Page 38 of Escaping Monsters

“So, is having Freyja interested in me a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked.

Ace winced. “Mixed. The ethics of gods and goddesses don’t always line up with that of human society. But the good news is their attention spans are shorter than a two-year-old’s, so she’ll probably move on soon.”

“Well, I don’t mind the cat love.” I leaned down and scratched behind the cat’s ears. “So, Ace… do you know a lot about Norse Mythology, or do you just know a lot about everything in general?”

I was getting the feeling it was the latter, but I wanted to check.

“Ace knows every random fact that you could ever not want to know,” Chad sang as he strummed his guitar.

Ace’s nostrils flared. “For someone who has so many ex-lovers and one-night stands, Chad, I’d think you’d take more of an interest in the supernatural abilities of the enemies you’re making.”

“Am I going to have to separate you two?” I asked sensing something a little more than annoyance between them. Maybe a past wrong. “So, Ace, are you the resident expert on Grayhaven?”

“Yes,” Chad sang. “And, he’s got a dozen fancy degrees to prove it.”

“One degree, in Classics, and I was going for my MA in Mythological Studies when I got a little too close to the truth and ended up becoming what I was studying.” Ace gestured down to his body. “Really, I’m just the resident bartender, meaning I come in contact with everyone in Grayhaven and learn more than I want to know about the residents of our fair town.”

“I seriously want to pick your brain sometime…” I trailed off as the big fluffy Skogkatt cat started hacking. His stomach moved up and down as its head arched toward the pavement. “Poor guy,” I said as he continued to hack, and then a wad of paper came hurling out.

“No wonder,” I said through gritted teeth as the cat continued to hack.

Next, the cat spat a thick chain, tangled into a ball. After he’d expelled his guts, the feline yawned, rubbed its head against my legs, and wandered back up the driveway.

“This looks like iron.” Ace poked the chain, and it fell apart to reveal a thick necklace with two charms on it, one of a tree with a twisting decorative trunk and another of a four-leaf clover.

“It looks like it could double for a weapon,” I said on a laugh. The necklace wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing piece of jewelry. The iron chain was clunky and the charms looked like worn hunks of metal.

“I think it’s a talisman to protect you from the fae.” Ace poked a charm that resembled a twisted tree. “This is a rowan tree, which should keep the fae from tricking you, and this here…” he pointed to the four-leaf clover, “It was said that if you carried a four-leaf clover you could see past fae glamour. And… this is as close as my fingers can get to the necklace. There’s some sort of force pushing my hand away.”

Chad set his guitar down and came to crouch over us. He reached for the necklace but yanked back and shook his hand. He nodded to me. “Feels like static. I’m guessing it was meant for you, Beautiful.”

Next to me, Ace rolled his eyes. “I thought you were supposed to be creative, Chad. Beautiful is the most overused expression of appreciation out there.”

“There’s a reason it’s overused,” Chad said, smoothly, and his shoulder pressed into mine.

Ignoring the two, I reached down for the necklace and my fingers met no resistance. I wrapped my hand around the chain, and the moment I did, the driveway around me changed. Where there had only been a gasoline tank before, now there was a thick tree root piercing up from the ground and into the tank.

“There’s a tree growing up into your gas tank,” I said as I pointed to it. “The moment I touched the necklace, this massive engorged root appeared out of thin air.”

“I wonder if this would work now that you’re touching it…” Ace reached up and wrapped his hand around the chain, meeting no resistance this time. “And, clearly the fae have been stealing from us for some time.”

The fae had stuck a leaf onto the monitoring system to fake out the reader.

Chad wrapped his hand around the necklace too. “Damn it. You’d think the fae would leave our gas alone since nine out of ten times the calls we respond to are reports of fires blazing in the forest, threatening their houses.”

“Do fae need gas for something?” I asked as I ran my hand over the root. It just felt like normal wood to me.

“They hate anything to do with technology. The absolute only reason they’d steal gas would be to trade it to the demons.” Ace rubbed a hand over his eyes. “And nine out of ten fires we put out are from the demons being careless with gasoline.”

Chad lifted the chain toward the tree root. “What would happen if we…”

“Don’t Chad!” Ace yelled, but it was too late.

Chad touched the iron necklace to the thick wooden stalk, and it yanked away, sending a stream of gasoline straight down at us.

Acrid gas splashed down, raining over my shirt and splashing onto my chin.

“Shit!” Chad reached up and covered the hole with his hands, but the gas was still streaming out. Ace and I both reached up and covered Chad’s hands with our own. We all stood there, soaked in gasoline and twisted up with each other’s limbs.