompings and stompings, confused.
“Who’s a bin chicken?” Zina asked cautiously. “Also,whatis a bin chicken?”
“Brent!” Maisie exclaimed, brandishing her phone at the others like it explained everything. “My good-for-nothing ex! He never even told me he was a shifter, and then it turns out that not onlyishe a shifter, but he turns into a bird that’ll stick its head into anything that even slightly resembles food, no matterhow old or disgusting!” She shook her head. “No wonder he was always nicking my snacks and taking food off my plate.”
“Oh,” Zina said, examining her phone screen. “He’s anibis?But those are lovely.”
“Maybe the ones elsewhere are,” Maisie grumbled. “But the ones here aregross.”
“The food stealing sounds more like a jerk thing than an ibis thing,” Euan contributed from across the room. “Trent does that, and he just turns into a kangaroo.”
“Prehistorickangaroo, and I absolutely do not,” Trent retorted. “You were done with those chips. You said so.”
