“There’s a special place in Hell for people like you,” Nolan muttered.
“Yes, yes, and we’ll all be sipping mai tais and having a wonderful time, I’m sure,” Sky replied.
While Nolan was preparing the water for the Yule tree, Sky dug out a box of lights and another box of ornaments. It was too late in the evening to decorate the entire house—that job took at least six hours to do properly—but they could at least get the tree decorated. Maybe if it were twinkling with white fairy lights and shining with pretty red and gold ornaments, Nolan wouldn’t be so scared of it.
When he returned, Sky coaxed Nolan into helping him move some of the furniture so they could set up a nice open area for the Yule tree by the front window. As soon as the spot was open, the tree scrambled over and put several of its roots into the pan of water. The tree shuddered once, as if shaking out its weary limbs, and sank a few inches, settling in.
Since it wasn’t a typical pine tree, it wasn’t easy to cover in lights or hang ornaments from its limbs, but after nearly an hour of steady work, Sky got it decorated and glowing nicely. Nolan refused to touch the tree, but he was willing to at least hold the lights and hand Sky decorations.
Exhaustion sank into their bones as they finally finished getting the tree decorated and settled in its corner of the living room. The BL show they’d been attempting to watch was forgotten, and the only thing that sounded good was bed.
“I’m heading up. You coming?” Nolan said as he retreated from the tree, refusing to turn his back on it.
“Yes!” Sky bounced to Nolan and wrapped his arms around his waist. “We can pick up where we left off.”
“If you think you’re getting lucky with that thing in the house, you’ve lost your damn mind.”
“Oh, Mr. Banks, I think you’re underestimating my powers of seduction.”
“And I think you’re underestimating how creepy that tree is.”
Sky pulled his boyfriend toward the stairs. “It’s fine. We’ve got the tree plugged into the wall, and there’s a cover for the water pan. It’s not going to cause any trouble. What is there to worry about?”
Chapter 2
December 5
Nolan didn’t trust the tree, but after a couple of days, his panic about the odd creature in the corner of their living room had faded. They refilled the pan of water each day and unplugged the lights each night before they went to bed. Since coming inside and getting settled in its spot, the thing hadn’t moved.
Other than its curled roots showing and the fact that it had walked into the house, it really wasn’t that different from a normal Christmas tree. But what had he expected when he’d jumped into a relationship with a necromancer who had man-eating roses in the front yard and a “live”-in ghost Grammy who popped by to give unsolicited relationship advice and catch up on the neighborhood gossip?
Following the tree’s arrival, Nolan had helped Sky haul his many boxes of Christmas decorations out of the basement. The interior of their home now looked like a Christmas fluff bomb had exploded in every room. There were smiling Santas, twinkling lights, stockings, reindeer, angels, and even a miniature glowing village on a puffy cotton snow bed. The only thing they still needed to put up was the fake tree that would have gone in the spot the creepy spider tree was now in.
Not that they needed another tree. From Nolan’s perspective, the walking tree was more than enough. However, Sky was sad that the new tree couldn’t handle all his ornaments and argued that the fake tree needed to go up so the rest of the ornaments could be displayed as well.
They also needed to finish the outdoor decorations, but those were limited because the roses didn’t care for the inflatable or plastic figures. Sky explained that since the roses got jealous and would the decorations, they would put up a few white lights around the door. That was fine with Nolan. The temperature had dropped significantly in the past week, and he had no interest in being on a ladder out in the cold and hanging lights.
Everything appeared fine.
Which was usually when things went horribly wrong. But it didn’t happen in the way he’d expected, though.
Nolan frowned at the remains of the last load of unfolded laundry in front of him. Something was off.
“Hey, baby!” Nolan called out from the top of the stairs.
A couple of seconds later, Sky’s voice swept from the foyer. “What’s up?”
“Could you come here for a moment? There’s something wrong with the laundry.”
A low chuckle carried up the stairs ahead of Sky. Nolan waited at the foot of the bed where he’d been folding the last load. It had seemed like a normal lazy Saturday, where they usually spent the first half of the day catching up on all the housework followed by a run to the grocery. It was one of Nolan’s favorite parts of being in a relationship with Sky—the mundane things they shared suddenly felt special.
“What’s wrong?” Sky asked as he strolled into the bedroom.
Nolan motioned to the bed, where six different socks lay without their mates. “This was the last load. I folded everything else and put it away.”
Sky’s brow furrowed, and he rubbed his chin. “That…seems a little high.”
“At worst, I’ve had two socks without mates, but six? I’ve already checked around the bed and in the bathroom hamper. I can’t find a single one of them.”
